Is Sderot a Prop? Solidarity & Exploitation
I watched and listened to most of the globe-circling tribute to Sderot in which millions, celebrities and real folks told the Jews of that rocket-battered town that there are millions of their fellows in the world who know and care deeply about their plight: at least the simple and forbearing people do…
Since we are living during the last days of the dominion of Edom and its parent culture, Yavan, there was plenty of politics, some overt and some less obvious. Politics is a Greek word, and all our social forms, habits of thought, vocabularies, sense of what is or is not possible is permeated with the culture of ancient Greece that intertwined democracy, oligarchy, slavery, Tyranny, militarism and cultural imperialism. The derekh Yehudi, commonly and somewhat vacuously called “Judaism” is in the book that many quoted or cited– the scroll of Esther. Do they intend to follow its model for redeeming Sderot and all of Israel or will they, do they now, sit supping at Achashverosh’s feast?
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations is Malcolm Hoenlein and he spoke on the web cast, quoting Hebrew with a passionately fine accent. The name of the coalition of Major Organizations he heads is so formidable, and was so formidably absent in asserting its clout when the ten thousand Jews of Gush Katif and northern Shomron were deported one imagines that twenty-five centuries ago they would have had their secretaries RSVP well in advance for six months of feasting and networking, followed by a more ‘intimate’ week hosted by the Persian tyrant. Be that as it may, Mr. Hoenlein spoke eloquently and read incisively from the Scroll of Esther. He emphasized with particular force that our sages teach that one who reads the Megillah without understanding that its message applies to our day has not observed the mitzvah or honored the holiday. It was a fine presentation from a head of a series of groups many of whom actively promote the “two-state solution” to the problem nations have with Jews living in their land; this is their “Jewish problem.”
But his remarks impressed and delighted me: for in this Mr. Hoenlein, the Head of a Conference of Presidents known for its tendency to provide cover for whatever an American administration wants to do Israel (for Israel’s own good of course), sounded like the Rambam explicating positive commandment 187 which pertains explicitly to the tribe of Haman, Amalek. The mitzvah to “exterminate the seed of Amalek…obtains in all generations” Rambam states.
“Whenever the seed [descendants] of Amalek is found it is to be exterminated! This is a milchemet mitzvah” (mandatory war from which there are no exemptions). “This mitzvah is not linked to a specific time and place [for] we are commanded to root them out and pursue them relentlessly in every generation until the very last one of them is exterminated” [1]. That is a very specific directive and it prompts thoughts of how different the position of Jews in the world would be if the leaders of the State of Israel and those leaders of Major Diaspora Jewish Organizations had demanded and followed implemented since 1967 at least. Perhaps Mr. Hoenlein and other great players in the “Conference of Presidents” would clarify if they indeed are lining up with Rambam and true Judaism on this urgent matter.
Amalek, one must note, now mixed among the nations, as Haman, the Roman church, the Crusaders, Ferdinand and Isabella, Luther and Hitler later showed is any group of people that comes against the Jews or the land with a decree to dispossess or attack them whether in the name of “peace” or because they will not bow before an alien god, or because they are in some way obnoxious to the day’s ruling power cult.
How great it would be if the Conference of Presidents drew a clear line in the sand between itself and the land and children of Israel on one side and all those represented by the JCPA that supports a “two-state solution” to the Jewish problem that so many nations, at least their diplomats have with the Jewish national home. Following the Rambam, that is, Judaism also requires us to save Jewish lives by driving out the hostile aliens from our midst; it’s not a reasonable “policy option,” that’s for the Greeks. It’s a commandment to save Jewish lives and land and now has become chillingly clear. The way of Judaism, the derekh Yehudi is a unified way of being whose main goals are to teach, love, be in awe of and to unify the “Primary Being” and Creator whose wisdom fills all things [2]. This road does not match the world of Greece or Rome.
But we are in the Greco-Roman era still; it has not destroyed itself fully yet, nor the rest of the world in concert with its ancient ally, Ishmael. Speaking of politics and Ishmael, the three “serious” American Presidential contenders taped short messages professing support for the brave people of Sderot. Contender Barry Hussein Obama who belonged for twenty years to a church where anti-white and Jew-hating racism was preached and Louis Farrakhan (did you ever see him imitate a Jewish tailor) had words as did Senator McCain who called the town, “Sharott,” or maybe he said cheroot; it sounded different every time he said it. Senator Rodham-Clinton offered some carefully chosen “smooth words” [3] that were not at all like the unsavory, even vicious epithets she loaded upon Jewish staffers in July 2000 as reported in the London Times and New York daily papers [4]. But this is politics and the writer does not intend singling out the Senator from the Empire State: all three ‘serious’ contenders support a “Palestinian” State in Judea and Samaria and they support the “moderate” Holocaust denier and Arafat partner, Abu Mazen as the “President” of this terror state. That’s politics and since Machiavelli’s day, at least, politics has been about “smooth words,” manipulation, brutality, pride and loss of compassion as Rav Hirsch noted. In truth, all of these politicians have contempt not only for the lives of the Jews of Sderot and everywhere else in Israel, and perhaps other places too but they, as professional harlots, are liars. They used Sderot as a prop to sell their fake compassion and even more fake “support” for Israel, — for an Israel with Yehuda and the Shomron, for an Israel that destroys its enemies? No, for an Israel that must show “restraint” (do little or nothing) to prevent or even respond to the murder of Jewish civilians and destruction of their towns and farms.
No doubt the people of Sderot were grateful that some of the mighty (and many of the simple) of the world paid attention for almost two hours to the hell in which they have been living and from which their government, under orders from American and European politicians does nothing to deliver them. But some are left with a sour taste from the way the agony of these people and the ruin of their lives was used as a platform for others to polish their “pro-Israel” position or their “deeply felt connection” to the Jewish people. “Words without deeds will not to heaven go…”
“For the searcher of hearts and minds is a righteous God; God is a righteous judge and God is angered everyday” at the wicked designs against the Children of Israel and their desirable, good and spacious home land (psalm 7:11-12).
The time of Purim is particularly inapt for the spinning dishonesties of politicians and ‘great ones’ at the feast of the Empire; for at Purim the king “permitted the Jews to organize and defend themselves, to destroy, slay and exterminate every armed force of any people that threatened them” (Esther 8:11). And the result was as in 1967: “on the very day that the enemies of the Jews expected to destroy them, — it was turned about! The Jews organized to attack those who sought their hurt, and no one stood in their way for the fear of them had fallen upon the nations” thus “transforming the times from sorrow to gladness and from mourning to festivity…days that should be remembered and celebrated by every single family and generation” (ibid. 9:1-2, 22, 28): remembered not least in the time of the carnage of the Oslo-Road Map scheme and the slaughter of Torah students and other innocents. But none of the great ones spoke of Eretz Levanon or of the two off-duty IDF soldiers hiking near Hebron, or Jacob Jacobson of Sderot. None noted that Torah teaches that Jews who give over the lives of fellow Jews or their property to others are like gentiles, enemies and foes, like Haman [5].
Ellie Wiesel spoke eloquently of the unique savagery of suicide murderers and the implicit savagery of the god in which they profess belief. What was he saying Israel should do when the first wave of these bombings struck it, as if a Divine alarm was sounding in the mid 1990s? Did he urge that Israel drive out those who by murdering Jews believe they find consummation and marriage to harems after death? Where was his passion for “human rights” when Jews were expelled in 1995 or during the pogrom at Amona? He too supports retreat (and consequent expulsions) to the 1949 armistice lines, does he not? This is the pinnacle of Hellenistic ‘ethics.’
But Haman the Agagite (descended from Agag, the king of Amalek in the time of Saul and David) singled out Mordechai not because he lived in Elon Moreh, Jerusalem or Hebron but because he was a Jew and fingered the Jews as a whole for annihilation. What does it tell you that the world, West and East wants to destroy the people whose ancient faith rejects the idolatry of power? “The wild beast…Hamas man” still wants to tear apart the turtledove (psalms 74:19, 18:49). Where were all of today’s preachers of solidarity when Gush Katif was rendered Jew-free or when Oslo and the Road Map were published and promoted to this day when Abu Mazen has been laundered?
One should note that most people in Sderot supported the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif having bought the government’s insane rationale that having hostiles a mile from their municipal borders would bring “peace.” They now repent, many have said so. Let no more Jews say that sacrificing other Jews (strictly prohibited by Torah) can bring “peace” or that such a “peace” would be good.
As in the days of Purim and Hanukkah, when the Jews and Judaism again were singled out, Jews better be ready to band together and fight for if they do they will win against staggering odds. As the Grand Rabbi of Great Britain, the rotten heart of modern anti-Semitism said, “the Christians have 82 states; the Muslims 54; cannot the Jews have even one?” The answer the world has been shouting loudly and clear for centuries is NO! One Jewish State is too many; the main purpose of the UN is to clarify this historical truth. So the expressions of solidarity on Purim 5768 better prove to be true because there is no bottom to the cesspool of imperial arrogance and greed in Edom and Kedar and make no mistake, as at Purim, it is Amalek, from Edom that pushes the train along.
1. Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvoth I.187-89 and II. 48-51, 59, the positive and negative commandments, two texts bound in one volume (Moznaim NY / Jerusalem 1993), English translation, Rabbi S. Silverstein; see also Rambam, Hilchot Melachim 1:1-2, 5:1, 4-5 (Moznaim 1987). In I.187, quoted above, Rambam cites Torah including Exodus 17:14, Deuteronomy 20:17, 25:17-19 and 1 Samuel 15:2 and in II, the prohibitions including Deut 7:2, “do not show them any favor” [v’lo Techanem] and “do not allow them to dwell among you” (Exodus 23:33) quoting also Avodah Zarah 20a and 64b.
2. Rambam uses the term “Primary Being” [Matsui Rishon] to refer to the Creator in Foundations of Torah [Yesodei HaTorah] 1:1 stating that knowledge of Him is “the foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom” phrases whose words first letters, in Hebrew spell the tetragrammaton.
3. See Rav Hirsch’s comments on Psalm 12.
4. The phrase she chose to deliver criticism was “f*****g Jew b******” after the first reports the wire services commented on the incident in euphemistic ways. Google it and read for yourselves. Enraged obscenity is not as bad as deporting entire communities or demanding that a nation put itself in a posture for extinction. There are many ways to curse and deride a person without focusing the curse on the person’s Judaism. So the Senator’s outburst, one of many recalls that of Haman. Recounting his glory, status and prestige, he admitted that it all meant nothing to him if “that Jew Mordechai” wouldn’t snap to attention when he passed (Esther 5:13).
5. Rambam, Hilchot Teshuva 3:6, 12
* As at the first Purim so long ago, truly we live in a time of hester panim “concealment of the Divine countenance” and approval, so ugly is the violence and institutionalized lying, the virtual reality of the world. Ramchal describes this situation well: “when man rejects wisdom [the substance of Torah and the Highest Wisdom] truth is ignored, wickedness strengthens and prevails, and deception and error increase. It is a world of false values,” a world of lies built upon lies “when good qualities are eclipsed and evil ones prevail.” This sage speaks to our time of constant shadow war and insecurity; and he continues. “As a result of this, tranquility ceases to exist and there is no security while there is much suffering and injury. God hides His glory from the world and it goes on as if left to chance, abandoned to the laws of nature,” the god of the Romantics and environmentalists, their successors funded by the great Foundations that oppose the “Foundation of all Foundations,” knowledge of the Creator. Thus “God neither rejoices in His handiwork nor does mankind rejoice in Him. Man neither realizes nor recognizes even what it means for creation to rejoice before its Creator.” As I often have written, there is ‘fun’ but no joy, giddiness but no gladness. “In such a world, the wicked become strong and the good are deprived of all status.” – Rabbi Moshe David Luzzato, Derekh Hashem [“the way of God”], 2.8.2 (Feldheim 1978; 1999 revised translation); this is the perverse world that takes good for evil and evil for good, a world without a future because it has spurned its past and miraculous origins and debt of love to the Creator whose Being and wisdom it arrogantly renamed and re-arranged. It is the world of politics and envy, the Greco-Roman world whose long term project is to crush the way of Judaism. The politics of genocidal envy will not last.