During this same time, the 9000 deported Jews have been dumped throughout Israel in trailer parks. The jobs, permanent residences, and compensation they were promised have been lacking. That the “world community” does not mention or care about these brutally displaced Jews is not unusual; but there also has been a failure of mainstream American Jewish leaders to speak publicly against the ethnic cleansing and its bitter aftermath. The highly touted “two-state solution” means more destruction of Jewish homes and more expulsions of Jews from the land of Israel.

These dual failures of trust, to the expelled Jews (whose deportation, it is claimed, will bring “peace”) and to totally suppress the rocket war on Israel, dismays lovers of Israel. One such person is Bernard (“Buddy”) Macy of New Jersey who in the past three years has become an impassioned advocate of justice for the deportees and for accountability and meaningful action from American Jewish organizations on behalf of an intact Israel.

Macy had served as a recording secretary, fund raiser and Trustee for the Jewish Federation in northern New Jersey for twenty-five years. In February 2006, he resigned to protest the national UJA/UJC refusal to begin emergency funding for the refugees and for their silence about the brutal ethnic cleansing of Jews from Amona, eighteen miles north of Jerusalem. Since then, Mr. Macy has pressed actively for mainstream Jewish leadership to assist and educate Americans about the embattled position of the Jewish people in the Promised Land.

In response, he has heard that “we don’t need another meeting,” in other words, ‘go away and don’t disturb our cozy ties to policy makers in Washington or our reputation as advocates for Jewry.’  This dismissal now includes the refusal of two prominent American Jewish leaders, Howard Rieger of the UJC (www.ujc.org) and Malcolm Hoenlein, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (www.conferenceofpresidents.org) to participate in a debate / discussion about the mistreatment of Israel’s internal refugees and the fact that Israel’s government refuses to respond to the war against it with military action that would protect its citizens, suppress Hamas and Hizballah and establish a basis for true peace.

These topics are of great importance to all Americans and, in fact, to all people. Yet as often happens when the official truth will not bear scrutiny, genuine discussion remains unheard. But the matter is still open; like poverty in the attic, hard truths will not go away.

On May 30, 2008, Macy emailed Messrs. Rieger and Hoenlein with an invitation to join with Dr. Arieh Eldad, Member of the Knesset, retired Brigadier General and head physician in the IDF, and with Dr. Eugene Narrett, writer and author on Israel and geopolitics, both of whom had agreed to debate. Macy’s email and follow-up telephone calls to Rieger and Hoenlein went unanswered. The “leadership” still ducks discussion; no surprise: their posture as champions and helpers of the Jewish people in the Promised Land would be discomfited by a full airing of what they have done (helped sell the “peace processing” of Israel) and failed to do (be genuine, vigorous and public defenders of Israel’s Biblical heritage and legal rights to all the land west of the Jordan River).

Education is essential to leadership but in all fields we find that education has been corrupted by those in positions of authority. This betrayal of trust is at the core of many crises in the modern West and its taproot, Israel. So it has been in this matter. In a follow-up email this week, Macy wrote his readers that by refusing an informative discussion, Mr. Rieger and Mr. Hoenlein “have once again demonstrated that they are unfit for their positions of Jewish leadership.” The same could be said for AIPAC which serves our diplomatic echelons by ‘koshering’ all candidates for President, even one with ties to Hamas and Fatah.

Among the points obscured from Americans and from Jewish communities around the world is the fact that the Road Map phase of the peace process, an Orwellian misnomer, demands the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the historic heartland of the Jewish people and their holiest sites, even from the Temple Mount where Jews are forbidden to pray. True Jewish leadership would alert American and world Jewry and their friends to these brutal facts; but those in office do not truly lead. The same is true in Israel which has not had genuine Jewish leadership in the sixty years since the state was re-born. If it had, the military victories of 1948, 1967, 1973 and 1982 would have been secured, not thrown away; the PLO would not have been rescued (1982) and sanitized (1993) and we would live in a different and better world.

Just as Americans watch their jobs, borders, education, and health systems disintegrate while Congress fiddles and candidates emit sound bites, the failure of American Jewish leadership, and the erosion of the status of Israel in Washington was clear at the State of the Union address when ALL members of Congress applauded plans to carve a state for a “non-people” called “Palestinians” from the center of Israel. Talk of surrendering the Golan Heights (“the Bashan”), site of much Jewish history and of one of the six “cities of refuge” elicits nothing from the ostensible leaders of American and world Jewry.

Throughout the West as in Israel, failures of leadership signal civilizational collapse. Jewish “leaders” say nothing while Israel, pressed relentlessly by the “Quartet” and an entrenched oligarchy hostile to Jewish sovereignty, delivers fuel, food, and water to those showering her with rockets. Jews are discriminated against fiercely by Israeli courts; as Aaron Klein has detailed, Jewish-owned land is given to Arabs who build while Jews are expelled. But American leaders are silent and people go about their lives ignorant of the catastrophe hovering over Israel, Jews and the West.  

All Americans need to hear the facts about these matters and to see how official Jewish leadership relates to the land and people of Israel. The burial of history threatens us all and is part of the godless new world emerging from many parts of our culture.

True Jewish leaders would declare unequivocally that a “Palestinian” State carved from the heart of Judea and Samaria would be a terrible blow to regional and world peace and a lethal offense against truth, history and memory. Dr. Eldad, head of the new HaTikva (“the hope”) party and whose father was a distinguished Professor who worked for Jewish independence notes that “a Palestinian State will lead to the destruction of Israel.”

The range of opinion in the American Jewish community is not being heard in the media. The American people do not favor a two-state solution and if better informed would oppose it even more strongly. Nor do they believe that true peace will result from arming jihadists whom politicians term “moderates.” These matters need a public airing. If the Emperor is naked let us dress him with an honest and honorable policy that sustains our friends and disarms our enemies.

America will have its debates; perhaps matters of substance will be discussed. The present condition and future prospects of Israel also need to be addressed openly and fully by the official leaders of American Jewry.

In the Hebrew language and consciousness, a flag is a miracle (nais), a banner snapping against the sky to arouse to wonder and thus empower those who experience it.

The modern State of Israel from its beginning has the wrong flag because it has the wrong leaders, socialists and multicultural globalists who suppress and would obliterate the Jewish substance that alone gives the State meaning and life. Great structural changes to save the nation and people of Israel can begin with designing, disseminating and displaying the truth and national pride of the Children of Israel.

The symbol of Israel from most ancient times is the Menorah for Israel testifies to the Creator and the purposefulness of life and history. The Menorah awakens people to the Matzui Rishon, the Primary Being as the primary fact of life, the generosity and order that establish abundance and coherence.

The flag of Israel is a golden Menorah on a field of white with a thin blue stripe inset from its border edge; the blue of the infinitely remote, — in space, time and concept — ‘place’ where the life energy of the Creator appeared and initiated the universe.

The mission of Israel as a witness and teacher of this fact and these qualities, the basis both of science and wonder was set forth at Sinai. There the Eternal One, the Highest Wisdom brought the people He chose to receive his teachings for sanctifying the world. Israel living on its land with its mission is like a banner arousing the nations to awe and respect. Therefore, another flag of Israel shows the tablets of the law flanked by the lions of Judah, rampant on a blue field, for Judah has royalty.

These flags must be displayed prominently in Jerusalem and in every Jewish settlement in the land of Israel which is a “daughter of Israel” married to a Jewish “son of Eve.” The Eternal speaks to the land Israel saying, “you shall clothe yourself with them like jewelry and adorn yourself like a bride…and those who would devour you will be distanced” [1].

And Israel again will learn preemption, honor and deterrence as taught in Torah, Rambam and other great sages. Whenever Israel is attacked or even threatened it requires mandatory war, milchemet mitzvah to secure peace.

In every generation the world rises up to destroy Israel and the Jews because most people, leaders especially with their fixation on power, cannot abide the testimony of Israel to the Eternal One and to the logic and purpose of history and creation. They would rather be fiddling with it, and with people to suit themselves and their ambitions to be as gods. In the Modern period, the ideology of the West, the dominant culture, is increasingly about forgetting, about burial of history and the past, about the radical reformation of family, gender, social relationships, the nature of humanity and its relation to the Creator. Israel embodies remembrance and history. So it must proclaim its history, the root-sparks of its integrity on banners seen brilliantly against the sky: this is Jewish strength, self-respect, honor and witness of the Highest Wisdom and our role in creation.

Thus, in every tribal territory, in additional to the national flags that teach science and morality, the first principles (reisheet) and holiness in life, Israel must fly the tribal banners in every settlement. The lion of Judah, the radiant hind of Naphtali, the viper of Dan (“don’t tread on me” as the US Navy flag adapted from this message and blessing proclaims), the silhouette of Shechem on the banner of Shimon, the ships of Zevulun, the olive tree of Asher, green on gold must fly everywhere reminding everyone who we are and where we are rooted by the Master and Maker of all things. More than any speeches, legal pleadings, ‘negotiations’ and declarations these banners will establish Israel in its place, deter the devourers and lift up a banner of honor, remembrance and identity to the exiles.

These uplifted miracles are the counterpart of the lovers of the land that walk it, pitch tents, cook meals and deepen the marriage of the Land and the People. They are these flags and they should carry the flags of the true Israel, the Israel of Sinai and Jerusalem and the entire nation.

Every day, for the same purposes, a brace of shofars should be sounded by these miracles, bannered against the sky. And we will see the sound, recalling the first time we knew ourselves as a precious and unique holy nation (Exodus 19:3-6, 16-20; 20:15).

Against the gathering darkness of our times, in every settlement and at every guard post in Yehudah and the Shomron there should fly the banner of the lion and the ox, a golden lion of Judah rampant on a blue field, vertical, next to the black ox on a red field of Joseph to remind us all of Ezekiel’s stirring prophecy of redemption and the embodiment of mitzvah yichud, the deed that goes with the prophecy and prayer: Judah and Joseph and their brothers with them, “one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel,” the heart of the heartland [2].

Last but not least, to fulfill Israel’s teaching mission, every day leaders of the heartland must proclaim their brotherhood and unity with all the Jewish people everywhere, especially those living in the State which so greatly needs to return to its root and strength. The oligarchs who grind down the Jewish people can be overcome by these myriad banners of identity and love and by the verbal declaration that “we are all brothers, sons of one man.” Jews of the heartland, tell them everywhere in the land and in the exile, we will never forsake you; we are one as Hashem is One [3].

People rally round a flag. Flags and the declaration of unity can be a rallying center for all those who know that the Land of Israel is for the People of Israel and only together can they flourish in the derekh Yehudi, an example for the world. A united front of all those who embrace this hope is necessary to resist, expose and undo the false collective that the looming “National Unity Government” by which the oligarchs would squash the heart of the heartland and bury the banners of Israel, its history & witness; and beyond that, to resist the new world religion to which Tony Blair’s high-powered “Faith Foundation” has just leant its weight [4].

The world can be inspired and reminded of the providence of Israel; it can learn, and the burden of madness will lift from its rulers. “The earth will yield its produce. May God, our God bless us and all the ends of the earth will know awe of Him” [5].  

The Hope persists; make the banners and raise them now: activate the miracle and the redemption.

* The opening quote from Dr. Eldad recalls a critical debate in 1936-7 and a defeatist comment by Chaim Weizmann, proponent of minimal Zionism. Zev Jabotinsky, founder of the Jewish Legion and tireless worker to insure that Britain fulfill its legal obligation to “facilitate Jewish immigration” to the Promised Land called for immediate action to bring at least three million European Jews to Israel. Weizmann offered a defeatist apologia for the British refusal by referring to his millions of brethren as “dust in a cruel wind.”

1. Rav Yitzhak Ginsburgh, Rectifying the State of Israel (Gal Einai 2003), 78-80, 120-4, 178-9
2. Ezekiel 37:15-28
3. Genesis 42:11, 32
4. London Times online, May 30, 2008; 5. Psalm 67: 7-8

.

Few politicians are born but many are made… the lust for power, to be a made-man or woman intertwines tightly with the purple tones of the twilight times.

VP Cheney flew to the Middle East a few weeks ago. In Israel he declared that America must never do anything to compromise Israel’s security. Then he flew to Amman and demanded the speedy creation of a “Palestinian State” which would destroy whatever remains of Israel’s security and drive a last big nail into the coffin of history. Cheney’s a politician and speaketh readily with forked tongue…

May 14^th was the sixtieth anniversary of David Ben Gurion’s declaration of Israel’s independence. Miracles of course do not happen in one day: they are the result of many choices and deeds as well as the holy life energies of the Creator [1] acting over large tracts of space and time. For one thing, the occupying British who greatly assisted the Final Solution (delegated to their continental cousins, the Germans) did not leave the Promised Land that day in May sixty years ago: it took them a few more months to finish arming their Arab troops for the Federation on which they’re still working with many helpers [2].  But politicians are not only personae, they are ‘party-animals’ so President Bush and an impressive entourage visited Jerusalem where he delivered an address remarkable for its incongruence with American policy, its internal dissonance and its effects on American presidential politics.

Remember that neither this nor any other post-War President formulates foreign or economic policy: he announces or indicates its shape, however bizarre; he may have some input into its articulation. But he doesn’t want to choke to death on popcorn or anything else…

He read some lines remarkable for their sense: “we consider it a source of shame that the United Nations routinely passes more human rights [sic] resolutions against [Israel] than any other nation in the world” (with the United States being second as whipping boy for the “international community”) [3]. But really, that is its purpose, shaped both by providence and the global oligarchy; condemning and dicing the Jews with attrition and dependency is the method and goal of “the Quartet” which is ALL the states in the world (the US, USSR, EU and UN). “In the end of days, all nations of the world will gather against Jerusalem…”

If Mr. Bush or his speech writers were serious about the UN, they, and previous administrations would have withdrawn decades ago and Israel with them. The dissonance shows that the oligarchs run American policy and intend no good to America or Israel.

The President denounced the Nazis and their assistants saying “they could not take away the spirit of the Jewish people and they could not break the promise of God.” He’s right, and that’s a miracle (see above); and it’s almost a miracle that this is the same fellow that said he looked into the pope’s eyes and saw god [4]. This is why we noted that Presidents do not formulate policy nor write their own speeches anymore; this is why we note the kinship of politicians to harlots.

Near the end of his speech, Mr. Bush made a reference rarely made by the dominant faction in Israel: “over the past six decades [actually, it has taken centuries] the Jewish people have raised a modern society in the Promised Land, a light into the nations that preserves the legacy of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.” If only this were more true; if only the oligarchy that the West keeps in power in Israel wanted this to happen; if only Israel was a Constitutional Monarchy settled in its tribal territories from the Sea of Reeds to the Euphrates and from the Arabian wilderness to the Western Sea. Did someone forget to tell the speech writers that every time Ms. Rice descends upon Israel she demands that her sub-contractors remove checkpoints so that more Jews can be murdered and destroy more Jewish towns and synagogues; to destroy Israeli army bases or Jewish-owned land and to build cities for the fictional “Palestinians” in their place? That they join her bosses in declaring Jews “illegal” residents in the center of the Promised Land? And that as checkpoints to weed out Arab murderers are dismantled, checkpoints to inhibit Jews from traveling to their homes are erected as part of the ethnic cleansing plan.

No, no one forgot anything. This was a birthday speech made in Jerusalem for those who love the promise of the Promised Land. It was politics. If it was Riyadh or Moscow or Rome or Zagreb a very different speech would have been made with a different amount of attention paid. After all, the key policy goal of both Bush II administrations has been to create a fake state for a non-existent people to curtail fulfillment of the Promise and legacy the President invoked. He may even have noted the dissonance in his writers having him hallucinate about a peaceful Palestinian State sixty years hence, “in a new period of tolerance and integration,” they’re smoking dope.

Being only VP, Mr. Cheney can be far more succinct and honestly dissonant, hoisting the thesis and antithesis clearly and in close proximity to enhance our virtual reality, the lie made truth.

But the above is background for the turmoil, probably pre-scripted that the President’s remarks stirred up Stateside. Mr. Bush’s writers had him denounce “the false comfort of appeasement” and the belief “that we should negotiate with terrorists” which is exactly what American policy requires that Israel do, it’s blared out and enforced almost daily; it also is the catechism of Team Blue. State might quibble: didn’t Mr. Bush himself declare that Abu Mazen (now decked in three-piece suits and called Mahmoud Abbas) “is a man of courage” and a “moderate” (May 2005) rather than the good cop to Hamas’ bad cop? Mr. Abbas a few weeks ago vaunted to the press in Transjordan about the good old days when he and his co-worker Mr. Arafat created the PLO from Fatah (into which it has again devolved for the one is just a transliterated acronym of the other) for the same old purpose of destroying the Jewish State whose miracle Mr. Bush had extolled.

In any case, for this scripted spat, Team Blue acted as if this “delusion” and “false comfort of appeasement” applied only to them; Mr. Obama particularly was appalled: appeasement is his middle name. He, like Senators McCain and Clinton represents those whose purpose is to dissolve America into a North American Union and generic and impoverished part of the world state. The distinguished Senator from Delaware, Joseph Biden commented that Mr. Bush’s praise of Israel was “B******it” [5]; how eloquent, what populist bona fides!. Oh how the “debate” raged between “liberal and conservative commentators” for whom guests are props for the delivery of the daily truth.

Of course Team Blue teems with appeasers and destroyers of sovereignty; so does the Carlisle Group and much of Team Red, especially its upper echelons. Indeed the relation between the teams (America’s ‘two’ political parties) recalls Hardy’s poem “the Convergence of the Twain” and Milton’s description of the ambiguity of death “if shape it might be called that shadow seemed…” [6]; the teams’ contrived argument exemplified my essays on convergence in the purple dusk: boundaries dissolve; integrity, identity and history fade. The foreign policy teams of each candidate could fit snugly into the Carter or first Bush administrations: shape seems shadow and shadow shape; “fair is foul and foul is fair, — hover through the fog and filthy air.” It’s the time of the lie made truth and erasure of history, even while the past is given “mouth honor.” Today, “nothing is but what is not” as virtual reality meets reality TV in a climate like the fog in Macbeth’s disintegrating mind and Culturetainment invites us to waltz on the decks of the Titanic.  

In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad’s narrator refers to Brussels as “a whited sepulcher.” The same may be said of D.C. or Moscow, London or Rome as the new world disorder draws near, brandishing its dart… famine, plague, war and population reduction; despite Mr. Bush’s remarks about the Nazis’ failure, eugenic dogma has never been more entrenched in high places. Dialectic attrition and ‘environmentalism’ mean a weeding out people and global feudalism.

It is a time of trouble for Israel as the West destroys itself by attacking its root.

1.  Rambam, Yesodei HaTorah (”Foundations of Torah”) 2:7 and Ramban on Genesis 1, the words “Bara” and “Yetzirah.”
2. Samuel Katz, Days of Fire (Israel 1966; NY Doubleday 1968) remains the best source in English on events in Israel during the 1940s. Planned by 1915 in the subsequently abrogated Sykes-Picot treaty, secretly advanced by David Lloyd George at Versailles and then openly by Churchill in 1921-2, by 1944 the British plan for an Arab Federation featured merging the Lebanon and “Syria” (states that had never yet existed) with Transjordan (ditto) and Israel in a block to be merged subsequently with the state of “Iraq” which the British at that point were still trying to get into place. For the origin of what became the Fertile Crescent plan see Shmuel Katz, the Aaronsohn Saga (Gefen 2007, English) 327 and 324-30. For its 1940s form http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/950373.html “In August 1944 the British government gave its representatives in the Middle East the go-ahead to implement ‘the Fertile Crescent Plan.’” Call it the Assyrian Empire redux in which “Christian and Jewish minorities would enjoy [sic] autonomy.” This plan is now called the Road Map and interlocks with other regional groupings served by the beer ad. Javier Solana and Tony Blair have been “crisis managing” in and around the Gaza Strip as George Tenet used to do. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/950189.html  You can’t manage a crisis unless there’s a crisis to manage. That’s why Israel must be ruled by an oligarchy sub-contracted to the global oligarchs that deny Israel the fruits of victory, to fight for total victory or even fight a war at all, as was plain in July-August 2006. Into this Fertile Crescent, Arabia and the Gulf states fit like a big, fat oil-sloshed plug.
Just as the ancient Assyrians ruled their sprawling imperium by transferring populations and scrambling discreet peoples, so the new world omelet does the same via multiculturalism and ‘free flow’ of human resources across artificial borders.
The renewed press for Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria indicates the relentless Anglo-American push to achieve the Fertile Crescent Plan.
3. See www.eyeontheun.org for reports, inter alia, on the UN “human rights commission” which is dominated by the Arab League and other Islamic states, most of them created by Western empires with whom they continue to work hand-in-glove.
4. See note to EWTN in previous essay and note that the current pope is fast-tracking the beatification of Pius XII who couldn’t bring himself to mention the massacre of  Jews during WW II and even made speeches inflaming the deicide claim. See John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope (1999).
5. Our previous essay discussed “the coarsening of speech” and “the reversion of the beast folk” in the prescient and nasty self-fulfilling prophecy of H. G. Wells (the Island of Dr. Moreau) for he and his fellow oligarchic world-breakers have done all they can to make people revert to beasts, the better to treat them as such; to treat them eventually as “useless eaters” for whom ‘health care’ is too expensive.
6. John Milton, Paradise Lost (1673), Book II. 666-70, “if shape it might be called that shape had none…” Milton’s description of death describes post-modernism’s institutionalized ambiguities and negation of integrity. So does the bizarre trans-gendered nature of Aphrodite, see Hesiod, Theogeny 160-210; contrast the Hellenist idea of the love goddess and love to Genesis 24. For Macbeth references see 1.1.4, 10-11; 1.3.39, 83-5, 130-42, 5.3.22-8, passim.

Surely Jews do not celebrate the governments perhaps not even the quasi-Jewish state established by those governments. Those who love Israel and its role in the world should celebrate a significant step in the achievement of Jewish sovereignty because miracles are not made in one day. Many miracles, recent, modern and ancient were present on that day in May, the beginning of new battles that continue.

May 14, 1948 (3 Iyar 5708), when David Ben Gurion read the Declaration of Israel’s independence was a great day, an eventful day, a disappointing day and part of a miracle unfolding for a very long time. The expulsion of the British occupiers took almost twenty-six years of explaining, urging, appeals to justice, scholarship, organization and armed resistance by many people. Many of them opposed and even hunted by the official Zionists who played ball with the Brits. Steady building of the yishuv proceeded during twenty-eight years of incitement by British officials and officers beginning in March 1920 [3]. The miracle that was more apparent that day in May surely included Aaron Aaronsohn, the resourceful and self-sacrificing members of Nili who made possible the British-Australian-Jewish conquest of the Turks and Germans, the Jewish Legion and its main promoter, organizer and officer, Zev Jabotinsky, the pioneers of the 19^th century, their daily heroism and labor, the heroic sanctity and aliyah of Rabbis Moshe Chaim Luzzato and Chaim ben Attar in the 1730s [4]…the Jews who in defiance of their own government and the Quartet, the powers of the world are rebuilding Homesh day by day; all those who throughout the ages like Yehuda ha Levi; since the war for independence led by Bar Kokhba, the Maccabees; the return to Zion under Ezra and rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple; the resistance to Babylon and Assyria… miracles are the work of many souls and much time, discernment, doubt, hope and self-sacrifice. Everyone has a part to play and for the miracle to reach full ripeness, everyone must do their part. The redemption of Israel is a vast work of the art of making a holy life; it has a cast of millions, a span of millennia and is celebrated everyday Jews perform mitzvoth, be it planting a date tree or blades of wheat, praying the morning prayer in the promised Land. All else is practice, necessary but inadequate, “the chirping of small birds” [5]. 

One could write a book on the miracle of Jewish history, memory, courage, faith and hope but here we will look at a brief strand of signal events that show how the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the Promised Land.

The sages teach that the first redemption, from Egypt is the pattern for the final redemption when Israel regains the sovereignty it rejoiced in on the shore of the Reed Sea (Yam Suf, Exodus 15). “This is my God and I will build him a sanctuary; the God of my father, and I will exalt Him. Hashem is Master of war; His name is Hashem” [6].

But the miraculous destruction of the armies, arrogance and denial of the Almighty by Pharaoh did not begin at the sea, whose miracle was accomplished through the forces of nature, human emotion, faith and deeds, but rooted centuries before that signal event in world history. When Moshe returned from his forty years tending flocks for Jethro, he had to accept the providence of the Eternal and gave full play to his plausible human doubts and fear. He knew and witnessed the degradation and decimation of the Hebrews in Egypt. It also was necessary for the Hebrews to hear his words, recognize the code of remembrance (pakod yifkod, pakod pakadti) passed long before from Joseph to his brothers and from them through their generations. These beaten and beaten down slaves had to remember, affirm and follow a fellow speaking in the name of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob for all that followed to ensue (Genesis 50:24-5, Exodus 3:15-19). And Pharaoh had to be gripped by his lust for power and supremacy for the drama to play out as the Highest Wisdom knew: humans addicted to power are not rational; they cannot read “the writing on the wall.”

And these words, this promise by Joseph, so long treasured in memory and actualized in faith (emunah, from amen) did not begin as he lay dying. The unification of the brothers, shevet achim gam yachad (ps. 133) even in a foreign land, required that Jacob descend to a slave empire from the land of freedom; even the enormous incentive of seeing Joseph could not put him at ease about this, only a direct assurance from the Highest, ‘speaking’ to Jacob’s faculty of knowledge, the form of the soul (Genesis 46:1-5). And the re-union of the brothers required their prior separation, quarrel and jealousy, which hardly seemed like ingredients in “a great deliverance” (lifleitah gedolah, Genesis 45:4-13), but it was. Joseph had knowledge and some traits that his brothers could not but fear and detest; they even disturbed Jacob: “what, are we to come – I and your mother and your brothers and bow down to you to the ground!?” (ibid. 37:9-14). Yet Jacob sensed providence in the tensions and despite the obvious risks, sent Joseph to his brothers after taking him for “deep counsel” “from the depth [valley] of Hebron to Shechem – Elon Moreh, a geographic line of holiness, history and providence that is central to Israel’s ultimate redemption, as now all the nations (the “Quartet”), led by the powers of Esau seek to preempt [7]. 

The miracle of strife, grief, repentance, love and reunion that set the stage for the terrible oppression foretold to Abraham (Genesis 15) required Jacob’s lonely persistence, drawing only on the example of his forefather’s lives, principles and teachings to see him through the manipulations and threats of Uncle Lavan to found and nurture his family, to appease, fend off and remain distinct from the deceitful, appetitive and murderous Esau and return to his fathers’ settlement in “the fields of Mamre, Kiryat Arba, which is Hebron” (ibid 23). Beyond this heroism stretch the fields of Isaac’s persistence and restraint, courageous self-sacrifice and the insight, unshakable faith and bravery of Abraham from his formative proclamation of the living God in Mesopotamia, Ur Kasdim, the land of the Chaldeans which remains in turmoil to this day, his graciousness to his nephew and to all wayfarers, and his prowess and bravery in battle (Genesis 14:10-16) [8]. It is for this grace and courage, this loving kindness and strength that Abraham was chosen and with specific offspring (Genesis 21-2, “please take your son, your only one, whom you love – Isaac,” 26-8, “nevertheless, he [Jacob] shall remain blessed!” 35, passim); these qualities of seemingly superhuman persistence, remembrance, honor and faith imbue all Israel, however clouded at times and denote its history, the history of a living, developing miracle. Because it is the proof of miracle and of the design of the Creator, of the coherence and grace of the world that the powers of the world, that worship their own works and fantasies want above all to blot them out from nationhood, so Israel’s name will not be remembered anymore” (psalm 83) buried beneath the big lie of “Palestine” and a “Palestinian people” soon to be submerged in a Middle East Free Trade Association, itself merged into the Mediterranean Peace and Prosperity Zone itself interlocked with the EU and NAU, a new Tower of Babel on the way to global tyranny and fragmentation, for the “force and fraud” of tyranny are always a step away from anarchy, and it is from this combination of tyranny and disorder that David prayed for deliverance through Solomon and his seed and that the Eternal One formed Israel as an alternative model. “He” knew that it would be a battle in which every evil impulse of human nature would rise up in rebellious longing to join the animal world and bury the sparks of our responsibility, dignity and freedom, the essence of Yom Kippur and the Jubilee year, the return to one’s patrimony being the foundation of freedom and the charity and national consciousness that attend it (Leviticus 25).

The miracle continues to unfold: it can be only by heroism and self-sacrifice, undermined in our days, not for the first time, by the appeal, blackmail and bribery of Yavan-Edom. Battles, literal battles must be fought, for a pre-occupation with books, particularly books of empty wisdom, like astrology “abolished our kingdom, destroyed our Beit HaMikdash, prolonged our exile and brought us to our present predicament,” wrote Rambam [9].  They imagined that these wisdoms were glorious and beneficial and they did not study warfare and land conquest…therefore, the prophets called them fools, and they certainly were fools for they followed vanities that cannot avail nor rescue…” (cf. 1 Samuel 12:21). Rav Teichtal comments “we should use the natural means that become available to us [to re-conquer the land, re-establish the kingdom and rebuild the Temple] then Hashem will send us heavenly assistance. “Each stage [of redemption] has its own time,” he adds, “like the rising of the dawn. This is why the Davidic dynasty is called “sun” as it says, “his throne shall be like the sun before Me” (cf. psalm 89:37).” The sun will not rise before dawn, Rav Teichtal notes; “God will bless the man who is zealous for His Name” and begins with all means to bring on the dawn and day of Israel’s redemption. “Therefore, the gedolim and shepherds of Israel must lovingly accept any opportunity for redemption and strive to bring it to completion” [10]. “Settling Eretz Israel is an extremely precious mitzvah. It is the sum-total of all other mitzvoth and encompasses the entire Torah…our nation’s entire existence depends on it…for if Jews would not live there, the Torah would vanish, God forbid” [11].  

The great and martyred Rav Teichtal did not know the extent to which Great Britain and America interdicted the aliyah which the League of Nations had mandated that Britain facilitate. He did not guess, in his fervent love and desire to awaken and save that a group of Jews would become so hostile to their fellows and to Torah that they would ally with foreign interests to uproot and crush Jewish settlement and a Jewish State. Despite these horrors, human choices that have complicated redemption with pain and confusion, the Jewish people, the Children of Israel continue to show cohesion that is a miracle of shared purpose and of some segula, precious quality of soul in their history and awareness of the Creator and purpose. Our time is one that uniquely tests these qualities as they approach possibility of great fulfillment. That is why they rush to blot out the past, to bury Israel.

From a different perspective, Dr. Daniel Pipes captured the contemporary situation well as Israelis and Jews everywhere wonder whether or how to celebrate the founding of the State, by the wrong people and with purposes that were partly wrong but that harnessed long pent energies to accomplish miracles: “for all its achievements, the Jewish state lives under a curse that other polities never face: the threat of elimination. Its remarkable progress over the decades has not liberated it from a multi-pronged peril that includes nearly every means imaginable: weapons of mass destruction, conventional military attack, terrorism, internal subversion, economic blockade, demographic assault, and ideological undermining. No state faces such an array of threats; indeed, probably none in history ever has…”

No, none ever has or will; the attacks upon the restoration of renewal are attacks upon the humanity, memory and nature of human beings and the possibility of a humane society of abundance and peace. So yes, celebrate 3 Iyar 5708 but also grieve its misdirection and bad leadership; celebrate what was gained despite needless costs and celebrate what can be done when Israel has a proper flag, a banner featuring the Menorah, testifying to the Creator for which all hunger, and the lions of Judah to indicate the specific place from which the knowledge, gratitude and service denoted by the Menorah are to be realized. And if it is Israeli sovereignty then that must mean Jewish sovereignty that is celebrated and fulfilled [12]. Know above all that the miracle to celebrate is the Hebrew discovery that we are far more than clever animals, that there is a Creator, purposefulness and a purpose eloquently described in the Hebrew Scriptures and that human intentions, words and deeds can realize the miracle everyday like the steady lightening to luminescence and brilliance of the dawn, Kokhav Ya’akov. This process of realizing the miracle was addressed by Rav Kook in his comments on Tehillim 126, “we were like dreamers”; the dreams, hopes, remembrance and efforts to live the dream prepare the road for the people to flow to the holy hill and the ultimate and ongoing celebration that is the antithesis of the descending dark road down which the powers are taking the world. There is a choice and we all have a part to play.  

1.  The Hebrew calendar integrates the solar and lunar cycles. Days and weeks are marked by the earth’s rotation around it own axis and around the sun; festivals and months are measured by the cycles of the moon, — its orbit around the earth. The sanctification of each month and Sabbath are like the mother and father of Jewish sanctification of time and the three pilgrim festivals plus Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the annual sanctifications of the entire nation done together in their time. Approximately once every three years a new month (a second Adar, “strength” and joy) is added to the calendar so that Pesach (“Passover”) always occurs in the spring, as is stipulated (Exodus 23:14-15, 12:14-28) and their basis in the land persists, Sukkoth for example being both the fall harvest festival and that of the sanctification of the altar and the joy of Israel’s holiness, modeled for all nations. Pesach is considered the first month in the annual cycle of holiness as the birth of the nation at and on the way to Sinai inaugurated its mission of sanctifying the ‘everyday’ world. The creation of the natural human world and human history begins with the first day of the seventh month (Tishrei) on Rosh Hashanah. Just as solar and lunar cycles, so the natural and sanctified world of Israel’s nationhood are integrated in place and time. 
2. Rambam Hilchot Melachim 11:1-4 and 12:1-2 on Rav Shmuel in Sanhedrin 99a3 and Brachot 34b; Hilchot Teshuva 9-10. The point is that the final redemption is a process, its duration influenced greatly by the actions, or failures to discern and act of human beings, even the Messiah. “One should not presume that the Messianic king must work wonders and miracles, bring about new creations within the world, resurrect the dead or perform other similar deeds. This is not true” (11:3); “the main difference is our liberation from subjugation to foreign kingdoms” (12:2). If a king, appointed by a council of 71 sages, “fights the wars of God, defeating all the nations around him” (against the enemies of Israel, land and people), “is learned in Torah and observant of mitzvot we may consider him the Messiah. If he succeeds in the above, builds the Temple in its place and gathers the dispersed of Israel he is definitely the Messiah (11:4).
3. See Shmuel Katz, Days of Fire (Doubleday 1968) for 1939-48 and his two volume biography of Zev Jabotinsky, Lone Wolf (NY 1996) for in-depth treatment of the 1914-40 period beginning with the efforts to secure permission to form a Jewish Legion to fight for the liberation of Eretz Yisrael from the Turks. For multi-faceted Jewish efforts spanning four continents in this period and covering fields of diplomacy, science, agriculture, war and espionage see Katz’s The Aaronsohn Saga (Gefen 2000; English 2007). Katz (1914-2008) is the great historian of modern Israel beginning with the birth of Jabotinsky in 1880. See chapter four of his Battleground (1983, 3^rd revised edition) for a short history of Jewish continuity in the land and one grasps the lengthy process involving millions of people that began producing notable fruits by the 19^th century. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land since Joshua brought the Children of Israel in to a conquest (that remains incomplete) 3300 years ago.
4. Rav Chaim Ben Attar (1696-1740) of Livorno Italy made aliyah with his congregation in 1736 and built a synagogue in Jerusalem. Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzato, the Ramchal (1706-46) author or Derekh Hashem, Daas Tevunos and many other great works made aliyah in 1743. Nachmanides, the Ramban, author of the magisterial symposium-commentary on the Books of Moshe, the heroic expositor at the Disputation of Barcelona made aliyah in old age in 1267 soon after the desolation of Eretz Yisrael by the Mongols, oversaw renewal of the Jewish community there and built a synagogue.
5. Rav Yehuda ha Levi (1080-1140) in his Kuzari 2:24; the Rav made aliyah from Spain where he was a distinguished scholar and liturgical poet and was murdered in Jerusalem to sanctify God’s Holy Name.
6. Exodus 15:2-3, passim. Note regarding the pronouns and human qualities (emotions, actions) attributed to the Eternal One, the Highest Wisdom (HaChakhma HaElyonah as Ramchal denotes the Eternal) that Rambam explains the familiar Jewish wisdom that “the Torah speaks in the language of man” (Yesodei HaTorah 1:9, 12, cf. Berachoth 31B, Ketubot 67a). It uses “metaphoric imagery” (mashal). “Does He have a sword? Does He need a sword to kill?” Rambam asks rhetorically. “His power is not the power of a body; form and separation are not relevant to him…He is unified and there exists no unity similar to His in the world… He has no image or form…’Can you find the comprehension of God? Can you find the ultimate of the Almighty?” [Job 11:7]. It is not within the potential of a living man to comprehend this matter in its entirety. Neither sleep nor waking, silence nor speech, joy nor sadness, anger nor laughter in the human understanding are appropriate to Him” (ibid. 1.7, 9-11, 2:1-6). The Tanakh speaks in “prophetic visions and parables” in our attempt to grasp how the Highest Wisdom feels in the world to us. Our “essential nature, the soul of all flesh…is the form of man who is perfect in knowledge which knows and comprehends immaterial ideas…knowledge is the form of the soul [HaDaat shehi tzurat HaNefesh] and it is this form of the soul, which does not require a body…which comprehends knowledge above matter, knows the Creator and will exist forever. This is the form of man “in our image and likeness” [Genesis 1:26] (ibid. 4:8-9, the “life energy,” chayyot HaKodesh that is our essential being, our DNA and cosmic plasma around which the complementary body and soul (guf and neshama) were formed in the garden (ibid. 2:7, Genesis 2:7). This explication by Rambam (Maimonides) of the essentials of the Eternal One and of man is a key stage in fulfilling the miracle of redemption when its knowledge will purge the nations of their fantastic conceptual dross, enable them to speak a pure language and live in peace with Israel whose integrity (shaleim) alone will bring forth peace (shalom) as the etymology, scripted by the Highest Wisdom denotes.
7. The sages note that Hebron is a mountain with a series of peaks so ask, what can the phrase “mai-emek Hevron,” (the depth of valley of Hebron) connote. Their consensus is that Jacob took Joseph to the double cave (Machpelah) where Abraham and Isaac, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah were buried to imbue his words with their strength and their wisdom for what Jacob expected would be a very long and momentous journey of strife, enduring love, contrition and reunion, all as part of the complex path by which through our free will and humanity we take various ways to arrive at the fulfillment of Wisdom when “ripeness is all.” See Ramchal, Derekh Hashem 2.3.5-7, passim
8. See Ramban’s discussion of the comments of Rashi and the sages on this passage of the combined honor and graciousness of Abraham to the defeated kings of Sodom et al, his pursuit and defeat of the five kings, and his rescue of Lot, “he deployed against them by night, smote them, and pursued them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus,” Ramban, Bereishis Volume I (Mesorah 2004), 326-31
9. Iggrot Shonot, quoted by Rav Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal, Em HaBanim Smeichah: On Eretz Israel, Redemption and Unity (Jerusalem 2000; English translation, Rav Moshe Lichtman), 272
10. Ibid. 266-70
11. ibid. 236-7, quoting Rav Moshe Sofer (the Chatam Sofer) and Rambam in Hilchot Kiddush HaChodesh
12. Arabs who increasingly use the day to commemorate their “catastrophe” (defeat in 1948) and to attack Jews, in Israeli know that the issue is Jewish sovereignty which is what Israeli sovereignty must become.

Of several Haggadoth [1] the one I cherish most and enjoy on the simplest level of good fellowship and family is a remarkable hand-sewn volume my mother’s parents brought from a trip to Israel back to the States in the 1950s. It has a hard plastic cover engraved with a grape-vine motif that makes it almost look like leather. Its cover page displays a wonderful interlace design featuring all the seven “fruits of the land” with five crowned pomegranates at the top and a lion of Judah in an oval beneath the title, “from the generations of Judah, Haggada shel Pesach, Yehuda edition” [2]. Stalks with ripe kernels of wheat and barley, clusters of grapes hanging from tendrils amid leaves, figs, dates, olives and pomegranates are the recurring motif that also covers the two end pages with this message embossed in the middle, in Hebrew on the right and English translation on the left.

“The message of the Haggada is intended for the present and future no less than the past. ‘In every generation it is a man’s duty to view himself as though he had come forth from Egypt.’ Many the generation which has heard this plea, but it is we who have seen with our own eyes the New Exodus, and the great return of the Children [of Israel] to the homeland and the founding of State of Israel. Our generation is witness to the eternal truth of the Haggada’s message.”  

What great and happy pride, what quiet but assured joy resonates from these lines as they cite the ancient adjuration not merely to recount but to re-live the liberating  experience of “the ingathering of the exiles and the rebirth of the Jewish State” as it reads in the introductory pages.

Re-settlement, planting (Vayikra 19:23), joyous re-connection, victories against all odds: what went wrong? What was missing?

By way of suggesting a brief answer, consider these other lines of the introduction: just as for many centuries, the editors write, “Jewish printers and illuminators have been able to illustrate the Haggada in terms of their own times and surroundings…it is only fitting that the eternal truth of this ancient and stirring narrative should be reaffirmed in terms of living pictures of our own land and the people of our own time.” And that is what is most wonderful of the wonders of this book to me, along with the illustrations and arrangement, the black and white photos set in trompe l’oeil ornate gold frames and glued onto a white square on pages facing the text, — photos of the land and people of Israel in the 1940s and early ‘50s with verses from the text for captions to establish the link and continuity from the earliest times to the present. From the valley of dry bones to flourishing hills and a standing host…

In this Haggada, “next year in the land of Israel” is the verse under a photo of a row of cypress trees, of grass borders and flower banks overlooking Haifa Bay. “But the Lord our God brought us forth from there” keynotes a photo from above of two open decks in the corner of a ship, its plain wooden planks crowded with scores of Jews (leaving internment in Cypress perhaps) for the Promised Land, not just a hope and prayer, but in reality. What a terrible reality they were delivered from: the next photo shows two men, one squinting in the sun, the other too youthful for a beard, composed and thoughtful still in striped camp uniforms above the verse, “for it is not one alone who has risen up against us…” And the rest of the verse bears repeating: “in every generation they rise up against us to finish us.” And indeed, the world’s diplomacy and wars have seemed directed largely of this ancient plan, this negation of the Creator by annihilating His people.

There are group photos of smiling youths from five to thirty-five, jammed together as if to show, proudly and gladly that the extermination had not succeeded even in these times. In one oval-framed shot, a beaming Yemenite Jew in traditional headdress and dark jacket and a European Jew in white button-down short-sleeved shirt throws an arm over each other’s shoulders and clasp hands. One tries not to think of some of the history in that rescue, immortalized by the name, “on eagle’s wings” (Exodus 19:4). But that is why the newborn nation has not yet become “a kingdom of Priests and a holy nation” – it is not, it has not been allowed to be a whole-heartedly Jewish State. But the light in the smile of that man’s face, his black beard gray at its twisted ends says that the Promise and potential that survived millennia of assaults and degradation is not only still alive but inextinguishable. That is why “the nations rage…”

There are photos of the mountains of Yehuda and the Shomron in spring, the time of Pesach, putting forth again their greenery; of cultivated fields in the Jezreel valley (“a delightful, good and spacious land”) stretching to the mountains in the east; of an Indian Jewish family sitting at a Seder table laden with large curling matzos, greens and fruits, the men holding up cups of wine as they read from haggadoth. There is a bowl brimming with fruits above the verse, “eat of its fruits and taste of its goodness”; Torah scrolls in an Ark armored in intricately engraved silver; three Jewish soldiers, watchmen on guard atop a cement and wooden tower. And last of all, illustrating the song, “just one little kid,” three children in shorts, sitting in a mountain of hay cradling and smiling over a kid.

The beautiful song that in its count-up fashion expresses the wonder of creation and the basics of Judaism concludes with the Holy One Blessed Be He slaying the Angel of Death who slew the slaughterer as we may yet see in our day for Israel, the kid amidst a world of wolves whose lust for Jewish blood seems to be unappeasable.

There is no photo, how could there be, it would mar the mood of the sinking of the Altalena though in a way everything that subsequently went wrong was a footnote to the lack of brotherhood and resolve to return fully that went into that terrible event [3]. The picture and the story that are not there explain the gap between the calm joy and wonder of the intro and the reality sixty years after the founding, and the sinking of liberation.  

I have another remarkable book, handmade and sewn, of photos printed on heavy stock, its very thick cardboard covers embossed with an interlace design surrounding a view of David’s citadel at the southwest corner of the old city’s walls [4]. The inside boards have a marbled design in green water color and every photo, scenes from the early decades of the century is on very thick stock and covered with a glassine sheet anchored in the binding. There is Allenby Road in Tel Aviv, bustling with pedestrians, autos and busses in the 1920s. There is Dizengoff Square, its lovely fountain and park, and one’s memory swims from the strife with Aaron Aaronsohn to the terrible bomb blasts of the 1990s [5]. There is Rothschild Boulevard with the triple-tier of lush trees in its esplanade and airy space between buildings no higher than four stories. There, most remarkably, is a tractor, circa 1910 pulling an even funkier baler in the Jezreel valley, men working in caps and shirtsleeves with pitchforks. There is the Temple Mount its dome still plain seen from the Mt. of Olives, the rebuilding Jerusalem spreading mightily beyond it, west, north and south. A corner of the Western Wall, it appears to be the “little Wall” with a full array of Jews: men in caps, jackets and laborer’s shoes; black-hatted and gowned Chassidim; women huddling under umbrellas against a wall fifteen feet away. There are Tiveryah by the Kinneret and its surrounding mountains and Tzfat, not a fourth their current size. There are the remnant walls and partly restored massive main entrance of an ancient synagogue on Mt. Meron where Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is buried. Most poignantly of all, there is Rachel’s tomb seen in full as it cannot be seen today because of the massive cement “security barriers” that enclose it to deflect Arab sniping and herd in the Jews, channeling and restricting their access to one of their holiest sites as various world powers and their local contractors prefer: there is a simple road, not fifteen feet wide lined by four foot high walls of stone rubble; there is the giant olive tree, seen in the foreground, in the grass amid the stones across the way. There best of all is the simple dome above the tomb and the 19^th century building for public functions adjoining it, its wide-vaulted doorway expansive and serene.

The photos that are missing are of a fully resettled and re-sown Promised Land, at least those areas west of the Jordan River; and really, the great failure of love and identity that truncated and followed the military victory of 1967 precluded the reclamation of much more land, Torah and truth than this small area, too. Aaronsohn, Weizmann and others worked hard, at least twill 1922 at including the Litani and Yarmuk parts of the Jordan watershed within the Jewish National Home, — to no avail. This could have been made good in 1967 and afterward had the desire been there [6].

Much has been lost, but much has been gained and found, built and revealed. Coins, pottery and utensils from the First Temple period in abundance, dwelling places adjacent to the City of David, the Old City and the Temple Mount. The tunnel built by King Hezekiah linking the Shiloach spring to the inner walls can now be traversed from end to end, a glorious walk in summer back through 2700 years. A quarry with stones for the Temple Mount and its walls uncovered early in 2008; the full burial procession and tomb of Herod on the mountain he shaped for this purpose halfway between Jerusalem and Hebron; the tiny synagogue atop Masada with fragments of ancient Torah scrolls. Millions of Jews, Torah study, Temple implements re-fashioned; a strong economy, leading science from medicine to botany, a mighty army – and a people trodden down by an oligarchic State-media apparatus serving foreign powers: “O Israel, — who is like you!”

Despite the victories and flourishing, the sentiment and joy of 1950 are mostly gone – except when you see the Children of Israel gathered for a festival, like the intermediate days of Pesach at Hebron with their music, like the campers pioneering the heartland again in defiance of the demands of the nations and their puppets. The world seems poised in a balance, quivering for collapse and tyranny, a new pyramid and period of slavery. “It is an iron law,” many have noted, that Esau hates Jacob and the modern period, whether dating from the Crusades or from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the holocaust seems to prove the point of Torah. The mighty of the world want to finish and have done with the Promise and the Creator for they are re-fashioning a world order to their own liking, one with many fewer people, little freedom, less justice, and dogmatic Darwinism to justify the imposture. They will make their lie into “truth” and consign the Jews, their Torah and God, the Creator to myth and ghettos. They will call it, “peace” and wage an endless “war on terror” to impose it.

That is the challenge to freedom and memory in our days, it could not be more stark or overwhelming, — like the sight of Pharaoh’s army of chariots hemming one against the Sea. To date it has been “redemption in its time” like the first one. But as it is taught that the final redemption will be like the first, at the end it will be hastened with a crash of surf, a song of joy and sweetened waters [7]. 

1. Haggadoth is the plural of Haggada, “the telling” or “the narrative” which is the story of the Exodus in a simple form, including blessings and psalms that accompanies the Passover Seder or festive meal.
2. Haggada shel Pesach, An Israeli publication by Lion the Printer (Tel Aviv 1954); English translation by I.M. Lask; photographs by Kluger; arrangement by Shifrin).
3. The Altalena was an old ship bought after many struggles by the National Military Organization (from which, decades later, by way of the Herut {“freedom”} party emerged the Likud which expelled the Jews from Gush Katif and the northern Shomron). Loaded with arms purchased in Western Europe, piloted by an American Jew, it was sunk with most of its cargo off the shores of Tel Aviv late in June 1948 at the orders of David Ben Gurion with the guns commanded by Yitzhak Rabin. The fullest account in English that I know is in Days of Fire by Samuel Katz (Doubleday 1968), 196-252.
4. Genuine Photographs of Eretz Israel (copyright Palphot, Hertzliya – Eretz Yisrael, undated). In English it says “copyright and made by “Palphot” [perhaps a pseudonym] Hertzliya – Palestine.”
5.  Shmuel Katz, The Aaronsohn Saga (Gefen 2000; 2007 English edition), 248-56, 278-87; Katz details that the main trouble was rivalry and resentment from HaShomer HaTzair; at every step of the subsequent peace conference, Aaronsohn, Weizmann and Jabotinsky had to fend off the opposition “of anti-Zionist Jews” in America, England and the Promised Land. And see pages 303-17.
6. Ibid. 308-11, 325-27, under the term, “the country of the Jordan and its affluents.” Also see E. Narrett, WW III: the War on the Jews (lightcatcherbooks.com 2007), chapter 14
7. Isaiah 60:22 and commentaries; Exodus 13:17-15:27; cf. Isaiah 55, Ezekiel 36-39, Ovadiah, etc.