Write back when you've got the intifada. For now it appears manageable historic conflict.
Attached is Rabbi Shalom Lewis' Rosh Hashanah sermon in Atlanta, GA. A long read but worth every minute of your time. To say his words are powerful is an understatement. A few years ago a sermon of his went "viral." Hopefully, this message will get national attention once again.
"Ehr Daw" 2014
I thought that maybe I'd start with a rendition of Paul McCartney's plaintive masterpiece "Yesterday". "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they're here to stay, oh I believe in yesterday" - but then I thought too romantic.
And then I thought, how about the favorite classic we all learned as children - "Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, Dormez-vous, Dormez-vous, Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines, Ding Daing Dong, ding daing dong. Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John" but then I said to myself...too French.
Perhaps the story of Chicken Little - "The sky is falling. The sky is falling" and I thought getting closer but too childish. What about Santayana's "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Maybe, but too philosophical. And then I remembered Joseph Conrad's sadly, cynical observation - - "The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness," and sadly it felt right. And so, here were are in a place of unimagined chaos and cowardice, paralysis and brutality. The beast roams the earth; we are stymied, stunned and continue to fiddle.
My friends, "Ehr Kumpt. Part 2, the Sequel."
This is not a time for delicacy. For tiptoeing. It is not a time to parse words nor worry about offending someone with unfiltered vocabulary. Time is no longer a luxury we possess. Distance, no longer provides protection. We are being threatened like no time before, by an enemy obsessed with an apocalyptic end game that will bring only disaster. An enemy that worships savagery. An enemy that celebrates depravity. An enemy that glorifies the death of the young.
There has been a seismic shift in our world. We feel it. We see it. We know it. We dare not deny it. Pick up any newspaper on any day, the first page, the second page, the third page, the fourth page and beyond - - most of the articles are about radical Muslims, not just ISIS, immersed in a vicious culture of blood and slaughter. Skip to the sports page or the crossword puzzle if you wish but that doesn't make the uncomfortable news go away.
In fact, it brings joy to the jihadists who hope for our indifference. If we deny evil then we need not fight it. It doesn't exist - just a few lunatics, thousands of miles away, pounding sand, blowing each other up and occasionally beheading an unlucky journalist. Not so bad.
For years we have been mercifully spared the ugliness and intimacy of war. The Battle of the Bulge and Iwo Jima were a black and white movie tone newsreel after Tom & Jerry and before the Pride of the Yankees. We planted victory gardens, rolled up tin foil, bought Liberty Bonds, said goodbye to fathers, sons and brothers. But the trenches were on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific. So too, every other subsequent conflict. The Yanks were coming but the shooting was "over there." We suffered little. But today, war has been redefined and relocated. Geneva is finished. We are all combatants in the cross hairs. We are all on the front lines, like it or not. The battlefield has no boundaries and the war, no rules. The enemy targets deliberately, fiendishly, any place of innocence. All are vulnerable and so we must recalculate our strategy, re-examine our tolerance, re-energize our resolve and unequivocally identify the evil doers. Let us not be silenced by fear, by feckless goodwill, by reckless hope, by meaningless rhetoric.
There are one billion Muslims in the world and authorities agree that 5% are committed Islamists who embrace terror and wish to see, by any means possible, the Muslim flag fly over every capital, on every continent. I was relieved when I heard only 5%. Thank God it's only 5%. Now I could sleep soundly. But wait, let me figure this out, 5% of a billion is... 50 million Koran waving, Allah Akbar howling Muslim murderers out there planning to slit our throats, blow us up or forcibly convert us.
It only took 19 of Osama bin Laden's disciples to bring down the Twin Towers, plow into the Pentagon and crash a plane into Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Over 3,000 dead. Over $10 billion in damages on that sad day. 19 Al Qaeda. 50 million Islamists. Do the math.
But what disturbs me is where are the other 950 million Muslims who are not terrorists? Who are not bomb blasting, acid throwing, zealots? Where are the other 950 million Muslims who tuck their children in at night with a lullaby, who are okay with Christians and Jews, crave a peaceful world and wish nothing more than a tasty bowl of hummus and a friendly game of Shesh Besh with a neighbor?
I want to believe they are out there for their sake and for ours. I want to believe they weep in pain over the desecration of their faith. I want to believe that we have partners who dream the dreams we do and wish upon the same star.
I want to believe - - but where are they?
A silent partnership is no partnership. Sin is not just in the act of commission - it is also in the act of omission. Most Germans were not Nazis - but it did not matter.
Most Russians were not Stalinists - but it did not matter.
Most Muslims are not terrorists - but it does not matter.
Stand up righteously or get out of the way. Perhaps in every mosque, in every midrassah, in every Muslim neighborhood, Edmund Burke's powerful warning should be chiseled on a wall in Arabic, in Farsi, in Pashto, in Urdu, for all to read and heed. "All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing."
A couple of months ago, 3 young Israelis were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and killed. And so began Operation Protective Edge. But the Gaza war was much more than shooting down rockets and blowing up tunnels - it was the preview, the soft opening, for a much more serious war - a genuine world war. It was a test of resolve, of fortitude. It was a test watched carefully by the indecent forces of a rising Islamist world. Israel is only the beginning. The first prize sought in what promises to be a protracted, multi-generational Kulterkampf. Israel made the headlines but the front lines are all over the map - we just don't know it yet. The whole world was watching and our performance was pathetic. We, the good guys, stumbled at the gate; tripped clumsily in an embarrassing display of moral confusion and ineptitude. It was amateur hour and the bad guys were licking their chops.
I say the following unapologetically and with a heavy heart. When the war began, the President of the United States, the leader of the Free World, should have immediately, instinctively invited to the Oval Office, the leading Democrats and Republicans of the Senate and the House, his cabinet and all significant Washington political players. Every domestic and international news organization should have been notified and the following talk broadcast across the planet.
"Fellow Americans - a crisis has erupted once again in the Middle East and I have been told that the war between Israel and Hamas is complex and nuanced. I have been told that our great nation must be evenhanded- but I am here to say with no equivocation, with no hesitation, this war is not complex. This war is not nuanced and we will not be evenhanded in this confrontation of good and evil, of right and wrong, of civilization and savagery. We Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives from sea to shining sea, stand together in unshakable support of Israel against foul, corrupt, murderers who sacrifice the lives of children in their pursuit of power. To Israel we say - do whatever you must. To Israel we say, take whatever time you need to crush this vile enemy and whatever you require, you can count on us. To the world we say, Israel is fighting for all of us - for our values, for our principles, for our civilization. Support her efforts, as we do, in every way possible. I will not tolerate any words of disparagement against our greatest ally and friend in the Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless the United States of America."
But these words did not ring forth from the White House, the capital of the free world. What we did hear was "No victor, no vanquished." This statement was our President's strategic plan. No call for triumph over terrorism, but a weak kneed, stalemate with butchers - a tie between good and evil. Right and wrong. Civilization and savagery.
This did not go unnoticed.
Media coverage during the war was biased and shameful with a few notable exceptions. To permit Hamas spokesmen and Hamas sympathizers to speak and to defend their monstrous deeds to millions of viewers is morally shocking. To promote equivalency between Israel and Hamas is morally appalling. With my remote, I would channel surf, go from station to station and I could not believe what I was hearing on CNN, CBS, BBC, ABC, MSNBC, and all the rest. The grotesque propaganda, the repulsive distortions - the tolerance of the wicked.
And this did not go unnoticed.
As I sat through these numbing broadsides, I wondered if our mainstream media during WWII would have invited the Germans and the Japanese to share their perspectives on the hostilities in Europe and in the Pacific. As they moaned about Dresden and the Doolittle Raid, would the anchors have nodded in sympathy? When the Germans and Japanese explained the need for the V1 and V2 bombardment of London and the necessity for the Bataan Death March, would the anchors have expressed understanding?
The obscenities and outright lies given airtime and legitimacy should be sickening to any person of conscience.
Words distinguish us from the beast. In a powerful Holocaust tale, Eli Wiesel painfully writes that when words lose their meaning, disaster follows. In today's Middle East, lexicon; restraint means suicide. Terrorists have become militants. Self-defense is a war crime. Democracy is apartheid. Israelis and Jews have become Nazis. Warning civilians to get out of harm's way has become genocide. 38 Muslim countries - 22 Arab countries and Israel, the only Jewish nation, must constantly defend her right to exist.
Russia invades. Nigeria enslaves. China oppresses. Pakistan rapes. Iraq slaughters. North Korea starves. Iran nuclearizes. Syria massacres. Venezuela plunders. Afghanistan tortures. Sudan annihilates. ISIS beheads and Israel is the pariah state, put under the microscope by the morally noxious.
And this did not go unnoticed.
Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman philosopher, wrote the following in 1968 - 46 years ago. His words have not grown stale with the passage of time. To the contrary, they are every bit as relevant and meaningful today, nearly 1/2 a century later.
I quote: "The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out 1,000's, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey drove out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out, heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But, in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield, dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious on the battlefield, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in the world...Other nations when they are defeated, survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated, it would be destroyed..." Hoffers' final words are chilling and prophetic. "I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us." To those who are morally obtuse I say shame on you– from university professors to the useful idiots of the media, from liberal churches to Hollywood, from the United Nations to the clueless left – let me remind all the 'misguided do-gooders" – your deeds do not go unnoticed."
The world does not like a righteous Goliath especially if Goliath speaks Hebrew.
Let's leave the Middle East and head to Europe. For those who have not been recently, it has changed. It has changed dramatically. The sights. The sounds. The crowds. The streets are much different than when we backpacked with our Eurorail passes – strolling down the Champs-Elysees, chasing pigeons at Trafalgar Square, wandering the backstreets of Amsterdam after dark. The continent that gave birth to Western civilization, the continent that defined high culture is crumbling before our very eyes. Because of well-intentioned tolerance and an undisciplined pluralism, Europe is returning to the dark ages. By most estimates, Europe will be unrecognizable by the middle of this century – crushed by a demographic tsunami. The birthrate of the Brits, the French, the Dutch and the rest of the EU is well below ZPG. The Muslim community's birthrate is prolific. The danger, however, is that Europe has not been a melting pot, assimilating new Muslims. And these new Muslims, for the most part, are not interested in respecting the great democracies of Europe. They want Sharia law and Islamic culture to be ascendant and with their birthrate, the ballot box and their disdain for the West, in time, they will get it.
The element that is surging and redefining Europe are not the democracy respecting Muslims but those who are rampaging in nearly every capital. They are preaching hate for Jews, for Christians, for Israel, for America, for the entire Western world. It is not our grandfather's Europe and it will not be a Europe our grandchildren will recognize.
For the record, Europe is being flooded not by freedom loving, tolerant, assimilating Muslims who wish to share in Western freedom, in Western tolerance, in Western culture but rather by violent Islamists, extremists who reject every value we treasure. We love ethnic communities – they are vibrant, exciting, magical faraway places only a walk away. Chinatown, Little Odessa, Greek town, Little Havana, Lower Eastside, Little Italy, but what is spreading across Europe are not charming, quaint neighborhoods enjoyed by locals and camera toting tourists
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“No Longer Able”
(to write back)
cji
11/15/14
Wanted to write to you
about our world in crisis
but no longer able
as freedom’s are gone
mostly from within
destruction of laws
the Constitution
speech – bearing arms
all being swept away
with MSM leading the way
anointing socialism
anointing liberalism
anointing corruption
accepting illegals
punishing religions
(exception of one)
ISIS on the move
invited by potus
embraced by who
46 million freeloaders
plus another 30 million
of the liberal left
follywood – video games
noise increasing daily
confusion – contention
divisions – racisms
thus no longer able
to write you today
when none listen
and even more
care not at all!
Copyright © 2014 – cji
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