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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

ROSH CHODESH TAMMUZ: TWO DAYS AND TWO 'TWO'S AND THEN A LITTLE NETANYAHU AND OBAMA TO SEASON TWO ISSUES

IT IS UNCANNY THAT THIS MONTH OF TAMMUZ COMMENCES WITH THE SAME THEMES OF HISTORY REPEATING NOW AS GAVE US THE HISTORY OF THE BAIS HAMIKDASH IN ANCIENT TIMES. BABYLON, PERSIA, AND ANCIENT ROME MAY NOW BE THOUGHT OF AS IRAQ, IRAN, AND THE U.S.A. ISRAEL IS CAUGHT BETWEEN THEM ALL. AS TIME COMPELS US TOWARDS THE "THREE WEEKS", TOWARDS FASTING, TOWARDS WEEPING, TOWARDS REMEMBERING, TOWARDS THE READING OF KINOT, LET US NOT FORGET GILAD SHALIT AND ASK OURSELVES, AMIDST ALL THE INTERNATIONAL POSTURING AND POSITIONING, AMIDST ALL THE PROPAGANDA AND THE DEAL MAKING, AMIDST ALL THE RESTRUCTURING AND THE REAL ESTATE TRANSFERENCES: "WHY IS GILAD SHALIT STILL CAPTIVE IN GAZA? WHY HASN'T THE WORLD BECOME OUTRAGED IN HIS BEHALF? WHY HASN'T THE EXISTING OUTRAGE TRANSLATED INTO HIS FREEDOM?"

PERHAPS THERE IS A SOLUTION OF A BIBLICAL NATURE, A LESSON FROM SHLOMO HAMELECH: MAY THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY PROPOSE THAT GILAD SHALIT BE SPLIT IN HALF; THEN, HALF GIVEN TO ISRAEL, AND HALF TO HAMAS....

BIBI HAS SECURED HIMSELF A SEAT AT THE INTERNATIONAL TABLE BY CONCEDING PUBLICLY TO THE "TWO-STATE SOLUTION", THERE ARE THOSE, WHO IN MAJORITY, MAY HAVE CONCEDED PRIVATELY, IF NOT PUBLICLY, THAT A TWO-STATE SOLUTION IS INEVITABLE, AND THAT ISRAEL IS TOO WEAK TO SUCCESSFULLY INCORPORATE ONE STATE [INCLUSIVE OF JUDEA-SAMARIA AND THE GOLAN AND SHEVA FARMS AND EVEN YERUSHALAYIM]; AT THIS NO ONE CAN BE SURPRISED. SHARON GIVING AWAY GAZA -- NOW, THAT WAS A SURPRISE! SHARON STILL IN A COMA -- NOW, THAT IS A METAPHOR FOR MUCH OF ISRAEL AND FOR AMERICAN JEWS! BUT, MAKE NO MISTAKE, "CONDITIONS" SUCH AS A DEMILITARIZED "PALESTINIAN" [ARAB PALESTINIAN ONLY] STATE THAT MUST RECOGNIZE ISRAEL" ARE MERELY USELESS ADJECTIVES TO THE SUBJECT AND PREDICATE OF THE STIPULATION, "ISRAEL ACCEPTS TWO-STATE SOLUTION." THERE IS NO "HASHEM ECHAD" TO BE FOUND IN THIS.

OBAMA HAS SECURED HIMSELF AT THE INTERNATIONAL TABLE BY CALLING FOR INCREASING PRESSURE ON IRAN BASED ON ALLEGED IMPROPRIETIES OF THE RECENT ELECTIONS AND ON THE SOMEWHAT VIOLENT CRACKDOWN BY IRAN'S REVOLUTIONARY GUARD ON DISSIDENTS. SOME CRITICIZE HIS "RESTRAINT" WHILE OTHERS CRITICIZE HIS "BOWING TO PRESSURE" BY SHARPENING HIS RHETORIC. AT PRESENT THE FORCE OF INTERNATIONAL "WIND" SERVES THE PURPOSE OF A PROPAGANDA VICTORY FOR THE WEST IN THAT THE MEDIA IS NOW FOCUSED ON REAL AND ALLEGED HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN IRAN, AND NOT AT ABU GHRAIB OR GUANTANAMO [PRAISE THE LORD FOR THIS APPARENT FAVOR]. BUT, IF THIS IRAN STREET DEBACLE BECOMES MORE THAN A MEANS TO THE EQUALIZATION OF "EAST V. WEST" WITH REGARDS TO ACCUSATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, THEN THE WORLD COULD BE LOOKING AT WW3, CREATED BY REAL ELEMENTS, BUT. FANNED BY THE MEDIA BILLOWS, THEN SPARKED OF BY AN AS YET UNDISCLOSED "EVENT" AS CATALYST. THERE WOULD BE NO "HASHEM ECHAD" IN AN IRANIAN CIVIL WAR, EITHER.

DEAR LORD, MAY THESE CURRENT EVENTS IN IRAN BY THE MEANS BY WHICH UNDERSTANDING BE REACHED BETWEEN "EAST AND WEST", MAY THERE BE NO CIVIL WAR IN IRAN, MAY GILAD SHALIT BE SENT HOME "NEFESH ECHAD, GOOF ECHAD", AND MAY ISRAEL BE RECOGNIZED AS IT SHOULD BE, "AHM ECHAD, ARETZ ECHAD".

Sunday, June 7, 2009

OBAMA SQUANDERS OPPORTUNITY IN EGYPT, DRIVING WEDGE BETWEEN USA AND ISRAEL

It is no longer possible to anticipate positive Presidential foreign policy towards Israel and Middle East -- nor towards the world at large -- from our newly sitting President. This President has squandered the opportunity afforded by his name and privilege and driven a huge wedge between America and Israel, while kowtowing to Muslim propaganda equating the suffering of Arab Palestinians to the suffering of Holocaust Jews. And his timing for doing this is extraordinary in it's contempt for Israel and for Jewry. Less than a week after Shavuos (the "book-end" holiday to Passover), when Israel celebrates the Feast of First Fruits and the ancient historical issuance by The Almighty of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai -- and, incidentally, the day preceding Israel's famous contemporary pre-emptive start to the Six Day War -- Barak Hussein Obama spoke of "Palestine" -- a new state of "Christian Palestinians and Muslim Palestinians" -- as an existing entity, and pressed Israel to cease all settlement activity in "Palestine". President Sarkozy of France wasted no time in chiming in his support for Obama's call for Israel to cease settling in "Palestine". True, this has been the undesirable direction of American Policy, strengthened by former President Bush in his call for a two-state solution. Yet, each time one hears strong policy statements that would deny Jews the right to settle in their historical homeland, it is more salt poured and rubbed into the ancient wound.

When will the world open it's eyes and see that there is no equivalence of any kind between the circumstances of the Christian and Muslim Arabs in Israel (Palestine) and in the world versus the circumstances of Jews in the world?

Can anyone name one Muslim nation in which there are surviving Jews living in safety and security and equal status before the law?

Can anyone name one Muslim nation that did not rape, rob, murder, and exile it's Jews in the mid-20th Century?

Can anyone deny that before and during World War Two the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem publicly allied himself with the Nazis, dined with and was guest to Adolph Hitler, was armed and fueled by the Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, and excoriated the Arab Palestinian population to hatred of and violence against the Jews of Palestine, some of whom were refugees from Hitler's Europe?

None of this, nor American attitude, informed President Obama in his speeches in Saudi Arabia and Cairo. Did he look out eyeball-to-eyeball into the audiences and say to them directly, "On September 11 of 2001 ninteen of your citizens murderously hijacked American commercial jets and flew them into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, annihilating them both, and into the Pentagon; three-thousand souls of all races, creeds, nationalities, and religions were lost that day in this act of war against the USA; and the world was plunged into an economic recession it still feels today. Are you in Saudi Arabia and Egypt doing enough to fight for freedom? Or is this Terrorism the face of Islam, which you desire to project into the world?" Instead of using his Muslim name to reach out and educate and motivate the Muslim audience in the fight for democracy and freedom, he used his Muslim name to reach out and placate that audience. And his visit to Buchenwald afterwards can only be said to have made a mockery of his grandfather's witness to the Holocaust.

A similar wedge into weakening America is his call to close Guantanamo's detention center, which together with his overtures to Castro, can only be seen as precursors to total closure of the American Guantanamo Naval Base. This would be consistent with the retreat from Latin America that commenced with Jimmy Carter's presidency and was completed during the Clinton Administration with the handing over the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal, which America originally built after French failure, is now operated by the Chinese (kinda sounds vaguely similar to Viet Nam, doesn't it?). It is true that Venezuela began nationalizing it's oil industry during the Nixon Administration, which Administration was wrought with scandals and burdened with the Viet Nam War and covert activities throughout Central and South America; it is in our time now, contemporary to the Hugo Chavez leadership in Venezuela, that we see supersonic Russian bombers and fighters based in Venezuela, and joint military operations of the Russian and Venezuelan navies in the Carribean.

This so-called "New Beginning" of American-Muslim relations harkens a reactionary future, as it is based on taking anti-Israel propaganda and incorporating it into American Policy, dividing Israel from America. And it is a wedge in tandem to the Carribean wedge, that would further shrink America's ability to defend and project American values and power. The apparent goal is an attempt to befriend everybody and to fund American corporate and domestic needs at the expense of the American military. One might label the Obama Foreign Policy as the "Ostrich Strategy of Foreign Relations".

One must wonder how the various political blocks in Sudan view the Obama Presidency at this moment. There is no nation that Obama has more in common with than Sudan. Sudan is a nation ruled by Arab Muslims, which for decades has alternately been engaged in de-facto or de-juree warfare with it's southern Christian population, and which is famous now in the 21st Century as well for it's rape, murder, and persecution of the Negro Muslims of Darfur. From Khartoum's point of view (Khartoum beint the capital of Sudan), the southern Arabs are Christian or Black and therefore neither Muslim nor Arab enough, and the Darfurians may be Muslims, but, they are Black and not Arab enough. Obama is born of a White, American mother and a Muslim, African father; as an adult, Obama proclaims himself to be a Christian. It is curious that President Obama's first priorities, instead of vigorously demanding a speedy and forceful resolution of the horrors in Darfur and throughout Sudan, is instead destroying what little civility remains between American/Israeli relations, while simultaneously reaching out to weaken America in the Carribean.

A word about the alleged "horrors" at the GITMO detention center (by analogy):

Once there was a man, who was married to the most beautiful woman in the world. This woman had a facial birthmark, however, which existence over time began to command more and more of his attention to the point that he could no longer tolerate this "blemish" to the perfection of his beautiful wife. He went from surgeon to surgeon, who advised him that they would not perform the surgery to remove the birthmark, as to do so would likely cause the death of his wife. Finally, he came across an unscrupulous surgeon, who told the man what he wanted to hear. Hence came the surgery on his wife, who of course died as a result thereof.

Just as this man became obsessed with the birthmark on his wife, we and the world have become obsessed with inflated tales of wrongdoing at the Guantanamo detention center, and, to save the "face" of America, may close it down without appreciating the cost.

Has the world shown similar obsession to see towards the release of Gilad Shalit from his imprisonment by Hamas in Gaza? Whatever alleged tortures may have occurred in GITMO to the Al-Quaeda terrorists incarcerated there, those "tortures" will never compare to what has been done to Gilad Shalit, may he somehow miraculously be yet alive and in good health, and may he be released whole to return home to his family, as if this was the One Commandment given with the strength of Ten this Shavuos, "Thou Shalt Not Covet...."

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

AMERICAN PRESIDENT BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA IN EGYPT...

... AND OTHER PLACES ARABIAN AND MUSLIM. In just a few hours President Obama will speak in Egpt. If my words should find ears -- perhaps even the President's ears -- then perhaps an entirely new way of looking at the Middle East will emerge and transform that desolate landscape into the Garden of Eden it once was.

I am as sick and tired of hearing Arabs and Muslims referred to as "towel heads" and "desert niggers" as I am of hearing Jews and Israelis and Americans and Christians referred to as "Little Satans", "Big Satans", and "pigs, dogs, and monkeys".

The "Peace of Jerusalem" will not be found, if the dialogue towards peace is ruled by extremists, whose common ground is limiting communications to the businesses of sales of wine, women, and weapons towards the mutual goals of destruction of the "other". The "Peace of Jerusalem" ought not be a crater, left after warfare, that survivors commence to fight over ad nauseum. That level of "holiness of worship" is not holiness at all and is in fact idolatry.

It has often been said, "From he, who has been given the most by the Lord, the Lord shall ask the most of." In the case of Israel that legacy is the 'Torah'. In the case of Christianity that legacy is 'self-sacrifice'. In the case of Islam that legacy has been 'Jihad'. Of late there has been much effort to distinguish between military expressions of Jihad and spiritual expressions of Jihad. Sometimes those expressions intersect; other times they contradict each other -- at least to the extent that some even deny that there even exists a military exercise of Jihad, claiming that only peaceful exercise is true Jihad.

It is not my place to presume to be a a Muslim scholar. But, having studied a bit and having had the personal acquaintance of more than a few Muslims, Arab and non-Arab, I can say from experience that there are two aspects of Islam that not only have a positive basis in reality, but, are also signatures of Arab culture: compassion and hospitality. One sees the opposite in the treatment of such as Gilad Shalit; it is true that it is hard to reconcile these signatures with kidnappings, suicide/homicide bombings, etc. Still, this is the "much given" in the spiritual sense of Jihad that much more can be made of in our times.

The world of Islam already encompasses a fifth or more of the populated and geographical world. Compassion, hospitality. and obedience to religious authority all can combine to produce joyful, unimaginable peace. This writer has no doubt that if all Arabia were called upon -- in the name of Islam -- to withdraw from Israel (inclusive of Sheba Farms, Golan, and Judea-Samaria) into the surrounding nations, then true peace would come to Israel (with the possible exception of Israel's own age-old dilemma: Torah v. Idolatry).

Why would an Arab Sheikh do such a thing? Perhaps even for his own "pleasure".... [see the film "Lawrence of Arabia"]. And a token of such pleasure, compassion, hospitality, and faith -- of Jihad in it's purely compassionate, hospitable, spiritual sense -- would be the unconditional release of Gilad Shalit, alive and well!