Refining the definition of “Judeofascism” to account for its secular-left cult of Jewish exceptionalism

(By Chris Moore, Judeofascism.com) -- Defining the word “Jew” can be a difficult task. A religious definition might include “a believer in the religion of Judaism.” But not all Jews are religious, and many atheistic Jews still identify themselves as Jewish. A definition as a “People” might include “a member of a Semitic people descended from the ancient Hebrews.” But that definition is even more controversial because no one knows or can determine who is descended from the Hebrews and who is not; in fact, some studies suggest that the biblical Hebrews have virtually noliving descendants that still identify themselves Jews whatsoever. So the ethnic definition is based on incomplete conjecture, at best.

Perhaps a more reasonable working definition of “Jew,” then, is “a person who has a cultural or religious connection to Judaism either through birth lines or adoption of a Jewish religious identity, and who continues to identify him or herself as Jewish.” 

The second part of the equation is crucial, because self-identification as a Jew, in the contemporary West at least, is an elective choice since Jews are not officially identified as such anywhere except in their own minds, by their religious institutions, and by one another. In most of the modern West, no authority forces anyone to identify as a Jew.

This, then, brings us to the question of Zionism and its relationship to Jewishness.

What percentage of Jews are Zionists, and what exactly defines Zionism beyond mere support for Jewish nationalism? There is no definitive answer there, either, and apparently no authoritative polls available on the subject. But given that the plurality of the world’s self-identifying Jews now live in the Zionist state of Israel, and given that (at the very least), pluralities of diaspora Jewry are staunch supporters of the Zionist state, it is a safe bet that a majority of self-identifying Jews are supporters of Jewish nationalism to one extent or another, and plenty of those are Zionists.

The category of Judeofascism is more difficult, still. As the editor of Judeofascism.com, heretofore I have generally defined Judeofascism as a network within a Jewish nation (including the Jewish nation of Israel and the many diaspora “nations” of Jewry) comprised of Jews who believe they are racially, religiously and/or culturally superior to non-Jews, and who believe that this supremacy gives them certain rights and privileges over gentiles either through historical fiat or in the eyes of God that should be extended and formally incorporated into the laws of men.

Does Judeofascism comprise all Zionists?

Certainly, it would include hard-core diaspora and Israeli Jewish Zionists who believe Jews, by virtue of birth lines, are entitled to institutionalized superior status and rights over non-Jewish native inhabitants of Palestine living in Israel. Additionally, it would include those Jews who support the general Zionist political program to disenfranchise the occupied Palestinians and continue to expand the borders of Zionism. However, it wouldn’t necessarily include all Jewish nationalists the world over who support the concept of a Jewish nation.

What about other Jews who believe in the concept of Jewish “choseness” or exceptionalism by virtue of blood lines in general? Are they Judeofacists, since choseness itself might be interpreted as a supremacist belief? By that definition, virtually all religious Jews would have to fall into the Judeofascist category since a belief in Jewish “choseness” is inherent in the religion of Judaism, so that seems an unfairly broad, singling out of Jews, given that nearly all religions and even ideologies have doctrine that could be interpreted as containing a membership that self-elevates above out-groups.

So let’s leave out non-Zionist religious Jews who are not also involved in some other form of Jewish exceptionalist ethnic racketeering outside of Zionism.

What about Zionist and non-Zionist irreligious Jews? Again, irreligious Jewish supporters of the Jewish supremacist program of Palestinian subjugation and disenfranchisement that is inherent to contemporary Zionism would have to fall into the Judeofacist camp by definition. But how about self-identifying left-wing Jews, for instance, who are non-Zionist? Is it possible for them to be Judeofacists even if they profess to be irreligious and opposed to Zionism? 

I maintain that it is possible when their political orientation reflects clear latent beliefs in Jewish exceptionalism, and a desire and program to utilize an authoritarian State to impose de facto Jewish exceptionalism upon non-Jews by means, in part, of ethnic racketeering that results in high concentrations of Jewish authorities administering a powerful central government. 

Have we encountered such a people before? Indeed we have -- in the revolutionary Jewish Bolsheviks, who played a hugely disproportionate role in the Russian coup that led to Communism and later in the Communist hierarchy of the early Soviet Union, as well as the implementation of the systematic Soviet state murder of millions of Christians, peasants, and anti-Communist dissidents.

Perhaps no one better personifies this axis of leftist thought, Jewish exceptionalism, and a vision of authoritarian imposition of Jewish messianicism than Moses Hess, an early Jewish socialist who was a 19th Century precursor to the Jewish Bolsheviks. A compatriot of, and tremendous influence upon, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels -- whose ideas became the basis of Communism and socialism through The Communist Manifesto and other seminal leftist writings (a basis that remains to this day) -- Hess was a pioneer of socialism who also became a Zionist socialist obsessed with “the race struggle” between ethnic nations for predomination.

From Wikipeida: “Hess originally advocated Jewish integration into the universalist socialist movement, and was a friend and collaborator of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Hess converted Engels to Communism, and introduced Marx to social and economic problems. He played an important role in transforming Hegelian dialectical idealism theory of history to the dialectical materialism of Marxism, by conceiving of man as the initiator of history through his active consciousness. Hess was probably responsible for several "Marxian" slogans and ideas, including religion as the "opiate of the people." Hess became reluctant to base all history on economic causes and class struggle, and he came to see the struggle of races, or nationalities, as the prime factor of past history.”

A string of key Wikipedia quotes captures the essence of Hess’ thought, from the Jewish exceptionalist underpinnings of his socialism, to his goal of the obsolescence of Christianity in favor of earthly utopia, to his smoldering anti-German racism and later Zionism: 

--"The Messianic era is the present age, which began to germinate with the teachings of Spinoza, and finally came into historical existence with the great French Revolution.

--"To this coming cult, Judaism alone holds the key. This "religion of the future" of which the eighteenth century philosophers, as well as their recent followers, dreamed [...] Each nation will have to create its own historical cult; each people must become like the Jewish people, a people of God.

--"The Christian... imagines the better future of the human species... in the image of heavenly joy...We, on the other hand, will have this heaven on earth."

--Even an act of conversion cannot relieve the Jew of the enormous pressure of German anti-Semitism. The Germans hate the religion of the Jews less than they hate their race - they hate the peculiar faith of the Jews, less than their peculiar noses."

--"The race struggle is the primal one, and the class struggle secondary. The last dominating race is the German."

As an important forerunner not only to Jewish Bolshevism, but to the entire Communist movement, Hess can be viewed as a kind of missing link in both Communist and Judeofascist historiography that bridges supposedly “secular” Communism and Jewish thought on the one hand, and that bridges the religious and irreligious strains of Judeofascism on the other (click on chart below). In this formulation, both Zionism and certain forms of Communism can be interpreted as expressions of Jewish thought.

[Image]

Examining the chart, then, we can modify our definition of Judeofascism to include its irreligious (secular) strain, as well as its openly religious one:

Judeofascist: A religious or irreligious member of a network within Jewry who believes Jews are racially, religiously or culturally superior to non-Jews, and who actively works to incorporate Jewish exceptionalism into the laws of men by means of openly religious-authoritarian de jure imposition (ie Zionism), or secular-authoritarian, de facto imposition (ie Bolshevism).

The implications of this vis-à-vis the Left, which professes to be anti-racist and unbiased even though the very basis of its ideology is grounded in Jewish exceptionalist thought that has clearly seeped into the body of Leftist dogma (most evident in its profound hatred for non-Jewish religions in general and Christianity in particular), are disturbing, to say the least.

***Chris Moore is the publisher of Judeofascism.com, and LibertarianToday.com, a conservative-libertarian-populist blog.

posted by Chris Moore at 9:46 AM on Oct 4, 2009

Israel’s Growing Insanity

by Avigail Abarbanel   

I wrote this on 9th February 2009, the day before Israel’s election, after seeing an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu’s father on Israeli TV.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s father—described as “sharp as a razor” at the ripe old age of 99—gave a rare interview to Amit Segel of Israel’s Channel 2 to support his son’s election campaign (Channel 2 website. 7 Feb. 2009). At some point in the interview Professor Ben-Zion Netanyahu said,

“Today we are facing plain and simple, a danger of annihilation. This is not only the ongoing existential danger to Israel, but a real danger of complete annihilation. People think that the Shoah (Holocaust) is over — but it is not, it is continuing all the time” (My translation from the Hebrew).

The views of Netanyahu Senior do not represent a lunatic fringe, but the Israeli mainstream. When I was growing up in Israel, things were much the same. I and everyone I knew believed in earnest that we were always at risk of annihilation. Fear of annihilation is at the heart of Jewish, not just Israeli culture and it pre-dates the Holocaust. But the climate in Israel today is far more extreme than it was in my time, as Israel on the whole moves further and further to an irrational fanatic position.

When a person’s perception of reality is completely out of touch with reality itself, we begin to get an uneasy feeling that something might be wrong with his or her mind. Where is the evidence that the Jews, right now are facing a “real danger of complete annihilation”? Where is the evidence that the Holocaust, a systematic and deliberate plan to eliminate all Jews during the Second World War, is still being carried out? I would even argue that saying this is an insult to the victims of the real Holocaust. Israel is rumoured to have one of the most powerful military forces in the world but Israelis still believe that they are right now being annihilated. This is insanity. Someone is indeed facing a risk of cultural, economic, political and even physical annihilation, but it’s not Israel or Jews, it’s the Palestinians, and the annihilator is Israel itself.

Our politics and our economics are both a product of our psychology, not something separate. We make political and economic choices based on who we are and what we feel and believe. Many rational people search for a rational analysis—often political or economic—for what is happening in Israel-Palestine. But the only way to interpret Israel’s behaviour during the past 61 years is through understanding the psychology of its society and its leaders. To ignore Israel’s psychology is dangerous because it means that any intervention based only on political considerations, will miss the mark and risk being irrelevant. Indeed if you look at the history of diplomacy and ‘peace negotiations’ in the region, it is quite obvious that they have achieved nothing at all. Things seem to be progressing on a trajectory determined by something that to someone in my profession, looks more like a mental illness than a political plan, bearing no relation to any rational diplomatic efforts, ‘roadmaps’, peace plans or truces.

Israel’s behaviour is a direct product of its psychological struggle with the implications of Jewish identity, which in turn determines Israel’s very reason for existence. In his bookAlternative to a Psychotic State Akiva Orr asks if Israel is a ‘Jewish state’ or a ‘state for the Jews’. Since it is clearly not a Jewish state—Israeli state law is different to religious law—then it must be a state for the Jews. And this begs the question of ‘who or what is a Jew’, and to that there has never been a satisfactory legal answer. Israel has no constitution precisely because it cannot resolve the question of who or what it wants to be. The de-facto, modern secular Zionist definition of a Jew is someone who would have been considered a Jew by Hitler. Effectively Jews are allowing themselves to be defined by those who hated them and sought their annihilation. In other words, this identity was formed as a reaction to a particular set of circumstances. But what happens if the circumstances change? What does that do to this identity? In other words, if the world is now safe for Jews and is no longer what Jewish people thought it was, then Jewish people no longer know who they are, in which case either Jewish identity needs to change, or you make sure that the world is back to what it was when the Jews were persecuted. That way there is no need to go through the difficult process of self-examination or live in a world that doesn’t make sense. The reason for the existence of the state of Israel is a direct result of Jewish self-perception as victims of persecution. Israel was created to offer a safe haven for Jews from persecution.

I could be wrong, I might be naïve, but I don’t believe that Israeli leaders are conscious that they are now hyping up more traditional forms of anti-Semitism—that is to say, I don’t think that they are consciously plotting to do it. They are operating without awareness and they probably believe in their own explanations for what they are doing, for example that they attacked Gaza to weaken Hamas.

But we must look at the real consequences of Israel’s actions in Gaza and three years ago in Lebanon for example, to understand Israel’s real motivation. If Israel’s actions lead to an increase in fanaticism and in anti-Jewish sentiment, this is because this is what Israel wants to achieve, albeit unconsciously. But why does Israel need more fanaticism and antisemitism? An increase in real anti-Semitism and attacks on Jews would bring current reality into line with the outdated imaginary reality, and would help keep Jewish identity unchanged. The reality is that Jews have not been victims, certainly not of a genocidal regime for over sixty years—the Holocaust is not happening now and there is no attempt by anyone to annihilate the Jews. The fact that Jews live in safety everywhere and are not persecuted makes Israel uncomfortable. If the Jews are doing well everywhere, then Jewish identity is being put to question, and so is the very reason for the existence of Israel. The very state that was created to save the Jews from persecution, now needs them to be persecuted again so that it can continue to exist. Escalating the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is one of the means to achieving this end.

The Palestinians, who are desperately trying to understand what has been happening to them, are caught in this madness and are the victims of it. It’s not because of who they are or something they did, that they are suffering. It’s because they had the misfortune of living on the land that a neurotic Zionist movement was determined to take for itself regardless of cost. I think many Palestinians are beginning to recognise this but the world leaders still believe Israel’s racist propaganda, which says that there is something inherent in the Palestinian people that means that they deserve what they get.

This is why it is essential that the world intervene decisively. I do not trust Israel to suddenly develop sufficient self-awareness to understand what it’s doing and put a stop to it. Israel’s growing delinquency demonstrates the exact opposite. The Palestinians do not have any more time to spare.

Seven Reasons Why We Can't Stop Making War

Editor's note: This was written over two years ago and it is getting worse, I used to believe that the American people were misinformed, but now i'm convinced that they may just be stupid

July 9, 2010 2:08 AM

by: CBS news

If one quality characterizes our wars today, it's their endurance.  They never seem to end.  

Though war itself may not be an American inevitability, these days many factors combine to makeconstant war an American near certainty.  Put metaphorically, our nation's pursuit of war taps so many wellsprings of our behavior that a concerted effort to cap it would dwarf BP's efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

Our political leaders, the media, and the military interpret enduring war as a measure of our national fitness, our global power, our grit in the face of eternal danger, and our seriousness.  A desire to de-escalate and withdraw, on the other hand, is invariably seen as cut-and-run appeasement and discounted as weakness.  Withdrawal options are, in a pet phrase of Washington elites, invariably "off the table" when global policy is at stake, as was true during the Obama administration's full-scale reconsideration of the Afghan war in the fall of 2009.  Viewed in this light, the president's ultimate decision to surge in Afghanistan was not only predictable, but the only course considered suitable for an American war leader.  Rather than the tough choice, it was the path of least resistance.

Why do our elites so readily and regularly give war, not peace, a chance?  What exactly are the wellsprings of Washington's (and America's) behavior when it comes to war and preparations for more of the same?

Consider these seven:

1.  We wage war because we think we're good at it -- and because, at a gut level, we've come to believe that American wars can bring good to others (hence our feel-good names for them, like Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom). Most Americans are not only convinced we have the best troops, the best training, and the most advanced weapons, but also the purest motives.  Unlike the bad guys and the barbarians out there in the global marketplace of death, our warriors and warfighters are seen as gift-givers and freedom-bringers, not as death-dealers and resource-exploiters.  Our illusions about the military we "support" serve as catalyst for, and apology for, the persistent war-making we condone.

2.  We wage war because we've already devoted so many of our resources to it.  It's what we're most prepared to do.  More than half of discretionary federal spending goes to fund our military and its war making or war preparations.  The military-industrial complex is a well-oiled, extremely profitable machine and the armed forces, our favorite child, the one we've lavished the most resources and praise upon.  It's natural to give your favorite child free rein.

3.  We've managed to isolate war's physical and emotional costs, leaving them on the shoulders of a tiny minority of Americans.  By eliminating the draft and relying ever more on for-profit private military contractors, we've made war a distant abstraction for most Americans, who can choose to consume it as spectacle or simply tune it out as so much background noise.

4.  While war and its costs have, to date, been kept at arm's length, American society has been militarizing fast.  Our media outlets, intelligence agencies, politicians, foreign policy establishment, and "homeland security" bureaucracy are so intertwined with military priorities and agendas as to be inseparable from them.  In militarized America, griping about soft-hearted tactics or theoutspokenness of a certain general may be tolerated, but forceful criticism of our military or our wars is still treated as deviant and "un-American."

5.  Our profligate, high-tech approach to war, including those Predator and Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles, has served to limit American casualties -- and so has limited the anger over, and harsh questioning of, our wars that might go with them.  While the U.S. has had more than 1,000 troops killed in Afghanistan, over a similar period in Vietnam we lost more than 58,000 troops.  Improved medical evacuation and trauma care, greater reliance on standoff precision weaponry and similar "force multipliers," stronger emphasis on "force protection" within American military units: all these and more have helped tamp down concern about the immeasurable and soaring costs of our wars.

6.  As we incessantly develop those force-multiplying weapons to give us our "edge" (though never an edge that leads to victory), it's hardly surprising that the U.S. has come to dominate, if not quite monopolize, the global arms trade.  In these years, as American jobs were outsourced or simply disappeared in the Great Recession, armaments have been one of our few growth industries.  Endless war has proven endlessly profitable -- not perhaps for all of us, but certainly for those in the business of war.

7.  And don't forget the seductive power of beyond-worse-case, doomsday scenarios, of the prophecies of pundits and so-called experts, who regularly tell us that, bad as our wars may be, doing anything to end them would be far worse.  A typical scenario goes like this: If we withdraw from Afghanistan, the government of Hamid Karzai will collapse, the Taliban will surge to victory, al-Qaeda will pour into Afghan safe havens, and Pakistan will be further destabilized, its atomic bombs falling into the hands of terrorists out to destroy Peoria and Orlando.

Such fevered nightmares, impossible to disprove, may be conjured at any moment to scare critics into silence.  They are a convenient bogeyman, leaving us cowering as we send our superman military out to save us (and the world as well), while preserving our right to visit the mall and travel to Disney World without being nuked.

The truth is that no one really knows what would happen if the U.S. disengaged from Afghanistan.  But we do know what's happening now, with us fully engaged: we're pursuing a war that's costing us nearly $7 billion a month that we're not winning (and that's arguably unwinnable), a war that may be increasing the chances of another 9/11, rather than decreasing them.

Capping the Wellsprings of War

Each one of these seven wellsprings feeding our enduring wars must be capped.  So here are seven suggestions for the sort of "caps" -- hopefully more effective than BP's flailing improvisations -- we need to install:

1.  Let's reject the idea that war is either admirable or good -- and in the process, remind ourselves that others often see us as "the foreign fighters" and profligate war consumers who kill innocents (despite our efforts to apply deadly force in surgically precise ways reflecting "courageous restraint").

2.  Let's cut defense spending now, and reduce the global "mission" that goes with it.  Set a reasonable goal -- a 6-8% reduction annually for the next 10 years, until levels of defense spending are at least back to where they were before 9/11 -- and then stick to it.

3.  Let's stop privatizing war.  Creating ever more profitable incentives for war was always a ludicrous idea.  It's time to make war a non-profit, last-resort activity.  And let's revive national service (including elective military service) for all young adults.  What we need is a revived civilian conservation corps, not a new civilian "expeditionary" force.

4. Let's reverse the militarization of so many dimensions of our society.  To cite one example, it's time to empower truly independent (non-embedded) journalists to cover our wars, and stop relying on retired generals and admirals who led our previous wars to be our media guides.  Men who are beholden to their former service branch or the current defense contractor who employs them can hardly be trusted to be critical and unbiased guides to future conflicts.

5.  Let's recognize that expensive high-tech weapons systems are not war-winners.  They've kept us in the game without yielding decisive results -- unless you measure "results" in terms of cost overruns and burgeoning federal budget deficits.

6.  Let's retool our economy and reinvest our money, moving it out of the military-industrial complex and into strengthening our anemic system of mass transit, our crumbling infrastructure, and alternative energy technology.  We need high-speed rail, safer roads and bridges, and more wind turbines, not more overpriced jet fighters.

7.  Finally, let's banish nightmare scenarios from our minds.  The world is scary enough without forever imagining smoking guns morphing into mushroom clouds.

There you have it: my seven "caps" to contain our gushing support for permanent war.  No one said it would be easy.  Just ask BP how easy it is to cap one out-of-control gusher.

Nonetheless, if we as a society aren't willing to work hard for actual change -- indeed, to demand it -- we'll be on that military escalatory curve until we implode.  And that way madness lies.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

By William J. Astore 

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.

A righteous Jew

Editor's note:

             

These are the words of a wise man, and they very succinctly tell the reasons for this blog                                         

Irrational hatred is wrong, hatred of the many for the sins of the few is also wrong. 

             

However, the Zionists are dangerous and the Jews who defend their sins and label Anti-Zionism

             

as Anti-Semitism are just adding fuel to a fire that so far serves the needs of Zionist colonization,   

            

but will soon blaze out of control, burning every Jew that refused to speak out, 

and say "Never Again, Not in My Name".

            

Andrew Hall (URL)                                           
May 29, 12:45 PM said:

As an American with Jewish ancestry, let me give my take on this :

I believe anti-Semitism persists because a very small subset of Judaism - very specifically, Zionists and some of the hardline Haredim - is composed of very selfish, very mentally unwell people who lie and cheat and steal for their own self-aggrandizement - and then all Jews are blamed for this.

The Zionists are TERRIBLE. They murder and cheat and kill and steal and abuse Arabs (not that the Arabs treat them any better - but still, it does go both ways) - they break the Commandments regularly, they are not following their own rules in any way that matters, and they threaten EVERYONE who disagrees with them. Even with Jewish ancestry myself, I have been personally threatened by American and Israeli Zionists several times for taking the position that the expulsions of Palestinians from Israel in 1948 was wrong and that the IDF treats Palestinians unethically at present as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus

But what you get is people who cannot distinguish between Zionism - a fundamentalist ideology of bigotry and occupation that supports religious war and discrimination - and the larger Judaism - which is a wonderful faith when practiced as it is written, with prohibitions against killing, lying, and stealing, and which exhorts people to treat others as they would wish to be treated.

Jews are not alone in this. The modern backlash against Christianity dates to these new Crusades started by fundamentalists in the U.S. government against Muslim countries - but most Christians are not anything like the psychotic generals who believe they are arbiters of God's law. Islam is routinely derided for its support for jihadism and for child marriage - but in my experience, most Muslims are peaceful people and in fact take a hard line against the sexual abuse of children. It happens with minorities, too - I routinely see commenters on BI and other sites blame all blacks because some blacks are violent and/or criminal, or Latinos for the same thing, never once discussing the millions of peaceful and hardworking blacks and Latinos who help the world go around and love their families, day after day.

The solution is that people HAVE to be taught NOT to blame every member of a group for the actions of its worst members. People are not their religions or their skin colors, nor are they all akin to the worst of what one reads about. Most people worldwide in ALL faiths and races, in my experience, are peaceful and hardworking, and should not be blamed just because a small subsection of others who share their faith or race break the social contract.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-do-people-hate-jews-2012-5#ixzz1xEh6LN77

Will the settlers win the war ?

Editors note:


I found this in Y-net:
It shows the state of mind of the builders of the Separation barrier and settlements in occupied territory
(in contravention of International Law, by the way)


Donniel Hartman

Published: 6/7/2012

For weeks now, our prime minister, government, judicial system and press have been spending an inordinate amount of time discussing the future of six buildings, called Ulpana Hill, in Beit El. The Supreme Court, after years of the issue moving through the courts, ruled that they must be removed, for they were built on privately owned property, a fact that violates both international law and Israel’s own policy regarding settlements in Judea and Samaria, a policy which views settlements only on public land as legal. Prime Minister Netanyahu, as he has done consistently since entering office, and with the support of a number of ministers, has refused to give into populist politics and pressure, standing behind the Supreme Court and the rule of law, has instructed that the houses be removed and that any legislative process attempting to circumvent the Court’s decision should be defeated. Regardless of the outcome, one thing is clear: The settler movement, its leaders, and its supporters have won today’s battle. The question is whether they have also won the war. One of the brilliant strategies incorporated regularly within Jewish law is the principle of muktsa, literally to set apart, a principle which trains an individual to avoid even touching that which they ought not to use. This principle is part of a larger halachic strategy to build fences around the Torah to ensure that no one approaches the possibility of violating it. Fences around fences around fences is a behaviorist policy which molds practice on a subconscious level, making certain actions or violations incomprehensible. Building on this Jewish strategy, which guides many aspects of their own religious lives and upbringing, settler leaders are slowly and surely training Israeli politicians and society that settlement evacuation is muktsa. If six houses consume the political life and process for weeks, one cannot even imagine what would happen when on the table lies the evacuation of all settlements that are not in one of the settlement blocs of Gush Etzion, Jerusalem, Maaleh Adumim and Ariel. But that is the point. The settler leaders want to train us to not even imagine it. They are ingraining in our consciousness the sense that it will be impossible. Settlements have consequences Prime Minister Netanyahu, in deciding to dismantle the six houses and cut and paste them to an adjacent hill and to build 10 buildings for every one that is moved, has fallen into the muktsa trap set for him both by the settler leaders and, to be fair, by aspects of an ideology that is broadly shared within Israeli society. The real problem is not the six houses within Beit El, but Beit El itself and similar settlements that are outside of the blocs. As a society, we are continuing to function like political ostriches whose heads are stuck firmly in the ground and who have come to believe that the view from there is reality. Granted, a political solution with the Palestinian people is not yet on the horizon and as a result there is little pressing need to expend political capital to argue today about the future of specific settlements. As a people, however, who have always prided themselves with having foresight, wisdom and aspirations, we need to stop deluding ourselves into thinking that maximalist definitions of the borders of Eretz Israel and of the rights of Jews to settle therein are sustainable in the long run. A day God willingly will come when a significant peace proposal will be placed on the table, and the question will be whether we see it as muktsa or as an opportunity to fulfill our deepest Jewish values. To prepare for that day we do not need to dismantle settlements now. We do need, however, to start taking down the fences around the fences around the fences. We need decisive action whenever an Israeli self-defined illegal settlement or outpost needs to be removed. We need to start treating this as imaginable, as a tikkun, a repairing of decades of neglect on the part of Israeli society, which deluded itself into believing that there would be no consequences to our settlement policies. We need to start a behavioral intervention which aims to help settlers outside of the settlement blocs adjust to the precariousness of their future with the confidence that Israeli society as a whole will be there to look after their legitimate interests when their relocation will become a necessary reality. One of the dangers of erecting a fence around a fence around a fence is that not only can’t you get anywhere, you don’t know where you are, let alone where you want to go. The aim of the muktsa policy of the settler leadership was to achieve precisely such anesthetization. As a society, we need to reclaim our place, and more importantly our direction. Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute

The first of many.............I hope

This is my first attempt at blogging and sharing my experiences

                                                as I navigate through a digital world,

That, to put it mildly is, shark infested and full of dangers everywhere.

Over the years I've learned a few tips and tricks,

                                                and now this blog is my modest attempt 

                                                              to put it all into a coherent format.

God willing it will be successful and help it's readers to avoid some of the pitfalls

                                                and reap some of the benefits of our shared digital landscape.

I hope to post articles about the things that are near and dear to me.

That is saving money, the state of the Union, or lack thereof,

                                                the world we live in and of course any

                                                                     and all things digital and hi-tech.

I promise to offer you insight, good advice, great links and stimulating reading.

I would like to thank anyone who is interested in reading my blog 

1.                                                                     and following it's progress in advance.

Some things we know about you

Everyday in the mainstream media I hear all of this crazy stuff about Muslims killed this, or somebody got themselves beheaded in the Middle East and all sorts of non-sense, I am a Muslim, quite a few of my friends are Muslims and believe me, you have to go way off the deep end to get yourself killed by a  Muslim 

It is what it is................... everything else is propaganda or a war already in progress instigated  by foreigners      

Take a look at this ...........

  

During his life, Muhammad gave various injunctions to his forces and adopted practices toward the conduct of war. The most important of these were summarized by Muhammad's companion and first Caliph, Abu Bakr, in the form of ten rules for the Muslim army:

“

O people! I charge you with ten rules; learn them well! Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.

”

Enough of that already, this is what we know about you

“They (i.e., the Jews and Christians) have taken their scholars and monks as lords besides Allaah (by obeying them in things which they made lawful or unlawful according to their own desires without being ordered by Allaah).” (At-Tawbah: 31).

The literature of the Talmud represents approximately a thousand years of Jewish thought. Its foundations were laid by the work of Ezra during the middle of the fourth century B.C.E., in the community of the returned exiles from Babylonia, who inaugurated the second Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. Its period of greatest productivity came in the centuries that followed the disastrous Jewish war against Rome in 70 C.E. The Talmud is not an independent literature however. It proceeds instead as a supplement to the Bible. The Bible remained the fundamental source of belief and practice in Judaism, but the Talmud was its authoritative exposition and implementation.

The position of the Talmud in Jewish life has been paramount. It was studied zealously by young and old alike, who found in it the authoritative word concerning the true meaning of Scripture. The lighter side of the Talmud, its parables, its ethical aphorisms, its legendary tales, delighted the common people. The more serious side, the subtle discussions of law, were a welcome outlet for the intellectual interests of the learned.

                                          

   The process of canonizing the New Testament took about 400 years. This process didn't happen in any organized fashion. Groups of Christians collected different writings together & compiled them for the use in their churches. The first collection  compiled was Paul's letters. By 200 A.D. this collection was complete and being given Scriptural authority by other eastern Christian writers of that time.

The four gospels were another collection that was compiled about the same time as the Pauline letters. The remaining letters of the Bible weren't added to the collections until 300 A.D. These remaining letters were called the "˜catholic letters' because their messages were important to the entire church.

Acts and Revelation were the last books to be accepted. The eastern churches didn't accept Revelation until the 4th century. The concerns of the churches were that the texts accepted as Scripture be attributable to Apostles or those closely associated with the Apostles. There was great concern that the New Testament Scripture be the accounts of the earliest Christians. By 405 A.D., the New Testament as we know it was widely accepted in most Christian churches.

“And they say, ‘None will enter Paradise except one who is a Jew or a Christian.’ That is [merely] their wishful thinking. Say ‘Produce your proof, if you should be truthful’” (Al-Baqarah: 111). 

If one did not happen to be born in a Christian country and are raised up believing a different way, or did not hear about Jesus and receive him as their savior, Are  you doomed to an eternity of agonizing, relentless, eternal torture in the flames of hell ?        

This couldn't be further from the truth.

Their favorite verse that they like to use to prove this is John 14:6:

         I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me.

but unfortunately for them, Jesus said other stuff too........ like this

John 6:45 Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father                               cometh unto me.

and this............ 

John 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: 

and I will raise him up at the last day.

The following is the only requirement for salvation, as they interpret it:

John 6:47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.

But once again Jesus has something to say about that In the Gospel of Matthew, a rich young man asks Jesus what actions bring eternal life. First Jesus advises the man to obey the commandments. When the man responds that he already observes them, Jesus adds:

If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.

The Gospel of Luke has a similar episode and states that:

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

The disciples then ask Jesus who then can be saved, and Jesus replies: "What is impossible with men is possible with God."

The Garden of Eden: A Jewish Heaven

What the next world is, however, is far from clear. The rabbis use the term

Olam Ha-Ba, (the World-to-Come)

to refer to a heaven-like afterlife as well as to the messianic era or the age of resurrection, and it is often difficult to know which one is being referred to. When the Talmud does speak of Olam Ha-Ba in connection to the afterlife, it often uses it interchangeably with the term Gan Eden ("the Garden of Eden"), referring to a heavenly realm where souls reside after physical death.

The use of the term Gan Eden to describe "heaven" suggests that the rabbis conceived of the afterlife as a return to the blissful existence of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before the "fall." It is generally believed that in Gan Eden the human soul exists in a disembodied state until the time of bodily resurrection in the days of the Messiah.Olam Ha-Ba, (the World-to-Come)

“But the Jews and the Christians say: ‘We are the children of Allaah and His beloved.’ Say: ‘Then why does He punish you for your sins?’ Rather, you are human beings from those He has created. He forgives whom He wills and He punishes whom He wills. And to Allaah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them, and to Him is the [final] destination.”
(Al-Maa’idah: 18).

Kol Nidre (also known as Kol Nidrei and Kal Nidre and Col Nidre) (Aramaic: כָּל נִדְרֵי)

Its name is taken from the opening words, meaning "all vows".

"By the authority of the Court on High and by authority of the court down here, by the permission of One Who Is Everywhere and by the permission of this congregation, we hold it lawful to pray with sinners." 

"All personal vows we are likely to make, all personal oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our personal vows, pledges and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths."

“Is it not [true] that every time they took a covenant a party of them threw it away? But, [in fact], most of them do not believe.” 
(Al-Baqarah: 100)

       There are good Jews and Good Christians who follow their hearts and do all that they can to do the right thing, there are Muslims like that as well, this is a part of the Human Condition, however, quite a few of them attend the Synagogue of Satan.

"....and nearest among them in love to the believers will you find those who say, "We are Christians", because among these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world, and they are not arrogant.                                

(Al-Ma-Idah: 82)

“....O you who believe! Be helpers of God-- as Jesus the son of Mary said to the Disciples, "Who will be my helpers in (the work of) God? Said the disciples, "We are God's helpers! "Then a portion of the Children of Israel believed, and a portion disbelieved. But We gave power to those who believed against their enemies, and they became the ones that prevailed"

(As-Saff: 14)

“The believers, in their mutual love, compassion and mercy, are like one body; if one part of it is suffering, the rest of the parts of the body join it in its fever and sleeplessness.”