Can there really be peace?

Better question:
What is peace?
Can it be bought?

Taking a look at World History, we can see that "peace" has only been achieved after a war in which one side wins and wins big. The other surrenders and is willing to make peace. They're pragmatists. They have no choice.

The victorious side makes it clear that they'll hit even harder if the losers "try anything."

We, Israel, had that very chance in 1967. We were supposed to declare ourselves the victors and warn the Arabs that if they resumed the terrorism which had plagued the first nineteen years of the State of Israel, then their cities would be destroyed, and they'd be refugees in one of the three countries which had attacked Israel, Syria, Egypt or Jordan.

We were supposed to have immediately begun settling our Historic Homeland.
We were supposed to have immediately begun organized Jewish Prayers on Har HaBayit and then built a new Beit HaMikdash.

Actually, that's how Jordan's King Hussein understood it. He fought the terrorists, and he didn't join Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur War.

We had PEACE IN OUR HANDS, and then we gave the Key to Har HaBayit, the Temple Mount, to the Arabs, and we lost our chance for Peace. But then G-d was merciful, and in 1973, on Yom Kippur, the Arabs attacked again. A miracle happened, an even bigger miracle than in 1967, because we weren't prepared, not militarily, not psychologically, not spiritually. World Jewry weren't praying for us an entire month before the war began. It wasn't 1967, when the Arab leaders declared that they were going to drive us into the sea.

It was a regular Yom Kippur, and then suddenly bus drivers were called up, emergency. And then there was a siren, early afternoon, all over the country. Everyone went into emergency, war mode. Radios were turned on, and the men, reserve solders, listened for their codes to be broadcast, and suddenly, most of the male population, those in their twenties, thirties and early forties, of Israel were in their military uniforms and traveling to their bases, instead of wearing their white shirts and sitting in synagogue. They prayed and they fought, and G-d gave us a great miracle.

We crossed the canal and defeated the Egyptians, and we entered Syria and defeated them, too.
But again, it was rejected by Israel. We had PEACE IN OUR HANDS.

The same Israeli leadership which shot at Jews on the Altalena and handed over their fellow Jews to the British rejected True Peace.

The Israeli Government, cheered on by the Israeli media and "intellectuals," think that they can "buy peace" for Land.

The ordinary Israeli knows that something is wrong, but they have been trained to obey orders.
Do you remember the hue and cry just over two years ago, when Israeli solders were faced with the orders to exile, transfer innocent Jews from their homes?
They were told by the great moralists:

Obey orders! Follow the Laws legally and democratically passed in the Knesset!

Do you remember the hue and cry just a few weeks ago, when Israeli soldiers were ordered to throw Jewish families out of their home in Hebron?
They were told by the great moralists:

Obey orders! Follow the Laws legally and democratically passed in
the Knesset!

Those moralists would have told Yehuda HaMaccabee to be a "good Greek."
What's so moral about that?

There are times when we must follow our conscience and look for the moral compass inside of us. There are times we must take risks or we won't survive.

Avraham took his son to sacrifice, and Yitzchak lived. And we descend from them.

It is now just after Rosh Hashannah, and Yom Kippur is less than a week away. We must obey G-d's Laws and G-d's morality. Remember, because Avraham did so, Yitzchak survived and we exist today.

Gmar Chatimah Tovah

They Really Want to Destroy Us

On the Jewish Calendar, the 40th anniversary of the Six Days War was a few weeks ago, but on the Christian Calendar it's now.

People of my generation and older have very clear and distinct memories of it and the horribly tense and frightening month before. The Arab countries were very proudly and clearly stating that they wanted Israel destroyed and the Jews thrown into the sea to drown. Pharaoh had failed at it thousands of years before when G-d opened the sea and the Children of Israel marched safely through. It closed up on the Egyptians, and they drowned.

The United Nations cooperated with all of the Arab requests and hastily withdrew its troops to facilitate the Arab war aim. The United States stood by passively. Not a single country offered aid or threatened serious sanctions against the Arab threats and plans.

At a press conference on May 28, Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser said, "The existence of Israel is in itself an aggression… We will not accept any…coexistence with Israel... Today the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel… The war with Israel is in effect since 1948."

On May 31 the Egyptian newspaper Al Akhbar reported, "Under the terms of the military agreement signed with Jordan, Jordanian artillery, coordinated with the forces of Egypt and Syria, is in a position to cut Israel in two at Kalkilya, where Israeli territory between the Jordan armistice line and the Mediterranean Sea is only 12 kilometers wide."

On June 1, Ahmed Shukairy, the PLO representative in Jordanian Jerusalem, responded as follows when asked what would happen to Israelis if there was a war: "Those who survive will remain in Palestine. I estimate that none of them will survive." for complete article, click this

Remember that this was just over twenty years after Nazi Germany was defeated and skeletal Jewish survivors were paraded on newsreels as the warm-up for post-war comedies. The United States had joined the war against Germany to save Britain and protect its own interests, not to stop the murder of Jews. Six million Jews had been murdered by the time the war was over.

Too many Israelis insist on believing that they're invincible and that the Arabs haven't really changed since the miraculously easy victory of 1967. That's the tragic flaw of Israel's Left Wing, which, contrary to the standard political labels, is truly reactionary, worshipping a past, which had a precarious, at best, security. The past they worship is the early days of the State of Israel, the time of the tzena, rationing, financial deprivation, frequent terrorism and sniper attacks on innocent Jewish civilians.

Instead of welcoming the Six Days War victory, the left-wing, and the psychological illness has spread to the "middle," all we hear from the media and most politicians is that it's "evil to rule over others." Shtuyot, as we say in Hebrew. That's not true at all. What's evil is the attempt to destroy a nation, and the Arabs still want us all dead, just like the Nazis did. The Nazis wanted Germany, and all of Europe, Judenrein, clean of Jews, and that's what the Arabs want for Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. And... that's what the UN, the US and even some Jews want for Eretz Yisrael.

That's evil.

Why can't we Jews live in our HISTORIC HOMELAND? I'd like a good answer. Honestly, I'm sick and tired of hearing that I can't live in my home. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to live in Shiloh, Israel. Why not? Would I be thrown out of Shiloh, Tennessee?

Remember; instead of being destroyed in 1967, Israel was victorious and liberated historical Jewish Land. There's nothing wrong with that. And that land must stay in our possession for the use and benefit of Jews.

We don't have to be sorry for winning and surviving.

Six Days in June, 1967

Here's my article which appears in the latest Voices Magazine, April, 2007.

Six Days in June, 1967

I guess this will reveal to you how old I am. That's the price of "fame," no privacy, no secrets.

I was a senior in high school, and Great Neck North was my alma mata. For those of us who remember the time, we remember well that from May, 1967, there was a terrible fear that Israel would be destroyed.

Israel and World Jewry had put its faith in the United Nations to protect Israel, and when Egypt's Nasser told the UN forces patrolling the Suez Canal area to leave, they just hightailed and left. All that was left for us was to pray. I'm sure that Great Neck Jewish community wasn't alone in having massive meetings to which "everyone," Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and unaffiliated attended. In Great Neck all of the rabbis sat together on the podium; I was one of the ushers.

I was relatively new to Zionism, having been introduced to it by another of the Great Neck Jewish "activist" kids maybe a year before. Zionism and Aliyah were not on the NCSY curriculum in those days. Due to his influence, I had joined Betar where I learned pure Zionism without the "socialist-kibbutz" adjectives. Previously, I had thought of Israel as a place one leaves, since I knew Israelis who lived in New York but had never heard of a New Yorker moving to Israel. At the same time I was a SSSJ activist, with the emphasis on Russian Jews leaving the USSR, but nobody seemed to ever reveal for where.

Great Neck is the kind of place, at least in the mid 1960's, which thinks and acts through its pocket, bank account and the like. Yes, that means that two of my strongest memories were of fund-raising during those stressful weeks.

The Great Neck Synagogue, which at the time was the only Orthodox Synagogue, sponsored a "clean-up" campaign. I don't remember the snappy slogan, but we, the members of the "Teen Club," the Great Neck Chapter of NCSY, offered to send kids to clean anything and everything for a donation which would be sent to Israel. I spent most of that day coordinating things, and if I'm not mistaken most people told the kids to wash their cars. One home I did go to was one of those enormous, stately mansions in Kensington, where we were asked to clean out the not-recently-used child-sized "dollhouse." People were very generous.

My other fund-raising venture was on Senior Class Beach Day. In those days one never missed school, on threat of dire punishments, and even something as ridiculous and frivolous as Senior Class Beach Day had to be attended. As a "newly religious," I did know that Jones Beach and a bathing suit weren't very proper, so I armed myself with a "pushka" and asked the hundreds fellow Jews in my class for donations.

Some kids politely put their ice cream money, or change after getting ice cream, into the "pushka," but others told me how their fathers had "just donated three ambulances to Israel, so I don't have any money for you!" Another one, a Jewish guy going out with a shiksa from the class, quickly emptied his pockets of change into the "pushka" and then "got it" from his girlfriend: "Why are you giving money to them?!"

During the war, we wanted to know what was going on, so my good friend (to this day) brought a transistor radio to school. Today, in the days of almost "microscopic" ipods and the like, it's probably hard for many to imagine, but a transistor radio was big, very big, like a large dictionary and just as comfortable if you're sitting on it. Yes, that's what we did to hide it from the teacher.

During most classes we wouldn't dare, but there was a substitute in "Accounting for Seniors." As we both recall, we were the only females in the class, both of us being daughters of CPA's… but that's another story. The "sub" couldn't control the class at all, and none of us had the patience to even attempt to be nice to her. She knew that my friend had brought in the radio and heard it, but she couldn't find it. I was sitting on it while it broadcast the news to the class. That was probably the only "funny thing" that happened to me during the war.

Did I have an inkling that I'd be living in some of the Biblical Land liberated in the Six Days War? Honestly, no. The concept of Aliyah was still "jelling" in my mind, and I still wasn't very familiar with Eretz Yisrael beyond the abstract. If I had been asked about Shiloh, I'd have been stumped. But Shiloh has been my home for almost twenty-six years already, and I have no plans on moving.