Destructive Jewish Guilt 1988

DESTRUCTIVE JEWISH GUILT By Rabbi Meir Kahane (January, 1988) [ He knew the truth, wrote the truth, spoke the truth and was hated for the truth. But loved by so many for the truth. As we see today, he was “always right!!!!! “] There is a specter haunting Israel and its American Jewish supporters. It is called guilt. Guilt over the "repression of Palestinian human rights". Guilt over the refusal to remove "the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East - the occupation of the Arab land seized in 1967". Guilt over the unwillingness to give the "Palestinians" their own state in the "occupied lands". And now, guilt over the killing of "Palestinians" and innocent civilians in the "Occupied territories". It is a powerful weapon, this guilt; Jews have a difficult time coping with it. A people that has been the most debased of losers for 2,000 years finds it difficult to cope with victory. It finds it extraordinary difficult to remain normal. It inherits insecurities, complexes, guilt. It begins to believe its enemies' slanders. It loses its self-respect and longs for the love of a hating world. That is especially true for the Jewish liberal! It is important that those who have retained their self-esteem and sense of Jewish survival speak out against the disease of guilt and moral insecurity. No guilt. Are the lands of 1967, "occupied" by the Jews, the main obstacle to peace? Is the year 1967 the origin of the conflict? How peaceful it must have been in 1966 when Sinai and Gaza were in Egyptian hands and the Golan was possessed by the Syrians to shell, for 19 years, the Jewish settlements below, and when Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem were in the hands of the "moderate" King Hussein. Why did they go to war? What did they want then? When they had all the "occupied lands" before they were "occupied"? When one has East Jerusalem and attacks Israel, can it be that he desires West Jerusalem? And Tel Aviv? And can it be that that is what they really want again? Now? And why did the "innocent Palestinian women and children" take to the streets then, in 1967, when Jordan and Egypt ruled them to call for "Israel in the sea"? What "occupied lands" did they want back then? And could it be that that is what they want now? And what did they wish in 1947 when they rejected the "Palestine" state offered them by the United Nations and went to war, killing fully 1 % of the Jewish population? And what did they wish in the riots of 1936-38 when there was no country called Israel and they murdered more than 500 Jews? And in 1929 when no "Zionist occupation troops" were in Hebron, why did the "Palestinians" rise up to murder 67 Jews in one day? And why the pogroms in Jerusalem and Jaffa in 1920 and 1921? What troubles the Arabs is the very presence of large numbers of Jews in the land, and Israel of any size. Zionism. That is what troubles the Arabs. That is the obstacle to peace. Let us inscribe that on our hearts lest we open the doors to a repetition-on a grand scale-of that which the Arabs have done to Jews since 1920. A horror of slaughter by knives and axes. And the bearers of guilt would do just that. No guilt. There is one sublime reason why we should not give up a centimeter of land...it belongs to us. If we have no right to Judea and Samaria and Gaza, then we indeed have no right to Tel Aviv. Abraham did not walk on Dizengoff Street nor did our ancestors live in Israeli cities that were built in the 20th century. But Abraham, who lived in Hebron, and Jacob who lived in Shechem, now Nablus, and David in Bethlehem are the sole legitimate reasons that Jews can lay claim to a Tel Aviv and the kibbutzim of the guilt-ridden Left. The land belongs to us because the G-d of Israel, creator and Titleholder of all lands, gave it to us. No guilt. There is no such thing as a "Palestinian people". They are Arabs, part of the Arab nation, possessor of 21 lands. Let them live in peace in any or all of them. But there are no "Palestinians". It was the Roman emperor Hadrian who, after the Jewish revolt against the Romans, angrily erased the name of the state, Judea, and invented the name "Palestine" after the Philistines. In every normal case, an existing people gives its name to a land. The Franks named it France and the Angles, England, and the Germanics, Germany. Only in this ludicrous case does a Roman invent a name, give it to a land, and the arriving Arab trespassers become "Palestinians". One presumes that had Hadrian not changed the name, Israel today would be fighting Yasir Arafat and the Judean terrorists. There are no "Palestinians" and there is no "Palestine" in the land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael. No guilt. The "Palestinian" civilians in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Lebanon cheered and supported every P.L.O murder and terror of Jews. They are united in hatred of Israel. It would be nicer if they did not stone our soldiers and try to kill Jews. It would be nicer if they did not rise up in revolt in order to force us out of Judea, Samaria and Gaza as the first step to the elimination of the State of Israel. But since they do, let Jews not allow themselves to be destroyed by "Palestinian" women and children. And if the only way to survive is to take the lives of people who attack us we have no choice. I wonder how many Americans and British and French mourned and protested the killing of German civilians during World War II bombings of Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden? There is nothing ethical about dying or anything moral about another holocaust. There is nothing immoral about winning and nothing necessarily noble in a loser. Let us cast off the chains of guilt and reject the accusations of its bearers. The greatness of Judaism is its spirit, but no spirit can survive without a living body. If we do not want to kill Arabs--and we don't; and if we want to put an end to the nightly television pictures of violence; and if we do not want to see those pictures tomorrow inside Israel itself, with Israeli Arabs fighting soldiers; and if we do not want to see the threat of Arab demography destroying the Jewish State--then let us have the courage to take the one difficult but immutable step that will free us of all this and guarantee a Jewish State: Remove the Arabs from the land and let them live with their brothers and sisters in any of the 22 Arab states. Anything short of that will see the horrors of today escalated a hundred-fold tomorrow. And let us not fear the world. Those who stood by during the Holocaust and when Israel faced destruction in 1948 and 1967 have nothing to tell us. Faith in the G-d of Israel and a powerful Jewish army are the only guarantors of Jewish survival. Let us not fear the world. Far better a Jewish State that survives and is hated by the world, than an Auschwitz that brings us its love and sympathy. No guilt Rather faith in G-d and a return to authentic Torah laws; rather pride and strength, and the love of our people rather than the enemy that would destroy us. That is sanity; that is Judaism. Anyone reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rabbi Kahane or Rabbi Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at barbaraandchaim@gmail.com To view articles written by Rabbi Meir Kahane and Rabbi Binyamin Kahane go to blog: www.barbaraginsberg-kahane.blogspot.com Facebook: Barbara Sandra Ginsberg

FIGHTING FOR G-D

Kahane on the Parsha Rabbi Meir Kahane- Parshat Lech Lecha FIGHTING FOR G-D "They took Abram's nephew Lot and his possessions....When Abram heard that his brother had been taken captive, he armed his trained men born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. He hurried after the invaders...and he smote them" (Genesis 14:12-15). With Abraham facing almost certain death, one might think it would have been better for him to have stayed home and done nothing. It is hard to understand how he dared go to war, especially when he and his tiny group were the only ones in the world who bore the truth that the L-rd is the only G-d. Why did Abraham endanger himself when his death would have put an end to the only man and group on earth that stood on the side of truth? The answer is that it is a mitzvah to "assist Israel against an attacking foe" (Rambam, Hilchot Melachim 5:1). Since Abraham and his group were all of "Israel" at the time-- and Abraham was legally their prince and monarch--he knew that an obligatory war (milchemet mitzvah) was involved here, rooted in the sanctification of G-d's Name. For whenever a nation rises up against Israel, it is also rising up publicly against the G-d of Israel, and there is no greater profanation of G-d's Name than that. We are required to wage a milchemet mitzvah over this affront, and one cannot escape this duty because of danger to life. Our Rabbis taught (Bereishit Rabba 43:2): " 'He armed (vayarek) he trained men': R. Yehuda and R. Nechemia disagreed. R. Yehuda said, 'They turned green [with anger] (horiku panim), saying: If five kings could not overcome them, will we be able to do so?' R. Nechemia said, 'Abraham turned them green with fear, saying: I shall go and die for the sanctification of G-d's Name!' " In other words, Abraham said the circumstances called for a milchemet mitzvah; they called for saving Lot despite the danger involved since the sanctification of G-d's Name was at stake. Going to war was imperative; if G-d forbid he died in battle, so be it. In other words, when war is necessary, danger to one's life is irrelevant. Furthermore, we learn from this episode that one need not fear shedding blood in battle. How so? The Rabbis relate the following: "[After the battle] Abraham was afraid and said, 'Perhaps the population I killed possessed a righteous, G-d-fearing man.' Yet, it is like the person who passed the king's orchard and, seeing a bundle of thorns, went in and removed them. The king saw him, and he began to hide. The king asked him, 'Why are you hiding? How many workers would I have needed to gather those thorns? Now that you have done it, come and take your reward.' Just so, G-d said to Abraham, 'The population you killed were cut thorns'" (Bereishit Rabba 44:4). We learn a fundamental principle here- that is, we need not have misgivings about shedding the blood of evildoers. Quite the contrary, it is a mitzvah, for it "rids the garden of thorns". This is precisely what we learn about King David in Pesikta Rabbati 2: " 'A psalm, a song at the dedication of the house- to David' (Psalms 30:1). If Solomon built the Temple, why was it credited to David? "David was worthy to build it and had planned on doing so. The only reason he never did is because Nathan the Prophet told him G-d did not want him to because he had 'shed much blood upon the earth before Me' (1 Chronicles 22:8). Hearing this, David was afraid. He said, "I have been disqualified from building the Temple!' "R. Yehuda bar Ilai said: G-d said to David, 'Have no fear. As I live, the evildoers are to Me like a deer or gazelle [animals unfit for the Altar].'... Alternatively, G-d said to David, 'As I live, all the blood you spilled was to Me like sacrificial offerings...' "David asked G-d, 'Why, then, am I not building it?' and G-d responded, 'Because if you build it, it will endure, never to be destroyed.' David then asked, 'And is that bad?' G-d responded, 'It is revealed before Me that in the future Israel will sin, yet I will take out My anger on the Temple and destroy it, and Israel will be saved...'" Here we have a scathing response to the ignoramuses who twist G-d's words, arguing that David did not build the Temple because he sinned by shedding "much blood upon the earth." Even without the Rabbis' comments above, could anyone possibly think that David somehow sinned by fighting G-d's wars? The simple reason why G-d did not want David to build the Temple is because the Temple symbolizes the perfect, all-good world G-d wishes for this earth. In such a world, war doesn't exist because there is no evil or evildoers. Therefore, even though it is a great mitzvah to wage war against the wicked and shed their blood in the right time and place, doing so cannot be associated with the Temple This reason is in addition to our Rabbis' explanation in Pesikta Rabbati--that had David built the Temple, it would have endured forever. In any event, it is clear that David was an outstanding saint and that his wars were fought for the sake of G-d and the sanctification of His Name. The distorters' words are not to be taken the least bit seriously. Shabbat Shalom Barbara Kahane on the Parsha can be purchased at: Amazon.com Anyone reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rabbi Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at barbaraandchaim@gmail.com To view articles written by Rabbi Meir Kahane and Rabbi Binyamin Kahane go to blog: www.barbaraginsberg-kahane.blogspot.com Facebook Links: Barbara Sandra Ginsberg

Stop Being Defensive Bereishit 1979

Kahane on the Parsha Rabbi Meir Kahane- Parshat Bereishit STOP BEING DEFENSIVE!!! The most famous of all the commentaries of the great Rashi is, undoubtedly, the very first one. Concerning the verse, "In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth..." (Genesis 1:1), Rashi quotes the Midrash that asks: Why did the Almighty begin the Torah with the story of creation? After all, the Torah is essentially a book of laws and statutes. Surely, it should have begun with the first mitzvah the Jews were commanded to keep. The well-known answer is, of course, that the Almighty wished to underline the fact that "He told His people the strength of His deeds in order to give them the inheritance of the nations" (Psalms 111:6). Meaning: Should the nations come to the people of Israel and complain, "You are THIEVES! You have STOLEN the land of the seven Canaanite nations!" the Jews can reply, "The land belongs to the Almighty who created it. By His will He originally gave it to the Canaanites, and by His will He took it from them and gave it to us." Thus the words of Rashi. Nevertheless, a look at the verse from Psalms that is cited gives rise to a question. If the verse is to be an answer to the nations, it should have read, "He told the nations the strength of His deeds," not "He told HIS PEOPLE the strength of His deeds." The answer is, however, that the most serious problem when it comes to the Jewish claim to Eretz Yisrael is not the fact that the nations do not recognize it. The nations are no problem for a Jewish people with faith in G-d. The real tragedy is the fact that so many of the Jewish people THEMSELVES do not believe or have grave doubts about the legitimacy of the Jewish claim to the land. In order to make the nations believe, it is the Jews themselves who must first be convince! And that is why the verse emphasizes, "He told His people the strength of His deeds." If the Jews believe it, they will have the strength and self-confidence to tell the nations. Yet another question is raised by the Siftei Chachamim. In Parshat Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:6), Rashi writes, "[The Canaanites] were capturing the land from the descendants of Shem since Noah had given it to Shem when he divided the land." If that is true, what claim do the nations have on Eretz Yisrael? How can they accuse the Jews of stealing the land? After all, if Noah originally gave the land to Shem and the Jews are his descendants, it is only right for them to retake the land from the Canaanites who stole it in the first place. It appears to me that the answer to this question contains an important lesson for today. Yes, the Jew ONCE lived in Eretz Yisrael and the land ONCE, originally, belonged to Shem, but the nations of the world can always say, "What does it matter what happened centuries ago? People come and people go. What matters is that now, TODAY, the Canaanites live here, and you cannot come after so many years claiming it's yours." Indeed, this is exactly what the Arabs say to the Jewish people today! How do we reply to this claim? The lesson of the first Rashi in the Torah is that, in the end, there are no "logical" or "political" answers to the world. The ultimate answer is only the one: The Almighty created the land. He is the owners and in Him vests all title. He decreed the Jewish people to be His inheritance, and the land to be theirs. Let us believe it and shout it forth joyously. The Jewish Press, 1979 Shabbat Shalom! “Kahane on the Parsha” can be bought at the following links on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Kahane-Parsha-Meir/dp/098867680X , it's also available on website, www.BrennBooks.com Anyone reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane or Rabbi Binyamin Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles and would like to be, please contact me at: barbaraandchaim@gmail.com To view articles written by Rabbi Meir Kahane and Rabbi Binyamin Kahane go to blog: www.barbaraginsberg-kahane.blogspot.com Facebook Links: Barbara Sandra Ginsberg

I AM NOT ASHAMED 1989

Kahane on the Parsha I Am Not Ashamed I am not ashamed to admit it. I am afraid. I am afraid that my people and my state are marching inexorably to a horror that can best be unimagined. And I am afraid, for the first time, that we are in the hands of people so blind and so mad and so un-Jewish that we may not be able, G-d forbid, to avert the catastrophe. Last week I was at the Western Wall. It was the Friday, after the Friday when the Moslems, standing on the Temple Mount – our Temple Mount – hurled rocks and stones on the Jews praying below. It was the Friday after the Friday when Jews, in the sovereign State of Israel, praying at the remains of the Holy Temple, fled in panic from the Moslems who cried “Allahu akbbar!” It was the Friday after the Friday in which Jews in the State of Israel fled in panic from Moslems who proclaimed their dream of destroying the Jewish state. I was at the Wall on the Friday after the Friday. No less than 3,000(!) security forces were there to protect the Jews in their own state from Moslems who once so trembled before the Jew. Three thousand(!) security forces to protect Jews – who were so frightened that they stayed away in droves. The proud State of Israel…. I am afraid. I am afraid that the Jews of insanity who run this land will destroy us, even as all the impossible Herut fools in the United States continue to write columns attacking the PLO. I am afraid. Last week, I was at the Hebron Jewish cemetery. I saw the swastikas and the Arab graffiti of hate on the walls. I saw the desecrated tombstones. I watched as the Jews held a memorial service. A memorial service! They murder us and they desecrate us and we react with memorial services! That day a rock smashed through the car window of a Jew traveling in Bethlehem, injuring him in the temple, cheek, and shoulder. That day, 600 apple and 50 olive trees were destroyed along with tens of thousands of commercial flowers at the settlement of Nvei Michael. But, I return to the cemetery. How many people, how many Jews, in the world heard of the Hebron cemetery outrage? No matter. How should they have heard of it when the prime minister of Israel, the president of Israel, in its Knesset, and its governmental leaders did not find it necessary to shout their indignation. A week of Chaillul Hashem, of desecration. And the men who run this State of Disorder sit by, hapless and impotent, silent partners to desecration. And I know that the Almighty’s rage will lash out at us for allowing His Name to be defiled. I am afraid for much more. Last week I watched as the insanity spread and reached new heights. The Border Police, the elite security forces, were sent to make arrests in the murderous village of Nahalin. They were attacked by hundreds of stone-throwing, Molotov cocktail-throwing Arabs. The Border Police, under a murderous barrage, fired and killed four Arabs. Only four Arabs. The Arabs shrieked in protest; the pathologically sick leftists joined them and demanded an “investigation”, the army command, led by two kibbutz members, chief of Staff Don Shomron and Central Command OC Amram Mitzna, so ordered. The Border Police were accused of “overreacting” and “indiscriminate shooting,” and two of their officers were suspended from duty. I am afraid. Yesterday they destroyed the army with their insane orders that gobbled the troops, causing them to fear to deal with the Arabs as normal soldier should. Today, the take the best of the security forces, the Border Police, and destroy them, too. And they must be stopped before they destroy the Jewish state – and the Jew. They protest over Nahalin? They investigate attacks on Nahalin? Do you know what Nahalin is? Do you know who the Arabs of Nahalin are? Of course not, so read. And learn. And grow angry and bitter – and do something. In 1948, the villagers of Nahalin participated in the massacre of 35 Jewish students coming to the rescue of Kfar Etzion. They murdered them in cold blood. In 1954, two Jews were murdered by Nahalin villagers leading to a reprisal raid on the village by Israel. At that time, the UN condemned the Jews. Today, the Jews do. When Israel liberated the land in 1967, the normal, sane thing to have done would have been to drive the scum out. But we are not normal. We are not sane. We allowed them to remain along with all the rest of them – the murderous Ishmalites who cannot live with Jews or themselves (and let us raise a toast to gloriously peaceful Beirut). And now we investigate and condemn our Border Police for having “fired indiscriminately” on the village that murdered Jews yesterday, that dreams of murdering them tomorrow, and that attacked the Border Police with hate and rocks and firebombs in their hands. We are insane. We are in the hands of leaders who are insane and who march us down the road to horror and destruction. I am afraid. I am afraid of a government that, instead of supporting the men whom they send into war (and this is a war!); instead of giving them accolades and medals for killing the Arab enemy (and they are the enemy – all of them) – investigates them, censures them, disciplines them. Insanity. And I am afraid. I am afraid. Last week I watched as the police indicted Rabbi Moshe Levinger for doing that which any normal human being would. Driving in the heart of Hebron, a nest of snakes and scorpions, a city of Arabs with Jewish blood on their hands from 1929 – his car was attacked and a stone smashed its window. He ran out shooting at the Jew-haters and killed one. A pity. One. He was indicted and I am afraid. For I fear that we may be lost. I see the leftists who control the state news media even as the pathetic Shamir government does nothing. I see that daily barrage of the state-sponsored self-hate and self-destruction aimed at destroying the morale of the security forces, while the tiny people who run this tiny government sit impotent. I see the defeatists who run the Likud-controlled Ministry of Justice indicting Jews who were attacked, even as the army does the same to its soldiers, and the government of Shamir sits in its perpetual transcendental silence. I watch Shamir and his Likud sell out Israel through the kind of deception we learned from Begin. He prepares elections that will seal the sovereignty of the “Palestinians” over the land, as it leads to the autonomy of Camp David that will whet the Arab appetite and increase the Jewish dementia and result in a “Palestinian” state that will be a dagger in Israel’s heart. I see all this and know that if we are to save the Jewish state and its three-and-a-half million Jews from terrible horrors, we must rise up and demand a fundamental change in the very system of government. We must throw out those who destroy us from within, and keep them out. I know that this present system of government that allows them to control our lives and lead us to destruction must be ended. I know that elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz – not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. I know that only groups which accept the following program should be allowed to run for office: To finish the Arab war against Israel with every means at our disposal and an end to the immoral and sick “pity” for them; to remove the Arabs from the land once and for all; to annex Judea-Samaria-Gaza and make them part of the Jewish state; to radically overhaul the bankrupt education of Israel by infusing our children with Judaism and true nationalism; and to cleanse Israel radio and television of the mad and dangerous leftists who, daily, destroy us from within. I know that unless the people rise up and demand such a national referendum, to dissolve the Knesset and vote on such a program, we are lost. And I am afraid. Written in The Jewish Press 1989 Succot Sameach Barbara Anyone reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rabbi Kahane / Rabbi Binyamin Kahane would like to be, please contact me at: barbaraandchaim@gmail.com To view articles written by Rabbi Meir Kahane go to blog: www.barbaraginsberg-kahane.blogspot.com “Kahane on the Parsha” can be bought at the following links on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Kahane-Parsha-Meir/dp/098867680X , it's also available on website, www.BrennBooks.com Facebook Links: Barbara Sandra Ginsberg