Sunday, August 28, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Why S&P downgraded - this puts it in perspective...
Why S&P downgraded - this puts it in perspective...
• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000
Let's remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:
• Annual family income: $21,700
• Money family spent: $38,200
• New debt on credit card: $16,500
• Outstanding balance on credit card: $142,710
• Total budget cuts: $385
• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000
Let's remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:
• Annual family income: $21,700
• Money family spent: $38,200
• New debt on credit card: $16,500
• Outstanding balance on credit card: $142,710
• Total budget cuts: $385
Damn, Those J ews are good!
News From Egypt, DAMN Those Jews are GOOD!
There is an old story about a Jewish man who goes to his rabbi to let him
know he is converting to Christianity and joining a Neo-Nazi party. Shocked the
rabbi says, "But Bernie, you are such an observant Jew, you keep kosher, go to
Synagogue and pray 3x every day, you are our number one Torah reader. what would
make you do something like convert and become a Nazi?"
"Well Rabbi," says Bernie, "I come to Synagogue and and hear talk to the other Jews, all I hear is bad stuff, the Arabs hate us, the Europeans hate Jews, the President hates us. I hear the same thing, over and over and over.
"But the Nazi party?" Says the Rabbi?
"You Bet," says Bernie, "I went to one meeting and there was nothing bad, all they kept saying was the Jews own the Banks, the Jews run the government, the Jews own the media and Hollywood. It made me so proud.
I know how Bernie feels especially when reading about Antisemitism in Egypt. They are so creative. Sure they pass along the hateful propaganda that Jew own the media, Hollywood, banks and control the US government, but they also come up with such unusual ways to slander the Jewish people.
Remember what happened last December when Egyptian swimmers were attacked by sharks. An Egyptian official claimed that a shark that killed one person and left four others injured in Egypt could have been placed there by agents from Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.
It wasn't some low level official either,
After reading that story, all I could think was "Damn We're good, even though I knew the story was nonsense.
The latest news from Egypt contains another one of those "Damn We're Good" moments, combined with a little bit of nonsense from Adam Sandler's movie, You Don't Mess with the Zohan.
Isn't it great how one of only two nation's that has made peace with the Jewish State has such great respect for the Jewish people that they make up stories just to show our brilliance? Damn, Those J ews are good!
"Well Rabbi," says Bernie, "I come to Synagogue and and hear talk to the other Jews, all I hear is bad stuff, the Arabs hate us, the Europeans hate Jews, the President hates us. I hear the same thing, over and over and over.
"But the Nazi party?" Says the Rabbi?
"You Bet," says Bernie, "I went to one meeting and there was nothing bad, all they kept saying was the Jews own the Banks, the Jews run the government, the Jews own the media and Hollywood. It made me so proud.
I know how Bernie feels especially when reading about Antisemitism in Egypt. They are so creative. Sure they pass along the hateful propaganda that Jew own the media, Hollywood, banks and control the US government, but they also come up with such unusual ways to slander the Jewish people.
Remember what happened last December when Egyptian swimmers were attacked by sharks. An Egyptian official claimed that a shark that killed one person and left four others injured in Egypt could have been placed there by agents from Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.
It wasn't some low level official either,
Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha, the regional governor, claimed it was not "out of the question" that Israel could have planned the attacks on tourists to dent the Egyptian economy.
After reading that story, all I could think was "Damn We're good, even though I knew the story was nonsense.
The latest news from Egypt contains another one of those "Damn We're Good" moments, combined with a little bit of nonsense from Adam Sandler's movie, You Don't Mess with the Zohan.
Israeli citizen Ofir Harrari, recently accused by Egypt of spying for Israel, was allegedly involved in a complicated scheme intended to harm Egyptian reproduction abilities, Egypt's official state paper Al-Ahram has claimed.
Harrari, accused by Egypt of being an agent of the Mossad, is set be tried in absentia on charges of "spying for a foreign country with the purpose of harming Egyptian national interest," news agency MENA reported on Sunday.
"According to the public prosecutor's office's investigation, 'Mossad agent Ofir Harrari' instructed Jordanian Ibrahim abu-Zaid to set up a company in Egypt which would exclusively import an Israeli hair product, for both men and women, which causes infertility. This in order to completely destroy Egyptian reproduction abilities," Al-Ahram states.Gee whiz, the Mossad messing with Egyptian hair products as to make Egyptians sterile.
Isn't it great how one of only two nation's that has made peace with the Jewish State has such great respect for the Jewish people that they make up stories just to show our brilliance? Damn, Those J ews are good!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
When a Civilization Goes Mad
When a Civilization Goes Mad
It begins with self-doubt; it ends with self-destruction.
August 16, 2011 - 12:00 am
Historian Arnold Toynbee, who developed the theory of challenge-and-response to account for the survivability of civilizations, has said that great civilizations are not murdered, they commit suicide — by not meeting their challenges. A variation of this historical insight may be phrased thus: When a civilization or an empire feels inwardly that it is dying, or as Oswald Spengler put it in The Decline of the West, that it wants to die and “wishes itself into the darkness,” it begins to go mad. Collective madness is a sure portent that an end is approaching, that an axial transformation is about to occur, that an entire worldview or cultural habitus is on the verge of disintegration. It signals that a people has surrendered to a mortal destiny, repudiated its sustaining tradition and condign principles, and indeed has gone so far as to regard the enemy at the gates as a form of salvation. “They were, those people, a kind of solution,” say Constantine Cavafy’s effete Romans in his celebrated poem, “Waiting for the Barbarians.”
“Western politics,” Raymond Ibrahim has said, discussing the befuddled American and European outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood with its clever, phased project for infiltrating Western society, “have descended into idealism and fantasy.” The same can be said about the state of the Western media. The media are like the neural pathways establishing connections between the various parts of the “world brain.” When they begin to transmit false representations and misleading messages, the response to world events is at best incongruous and at worst drastically contorted. Both public sentiment and public policy lurch about in a kind of no-man’s land, unable to make contact with things as they are. Obviously, there will always be a certain amount of “misfiring” in the circuitry, but when the entire system is warped and deformed, it becomes next to impossible to properly “read” the empirical world and react in appropriate ways. This creates a disjunction between mind and reality, which is one definition of madness.
The gradual but unrelenting insinuation of socialist and neo-Marxist doctrine into the liberal West, after it has been reliably shown to falter or collapse wherever it has been implemented, is still another index of severe mental disconnect and maladjustment to reality. Command economies are proven to be inefficient, and the welfare state, predicated on the punitive taxation of a shrinking and increasingly insolvent productive base to subsidize ever-inflating entitlement programs, has been properly described as a gigantic Ponzi scheme. Redistributionist and womb-to-tomb security states, as Margaret Thatcher famously said, will eventually run out of other people’s money. Nevertheless, this ideological will-o’-the-wisp continues to be diligently pursued.
Or consider the phenomenon of multiculturalism, as interpreted and practiced in the West, which has led the countries that have adopted it into a state of social and political bedlam. Based, as Salim Mansur argues in his new book Delectable Lie, “on the false idea — another official lie, really — that all cultures are equal,” it is progressively destroying “the West’s liberal democratic heritage…by extending recognition to groups defined through collective identity” and by elevating ethnicity over nationality. As a consequence, under the glazed and permissive view of the political class, the social fabric has critically unraveled, no-go enclaves have sprung up in many cities, the specter of homegrown terrorism haunts the public square, the structure of Western law and normative conduct has come under threat, and growing tension is the order of the day. Multiculturalism has seen the heritage culture adapting to the demands, institutions, and usages of immigrant societies rather than the other way round.
Indeed, the European Union has promulgated laws which militate against the criticism of Islam on the grounds of hate speech. Politicians, journalists, and ordinary citizens, like Geert Wilders, Lars Hedegaard, and Elisabeth Sabbaditch-Wolff, respectively, have found themselves prosecuted in court for warning their fellow citizens against the infiltration of radical Islam into the body politic. The same travesty is being repeated in Canada, whose misnamed Human Rights Commissions, which are essentially kangaroo courts that are not required to follow the rules of evidence, have tried such forthright and respectable journalists as Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn for offending Muslim sensibilities. If this is not madness, I don’t know what is.
Perhaps the most conspicuous current example of collective delirium was the election of Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency of the United States. A man with no record of significant prior achievement, who sat for twenty years in the pews of a dubious church under the ministry of an anti-American and anti-Jewish, hate-spewing pastor, who has associated with various compromised individuals such as former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, antisemite and black supremacist Louis Farrakhan, unrepentant former terrorist Bill Ayers, pro-Islamist plutocrat Khalid al-Mansour, and corrupt businessman Tony Rezko, whose political sentiments lie far to the Left, whose dossier remains in large measure under seal and whose verifiable biography is to a disturbing degree a matter of conjecture — all this and much more should have alerted the electorate to his gross unsuitability for office, prompted the legacy media to investigate, and disqualified him immediately from running for the Democratic nomination.
But the emotional frenzy surrounding his candidacy ensured that sanity would not prevail in outing a man whom Robert Kimball has called “a typical hothouse product of our self-satisfied liberal elite.” Kimball continues, with much justification, that “tens or hundreds of thousands of people will suffer because of our naïveté and Barack Obama’s malevolent stupidity.” The sequel has made it amply clear to all but the partisan, the myopic, and the myriad barnacles clinging to the ship of state and dependent on the largesse of the Democratic Party that America has been gravely weakened both domestically and abroad, and that it might not recover. And yet it is entirely conceivable that Obama may be re-elected to the most powerful office in the world. We recall it was not only a besotted American electorate that hoisted him on its collective shoulders; all Europe also went berserk over the man. Even the Israelis treated him like royalty when he gave his lying Sderot speech. If this is not madness, I don’t know what is.
These are only a few examples, which could be multiplied indefinitely, of a civilization losing control of its future. The riots we are currently witnessing in the UK, ignited to a great extent by an entitlement culture that cannot meet the expectations it has created, is only a modest symptom of what is coming down the pike. The overall spectacle we are observing today — the dramatic erosion of a sense of civic responsibility, the nihilistic relativizing of moral principle, the insidious effects of political correctness, the reluctance to deal adequately with terrorism, the mounting hostility toward Jews and Israel, the return of autocratic rule in Europe with the appointment of authoritarian bureaucrats answerable to no one to the European Parliament, the cosseting of Islam, the election of incompetents, as in the U.S., as well as in Britain, Sweden, France, Spain, Australia, and many other places — the list goes on and on — are infallible harbingers of cultural and civilizational decay. Good things come to an end, just like everything else. It seems highly probable that the United States in particular and Western civilization in general have begun to circle the drain. The symptoms of an imperium in its dotage are unmistakable.
The greatest civilization the world has ever known has lost confidence in itself, infected by a plague of self-doubt and self-recrimination. Having lost its bearings, it is no longer willing or able to think clearly, to make difficult choices, to defend its patrimony and resist demographic subversion, to accept the need for sacrifice, to value the radiant catalogue of its triumphs and achievements in art, science, technology, medicine, and statecraft, and, with its declining birthrate, even to reproduce itself. This is total madness. Further, the leftist “illiberal trajectory” it has embarked upon, as Caroline Glick writes, has led to the “bid to criminalize ideological opponents and justify acts of terrorism,” a radical political shift that “will destroy the liberal democratic foundations of Western civilization.”
Is a return to psychic health at all possible? Do civilizations convalesce? Can those who follow the maxim of the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations — “the object of life is…to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane” — influence events for the better or at least defer the inevitable? Is the writing on the wall erasable graffiti or is it, shall we say, Biblically indelible?
Any way we look at it, the prognosis is not encouraging. As Martin Heidegger deposed in a 1966 Der Spiegel interview, the only one of the philosopher’s utterances that keeps on echoing, “Only a god can save us now.”
“Western politics,” Raymond Ibrahim has said, discussing the befuddled American and European outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood with its clever, phased project for infiltrating Western society, “have descended into idealism and fantasy.” The same can be said about the state of the Western media. The media are like the neural pathways establishing connections between the various parts of the “world brain.” When they begin to transmit false representations and misleading messages, the response to world events is at best incongruous and at worst drastically contorted. Both public sentiment and public policy lurch about in a kind of no-man’s land, unable to make contact with things as they are. Obviously, there will always be a certain amount of “misfiring” in the circuitry, but when the entire system is warped and deformed, it becomes next to impossible to properly “read” the empirical world and react in appropriate ways. This creates a disjunction between mind and reality, which is one definition of madness.
The gradual but unrelenting insinuation of socialist and neo-Marxist doctrine into the liberal West, after it has been reliably shown to falter or collapse wherever it has been implemented, is still another index of severe mental disconnect and maladjustment to reality. Command economies are proven to be inefficient, and the welfare state, predicated on the punitive taxation of a shrinking and increasingly insolvent productive base to subsidize ever-inflating entitlement programs, has been properly described as a gigantic Ponzi scheme. Redistributionist and womb-to-tomb security states, as Margaret Thatcher famously said, will eventually run out of other people’s money. Nevertheless, this ideological will-o’-the-wisp continues to be diligently pursued.
Or consider the phenomenon of multiculturalism, as interpreted and practiced in the West, which has led the countries that have adopted it into a state of social and political bedlam. Based, as Salim Mansur argues in his new book Delectable Lie, “on the false idea — another official lie, really — that all cultures are equal,” it is progressively destroying “the West’s liberal democratic heritage…by extending recognition to groups defined through collective identity” and by elevating ethnicity over nationality. As a consequence, under the glazed and permissive view of the political class, the social fabric has critically unraveled, no-go enclaves have sprung up in many cities, the specter of homegrown terrorism haunts the public square, the structure of Western law and normative conduct has come under threat, and growing tension is the order of the day. Multiculturalism has seen the heritage culture adapting to the demands, institutions, and usages of immigrant societies rather than the other way round.
Indeed, the European Union has promulgated laws which militate against the criticism of Islam on the grounds of hate speech. Politicians, journalists, and ordinary citizens, like Geert Wilders, Lars Hedegaard, and Elisabeth Sabbaditch-Wolff, respectively, have found themselves prosecuted in court for warning their fellow citizens against the infiltration of radical Islam into the body politic. The same travesty is being repeated in Canada, whose misnamed Human Rights Commissions, which are essentially kangaroo courts that are not required to follow the rules of evidence, have tried such forthright and respectable journalists as Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn for offending Muslim sensibilities. If this is not madness, I don’t know what is.
Perhaps the most conspicuous current example of collective delirium was the election of Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency of the United States. A man with no record of significant prior achievement, who sat for twenty years in the pews of a dubious church under the ministry of an anti-American and anti-Jewish, hate-spewing pastor, who has associated with various compromised individuals such as former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, antisemite and black supremacist Louis Farrakhan, unrepentant former terrorist Bill Ayers, pro-Islamist plutocrat Khalid al-Mansour, and corrupt businessman Tony Rezko, whose political sentiments lie far to the Left, whose dossier remains in large measure under seal and whose verifiable biography is to a disturbing degree a matter of conjecture — all this and much more should have alerted the electorate to his gross unsuitability for office, prompted the legacy media to investigate, and disqualified him immediately from running for the Democratic nomination.
But the emotional frenzy surrounding his candidacy ensured that sanity would not prevail in outing a man whom Robert Kimball has called “a typical hothouse product of our self-satisfied liberal elite.” Kimball continues, with much justification, that “tens or hundreds of thousands of people will suffer because of our naïveté and Barack Obama’s malevolent stupidity.” The sequel has made it amply clear to all but the partisan, the myopic, and the myriad barnacles clinging to the ship of state and dependent on the largesse of the Democratic Party that America has been gravely weakened both domestically and abroad, and that it might not recover. And yet it is entirely conceivable that Obama may be re-elected to the most powerful office in the world. We recall it was not only a besotted American electorate that hoisted him on its collective shoulders; all Europe also went berserk over the man. Even the Israelis treated him like royalty when he gave his lying Sderot speech. If this is not madness, I don’t know what is.
These are only a few examples, which could be multiplied indefinitely, of a civilization losing control of its future. The riots we are currently witnessing in the UK, ignited to a great extent by an entitlement culture that cannot meet the expectations it has created, is only a modest symptom of what is coming down the pike. The overall spectacle we are observing today — the dramatic erosion of a sense of civic responsibility, the nihilistic relativizing of moral principle, the insidious effects of political correctness, the reluctance to deal adequately with terrorism, the mounting hostility toward Jews and Israel, the return of autocratic rule in Europe with the appointment of authoritarian bureaucrats answerable to no one to the European Parliament, the cosseting of Islam, the election of incompetents, as in the U.S., as well as in Britain, Sweden, France, Spain, Australia, and many other places — the list goes on and on — are infallible harbingers of cultural and civilizational decay. Good things come to an end, just like everything else. It seems highly probable that the United States in particular and Western civilization in general have begun to circle the drain. The symptoms of an imperium in its dotage are unmistakable.
The greatest civilization the world has ever known has lost confidence in itself, infected by a plague of self-doubt and self-recrimination. Having lost its bearings, it is no longer willing or able to think clearly, to make difficult choices, to defend its patrimony and resist demographic subversion, to accept the need for sacrifice, to value the radiant catalogue of its triumphs and achievements in art, science, technology, medicine, and statecraft, and, with its declining birthrate, even to reproduce itself. This is total madness. Further, the leftist “illiberal trajectory” it has embarked upon, as Caroline Glick writes, has led to the “bid to criminalize ideological opponents and justify acts of terrorism,” a radical political shift that “will destroy the liberal democratic foundations of Western civilization.”
Is a return to psychic health at all possible? Do civilizations convalesce? Can those who follow the maxim of the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations — “the object of life is…to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane” — influence events for the better or at least defer the inevitable? Is the writing on the wall erasable graffiti or is it, shall we say, Biblically indelible?
Any way we look at it, the prognosis is not encouraging. As Martin Heidegger deposed in a 1966 Der Spiegel interview, the only one of the philosopher’s utterances that keeps on echoing, “Only a god can save us now.”
Monday, August 15, 2011
I am a Bad American
THINK THIS GUY HAS IT ALL COVERED. I COULDN'T SPOT ANYTHING HE LEFT OUT.
I Am the Democratic, Republican Liberal-Progressive's Worst Nightmare.
I am a White, Conservative, Tax-Paying, American Veteran, Gun Owning Biker. That’s me!
I am a Master Mason. I work hard and long hours with my hands to earn a living.
I believe in God and the freedom of religion, but I don't push it on others.
I ride Harley Davidson Motorcycles, and drive American-made cars, and I believe in
American products and buy them whenever I can.
I believe the money I make belongs to me and not some liberal governmental functionary, Democratic or Republican, that wants to share it with others who don't work!
I'm in touch with my feelings and I like it that way!
I think owning a gun doesn't make you a killer; it makes you a smart American.
I think being a minority does not make you noble or victimized, and does not entitle you to anything. Get over it!
I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac or any other item, you should do it in English.
I believe there should be no other language option.
I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her God when and where they want to.
My heroes are Malcolm Forbes, Bill Gates, John Wayne, Babe Ruth, Roy Rogers, and Willie G. Davidson, who makes the awesome Harley Davidson Motorcycles.
I don't hate the rich. I don't pity the poor.
I know wrestling is fake and I don't waste my time watching or arguing about it.
I've never owned a slave, nor was I a slave. I haven't burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks, and neither have you!
I believe if you don't like the way things are here, go back to where you came from and change your own country!
This is AMERICA ...We like it the way it is and more so the way it was ...so stop trying to change it to look like Russia or China , or some other socialist country!
If you were born here and don't like it... you are free to move to any Socialist country that will have you. I believe it is time to really clean house, starting with the White House, the seat of our biggest problems.
I want to know which church is it, exactly, where the Reverend Jesse Jackson preaches, where he gets his money, and why he is always part of the problem and not the solution?
Can I get an AMEN on that one?
I also think the cops have the right to pull you over if you're breaking the law, regardless of what color you are, but not just because you happen to ride a bike.
And, no, I don't mind having my face shown on my driver's license. I think it's good....
And I'm proud that 'God' is written on my money..
I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don't want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years. I dislike those people standing in the intersections trying to sell me stuff or trying to guilt me into making 'donations' to their cause.... Get a job and do your part to support yourself and
your family!
I believe that it doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes two parents....
I believe 'illegal' is illegal no matter what the lawyers think!
I believe the American flag should be the only one allowed in AMERICA !
If this makes me a BAD American, then yes, I'm a BAD American.
If you are a BAD American too, please forward this to everyone you know....
We want our country back!
My Country..... I hope this offends all illegal aliens.
My grandfather watched as his friends died in WW I.
My father watched as his friends died in WW II.
I watched as my friends died in Vietnam , Panama & Desert Storm.
My son watched & bled as his friends died in Afghanistan and Iraq .
None of them died for the Mexican Flag.
Everyone died for the American flag.
Texas high school students raised a Mexican flag on a school flag pole,
other students took it down. Guess who was expelled...the students who took it down.
California high school students were sent home on Cinco de Mayo, because they wore T-shirts with the American flag printed on them.
Enough is enough
This message needs to be viewed by every American; and every American needs to stand up for America .
We've bent over to appease the America-haters long enough. I'm taking a stand.
I'm standing up because the hundreds of thousands who died fighting in wars for this country, and for the American flag.
If you agree, stand up with me. If you disagree, please let me know.
I will gladly remove you from my e-mail list.
And shame on anyone who tries to make this a racist message.
AMERICANS, stop giving away Your RIGHTS !
Let me make this clear! THIS IS MY COUNTRY !
This statement DOES NOT mean I'm against immigration !
YOU ARE WELCOME HERE, IN MY COUNTRY, welcome to come legally:
1. Get a sponsor !
2. Learn the LANGUAGE, as immigrants have in the past !
3. Live by OUR rules !
4. Get a job !
5. Pay YOUR Taxes !
6. No Social Security until you have earned it and Paid for it !
7. NOW find a place to lay your head !
If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone,
then YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM !
We've gone so far the other way . . . bent over backwards not to offend anyone.
Only AMERICANS seems to care when American Citizens are being offended !
WAKE UP America ! ! !
If you do not Pass this on, may your fingers cramp !
US Helps Pay PA Terrorists Who Murdered Americans
Every single Palestinian Authority terrorist held in an Israeli jail receives a monthly salary from the PA. Terrorists who committed the most heinous crimes – and therefore received longer sentences – receive the most money, according to a report in Israeli paper Yisrael Hayom.
Citing a report received by a senior government official in Jerusalem, the paper says that the terrorists' salaries are paid from the PA's "public budget," which accounts for about 3.5 percent of its total budget.
The PA treasury receives cash from two main sources: the US pays about 50 percent of the money, and the rest is mostly from European Union member nations.
Prisoners who were jailed for periods of up to five years receive 1,400 to 2,000 NIS per month. However, terrorists serving 10 to 15 years receive 6,000 shekels, the ones serving 15 to 20 years receive 10,000 shekels, and those serving 20 to 30 years get 12,000 shekels. These are people who planned, directed and took part in the intentional sadistic slaughter of civilian men, women and children, at point blank range.
Since some of the victims of PA terror are American citizens, the information means that US taxpayers pay monthly salaries to the people who murdered their fellow citizens. The latest US citizen who was a victim of PA terror is Ben Yosef Livnat, who was gunned down in Shechem.
The terrorists' wives and children receive additional cash, and prisoners with Israel citizenship get a bonus.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
A world without Israel? (Erev Tisha B'av)
A world without Israel?
By STEWART WEISSThe writer is director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana; jocmtv@netvision.net.il
Each year in recent times, as the ninth of Av approaches, we ask the question: How can we sit and mourn for Jerusalem, when the city has been so magnificently rebuilt? Why do we “afflict” ourselves for 25 hours when we have returned to the Jewish state in amazing numbers, and built a wonderful country from the ground up, with a superb army, world-class universities and a brilliant economy? Has Tisha Be’av become passé? These thoughts were reinforced last week when my wife and I took a Segway tour on the newly-refurbished Armon HaNatziv promenade. Led by our expert guide Chaim, we beheld a magnificent view of Jerusalem rebuilt, with its many sparkling new neighborhoods against the ancient villages and walls of the Old City. From that elevated view, one can truly appreciate how unique our Jewish capital is, and how it so brilliantly melds the past and the future.
Yet despite all this, I will still recite lamentations on Tisha Be’av; I will still add the somber Nachem plea for consolation to my prayers. Not only in remembrance for the spiritually-elevated world, centered around the Temple, which vanished when Jerusalem was destroyed (twice); but also for the shuddering thought of a third destruction, God forbid. For only when we force ourselves to consider what the effect would be of another Holocaust – this time on Israeli soil – can we begin to relate to the destruction that was visited here.
And so, with apologies to the History Channel’s “Life After People” series, I ask you to gather up your courage and consider A World Without Israel.
THIS SCENARIO – may it never come to pass - occurs sometime in the future.
The combined forces of Syria, Hezbo- Lebanon, a radicalized Egypt and an only semi-reluctant Jordan – spurred on by the Palestinian masses, now fully under the sway of Hamas – have flooded Israel with millions of combatants.
After bombarding the Jewish state with tens of thousands of missiles, causing hundreds of thousands of Jews to flee (no easy task after a shell-shocked Ben- Gurion airport is closed), Arab mobs have crossed our borders, overwhelming the courageous but hopelessly outnumbered soldiers of the IDF. The smell of victory finally in their noses, the Arabs reject all international calls for a cease-fire and unleash a brutal assault on the civilian population. The government considers using nuclear weapons, but the enemy is already within the gates, and the Opposition effectively blocks the proposal.
Independent Israel, as we knew it, has ceased to exist.
Three months after Israel: The last pockets of Jewish resistance have been brutally suppressed. Thousands of Jewish fighters, summarily executed for carrying arms, are slaughtered in the public squares. MKs – present and former, including Arab MK’s – having been charged as war criminals and accomplices to genocide, are also killed.
(Pointedly, the first to be shot are members of the Israeli Left, who zealously defended the Palestinian cause .) The haredi population is not spared; they, too, are slaughtered, despite their protests of being apolitical. Only a handful of Neturei Karta are left unharmed – a reward for their strident anti-Zionism through the years.
Six months after Israel: Hundreds of thousands of Israelis, seeking asylum, find they have no place to run. The Arab League has ordained an oil embargo against any country opening its borders to survivors. The EU has declared a moratorium on all immigration, wishing to “carefully study the situation before inflaming any further passions.”
Even those holding American passports are barred from entering the United States if they have resided in a war zone during the past year, in the interest of “national security.”
Meanwhile, those Jewish homes still intact are given to Palestinians, while their former residents are placed in refugee camps, now called “holding centers for foreign workers.” Starvation and sickness are rampant, as the UN finally decides it will no longer be administering the camps.
One year after Israel: Judaism is no longer acknowledged as an official religion in the new Palestine. Jewish practice among the skeleton Jewish population is permitted only in private, and even then is subject to constant harassment.
The last remaining synagogues – branded as “centers of terrorism and racism” - are consecrated as mosques, in line with Islamic law forbidding any non-Islamic places of worship on “holy ground.” While most churches are similarly converted, several of the more famous ones are designated as “museums” and “cultural attractions” so as to continue to attract Christian tourists.
The most dramatic moment comes when the Western Wall is dismantled, stone by stone, as the foundation is laid for the Grand Al-Buraq Mosque.
Western criticism is muted.
10 years after Israel: Diaspora Jewry, devastated by the loss of Israel, is in a state of rapid decline. In-fighting within the shrinking communities pits those whose love for Israel still lingers against those who blame Israel’s founders for having established the state in the first place and bringing such destruction upon the Jews. The American administration, anxious to maintain ties with the ascendant Islamic world, categorizes Zionist organizations as “harmful to American interests,” and forbids their funding and publications. Jewish schools continue to operate, but their curriculum is subject to constant inspection and are carefully monitored for signs of “subversive” activity.
50 years after Israel: As world economies experience a deep decline, democracies declare a state of emergency.
Jews are scape-goated and subjected to increased discrimination.
Pogroms break out in several countries as Jews are accused of parasitism and disloyalty. All Jews aged 18-25 are drafted, with no exemptions or special privileges.
For their own protection, Jews are moved into closed-off sections of major cities, and their contact with the indigenous population is limited. The lack of Jewish influence and the absence of a homeland leave Jews exposed to every form of abuse.
100 years after Israel: Intermarriage among Jews now exceeds 80%. The combination of high costs and low demand results in only a fraction of Jewish children receiving a Jewish education.
In the Middle East, internecine fighting between Arab nations over the past three decades has left the region in shambles. Palestine, with no natural resources and no wealthy donors, has become bankrupt and largely desolate.
The once-flourishing agriculture is but a memory, as fertile fields revert to wilderness.
In secluded places across the world, small groups of Jews gather to discuss the idea of returning to Zion and reestablishing a land of their own, a place where they may again walk proudly with their God. They decide to meet in a special assembly, which they will call “the Herzl Congress.”
Can it happen? I think not and I pray not. But I certainly will not take this great country, or Jerusalem of Gold, for granted.
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