Frontline Tours In The Holy Land
This last week I hopped on to the Lowell Yosef Galin Show for a short interview and discussion in connection this very magazine and its role in presenting an alternative approach to geopolitics and Israel’s connection to other indigenous peoples around the world.
We discuss:
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Every year we we find ourselves at this time again. The darkest moments in Jewish history and really the collective Israelite history can be boiled down to the 9th of Av, the day of mourning of the destruction of the two temples that stood at the exact location of today’s Dome of the Rock.
Exile cannot be quantified and there is no other people in the world who have been exiled, enslaved, and brutally oppressed as much as Israel. We have been scattered to the four corners of the world and only because the Almighty deemed it time to come home, did Jews begin to stream back to the Land of the Israel. Liberation was achieved against the British and subsequent wars of defense and liberation of our homeland were also fought and won. All of these events occurred against impossible odds.
Yet, despite Israel’s standing there is a vacancy in our nation and our hearts. The location of the Temple is the point where the world was created from. It is the point where Abraham our Father binded Isaac. Kabbalah teaches the temple mount is point that connects this world to the upper worlds. The Almighty entrusted his Children with this spot. We built two temples there and both times they were destroyed and we were exiled. The first exile brought us to Babylon, Egypt, and Syria. Some Israelites returned 70 years later to rebuild the Temple and establish sovereignty, but many stayed in exile and built communities across the Middle East and Africa.
When the Romans destroyed the second Temple, forcing us into exile again, many fled or were sold into slavery into Africa and many of us were brought to Rome and other parts of the Roman Empire in Europe.
Our sages teach us the second Temple was destroyed due to intramural hate and only tremendous unity can rebuild it.
The prophet Ovadia clearly states that although the people of Israel were scattered they will return at the end of the days and mentions both the house of Yosef returning from France and the house of David from Spain.
We are clearly in the middle of this as we speak. But there are other locations. The prophet Isaiah mentions Cush. We have already witnessed our brothers and sisters return from Ethiopia, but what of the other Israelites found there? Millions fled or were sold into slavery to Africa after the destruction of both Temples. These Jews are only supposed to resurface at the end of days, after we the ones exiled into Rome trigger the awakening by returning first.
The Almighty has hidden from us our brothers’ location, but now it is clear at the end where they have been. The Jews who went into Egypt with Jeremiah and the Jews who were sold into slavery into Africa eventually found their way to the Gulf of Guinea mainly in Biafra. They eventually became known as the Igbo. There they kept circumcision and the dietary laws as espoused in the Torah, but something happened. First Islam came and began to forcibly convert the non-Jewish tribes to the North. These tribes fought against the Jewish tribes living in Mali. Many of these Jews fled south merging with the Igbo and other Israelite tribes already there and still others were lost and blended into non-Jewish African tribes. Yet, many stayed true to the Torah as much as possible.
When the Europeans arrived to missionize and enslave the inhabitants living on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea they found that the Igbo of Biafra and many other tribes in the coastal region kept certain laws from the Torah. In their minds this would not do. The solution was to enslave and deport, decimating what was there and nearly erasing the memory of what once was.
The Igbo and their related brethren were brought to America. So many Igbo were brought there that it is said that up to 60% of African Americans can trace at least one side of their family to being Igbo. This explains the affinity both Jews of European descent African Americans had with one another during the Civil Rights era.
What happened to the Igbo is not dissimilar to the Spanish and Portuguese Jewry who were either forcibly converted or chased into the New World where they started to forget who they were.
Now there is a great awakening and the movement to reverse the enslavement of our past is happening. In Biafra, where the Igbo still reside, synagogues are being built, prayers are being said, and Torah is being learned. There is a struggle to free the Igbo from the mental slavery of the past. This struggle has taken many forms. Politically it has inspired the free Biafra movement whose leader Nnamdi Kanu, rots in jail for no apparent reason than he acknowledged his Hebraic origin and sought to activate it in order to free his people.
Unity will bring the Temple. Understanding that we Israelites were exiled and enslaved and brought to far flung places. Exile has been brutal to us yet we are awakening and realizing all of us together can unify and return the Holy Temple to the Mount Moriah. All of us black, white, yellow, brown can one way or the other trace ourselves back to the Land from which we were taken.
The nations of the world have confused us and turned one side on the other, but we can if we want end the exile once and for all by creating a unity that will reverse our collective exile once and for all.
Amar’e Stoudemire is coming home. After travelling back and forth to Israel since 2010, he has experienced what many African-Americans have noted as a sort of realization that somewhere in their past a Jewish ancestor is rooted. Stoudemire confirmed that his Jewish roots reach back through his mother’s side, linking him to the Jewish people. To many observers this sort of awakening is surprising, but it has been going on for quite a while.
In the early days of the Black Hebrew movement, there was a decidedly racial line drawn. In fact, an idea was posited that it was in fact the Africans themselves that were the Jews and not those of European descent. The myth of the Khazars superceded more traditional understandings as well as factually sound that European Jews came to Europe both as traders in the times of the Romans and were brought there as slaves.
This line has begun to fade as a new crop of younger African-Americans find interest in Hebrew customs and beliefs. This Hebrew awakening is beginning to ripple across the African-American world. Influential leaders like Rabbi Capers Funnye are publicly advocating for Black Jews to become fully integrated members of the broader Jewish world, dropping the racial division. In the past traditional Jewry shunned such overtures, but something is occurring now for the first time throughout world Jewry: tacit acceptance.
The affinity that many Black Americans have for Judaism is not without historical merit. Most Africans that were taken as slaves to the Americas came from the West coast of Africa. A majority of these slaves were Igbo. Igbos have a clear connection to the broader nation of Israel to the point that many rabbis in Israel have begun to come out in support of real outreach to Igbos in Nigeria. In fact, Igboland already hosts 47 synagogues and a 10,000 person strong and growing population of observant Africans.
In Isaiah 11:11 it says the following:
Then it will happen on that day that the Lord Will again recover the second time with His hand The remnant of His people, who will remain, From Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, And from the islands of the sea.
Cush is mentioned as one of the locations of the Israelites. Cush in biblical parlance does not only mean South Sudan and Northern Ethiopia, but essentially anything south and soutwest of these locations. The Igbo and many of the tribes like the Guin tribe express parallel customs like circumcision, kosher observance, and in many communities a wedding canopy. Josephus, the Jewish historian at the time of the revolt against Rome writes clearly that the Jews were not only taken to Europe, but fled into Africa as well. Of course in Europe Jews found their way to the Jewish communities of France and Italy and blended in as well taking in Roman converts. But in Africa they were seemingly “lost” to the rest of the Jewish world.
The Jewish exile has often been connected to European and Middle Eastern Jewry, mainly because West Africa and Africa as a whole was so decimated by European and Arab colonialism. Many of these communities that thrived in these sub-Sahara areas lost their cohesive expression.
Now, with this tremendous awakening underway, a piece of of the redemption is unfolding in front of us. Jews from all over the world are meant to return. Amar’e Stoudemire’s return to his roots is not only his personal journey, but in light of clear documentation, his journey is part of the redemptive process of the people of Israel.
“Mr. President you can purchase all the drones in Europe and Untied State. It will not stop the Niger Delta Avengers from bringing the country’s economy to zero. The worse you can do is to kill poor innocent people which the military is good at, but know the Nigeria Economy will suffer.”
– Niger Delta Avengers
Although the Niger Delta Avengers are often times depicted by the Nigerian regime as a terrorist organization, many Biafrans who have suffered greatly at the hands of the Buhari led Islamist government in Nigeria. view the Niger Delta Avengers as freedom fighters.
The Niger Delta Avengers released the following statement through their spokesman, Mudoch Agbinibo:
The NDA intelligence agency gathered that the said peace talk or dialogue by the federal government is a delay tactic employed by the federal government to enable their purchased drones that are said to arrive latest end of August from the United State.
This whole thing makes us to wonder what kind of country is this. We can all see that President Buhari- led government is a fraud. They are not serious about any dialogue and made it seem the Niger Delta Avengers are the ones not ready for dialogue.
Mr. President you can purchase all the drones in Europe and Untied State. It will not stop the Niger Delta Avengers from bringing the country’s economy to zero. The worse you can do is to kill poor innocent people which the military is good at, but know the Nigeria Economy will suffer.
Also note that you will not be able to export one litre of crude in the Niger Delta. Just intensify the oil exploration in the north-east as for the ones in the Niger Delta forget about it because the Nigeria government won’t export a drop from our land.
The statement makes it clear that the Niger Delta Avengers as a group are only responding to provocations initiated by the Buhari led government. In the coming months these sort of attacks can be expected to increase. As Buhari and his Islamist regime continues to inflict damage on the Igbo and the other tribes that make up Biafra, patience is wearing thin. The Niger Delta Avengers are correct, oil is the key to Buhari. Disrupting the sale of the oil to the world will certainly bring the country to a stand still.
In Israel’s fight for independence, the Lehi captured the imagination of the Jewish youth oppressed by British forces and Arab mobs. The Lehi as well as the Irgun bombed the British rail lines, targeted officials, and at the end brought the country to a standstill causing th British to leave. The Niger Delta Avengers appear to be few in number, but like the Lehi they are capable of bringing Nigeria to a halt. The Nigerian government will have to think twice before sending the army into the Biafran heartland. What Lehi proved and the Niger Delta Avengers are figuring out is that force of arms is the only tactic that works.
When 20-year-old Bruce Mayrock set himself on fire in front of the UN Building on the 30th of May 1969 to protest the world’s silence in relation to the Biafran genocide, little did he know he would be the most publicized non-Igbo activist to be killed during the 3 year Biafran struggle for independence from Nigeria. The struggle ended in loss. Millions of Biafrans, mostly Igbo were systematically killed at the hands of their enemies. Women and children were raped, tortured, killed, and starved to death. Nigeria was aided by the British and the Americans through a blockade, which prevented needed supplies from reaching Biafra.
It is doubtful that Mayrock attached a Jewish connection between himself and the Biafran struggle. In those days the Hebrew roots of the Igbo were fairly unknown in the West. Mayrock was doing as a Jew what he felt was right. But like all things there are some cosmic connection to Bruce Mayrock’s immolation.
We now know that before the British and other European countries colonised, enslaved, and missionized the West Coast of Africa, tribes like the Igbo had a plethora of Hebrew practices and still retain obviously Jewish practices. Many of these have surfaced in recent years: brit milah (circumcision), chupah (wedding canopy), ritual slaughter, separation of meat and milk, day of rest, and many more. Many practices were forcibly suppressed by European missionaries, with those same missionaries telling the Igbo that they were pagans.
The Biafra struggle has many facets to it. One of the most fascinating is the struggle has awoken the ancient connection of the Igbo and many of the other smaller tribes around them to their connection the people of Israel. The free Biafra movement is as much about spiritual and cultural freedom as it is about political independence.
Understanding for a moment that 60% of African-American have Igbo ancestry, it is not by accident that the power structure in America wanted to drive a wedge between the civil rights movment and the Jewish community.
As the awareness is spreading that the Igbo and Jews are actually long-lost brethren, both enslaved and abused by European and Arab cultures, the immolation of Bruce Mayrock takes on a far more powerful iconic symbol than ever. Understanding for a moment that 60% of African-American have Igbo ancestry, it is not by accident that the power structure in America wanted to drive a wedge between the civil rights movement and the Jewish community. These forces are essentially the same forces that have created separate narratives between the Igbos and Jews keeping the first from recovering the roots stolen from them and the latter from embracing their lost brothers and sisters. These lost brothers and sisters in America may just be some of the very same African-American neighbors Jews regarded as outside of the Hebrew National consciousness.
Bruce Mayrock maybe have killed himself, but his immolation revealed the deep despair that was occurring in his heart, witnessing another genocide of a Hebrew people, so shortly after the European Holocaust. Freeing Biafra and the Igbo from their cultural, spiritual, and political occupation is a cause the Jewish world must take on themselves both as a rectification of the past and a need to restore a more complete Israelite and Jewish nation.