Real History: USA Wasn't Founded/Established by "Immigrants"

I hate to break to to you, but the truth is that the United States of America was founded/established by invaders and colonialists. They vanquished the native locals in every way possible. The surviving natives were then brainwashed by Christian missionaries. And to this day their descendants are second or third class citizens.

The immigrants came later, after the colonialists and adventurers. And don't forget the unfortunate black African slaves sold to the Europeans by the Arab muslims. The Europeans needed workers for the agriculture in the "new" land they had taken over.

Manifest Destiny was the rationale/green light for the new country to take over/populate all the land from sea to sea.

Manifest Destiny, a phrase coined in 1845, expressed the philosophy that drove 19th-century U.S. territorial expansion. Manifest Destiny held that the United States was destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent.

And that's when immigrants became necessary.

Sorry, but what I wrote is the truth, and it doesn't sound all that pretty. And reading recent news, it's clear that Europeans still think themselves as "rulers" of the world. The Arab terrorist Abbas, whom they set up to run the PA, has gone davka to the European Union to ask their help in forcing Israel to kowtow to his terrorist demands.

The Jewish People have a much longer history here in the Holy Land, and we never completely left it. Now we are back where we belong. We've outsurvived our ancient enemies, and we'll be around long after the EU and the USA, Gd willing.

More Idiocy from The Israeli Government

How dumb can they get? There will be no school celebration on 10th of Nissan since it part of Passover vacation!

Bill to institute 'Aliya Day' passes early vote
Legislation that would make the 10th of the Hebrew month of Nissan "Aliya Day" passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset Wednesday. 
The bill would institute a day to mark immigration to Israel in schools, the IDF, the President's Residence, a special cabinet meeting and the Knesset. 

Honestly, I have nothing against the general idea of "Aliya Day," but they should look at the calendar before announcing a date.

Only in Israel: About 20,000 Attend Funeral of Sean Carmeli, HaYa"D, Lone Soldier

Sean Carmeli, HaYa"D

cross-posted on me-ander

Yesterday morning we read about the lone soldier from the small Texas town nobody had ever heard of who had been killed in Gaza trying to destroy the Hamas terror infrastructure, Sean Carmeli. Later in the day, emails and facebook messages kept arriving in Hebrew and in English asking that people come to his funeral.

Israel values all of its soldiers; they are our children. Israeli kids are raised knowing that after high school they will be drafted. (I'm not getting into the chareidi draft issue here.) Religious girls frequently take the option to do Sherut Le'umi, National Service and volunteer in all sorts of places, schools, hospitals, memorials etc. Young men who are exempt for various medical reasons quite often petition the IDF to be accepted as official soldier volunteers and get positions suitable for them.

And then there are the new immigrants and foreign IDF volunteers who come to Israel either just to serve or knowing that their choice to be Israeli means that they will be drafted and serve in the army without a mother waiting at home to do their laundry and make sure there's hot food for them. They are the true idealists, and Sean Carmeli was one of them.

When an Israeli born and raised IDF soldier is killed, his funeral is attended by his family, childhood friends of all members, fellow students and those from the neighborhood and more. Funerals here for whomever, no matter what the reason of death, are usually humongous. Here in Shiloh, a small funeral, quickly arranged on a Friday before Shabbat can have a minimum of fifty to a hundred people, and the larger more public funerals, like the triple one for the three teenagers murdered by Arab terrorists a few weeks ago are attended by hundreds of thousands. Compare that to a very recent funeral in New Jersey for a policeman killed, Fallen Jersey City Police Detective Melvin Santiago laid to rest.

JERSEY CITY - The Jersey City police officer who was shot and killed while responding to a report of an armed robbery was laid to rest today.
Hundreds of police officers from around New Jersey and surrounding states came to St. Aloysius Church to pay their final respects to Melvin Santiago. 

IDF Staff Sgt. Sean Carmeli was laid to rest accompanied, honored by about 20,000 people.

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HaMakom yenachem...
May G-d comfort his family and friends

French is The "New Russian" on The Streets of Israel

When the two large Russian aliyot to Israel were new we'd hear a lot of Russian in the streets, buses, offices, stores and clinics in Israel. But now most immigrants from the FSU (former Soviet Union) use a lot of Hebrew or are answered in Hebrew by the younger generations, and the Russian language no longer stands out.

Nowadays I hear an awful lot of French in  the streets, buses, offices, stores, clinics etc. Israeli history, sociology has been described as continual waves of immigrants. The more veteran ones are replaced by newer waves. Each wave has its own stories and needs. And each one thinks the newer ones got a better deal.

There's a classic Israeli film and jokes about how each wave of immigrants are resentful and discriminate against the newer ones.

A classic skit from the 70's where Arik Einstein and Uri Zohar play all the roles. English Subtitles. 

It's a parody saying the Israelis are inpatient towards the new Olim. But 5 minutes after the new Olim came to Israel, they see themselves as Israelis, and act the same 

The majority of Ethiopian immigrants, due to their color, are noticed visually even before being heard. They tend to speak so quietly. Bnai Menashe, who have come in smaller numbers, are also pretty silent and aren't as scattered around. I see them in Ofra, Beit El and shopping in Sha'ar Binyamin.

There was also a lot of resentment incomprehension when the American immigration was large in the post-1967 Six Days War euphoria. There was total amazement by many Israelis who couldn't understand how we Americans could have left America which has always been seen as a magic place, wealthy, easy living and easy money. To make it worse more veteran Israelis would misunderstand the regulations of that time concerning all sorts of tax free/reduced items, including cars, and insist that we got them for free.

But I'll never forget how moved the El Al flight crew was by the Americans making aliyah during the Second Lebanon War. I accompanied the Nefesh B'Nefesh flight as a journalist.

Photo I took on that NBN flight

Recent French immigrants are understood by many Israelis as escaping terrible, violent antisemitism.

Speaking on camera a day after his assault, the victim – a 59-year-old Jewish teacher only identified as David –said he was attacked by three North African “Maghreb men” at 10 p.m. on March 20 after leaving a kosher restaurant in Rue Manin, Paris, and making his way to a subway station.
“They started to curse me out: ‘dirty Jew,’ ‘death to the Jews,’ ‘son of a b***,’ etc. Then they started to beat me up,” David says in the clip before breaking down in tears. “I was hit on my face, I got my nose fractured… And then one of them took something out of his pocket, I thought it was a knife… It was a marker… And this is what they did to me (showing his chest), a swastika as they were screaming ‘dirty Jew.’ ”

There has been a lot of coverage of French antisemitic attacks in the media, including the one on the Jewish school in Toulouse.

There has been a marked increase in the number of French Jews who have moved to Israel since the killings two years ago, from fewer than 2,000 in 2012 to more than 3,000 last year.
President Moshe Kantor of the European Jewish Congress, in a statement on Wednesday, commended the French authorities for their efforts to curb anti-Semitism and urged officials to “preempt the next murders by continuing to invest in education, law enforcement against those who preach hate and incitement, and to combat the extremists.”
The SPCJ, the security unit of the French Jewish community, says the murders triggered a wave of 90 anti-Semitic incidents in the subsequent 10 days.
Two years after the most traumatic Islamic terrorist attack on its territory, France continues to remember the killings in Toulouse. French websites and France 2 television reported Wednesday’s two ceremonies.
On March 19, 2012 the French-Algerian Merah shot and killed three Jewish children and the father of two of them at the entrance to the Ohr Torah school in Toulouse.

An English-speaking friend who made aliyah at the time of the large Russian aliyah finished ulpan (intensive Hebrew-language classes) with a Russian accent. Now, no doubt, many olim chadashim new immigrants from all over the world pick up Hebrew with a French accent.

The big question is:

From where will the next wave of immigrants come?

It Was Forty-Three 43 Years Ago Today....

It was about time that I check out the exact Hebrew day my husband and I docked at Haifa port as olim chadashim, new immigrants...

It was a Saturday night, September 5, after Shabbat and after circling aimlessly in the Mediterranean so as not to dock on Shabbat.  It's, davka, today, the 5th of Ellul, also a Saturday night-Sunday.  We spent fourteen days on the Annamarie, A Greek Line ship that had a kosher kitchen and a special deal with the Jewish Agency to transport immigrants.  We weren't unique.  There were about four hundred of us that summer of 1970.

In the late 1960's and early 1970's the miraculous Israeli victory in the 1967 Six Days War galvanized the international Jewish World, and for the very first time, Jews from the developed countries, who hadn't suffered obvious antisemitism began making aliyah.  Israel was no longer seen as only a place for Jews who had no choice and die-hard idealists.  Instead of forcing immigrants, like those from North Africa, into unsuitable, isolated agricultural communities, the Israeli Government built attractive (compared to what many Israelis had been living in) immigrant housing in places like Jerusalem's Ramat Eshkol, French Hill or Ramat Aviv, near Tel Aviv.

In 1970 many people didn't have phones in their homes, and some of those who did had shared party-lines. Our pockets and purses were weighted down with "asimonim," special phone tokens.  Most immigrants had to pick up at least minimal Hebrew quickly, since the local grocer served us what we needed, after we asked in Hebrew.  Supermarkets were rare.

Even Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel's largest cities were very different from New York.   Elevators were rare, and escalators unheard of.  Simple plastic bags were a luxury, rinsed and rewashed for maximum use.

Summer is a popular time to make aliyah.  Jennifer and her family have just arrived to The land where dreams come true!   Benji is celebrating seven years here.  Actually I was the first to blog about him.

Many of the young people, the single olim, had been in Young Judea and on its Year in Israel Program. Among them was Benji Lovitt, off to Tel Aviv in his Crocs, where he'll fit in fine.

That was an amazing flight in the midst of the Second Lebanon War.  I'll never forget the tears in the eyes of the stewardesses, who just couldn't believe that Americans were making aliyah to Israel in the middle of a war.

I have few olim friends who have been here in Israel longer than I.  One of them is Risa, aka Isramom.

My own first hours in Israel were just a few weeks after the Six Day War (which has become ancient history it seems).  My most vivid memory is of going with my friends to Tel Aviv where just about every balcony had an Israeli flag hanging out. The flags were in honor of the liberation of Jerusalem and in celebration of the survival of the State of Israel when just a few weeks before many had not been certain that this Zionist experiment would live out its second decade. That euphoria is sort of like the laughter after  a particularly scary roller coaster ride, you know the kind where you ride a loop that has you completely upside down and you doubt your sanity. When it's over your laughing from relief. Only this danger was real. And then it was miraculously over. (Or so we thought.)

My friend Ruti sent me this old post.  She had a much more challenging aliyah than I did, because she and the coach came with a bunch of sons, not just dreams.

One of the key ingredients in a successful aliyah is adaptability.  If I may spend a moment or two in the "bli ayin hara, puh-puh-puh" place, I'd like to brag about my kids' success in bringing this spice to our aliyah.

I've been living in Israel for almost a full two thirds of my life.  And we're in Shiloh for half of my life.  Considering that I'm old enough to get Israeli Bituach Le'umi, National Insurance old age payments, we're talking about a very long time.

What's most exciting is to hear that there are more young Jews packing their bags and planning on living here, like Aryeh.

Aside from me making aliyah, there are many many many more like me who are making this journey together with me. Each of us has our own story behind what we are doing, yet we all arrived at the same conclusion. THIS IS WHERE WE BELONG! And that in itself is mind blowing.

Please share this and send me more aliyah posts.