Category: The Society

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Yom Ha’atzmaut – Israel’s Commandment For Independence On Its Land

In order to appreciate the full significance of Israel’s Independence Day, one must clarify what the day is meant to commemorate as well as what this connotes within the context of Jewish history and Torah Law. One of the major reasons for the celebration of Yom HaAtzmaut is to rejoice in the restoration of Hebrew independence in the Land of Israel following a long and bitter exile of the majority of Jews from our soil. Yom HaAtzmaut celebrates the liberation of Eretz Yisrael from British rule and the reestablishment of Jewish political sovereignty over our country.

In his supplement to the Rambam’s Sefer HaMitzvot, the Ramban teaches that it is a Torah commandment in every generation that the Nation of Israel take control of and inhabit the entire Land of Israel.

“This (a war to liberate Eretz Yisrael) is what our Sages call milḥemet mitzvah (obligatory war). In the Talmud (Sotah 44b) Rava said, ‘Yehoshua’s war of liberation was an obligatory duty according to all opinions.’ And do not err and say that this precept is the commandment to vanquish the seven nations… this is not so. We were commanded to destroy those nations when they fought against us and had they wished to make peace we could have done so under specific conditions. Yet we cannot leave the land in their control or in the control of any other nation in any generation… Behold, we are commanded with conquest in every generation… this is a positive commandment which applies for all time… And the proof that this is a commandment is this: ‘They were told to go up in the matter of the Spies: ‘Go up and conquer as HaShem, G-D of your fathers, has spoken to you. Do not fear and do not be discouraged.’ And it further says: ‘And when HaShem sent you from Kadesh Barnea saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you.’ And when they did not go up, the Torah says: ‘And you rebelled against the Word of G-D, and you did not listen to this command.’” (Positive Commandment 4 of the Ramban’s supplement to the Rambam’s Sefer HaMitzvot)

The Ramban asserts that the conquest of Eretz Yisrael is a mitzvah for Israel in every generation and that we are forbidden from allowing any part of our country to fall into – or remain under – gentile control. It is found in the Shulḥan Arukh that all of the arbitrators of Torah Law (Rishonim and Aḥronim) agree with the Ramban concerning this issue.

“All of the Poskim, both Rishonim and Aḥronim, decide the Law in this fashion on the basis of the Ramban.” (Shulḥan Arukh, Even HaEzersection 75, Pitḥei Tshuva 6)

The Nation of Israel is eternally commanded to conquer and implement Jewish sovereignty over our country. Yom HaAtzmaut commemorates the fifth day of Iyar, 5708, when Israel fulfilled thismitzvah for the first time in nearly two thousand years by declaring Hebrew independence in portions of our homeland.

Just as a young man celebrates becoming a Bar Mitzvah because it is his first opportunity to truly fulfill Torah commandments, we celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut as our first opportunity to carry out the Divine directive of Jewish sovereignty over our homeland. It is our collectiveBar Mitzvah signifying the Jewish people’s national renaissance.

Aside from renewing the mitzvah of Hebrew sovereignty, there is another essential reason to celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut. The Megillat Ta’anit teaches that it is a mitzvah to thank HaShem for the miracles He performs. This was the basis for sanctifying Ḥanukah and Purim. And like Ḥanukah, Yom HaAtzmaut commemorates the triumph of a small and ill equipped band of Jewish freedom fighters over one of the world’s most powerful empires.

The British had ruled the Land of Israel since World War I and had done everything in their power to prevent the Jews from achieving statehood. While Israel’s political leadership grudgingly acquiesced to Britain’s imperialist designs, a courageous minority of young revolutionaries launched a war of liberation that eventually succeeded in attaining independence. As Hebrew fighters displayed tenacious heroism in the face of nearly impossible odds, HaShem worked through these fighters to force the British Empire from the shores of Palestine. And it was on the fifth of Iyar – Yom HaAtzmaut – that the Union Jack was ultimately lowered from the Jewish homeland.

Throughout the period of our exile, scattered Jewish communities have had the authority to establish what is called a “Purim Katan” – a sacred day of thanksgiving meant to express gratitude to the Kadosh Barukh Hu for saving a community from danger. Since Yom HaAtzmaut is a day on which a miracle occurred for the entire Jewish people, it is a Torah precept to ordain a public festival for commemoration of HaShem’s kindness towards His people. Israel’s Chief Rabbinate declared that the nation recite Hallel on this day in order to remember the miracles performed on Israel’s behalf.

But if the commandment is really so obvious and clear, why would so many great scholars appear so unsure about – or often even vehemently opposed to – the State of Israel and the celebration of Yom HaAtzmaut? The Gaon of Vilna answers this question in Kol HaTor (the Gaon’s teachings regarding the redemption process compiled by his student Rabbi Hillel Rivlin of Shklov).

“The Sin of the Spies… hovers over the Nation of Israel in every generation… How strong is the power of the Sitra Aḥra that it succeeds in hiding from the eyes of our holy fathers the dangers of the klipot; from the eyes of Avraham our father, the klipah of exile… and in the time of the Messiah, the Sitra Aḥra attacks the guardians of Torah with blinders… Many of the sinners in this great sin of, ‘They despised the cherished land,’ and also many of the guardians of Torah, will not know or understand that they are caught in the Sin of the Spies, that they have been sucked into the Sin of the Spies in many false ideas and empty claims, and they cover their ideas with the already proven fallacy that the mitzvah of the settlement of Israel no longer applies in our day, an opinion which has already been disproven by the giants of the world, the Rishonim and Aḥronim.” (KolHaTor chapter 5)

The Torah debate over Yom HaAtzmaut is actually far more psychological than it is legal. Those who relate to Jewish history as having played out in ancient times, but being currently paused until the eventual arrival of a Messiah, generally restrict Jewish life to matters of “religion” often divorced from public life and national developments. But those who view themselves as participants in history and active characters in an incredible living story appreciate how current events – and even the actions we take – can have the power to impact and influence the Hebrew calendar.

The most amazing miracle of Yom HaAtzmaut is perhaps the foundation for all of the others. After so many centuries of persecution in exile, HaShem placed a new spirit of valor into our people. For the first time in modern history, a generation of Jewish heroes arose – willing to lay down their lives for the liberation of their homeland. And even more astonishing than this is the fact that theKadosh Barukh Hu strengthened the hearts of Israel’s political leaders so that they would declare independence for the Nation of Israel despite being faced with overwhelming international pressure not to do so.

Yom HaAtzmaut is the most significant world event to take place in nearly two thousand years. It was on this day that HaShem returned the Children of Israel to the stage of history so that we may lead mankind towards a world of total blessing. It is the goal of Creation that the Divine Ideal be fully expressed through Israel bringing humanity to an awareness of HaShem as the timeless ultimate Reality without end that creates all, sustains all, empowers all and loves all. The Maharal of Prague teaches in Netzaḥ Yisrael that in order for AmYisrael to fulfill our historic mission, we must first unite as an independent nation on our soil. Only as a strong and healthy nation living a collective life of national kedusha can Israel reveal the greatness and unity of HaShem’s Ideal in every major and minor sphere of existence. Only by establishing the Kingdom of Israel in the whole of our land can we bring mankind towards a universal blessing through illuminating the world with the light of Torah.

The modern State of Israel – the foundation of HaShem’s Throne in this world – must be understood not only as His Divine handiwork but also as an early stage in the development of universal redemption – a process that unfolds through a series of historic events. While the current Jewish state has not yet reached the greatness for which it is destined, it must be recognized that the physical vessel is once again in our world and will eventually grow to reveal its exalted inner potential. After so many centuries as a ghost walking through history, Israel again exists as a living nation on the world stage. The Jewish people has taken an enormous step forward by reestablishing Hebrew independence in portions of Eretz Yisrael. While the mere existence of a Jewish state was never the final goal of our ancient yearnings, it is certainly a powerful vehicle with which to now achieve the Hebrew Nation’s greater aspirations. The liberation of our people will continue to progress as new heroes arise to confront the challenges of our generation and advance Jewish history to the next stages of redemption.

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Blame the Jews, Not the Terrorists?

A disturbingly clear pattern has emerged in the wake of the increase in terrorism around the world, especially in the West. Whenever there is a terrorist attack, the parents, friends and families of the perpetrators are always in “deep shock.” They cannot fathom from where their terrorist offspring, who had always been so “normal and good,” got their inspiration. The parents have absolutely “no idea” what could possibly have prompted the attacks.

It is conspicuous — and pathetic — how uniform these parents of Muslim radicals are in their frantic denial of knowledge and responsibility for raising monsters that go out and commit such atrocities. But the politically correct mainstream international press never probes deeper and lets the parents off the hook easily. After all, the international mainstream media pushes and encourages the very victimhood narratives that the parents’ denials and feigned “shock” feed into in order to escape further scrutiny. It is astounding that no one in the media seriously questions these uniform denials.

Among all these stories of feigned shock and surprise, that of the parents of the Hamas terrorist who bombed the Jerusalem bus recently (wounding 20 people and killing himself) takes the prize. Not only do the parents insist they had “no idea” their son had been involved with the Hamas, they feel no remorse for his actions and astoundingly blame Israel and the Jews for his actions: “You Jews have to understand something: Abed al-Hamid did not come from a poor family; he came from an affluent one. He had his own car. A family with property and money … a cultured household — with manners, respect, education — which opposes violence. You Israelis have to ask yourselves what causes a boy like ours to want to do such a thing. And I am telling you: Israel is responsible. Israel caused this generation to act this way. This generation has no future. No work. You pressure them and hurt them and create a hopeless situation for them. You are turning the young generation into what it is. The next generation, the young children, will be even more dangerous.”

So while their terrorist son had everything he could wish for in material wealth and came from a “cultured household,” he still had “no future” because of the Jews. What else is new?

But perhaps his parents were not so innocent. As his mother says, in what is difficult to characterize as anything other than a defense of her son’s actions, “It was an act of self-defense. As an enlightened person, I would find it hard to do something like [blowing up a bus]. Perhaps I would have done things differently, maybe through writing. But everyone has his own way of [taking part in] resistance.”

Her son was merely taking part in the “resistance” in his “own way.” Perhaps his mother’s “peaceful” idealization of the “resistance” (against what exactly? This is never clarified — the “resistance” according to Abbas and Hamas is very simply the resistance against the existence of every last Jew on Israeli soil) gave her son an idea or two.

The hatred emanating from the words of these affluent, “cultured” parents and their unremorseful threats against Israeli society of a future, even more dangerous, generation, speak for themselves.

However, they are right about their son’s generation. It is indeed dangerous, because it is steeped in unmitigated hatred, not only at home but at every turn it takes: in kindergarten, in school, on TV, in the mosques and on the streets — in all these places, this generation is taught that killing Jews is a good thing. As their son watched one terrorist after another celebrated as a martyr of Allah, having streets and squares named after them and their families richly rewarded by the PA, this son of “cultured” parents drew the logical conclusions of what he had been taught to worship and revere all his life, and went out and killed Jews. Who — least of all his parents — could possibly be surprised about that?

Ironically, the parents inadvertently made a big propaganda mistake by emphasizing that the terrorist had come from a financially comfortable, “cultured” household — putting to rest, finally, the idea that terrorists become terrorists out of grievances, for lack of jobs, poverty and so on.

The answer to the question of what causes “a boy like ours to want to do such a thing” is not difficult: It is unadulterated hatred of the Jews, as taught to and inculcated in children all over the Muslim world, along with the accompanying refusal to accept a Jewish state in Israel. It is about the Islamic injunction to perform jihad against infidels and the ethics stemming from that injunction. When Arabs massacred Jews in the Hebron pogrom in 1929 there was no “occupation” to “resist.” There were just Jews to hate. Nothing has changed, apart from the rhetoric.

(Originally published in Israel Hayom)

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Opting Out of Freedom

During the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany, a young woman found herself traveling on a packed tram. She was Jewish but living in hiding and pretending to be a non-Jew so as to save herself and the few people in her family who were still alive. The tram was not only packed to the brim, but also filled with German officers, raising the risk of her being caught.

The woman was sitting next to a Polish peasant woman who was in town to sell produce. At one point during the ride, an insane impulse grabbed hold of the woman, and she suddenly reached out and pinched the peasant’s leg, right there, in the middle of the packed tram, crawling with Germans.

This could have been the end of her. The Nazis could have grabbed her and snuffed out her life, as they did with millions of others. The reason I know she did not meet her end is that I would not be here to tell the story if she had: The young woman was my grandmother.

What happened? The peasant woman did not scream out in pain or curse my grandmother. She kept still, quiet and unresponsive to my grandmother’s unprovoked violence. The tram continued on its bumbling way, and my grandmother, perhaps drawing a long breath, was saved by the peasant woman’s grace.

I have thought about this story countless times over the years. My grandmother never gave a straight answer to why she acted in this manner, putting her life at risk on a whim. The more I thought about it, however, the more I came to realize that my grandmother’s act was not necessarily meaningless, even if it was extremely reckless.

I have come to believe that her act — a rather reprehensible act of violence — was an impulsive act of defiance. It was a way of punching fate in the face, as it were, and challenging it to a fight at a time of extreme oppression and total absence of freedom. Showing her hostile and ruthless surroundings that she was there, too, not just a shadow hiding from extinction, but a living being forced to spend her every breathing moment guarding her life from extinction.

But why did the peasant woman keep quiet? She did not know my grandmother and she could have screamed and cursed her, drawing the attention of the German officers. My guess is that this rare woman, stoic as she was, instinctively realized that any pinch from my grandmother was a caress compared to the pain that the Germans would have unleashed and she would have no part of it. She saved herself, most likely, along with my grandmother.

After the war, the occupier’s flag changed and instead of the swastika came the hammer and sickle as the Soviets mercilessly snuffed out any brief euphoria. Eastern Europe was a place bereft of freedom, where the thought police controlled all avenues of communication and the only accepted speech was that parroting the communist slogans of the Soviet politburo.

My grandmother continued her life in this “communist paradise,” where there was no freedom from communist orthodoxy — although conditions in Poland were far from being the worst among the countries behind the Iron Curtain — and where, in the words of George Orwell, if you wanted to keep a secret, it was best to keep it hidden even from yourself.

Having been inoculated against any and all versions of communism and socialism from a very early age — a natural consequence of having felt the effects of those ideologies in real life and not just as “beautiful” theories — I often marvel at the speed with which history is forgotten.

It has only been a quarter of a century since the United States conclusively won the Cold War against the Soviets, yet I often ask myself whether the Soviets aren’t metaphorically jumping for joy from their place in hell, considering how political correctness has permeated public discourse in the United States and Western Europe.

After all — and tragically very few people know this — the standard tropes of political correctness, especially in Israel-related discourse, were conceived by the Soviets. When young people think they are fighting for social justice and freedom, they are often repeating Soviet tropes that would have made Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev proud. It was he who, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, told Yasser Arafat that the invasion amounted to “the same genocide against Palestinians that the Nazis committed against other people during World War II.”

The terrible accusation that Israel is an apartheid state is also a Soviet invention, which has refused to die even after the demise of its inventors. There is a certain irony in the fact that young college-age Americans, who in the old days would have been fighting the Soviets, are now reciting Soviet slogans.

I wonder at the ease with which perfectly free people throw away their freedom of speech in favor of living up to the expectations of political correctness, rigid as they are in all their reductionist groupthink. Living in free societies, they are seemingly incapable of appreciating how precious that freedom is, and how easily it can be snuffed out. Not by invading armies of the totalitarian kind, but by the equally totalitarian impulse to adhere to a particular rendition of reality.

Current generations living in the West have never gone through the experience of being reduced to complete silence, desperately communicating their anger by pinching total strangers on trams. They have the entire world at their feet and still they choose to narrow it to its smallest components, censoring themselves and others who disagree with them, until all that is left is the embarrassing sight of shrunken, small minds, fearful of sticking out in the crowd.

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness, and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better,” George Orwell wrote in his satirical book “1984.” Political correctness, and all the ills of intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice that flow from it, can only become as pervasive as it is when the majority prefers happiness over freedom.

This article was originally published by Israel Hayom. 

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Ghana’s Growth a Beacon for a Potential Israeli Partnership

When I landed in Accra, Ghana yesterday it had been just under 16 years since my last visit. The world has changed a few times over since then. Internet technology and communication has created a smaller world, a world where people from any country can dialogue and discuss with counterparts around the world.

Still, some things were the same.  Women selling food and drinks from on top of their heads, children pointing to their mouth and asking for charity (although far less than what I remembered), and a distinct dichotomy between rich and poor.

In the world’s eye Africa has always been behind.  Whether out of ignorance or passive racism the perception that Africa is a bunch of unstable countries, steeped in corruption, and reliant in international aid has persisted well into this century.  

Like anything else, the Western world views the world through a particular historical and cultural context.  It is true Africa and especially sub-Saharan Africa has had its fair share of chaos brought upon it from a clear neo-colonial agenda that saw the Western world take advantage of  ravaged economies, artificial boundaries, and dictatorships it helped to foster.

 

Ghana as a Model

What has always made Ghana fascinating to me is the relative stability it has compared to many of its counterparts across Africa, although we can point now to many African countries, especially in the lakes region and Eastern Africa that have achieved this as well, Ghana has always seemed to exhume some sort of alternate reality as opposed to other places.

At first glance, Ghana should have similar problems with geopolitical uncertainty as other African countries.  It is an artificial construct of the British merging  a mosaic of African tribal nations together.  It has a strong Muslim population along with a devout Christian populace.  There are vast amounts of poor people, coupled with a strong wealthy upper class.

Yet, with all of the above, Ghana has seemed to skip the chaos. Part of the reason for this is that it did not sink into conflict after independence in 1957, but rather was built in a stable one party rule albeit sometimes military. However, it transitioned when it had into a multi-party rule in 1992, which has allowed for more voices to be heard and aided the growth of an exceptional economy.  Although Ghana needed an IMF bailout due to a spiraling debt, it’s oil production and multi layered economy is a window for what can be in the future.

 

Ghana as an Ideal Partner for Israel

Ghana has appears to be strategically critical by Israel as a buffer against the spread of radical Islam into the Sub-Sahara.  This takes more importance after Israel lost a growing ally in Nigeria, with the ascendancy of Mohammed Buhari.

Yet, building a strong relationship requires more than weapons, it needs real economic cooperation.  This is where Israeli companies and startups would be able to take advantage of Ghana’s stability and fast paced growth.  Accra may still be a third world capital, but it is quickly transforming into a modern hub in Western Africa.

Although Israel has grown close with East African countries and seems to be placing more of its emphasis on those countries, Ghana would be a great place to start to rebuild its West African strategy, after its miscalculation with Nigeria.

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The 2-State Notion Is No Solution

One of the most perverse paradoxes in the political discourse on the Israeli-Arab conflict is that the people who supported the two-state principle should have been its fiercest opponents — at least if we are to judge by the “enlightened” moral values and progressive political pragmatism they purportedly invoke for endorsing it.

For even the most perfunctory analysis quickly reveals the two-state endeavor to be not only an exercise in utter futility, which will not attain any of its declared aims, but one that is both self-obstructive and self-contradictory. In fact, it would most likely bring about the exact opposite of its stated aims.

The two-state endeavor is immoral, irrational, and incompatible with the long-term existence of Israel as the Jewish nation-state.

It is immoral because it will create realties that are the absolute negation of the lofty values invoked for its implementation.

It is irrational because it will generate the precise perils it was designed to prevent.

It is incompatible with Israel’s long-term existence as the Jewish nation-state because it will almost inevitably culminate in a mega-Gaza on the outskirts of the greater Tel Aviv area.

Why the two-state endeavor is immoral

Typically — indeed, almost invariably — two-state proponents lay claim to the moral high ground, invoking lofty liberal values for their political credo, while impugning their ideological opponents’ ethical credentials for opposing it.

Indeed, given the socio-cultural conditions in virtually all Arab countries, and the precedents set in Palestinian-administered territories evacuated by Israel, the inevitable outcome of the two-state notion is not difficult to foresee. Indeed , there is little reason to believe (and certainly two-state proponents have never provided anything approaching a persuasive one) that any prospective Palestinian state, established on any territory Israel evacuated, will quickly become anything but yet another homophobic, misogynistic Muslim-majority tyranny.

Why on earth then would anyone who allegedly subscribes to values of gender equality, tolerance of sexual preferences and political pluralism endorse any policy that would almost certainly obviate the ethical tenets they purport to cherish? On what basis could advocating the establishment of such an entity be made a claim for the moral high ground — or indeed for any moral merit whatsoever?

Why the two-state endeavor is irrational

But it is not only in terms of moral outcomes that the two-state paradigm is a perversely self-obstructive endeavor. The same is true for the practical outcomes that it will almost certainly precipitate.

It is hard to say what has to happen before it is recognized that the land-for-peace doctrine, on which the two-state concept is based, is a perilously counterproductive endeavor — as it has in every instance it was attempted, not only in the Arab-Israeli context, but whenever an effort was made to appease tyranny with political concessions and territorial withdrawals.

For whenever that unfortunate formula has been applied, rather than result in peace, it has produced increased violence and bloodshed. Every time territory has been relinquished to Arab control, that territory has, sooner or later — usually sooner rather than later — become a platform for launching lethal attacks against Israel: Almost immediately in Gaza, within months in Judea and Samaria, within years in southern Lebanon and after several decades in Sinai, which is now descending into the depths of depravity and unspeakable brutality — with no good options on the horizon.

In light of the grim precedents provided by previous land-for-peace experiments, together with the no less grim trends in Arab society in general and Palestinian society in particular, continued insistence on this fatally flawed formula is both gravely irrational and grossly irresponsible.

Why the two-state endeavor is incompatible with Israel’s existence

Thus, apart from wishful thinking, dangerously detached from any prevailing (or foreseeable) reality, stubborn adherence to the two-state dogma has no value — neither in terms of its moral merits nor its political pragmatism. Worse yet, the pursuit of it is totally incompatible with Israel’s long-term existence.

To grasp the fundamental validity of this seemingly far-reaching statement it is necessary to recognize that today, with the changing nature of Arab enmity, the major existential challenge to Israel’s existence as the Jewish nation-state is no longer fending off invasion, but resisting attrition.

Nowhere was this more starkly evident than in the 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, where continued bombardment resulted in the evacuation of entire Jewish communities in Israel’s south.

Without compelling evidence to the contrary, there is little reason to believe, and certainly to adopt as a working assumption, that the realities in the south will not be repeated on Israel’s eastern border — with several chilling differences.

The most plausible outcome of an Israeli evacuation of Judea and Samaria is the emergence of a mega-Gaza on the very outskirts of the greater Tel Aviv area and other major urban centers in the heavily populated coastal plain. But unlike Gaza, which has a border of 51 kilometers (32 miles) and no topographical command of adjacent territory inside the pre-1967 frontiers, the situation in Judea and Samaria would — to understate the case — be alarmingly different.

“Depraved indifference” of the two-state paradigm

Any Arab entity set up there would have a front abutting Israel’s most populous area, of about 500 kilometers (about 300 miles) and total topographical superiority over 80% of the country’s civilian population, vital infrastructure systems and 80% of its commercial activity.

All of these will be in range of weapons used against Israel from territory evacuated and transferred to Arab control. Accordingly, this grim caveat cannot be dismissed as “right-wing scaremongering” for it is merely the empirical precedent.

Any force deployed in these areas — whether regular or renegade — could, with cheap readily available weapons, disrupt at will any socio-economic routine in Israel’s coastal megalopolis, turning the popular tourist city of Netanya into a Sderot-by-the-sea, and making the attrition in daily life increasingly onerous.

There is, of course, little dispute over the assessment, that if Israel were to evacuate Judea and Samaria it would almost certainly fall into the hands of Hamas-like elements, or worse. At the very least, such an outcome is highly probable. Indeed, the only way to ensure that what happened in Gaza does not happen in Judea and Samaria is for Israel to retain control of this territory — thereby obviating implementation of the two-state formula and the emergence of a Palestinian state.

Surely then, given the grave — indeed, existential — risks inherent in the two-state paradigm, considerably heightened by the precarious position of the current regime in neighboring Jordan, threatened, as it is, by ever-ascendant Islamist elements, would it not be eminently reasonable to consider further advocacy of this perilous prescription as “reckless endangerment” — even “depraved indifference”?

Immediate imperative

Accordingly, with the catastrophic consequences of continued insistence on the quest for a two-state resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict an ever more ominous likelihood, a determined search for plausible and durable alternatives — more moral, more rational and more compatible with the survival of the Jewish nation state — is now an urgent imperative.

(This article was originally published on Israel Hayom)