Israel Will Survive Without U.S. Aid - Kahane 1988

The long article by Robert W. Gibson.  “Israel: An Economic Ward of the U.S.” (Los Angeles times, July 24), highlights the main thrust of the anti-Israel elements in the United States who, quite correctly, understand that the most direct and easiest way to fuel anti-Israel feeling is to dramatize the amount of economic aid the Jewish state receives from Washington.  Not only does this tactic play on the economic resentment of Americans in financial straits but it incites, too, the very strong, though latent, feeling within many, many Americans that “Israel and the Jews” run the policies of the United States.  And so it is time, long overdue in fact, to lay down a clear political axiom:  If the citizens the of the United States do not feel that their interests are being served by Israel, then their obligation is to stop this economic aid.   If, on the other hand, they believe that Israel serves a vital interest of the U.S. they should then put an end to their whining and deal with Israel as one would an equal partner who gives as much as he gets.
Of course, the nonsense about helping Israel because it is “the only democracy in the Middle East” has to be stopped.  Nations do not help other states because they are “democracies” or “progressive” states, or “good.”  Nations have self-interests that lead them to ally themselves with other states.  Those self-interests, and not the “morality” of the state, are what determine foreign policy decisions.  That is why “socialist” China sells weapons to Khomeinlist Iran and why the Soviet Union, not to mention various African states, do business with South Africa.  That is why the U.S. had military and/or economic ties with such “democracies” as Franco’s Spain, the colonels of Greece and a whole host of other “worthies.”  And that is the reason, the only reason, why the United States should have an alliance with Israel – and then pay for what it is getting.

The most urgent U.S. interest in the Middle East is a strong and reliable anti-Soviet ally.  It has a wide range of choices.  If not Israel, it can always choose from such reliable powers as Oman, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Jordan, or Lebanon …

It is Israel alone that gives the United States a guaranteed and safe base whenever needed.  It is the Haifa naval harbor that is open to the U.S. Sixth Fleet regularly.  It is in the Negev that the U.S. stores tons of military equipment for use when needed.  It is Israel that provides the Voice of America an area in which to build new, powerful transmitters.  It is Israel that works hand in hand with the U.S. to, actively, crush terrorism.  It is Israel that flies U.S. F-16 planes, in real combat, to tell the Americans what defects exist.  It is Israel that puts Soviet missiles given to the Syrians out of commission and then explains to Washington how it was done.  It is Israel that captures a Soviet T-72 tank and shows it to the CIA for the first time.  It is Israel whose Jericho missiles makes Moscow nervous enough to protest a weapon that can reach its territory.  It is Israel that has the brains, the technology, the ability to create; things that no nation in the region has.  And it is Israel that has the innate common hostility to the Soviets and other anti-Western totalitarian states, shared by America.

If all that is not worth the money - then by all means stop it.  Indeed, the Administration has an obligation to stop “wasting” American money.  But if all that adds up to a priceless asset, then let the weepers and wailers shut up and pay for what they are getting and count themselves fortunate.

And know that the State of Israel’s survival is in no way dependent on the United States or any other human agency.  The incredible saga of the Jewish return to the Holy Land is, of course, preceded by the miraculous survival of that Jewish people through 1,900 years of persecution, wanderings and Holocaust.  How?  Why, because they are, indeed, the Chosen People.  They are, indeed, capable of suffering terribly but never being destroyed.  They are, indeed, the people of G-d who, just as Divinely promised, have come home, never again to be exiled.  That is the immutable fact of history, whether one cares to believe or not.  Not by American bread does the Jewish state live but by the word of G-d.  Let that be clear. 

And a final world.  The Kach Movement is committed to putting an end to U.S. economic aid.  Not only does it not help us, it perpetuates the economic basket case that Israel is today – a state that, like some beggar, lives off Washington and German reparations and the United Jewish Appeals or Israel Bonds.  Normal countries do not survive on charity, which only petrifies economic initiative and intensifies possible political pressure on the part of the donor nation.  And Israel, which is a pathetic victim of its own bureaucratic and socialist system that strangles free enterprise and initiative, receives U.S. economic aid as some drug addict needing his annual “fix.”  That “fix” does not aid Israel, it keeps it from taking the difficult, painful steps needed to achieve economic independence.  Let the aid be gradually stopped and let the bureaucrats be thrown out and let free enterprise and economic initiative rule.  Then, Israel will grow and thrive – without U.S.  or any other human assistance.  Then Israel will be able to respond to intolerable American pressure and interference in internal affairs with a clear and respectable:  No.  Israel and the U.S. must be partners.  Equal partners.  If there are Americans who do not want this – fine.  Stop giving; but then accept the consequences of not receiving.

The awesome fly in this Jewish ointment is, of course, that the people in the world who will most strenuously object to all the above will be Jews.  The People of the Book, who cast it aside for Philip Roth and other moral-cultural-secular pornography, is also the people of ultimate faith that cast that away to suckle at the breasts of the nations.  The Jew of our times simply does not believe in G-d, despite all the piously fraudulent protestations.  Too lacking in courage to admit his lack of belief and preferring to create a G-d that is safe and in his own image, the Jew will build his temples and hire (at munificent costs) his priests and priestesses (a.k.a. rabbis), paying expensive lip service to Divinity.  But that Divinity is most limited by the new Creator-Man.  He has His place, but He had better well know it. 

The Jew absolutely rejects the idea of a G-d who is stronger than Caspar Weinberger or Ronald Reagan.  He may pray to G-d, but he quakes before Washington.  Israel can certainly survive in his pragmatic little mind without the G-d of Israel, but it can never last a week without the American savior.  That is the result of the centuries of Jewish religious corruption, the decadence of Western Hellenization and secularism.  We have evolved from a holy nation that once worshipped at the footstool of G-d to one that prays at the armpit of the American president.

And the Orthodox Jew is not a whit better.  The Orthodox Jew, he who evolved from the religious one.  From a Jew who once fearlessly proclaimed, “these may come with horses and these with chariots, but we shall call in the name of the L-rd” (Psalms 20:8), we have emerged a people who, following the morning prayer when we mouth that very verse, remove the tallit and teflin, gulp down a bit of schnapps, and speaking “politics,” venture: “Of course we believe in
G-d, but be practical.  If Israel does not compromise, Reagan will not give us horses and chariots.”

We pray and hear nothing of what we say.  We swiftly mumble and slur not only the words, but, far worse, the very thoughts.  We are not a religious people, and two yarmulkas and all the kaftans in the world can never cover the nakedness of the Jew who has lost his real faith in the G-d of Israel – who simply does not believe that the All Mighty is stronger than Ronald Reagan.
Written, October 2, 1987

Jerusalem Post February 15, 2013 printed ASSET TEST. How the United States benefits from its Alliance with Israel.  I will only write the headlines of Israel’s help to the U.S.  (bg)

Soft Security: Societal Resilience, Economic Competitiveness, IT/Cyber Security, Water and Food security, Energy and Resources, Medical R&D/ Public Health.

Hard Security:
Homeland Security, Intelligence Sharing, Counterterrorism Cooperation, Rocket/Missile Defense, Military Lessons Learned, Defense Industrial Cooperation.

Developed in Israel, Made in the USA: 1,000 Aircraft Targeting Pods, 2,500 Helmet-Mounted Aircraft Sights, 15,000 Military Vehicle Armor Packages.

Moshe Feiglin's Debut in the Knesset

Moshe Feiglin's Debut in the Knesset

Click here to watch the Hebrew video of Moshe Feiglin's speech

Moshe Feiglin made his debut Wednesday in the Knesset with a moving and patriotic speech. His opening remarks were not part of his planned speech, but brought at least one MK to tears:

"I have listened to all the debut speeches," Feiglin began. "Excellent speeches, some of them virtuoso speeches. But when I listened to your speech, MK Mickey Levy, (see minute 1:10 on the video, where Yesh Atid MK Levi breaks out in a big smile) a former police Major General, a person who I was used to seeing on the other side of a great divide – you as a police officer and myself as a protester – when you spoke about how you lost your brother in the Jordan Valley, my heart skipped a beat.

I was a young platoon commander on duty in a reserve unit. A new regiment commander had been assigned to our regiment and the commander came to visit our position in the Jordan Valley. He asked me, in front of my soldiers, if all was well.

'No,' I answered.
'Why not?' he asked.
'Look over there,' I said to him. 'Anybody can cross over that bridge and continue up that path there, hidden from view, come around the back of our position under cover of that ridge, enter without anybody even noticing and shoot.'

Much to my surprise, the regiment commander became furious. He admonished me in front of my astounded soldiers and angrily left our position. I was confused. 'He probably knows something that I don't know,' I said to myself and put the incident out of my head.

Our tour of duty finished. I came home. Approximately one year later, I heard that an IDF soldier was killed at that position in the Jordan Valley, precisely as I had warned. And here, Mickey, in our opening speeches in the 19th Knesset, this story has come full circle. (Watch Mickey Levi at 5:18 wiping the tears from his face).

My heart ached. I was terribly angry at myself. I should have protested, left my position against the rules and demanded the attention of the brigade commander. I should never have believed that my commanding officer knew something that I didn't know.

Remember, Members of the 19th Knesset. What you perceive is the reality that you must work with. When we adopt somebody else's worldview, we betray our duty. The agenda in which we believe is our responsibility and our authority and we must do all we can to bring it to fruition.

A few years later, the Oslo Accords came into our world. Once again, I clearly saw the catastrophe about to happen. I saw the thousands of victims and even worse – the loss of legitimacy for our very right to exist as a state. For if you recognize the Organization for the Liberation of the Land of Israel from its Jews, (Ed: the PLO) what can you possibly claim?

This time, I did not remain silent. The entire country stood and cheered the emperor's new clothes and I insisted on telling the truth."

Moshe went on to describe the civil disobedience that he adopted in the Zo Artzeinu protests, citing that it was the "greatest display of liberty and democracy that the State of Israel has ever known." He decried the next step in the Oslo Accords, the destruction of Gush Katif. "Even though Tel Aviv is now targeted from the ruins of Gush Katif," he continued, the Oslo worm continues to destroy us from inside. Today, as we speak, Israeli forces are destroying Ma'aleh Rehavam."

From there, Moshe turned to his family roots: He is a descendant of the Chabad rabbis whose ancestors made aliyah to Israel in the 1880's, pioneering the settlements of Metulah and Mishmar Hayarden.

"When, against all odds, we managed to restore the Likud and the National Camp to power in 1996, it turned out that the Right really didn't have an alternative to Oslo," Moshe continued. "Then I understood that the debate is not really between Right and Left: It is not a debate over territory. It is a debate of identity. It is a debate between the Jew and the Israeli. The fact that the Right ascends to power is not enough to stop the deterioration. It is imperative to infuse our national conversation with Jewish meaning and content.

2000 years ago, we went into exile and it was not at all clear how we would survive without the Holy Temple, bereft of the authentic Jewish culture of a nation in its homeland. Then the Jewish nation invented the most successful start-up in history. It is called the Jewish religion. Judaism, which is much more than just a religion, discarded its territorial dimension and became something adaptable to the individual, the family and the community; something that can be packed into the knapsack and moved to a new place every time the Jews had to flee violence and pogroms. Religion became the lifeline of the Jews in exile.

2000 years later, the pioneers who came to revive the Land of Israel felt that this lifeline had become a noose. They had to cut it to feel the earth under their feet. Those tremendous energies sprang forth, giving birth to the State of Israel.

Dear friends: Israeli society has hit an ethical dead-end. We can no longer justify our sovereign existence in this Land without our Father, our King, Whom we had left behind in the exile.
We must reconnect to our identity. When we return to ourselves, we will be able to afford full liberty and human rights to our neighbors, as well.

I pray that G-d will give me the strength to connect vision with reality, to restore the State of Israel to itself and its destiny, in the service of the Nation of Israel and the vision of the prophets: to perfect the world in the Kingdom of Heaven."

Watch the video at 27:50, where MK Mickey Levi hugs Moshe, telling him that he is happy to hug him and not arrest him. You can watch some of the other MKs also congratulating Moshe on his debut speech.

Likud MK Tzippy Hotobelli spoke after Moshe, welcoming him to the Knesset and calling him a "great visionary."

American Jewry's Denominational Delusions

Statistics are against the continuity of Reform and Conservative Jewry, possibly reducing the power of the Jewish population in the USA. (Perhaps Israel should note that when considering their requests to change tradition at the Wall.)

Andrew Apostolou

The writer is an historian based in Washington D.C.

► More from this writer

American Jews are caught in a crisis and their rabbis aren’t helping. Synagogues are closing, congregations are ageing, and the non-Orthodox majority is dwindling. For every 100 non-Orthodox Jews in their 50s, there are just 55 children with the same religious orientation. If the Jewish community does not take action, its numbers will shrink. The era in which Jews played a vital role in American life will end as the entire community becomes demographically diminished and socially insular.
Yet there are Jewish religious movements who are not grasping the root of this problem—the failure of Jews to marry other Jews. None is explicitly pursuing strategies to promote marriage within the community. Reform Jews are making matters worse. The Conservatives are confused. The Orthodox believe that they are the answer, but the decline of their non-Orthodox coreligionists harms them as well.
Reform Judaism, currently the largest denomination, is encouraging demographic failure. The movement accepts intermarriage despite evidence that its occurrence leads to fewer Jews. Most intermarried couples do not raise their offspring as Jews and, not surprisingly, these children themselves marry non-Jews at a rate of 76 percent. The result is that now there are not enough young people in Reform synagogues to keep them going. According to one survey, just eight percent of Reform synagogue members are young adults—while 22 percent are over the age of 65.
Reform Judaism continues to welcome intermarriage despite this evidence. Around half of all Reform rabbis conduct marriages between Jews and non-Jews, with increasing numbers of rabbis joining their ranks. Instead of encouraging Gentiles to convert to Judaism to marry Jews, some Reform rabbis question the whole point of conversion. They even perform marriages jointly with non-Jewish clergy, in contravention of the rules of the Reform rabbinic body, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR).
Reform rabbis now propagate the notion of patrilineal descent without any qualification, which is both false to the text of the CCAR’s 1983 resolution on “The Status of Children of Mixed Marriages” and self-defeating. It is false because the resolution acknowledged as potentially Jewish only the children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers who were raised within the Jewish fold. It is self-defeating because it weakens the Jewish identity and commitment of Reform youth. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, previous president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said that “if current trends continue, approximately 80 percent of the children who have a bar or bat mitzvah in our congregations will have no connection of any kind to their synagogue by the time they reach 12th grade.”
Meanwhile, the Conservative movement is in even worse demographic shape than the Reform. During the first decade of this century, the number of Conservative synagogues fell by six percent, while membership declined by 14 percent. In 2010, only nine percent of adult members of Conservative congregations were under 40—those over the age of 65 outnumbered young adults three-to-one. The Conservative intermarriage rate is 33 percent and rising.
The Conservative movement is confronting its intermarriage problem with resolute confusion. The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement’s synagogue organization, mentions intermarriage as an issue in its latest strategic plan, but makes no suggestions for encouraging marriage to other Jews.
At the same time, the Conservative rabbinic corps is drifting toward accommodating the intermarried and discouraging the conversions needed to prevent it. The Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards voted in 2010 to allow the burial of non-Jewish spouses in a separate section of a Jewish cemetery. The sole opponent on the committee, who lives in Israel, argued that the decision removes any incentive for non-Jews to join the Jewish people: “Why would they bother converting?”
The only source of good news appears to be the growing Orthodox population. The Orthodox intermarriage rate is around six percent. Just as important, the Orthodox have no difficulty reproducing, a task that has befuddled the other denominations. The Jewish population of New York, Westchester, and Long Island rose by nine percent in the decade to 2011 in large part because of the high Orthodox birthrate, according to the 2011 UJA-Federation study. Orthodox children are now close to two-thirds of the Jewish children in the New York metro area.
It appears that Orthodoxy will flourish while the other movements languish or perish. As Rabbi Norman Lamm, the chancellor of Yeshiva University, has said, “With a heavy heart we will soon say kaddish on the Reform and Conservative movements.”
Other Orthodox rabbis have openly expressed pleasure and dismay at the waning of the non-Orthodox. Rabbi Yitzchock Adlerstein wrote that the “mixed emotions” stirred by the New York population survey were best communicated by imagining that you are "watching your sworn enemy go over the side of a cliff in your new Lotus.” Adlerstein hinted that result could be increased anti-Semitism, because without the connections that the non-Orthodox have made to non-Jews, Jewish life would become less easy in America “in times of stress.”
The Orthodox assumption that they will replace the non-Orthodox is a delusion. Orthodox Jews constitute less than 15 percent of the American Jewish population. Their high birthrate cannot compensate for the massive losses among the other denominations and the unaffiliated. Also, the substantial reproduction rate among hareidi Jews, the so-called ultra-Orthodox, may not continue indefinitely. As they climb the economic ladder, their families are likely to become smaller.
The decline of the non-Orthodox will damage the Orthodox in three ways. First, a substantial part of the growth in Orthodoxy, particularly Modern Orthodoxy, has come from non-Orthodox groups. The baalei teshuva, “repentant” Jews who reject non-Orthodox Judaism, have more than compensated for those leaving Orthodoxy. They also provide a connection to non-Orthodox communities through their extended families. In some cases they are the first observant Jews in their families for generations. This pool of potential recruits would be gone without Reform and Conservative Judaism.
Second, without Reform and Conservative Judaism, American Jews will have fewer choices in the future for their religious practice. The options will be Orthodoxy or other religions.
Third, the non-Orthodox movements, and to a much lesser extent Modern Orthodoxy, connect Jews to American society. The Orthodox can have difficulties in dealing with other Jews, let alone maintaining any meaningful relationship with other religions. Orthodox life can be insular because it is so all-enveloping. America accepts closed communities, like the Amish, but the price of social isolation is a lack of cultural and political influence.
American Orthodox rabbis lead congregations filled with Torah study and bursting with children. After decades of being dismissed as relics or characterized as extremists by the non-Orthodox, the Orthodox are witnessing what looks like the irreversible decline of the religious competition. That feeling of vindication, however, will prove brief when they realize they may also suffer from the demographic self-destruction of today’s non-Orthodox majority.
Sent to Arutz Sheva by Jewish Ideas Daily.

(Israel) Nuclear weapons replace depth of defense

Peace, and even neutrality, have protected no state, ever. Small irrelevant states are tolerated, but they are rolled over without remorse when military needs arise. Germany occupied Belgium, and Italy annexed almost all the lands of the Vatican. Belgium was neutral, and the Vatican was even culturally indispensable for Catholic Italy.

 Israel cannot hope to convince the Muslims of her peaceful intentions and enjoy peace with them.

Hong Kong and Switzerland provide different examples. The evil empires of Communist China and Nazi Germany tolerated them out of utter economic necessity. But Hong Kong and Switzerland were indispensable for their imperial neighbors only because the evil states were isolated from the rest of the world. Muslim oil economies are very open, and do not need Israel as their gate into the world. Muslims won’t hesitate to wipe Israel off the map.

Could Israel possibly rely on outside protection, such as a mutual defense treaty? No country rose to defend Poland in WWII. Protection—however unreliable—could only come from the US, but its behemoth army wouldn’t be able to deploy in Israel before the Muslims overran her forty-mile depth of defense and annihilated the Jews.

Read the rest:

http://samsonblinded.com/blog/nuclear-weapons-replace-depth-of-defense.htm

Kahane Tzadak! -

There is a truth, a Jewish truth that no one speaks today.  The Jewish Idea has been corrupted and silenced.  There must be one person who is prepared to speak the entire truth in the truthful way.  No one else speaks about the holocaust that must grip the Galut; no one else speaks about the need to remove the Arabs from Eretz Yisroel; no one else says that to depend on the Americans will not bring salvation but rather Divine punishment; no one else ways that if the government of Israel will not annex the lands, Divine Punishment will again strike us; no one else says that we must defy the government if it defies Jewish law; no one else speaks as a Jew, and with the Jewish Idea.  That is my obligation.  If I have support and if I have followers, well and good.  If I am able to build an organization, so much the better.  But if I have to be alone and shout out the lonely truth in that way – that will be my role.

Kahane - 4/1978