Our Own Shoes

The ability of a lot of people in the world to judge Israel as the aggressor for retaliating for rocket attacks on its citizens, the USA as the aggressor for launching military offensives after 9/11, or Denmark as the aggressor for publishing a bunch of mediocre cartoons, is captured by the Leftist self-hater’s flagship phrase: “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.” It’s a call for letting go of all discernment, in the name of open-mindedness.

I never understood how those same Leftists can view Israel, the USA or Denmark as aggressors at all, in light of that phrase. If you take it, and its sibling “Who are we to judge?”, to its logical conclusion, then there is no aggressor and no victim, no oppressor and no resistor, and no room to judge either Israel or the Arabs. The fact that those Leftists are pretty sure in their judgments makes me suspect there is some lack of candor in their slogan. However, that’s only one flaw with it. I want to talk about another flaw, perhaps even more fatal.

“One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” you say? Good. I’m “one person”, not “another person”. I think we all are. (Those of us who aren’t can be found in certain institutions.) As myself, and not as someone else, I consider the Arab suicide-murderers to be terrorists, and the Jewish army, settlers and all Zionist Jews to be freedom fighters.

“One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter” is an invitation (or maybe more than an invitation) to walk in the other side’s shoes for a moment. It’s very fitting it should come from the Leftists, who are long past borrowing the other side’s shoes, and are now walking in them day by day, as if Mom had bought them. The Leftists want us to look at things from the other point of view, try to get into the mind of the other side, and then realize the other side is no different from us, having the same dreams and aspirations. Following that revelation, we’d be firmly on the path to recognizing the error of our ways and letting the other side fulfill their dreams and aspirations, which, as we’d learned, were the same as ours.

Factually, this is all a load of something I don’t want to mention here. I don’t remember hearing of Jewish children ever being raised to be suicide-murderers. Not in the short history of modern Zionism, and not in the long history of the Jewish nation. Factually, no matter what the Leftist theorists say, I know, I don’t just believe, that the other side aren’t like us. We’re different, no matter how much the Leftists, and Jewish self-hating useful idiots who have enlisted to their ranks, try to tell us we’re the same.

Even theoretically, however, this postmodern thought-experiment is a luxury we can’t afford. If you’re a Frenchman living in Algeria in the early 1960’s, you can go back to France. We have nowhere to go that we can call a homeland. Even the non-Jewish state kindest to Jews is a temporary place of residence, and the situation there could change all of a sudden. And we’re men with women and children. We don’t relish at the scenario of having to kill women and children on the other side, but at some stage the time comes that we have to weigh our lives, our life-loving women and children, next to their lives, their women who send their children to commit suicide-murder, and their children who have been brainwashed to be suicide-murderers. The lives of our women and children are on the line, and when balanced against a pathologically death-worshiping society on the other side, it’s simply no contest.

That’s the story of Zionism in the recent years in a nutshell. A fever of postmodernism, of wearing the other side’s shoes, leading to the Oslo Accords and all the carnage that ensued thereafter, was succeeded by the sobriety of thinking about our own women and children. “Charity begins at home”. Time to wear our own shoes for a change.

Because, in the recent years, we’ve seen where the other shoes could take us. Let’s go as postmodern as possible, tying the other shoelaces as tightly as can be, and assume the thought, “Israel was born in the sin of displacing the indigenous Palestinians”. Never mind for a moment that that isn’t historically accurate, or that Jewish law permits it. Let’s get into the minds of our Arab, and now also Leftist, enemies. You then want to get to the next question: What are you going to do about it?

Accepting, in postmodern, shoe-borrowing fashion, that the very state of Israel, from the get-go, is something wrong, the next issue is how to right that wrong. That’s where most Jews—Jews with their Jewish point still intact—just stalled. For any Jew with a minimum of sense and reason knows that there is no way of “righting” that “wrong”, no way of dismantling the Jewish state, without a massacre of Jews taking place. Not when the eyes are capable of seeing, and the ears of hearing, the genocidal streak that runs through our enemies. Not in view of their culture of death, or at the sound of their bloodcurdling speeches.

Our “lying eyes” (and ears) trump postmodernism. “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter”, when put against this reality, becomes irrelevant. No matter how much the world insists on the Palestinian Right of Return, or declares Israel to be South Africa’s heir, or any other measure of applying pressure, a Jew with sense and reason knows we can’t afford to wear the other side’s shoes. We have the lives of our own women and children to think of, no matter the cost.

Leave postmodernism to the lit-crit professor. The Jew in the street knows better. That’s why the unfolding scenario Melopum is laying out has a good chance of coming true. HaShem willing.

The Jewish Army

IDF, standing for “Israel Defense Forces”, was its name until then, or Tzahal in Hebrew, for “Army of Defense for Israel”. The name itself represented the same shackling mindset that adherence to international law created in practice. Countless debates about “purity of arms” had ensued, the effective verdict being the obligation of the Israeli army to show mercy even toward the cruelest. The lesson of an episode from Israel’s War of Independence, of the 35 soldiers who spared the lives on an Arab shepherd only to have him call for reinforcements who subsequently killed all the 35, was trodden underfoot. And on top of it all, the world would not hear of it: The initials IDF were frequently changed, such as to IOF, replacing “Defense” with “Occupation” or “Oppression” or other terms of opprobrium.

Now, after the Jewish State’s withdrawal from the United Nations and its unbearable set of rules of warfare, the IDF was no more—it was now time for the JA, the Jewish Army.

One act of military reform had been passed before Israel’s dramatic withdrawal from the UN: the cancellation of female recruitment. The issue of women in the army had been a contentious one for all of Israel’s years. The main objectors were the religious Jews, for the participation of women in the armed forces was against Jewish law. The religious had always sent their girls for a term of National Service, equivalent to the regular army service, but there was still the problem that the religious male soldiers had to contend with the secular girls serving in the regular army. However, there were objections even from the secular point of view: one was concerning the service of women in combat units, for the event of capture by the enemy could be much more severe than when a man was captured; the other was the increasing problem of sexual harassment in the army. Most women in the IDF had not served in combat units, but as secretaries and desk personnel, where they were subject to intimidation by their superior male officers. Even among the secular, there were those who questioned the benefits of having women in the regular army. The decree by the Jewish government, whereby all Jewish women were to enter National Service instead of the regular army, ended decades of acrimonious debate.

But the radical changes had to wait until the Jewish State was officially free of its obligation toward international law. The first act of military reform to be passed after the withdrawal was the Judaization of the army: all non-Jews were dismissed. Letters were sent to their families, saying that the change was not out of any punitive motive, but because of the requirement of Jewish law. Most of the non-Jews serving in the IDF had been loyal; even so, especially with the general unrest among the Arab public in the recent years, there was the fear of treason within the ranks. But Jewish law was above all: the army was to be a Jewish one. That had been, after all, one of the original reasons for setting up a Jewish state in the first place: that Jews could defend themselves with a Jewish army.

One could say that the above change could, too, have been made while Israel was still in the UN. True, but the Jewish government wanted to be able to respond (to the inevitable charges of “apartheid” and “racism”) with what would be the Jewish State’s catchphrase: “The Jewish State is not beholden to international law.” The next changes, however, could not be carried out before the withdrawal, for they were the all-important changes, the changes so longed-for by a nation barred from delivering an adequate response to rockets fired from within civilian population centers: the application of Jewish laws of warfare.

It is on this note that we visit a Jewish Army combat training camp. We are in a briefing room, with combatants listening to their officer:

“The system devised at Nuremberg, where there are illegal orders that a soldier must disobey,” said the officer, “has not been eliminated. Under the Jewish laws of warfare, there still are illegal orders that you must disobey if I give them to you. The change from the past is as to the orders themselves: some orders that are legal under the international system are illegal under Jewish law, and vice versa, hitherto illegal orders are now legal.

“Jewish law determines what is legal and what isn’t. Jewish laws says, for example, that desecrating Shabbat except for saving lives is illegal, so if I tell you to do a forbidden work on Shabbat without there being lives at stake, you are required to disobey me. Jewish law also states that Jews are not to abandon lands in Eretz Yisrael to the goyim, so if I tell you to remove Jews from their homes in favor of the Arabs, as was done in the past, you are required to disobey me. In any case of doubt, ask the military rabbi. Remember: the Commander-in-Chief over us all is G-d.”

The soldiers were listening attentively. It was all too clear why the army had to be Jewish-only.

“Now, as for Jewish law declaring legal what international law deems illegal—you will find most of it to pertain to the rules of engagement, to the laws of warfare. The changes here are deep and far-reaching, and demand your absolute attention.

“First of all, we cannot keep the distinction between civilians and military unless the other side co-operates. If the civilians on the other side engage in the same military activities as the combat-dressed operatives, then for all intents and purposes we have to consider them all to be military. If the combatants take care to fire their weapons in a distance from the civilian population centers, then it is illegal for us to fire back at those centers. But if, as has been the case for countless years, we see rockets launched from within civilian population centers, we have no choice but to fire back at those centers. We are required to do so by Jewish law, for we are required to have mercy on our own women and children. As for the women and children on the other side—HaShem is the upright judge. It is our hope that such strikes will eventually bring the civilians there to reconsider their full complicity with the combatants, thus doing away with the need for those strikes.

“That was about defensive and preventive warfare. But the Jewish Army is not only for defense, its purpose, as in the days of Joshua, is the claiming of what HaShem has given us—the whole of Eretz Yisrael. The Jewish Army is to besiege the enemy’s cities. As a first step, it must offer them the option of peaceful evacuation, with no lives hurt. If they do not agree, combat ensues until they surrender. Then, all inhabitants of the city are told to come outside and flee to outside of Eretz Yisrael’s borders. All who come outside are given the opportunity to flee, without hurt or injury. After all those who decided to flee have fled, the city is burned to the ground. On his own head be it for anyone who decided to stay in the city, knowing very well that he had had the chance to have his life spared by fleeing the city.

“You might raise the objection that that course of action could let valuable prisoners, heads of the enemy, escape. The Jewish response is that the Jewish mode of warfare does not have capture in mind—indeed, in the one case where a head of the enemy was captured rather than slain, Agag the Amalekite by King Saul, it lost Saul his kingdom—but the reclaiming of Jewish land. Prisoners are of little use to us, we are through with the sordid deal of hostage exchanges. The Jewish Army is there for ridding Eretz Yisrael of all those who do not accept that it should be under Jewish rule. Any questions?”

One soldier raised his hand to speak. He asked: “What about war crimes trials from those who still adhere to international law?”

“This is just the question I wished to come up,” said the officer. “The Jewish State assumes full responsibility for the protection of its soldiers from the talons of international law. Actually, it goes further than that: the Jewish State, as the one state that upholds G-d’s Law, is prepared to conduct its own trials against those who oppose the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. You will find out, dear brothers,” said the officer, shedding his commanding demeanor, “that it is not you, but our enemies everywhere, including those wishing to bring us to trial, who will be quaking in their boots.”

A universal smile spread across the room.

“Next briefing tomorrow, 0600 hours sharp. Dismiss!”

The Israel Defense Forces were no more. This was the Jewish Army, marching to the leadership of HaShem.

Speech at the United Nations

The entire membership of this special session, convened for the purpose of condemning the Jewish State’s recent policies, waited tensely for the turn of the Israeli ambassador to speak. He strode through the aisle, onto the podium, to the voices of whispers all around, and bated breath. Those present did not know exactly what to expect: Although Israel had had its opportunities—many, in fact—to protest the universal condemnation directed at it, the boldness of Israel’s recent steps raised the suspicion that the ambassador’s speech would be something out of the ordinary.

The whispers died down. Then the ambassador spoke:

“Members of the United Nations, I am here on behalf of Israel, the Jewish State, the state of the Jews, with full authorization from my government and courts, to announce the end of an era.

“It seems that the agreement of the United Nations, so long ago, to grant the Jews a state of their own on their ancestral land was nothing but the result of a momentary pang of guilt, guilt over the recent murder of six million Jews. I can find no other explanation for the fact that the United Nations have been trying to undo that vote ever since—no other way to explain the fact that the United Nations has obstructed a peaceful solution and sided with the Jewish State’s mortal, existential enemies beginning with its recommendation that the Palestinian refugees be granted the right of return to the lands they had fled.”

“Regarding no other place in the world has the definition of ‘refugee’ ever been expanded to include the descendants of those who fled a zone of war. In all other cases of refugees since the aftermath of World War II, it has been accepted that the refugees, and certainly their descendants, must resettle in their new lands, begin a new life. Only regarding Israel has it been maintained that the descendants of refugees must be permitted to return, more than half a century after the end of the war. It cannot be but that the United Nations is united around the notion that the Jewish State is a mistake to be corrected.

“This body was founded after a war instigated by three states. It was reasoned that the slide toward evil could be stopped by erecting an organization of good member-states as a safety-valve against a few evil states. The founders of the United Nations could not foresee, however, today’s situation, in which good states are the minority, and evil ones the majority. This is the situation today.

“Look at most of the UN member-states preaching at us: hell-holes ruled by multimedaled narcissists, held in thrall to ideologies like Marxism, with its ‘achievement’ of a hundred million dead, apartheid states where Muslims are the masters and all others live in constant fear. How dare they preach at us! And look at those whom the UN supports against us, the Palestinians: people who, when given billions in aid from rich member-states in order to build their economy, use the money in order to buy weapons and fund terrorist training camps and genocidal education programs for their children. Contrast the Jewish State: name an institution of our state, and you will very often find that it was founded in the days of the British Mandate, when we still lacked a state. Nothing short of evil is behind the persistent support of the genocidal Palestinian Arabs over us!

“You speak of adherence to international law. I will tell you forthwith: We cannot abide by international law! We cannot abide by the rule that says that, if the enemy has no moral qualms about firing rockets on our women and children from within the midst of their own women and children, we are not to retaliate, but to capitulate to their demands! International law was conceived with a fairly well delimited distinction between civilians and combatants in mind. Our enemies do not maintain even a smidgen of that distinction. We cannot hold our women and children hostage to the short-sightedness of the original authors of international law!

“Nor can we trust UN armed forces to keep us safe. They cannot keep us safe, those armed forces—those forces that caused the Six-Day War by evacuating the Sinai Peninsula at the first finger-click from Nasser; those forces that stood idly by while millions were slaughtered in Rwanda; those forces that gave cover to Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War; those forces that are compromised by many men having sympathy with the Palestinian cause, with the cause of wiping out the Jewish State and all its inhabitants. We do not trust in anyone but G-d, and ourselves if we follow His laws.

“His laws of warfare do not suffer from the myopia of the authors of international law. His laws of warfare are fully cognizant of the possibility of the dividing line between civilians and combatants being blurred, or outright erased. His laws of warfare are an alternative, nay, the only sane alternative, to this requirement to hand victory to evil, to those who have no compunction about using the lives of their own women and children as propaganda material. May our G-d, who has given us the Land of Israel as inheritance, have mercy on those women and children murdered by their nihilistic ideology; we, for our part, have mercy on our own women and children, and we have mercy on the world as well, for we wish to uproot this culture of death, to banish it eternally.

“G-d is the Creator of this entire world. To Him it belongs, and to Him is freedom to give parts of it to whomever He wishes. He has given the Land of Israel to us, the Jews; and though He exiled us from it because of our transgressions, He never gave it to any other nation, just as He never transferred His covenantal promises from the Jews to any other nation. Now that the end of days is at hand, we have a mandate to reclaim our land, no matter who else inhabits it, just as we took the land from seven nations when we arrived from slavery in Egypt. It was not the centuries of slavery in Egypt that gave us the right to the land then, but G-d’s Word; and it is not the Holocaust that gives us the right to the land now, but G-d’s Word. It is, therefore, of no consequence that the world has gotten over its Holocaust guilt. The only point to be kept in mind is that G-d’s Word trumps the United Nations and international law every time.

“We could follow the decrees of the Torah and stay a United Nations member—being labeled a ‘scofflaw’ and ‘outlaw state’ is nothing new to us. However, our prophet Elijah warned us against halting between two opinions. It is not right to serve HaShem in our Jewish State while continuing our membership in the Baal of the United Nations. The Jewish State wishes to cut off, de jure as well de facto, its ties to international law, to the system of law that gives its enemies victory and its citizens misery. We turn, then, our backs on this organization. We turn our backs on the United Nations! Israel, the Jewish State, the state of the Jews, is hereby officially declared to be no longer a member of the United Nations!

“My speech, fully authorized by the people of the Jewish State and by its government, is thus concluded.”

The ambassador stepped off the podium and walked out of the room, to the sight of open mouths 360 degrees. For the next few weeks, that speech was the media’s obsession.

The Jewish State was finally free to be Jewish. No longer bound by the chains of international law, its next step was the reformation of the military.

Progressing Toward Non-Judaism

Today, Melopum and I share nearly the same political views. This wasn’t always so, because we came from different backgrounds: I’ve always been a right-winger, even in the days when it wasn’t very fashionable in Israel, while Melopum did a Reaganesque turn from his socialist past when he realized the Left was the world’s scourge rather than salvation. Like all former Leftists, he kept a lot of reservations about bashing Leftists, and it was only after several cumulative hours of intellectual scrapping with me that he got hardcore. My first article here, “Leftist Myths and the Facts Debunking Them”, is something he’d be quite miffed about not so long ago.

He’d take especial issue with the view that Leftist, Progressivist ideology is in necessary contradiction to real, authentic Judaism. I’m now going to take up the explanation that managed to convince him of that point. In his counterarguments, Melopum would usually begin with examples of Progressivists expressing “deep respect for the ideals of Judaism”. I’m going to begin with that.

The Progressivists aren’t lying (for a change) when they say they respect some Jewish ideals. But they reject, even fiercely oppose, many others, and they reject, because of the nature of the Progressivist worldview, the ideological core that makes Judaism, Judaism.

A Leftist Portuguese writer, Jose Saramago, once tried his hand at imaginative writing à la Melopum, only for the exact opposite purpose, for unholy ends: he described the sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem. In his irreverent take, he described the Temple as nothing more than a slaughterhouse, and even more blasphemously, wrote of it that it was the farthest from spirituality a place could ever be. How he knew that without ever having been present in an actual Temple service, he doesn’t tell. Incidentally (or not so incidentally), Saramago isn’t all too knowledgeable about the present either. He was one of the earliest of Leftist voices comparing the Disputed Territories (the town of Ramallah, in his case) to the Warsaw Ghetto. Hell awaits him and his like.

Why is the destruction of the Temple such a disastrous matter for believing Jews, so much so that they still bewail it, after nearly 2000 years? Nearly two millennia of lamentations, just for a slaughterhouse? No. All canonical (meaning non-heretical) Jewish sources tell us that the Temple was where the spirit of G-d dwelled, by His choice. A Jew would go there to actually see G-d. It was a place where, if a Jew performed the commandments (including the animal sacrifices) correctly, he’d be 100% certain of the existence of HaShem, the Creator as described in the Torah.

There was no atheism while the Temple stood. From the Temple, the glimmer of divinity spread into the whole world. That’s why, all that period, the temptation to sin was not that of atheism (unbelief in divinity) but that of paganism (wrong conceptions of divinity). The twilight of paganism coincides with the period after the destruction of the Temple. Ever since that time, the world has seen the Divine only indirectly, like perceiving the sun hidden behind the clouds only through its influence. Only a few glimmers of divine light have been offered since then—all the “holy men” of all religions claiming to have glimpsed the divine light have been mistaken, succumbing to their own self-delusion or perhaps fakery. Our world is a world of doubts and inclination toward atheism as long as the Temple is still in its ruins, still under the gold-domed mosque that the Arab thieves built on top of it.

In this light, it is no wonder that the Jewish lamentation of the destruction of the Temple is fervent, and that the Jewish prayer for the rebuilding of the Temple, for the return of G-d’s spirit to dwell among us, is equally fervent. Like a once peaceful and harmonious society turned violent and full of strife, the destruction of the Temple is a regression, a slide to the wrong. That’s the orthodox, authentic Jewish view.

Now Progressivism, as Saramago’s writings exemplify so aptly, doesn’t see it that way. The Progressivist view constructs a “scale of spirituality” (like the Scale of Nature of old), where animal sacrifices, whether Jewish or pagan, are on one of the lower rungs, and contemplative worship of G-d (through prayer, which Orthodox Jews take to be the placeholder—note, placeholder, not substitute—for the Temple services) higher up. In Progressivist eyes, the destruction of the Temple was a good thing, a jump onto the next stage of spiritual evolution.

So Progressivism has a problem with the Judaism of Temple days, but doesn’t have any problem with the subsequent forms of Judaism, right? Wrong. All I said was post-Temple Judaism was on a higher rung than Temple worship. I didn’t say it was on the highest. Higher up on the scale is to leave the practical mitzvot (like donning the tephillin) altogether, and make your religion nothing but “pure spirituality” and mere “kindness toward fellow human being”. Yet higher is to discard the idea of a personal G-d altogether, and believe in an all-pervading Force of Love or an absentee-landlord god of reason. But the highest on the Progressivist scale is to go more Greek than the ancient Greeks and make Man not just the measure of all things, but His Own Salvation. Or put it in a more intellectual, less mystic form for pulling in the gullible: the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, where all humans are united in a kumbaya-singing, zombie-eyed Brotherhood of Man. Cue the song John Lennon wrote from his multimegabuck mansion…

You’re probably asking, “Where does today’s Judaism come into all this?” If the primal example of fall from grace in Judaism is the worship of the golden calf, then for the Progressivists it’s a return (real or perceived) to old-time values. The Progressivists picture a line going smoothly from pagan animal sacrifices to monotheistic animal sacrifice, then to more rational, contemplative forms of monotheism, then to mystical spiritualities centered around an abstract “Ground of All Being”, finally ending in the utopia of self-saved humanity. Hand in hand with that line, they also see humanity progressing away from tribes into nations, and then from nations into a unified humanity without group allegiances (interestingly, Islam offers the same vision, in a different way: it aims to unify humankind by Arabizing it). Religious Judaism counters this vision entirely, with its promise that the Temple will be rebuilt, and that the Jews will be gathered back into their G-d-promised land. In Progressivist eyes, this view constitutes the primal sin of regressionism, or reactionism.

Of course, as long as the Jews seemed hopelessly scattered in the lands of exile, Progressivists (and a lot of Jewish dupes who joined them—plus ça change…) contented themselves with attacking Judaism as a capitalist ideology. All this was upset when Zionism came on the scene, and started succeeding at that. From the Progressive point of view, Zionism is an abomination against the Forces of Historical Materialism: instead of moving away from nationalism, a scattered nation suddenly reinhabits its land of old! This is as disorienting to a Progressivist as was the sight of Abraham smashing their idols in the eyes of the pagans of his day. That’s why Jewish nationalism, though an authentic part of Judaism as dreidels and Sabbath candles, is ferociously targeted by Progressivists, who spare no effort in portraying it as “a perversion of Judaism”.

When the Progressives say they respect Judaism, they don’t mean the whole of Judaism. They respect only those aspects of Judaism which they deem to be precursors of their own, Progressivist view. They’ll gladly quote the Torah’s commands to be fair to the stranger in your land (which, I must point out, is as binding as anything else, and applicable to the Jewish State. I’m leaving it to Melopum to elaborate on that), but they’ll conveniently leave out the parts where G-d tells the Israelites He has given them Eretz Yisrael to be taken forcefully from the seven nations inhabiting it. They don’t consider the tephillin to be of any significance, except perhaps symbolic. They laud the Jewish ideal of charity, but only as a precursor to their “perfected” ideal of a charity-regulating state, where the giving of alms is coerced through the force of onerous taxation, or worse, the gulag, rather than being a willed, truly spiritual connection between giver and given to. Judaism, in Progressivist eyes, is like a stage rocket to be jettisoned once the shuttle is out of orbit. Just like monotheism was useful only in that it was more rational than paganism, but now has to make way to most perfect and rational view, of atheism.

The Progressives think, deep down, the same way about Arab nationalism and Islamic monotheism. But like the Nazis before them, they’ve decided to strike an alliance with them in order to deal with the more egregious offense, that of resurgent Jewish nationalism, the affront of the Jewish State. The two strange bedfellows are destined to devour each other (it already happened at least once: Iran’s Khomeini executed his former Communist allies by the thousands), but in the meantime they’re united against us, the Jews, Jews who believe that the Jewish nation is entitled to go back to its ancient land. The siding of Progressivists with the likes of Qaradawi and Ahmadinejad seems strange when you think of Progressives as standing for human liberty and “freedom from religion”, but then you remember that the Progressive Left, as opposed to the classical Left of FDR’s time, never stood for those values. It has its vision to be forced on all of humanity, and it’s a religion all its own.

That’s one of the reasons why Melopum went over to my side, never to look back. That’s why we believe “Judaism or Progressivism” isn’t a false dichotomy.

Sedition’s End

With the Media Reform Act now done, the Jewish State went on to deal with what had arguably been Israel’s gravest problem for all its existence: sedition on the part of elements from within. The fomenters of sedition were comprised of various groups: Arab Islamists like Sheikh Raed Saleh, Arab and non-Arab Leftist dupes for the “Palestinian Cause”, non-Arab opportunists sensing Jewish weakness, such as the Druzes, and foulest of all, Jewish Leftists, the ones who by their very nature had put a legitimate face on the New Anti-Semitism. Not all groups were dealt with the same way.

The Arabs had never accepted the fact of Israel as a Jewish State. However, they had lain quite low during Israel’s first years, when the Jewish leaders still had the Zionist, albeit secular, sturdiness in them. Over the years, with the “Land Day” demonstrations in 1976 serving as a starting-point, they grew more confident, more insolent as it was clear to them that the state of Israel was always going to handle them with kid-gloves, for fear of world opinion. The all-time low was reached during the weakest government, that of Ehud Olmert, with the Arabs publishing documents outlining their plan for the de-Judaization of the state, and Arab members of the Knesset openly identifying with their brothers in Gaza and Judea and Samaria and calling for a unified uprising. The government of then, mired in corruption as well as fear of the goyim, did next to nothing in reaction. But the Jews in Israel internalized every lesson to be gained from Arab behavior, and when the Jewish government was installed, things had to change.

The rise of the Jewish government had the Arab MK’s in considerable perplexment. A few of them decided on going back to the low-profile policy, and one of them even resigned. Most, however, were giddy with the free hand of the Olmert years, and brushed off the new government as more of the same. That would cost them dearly.

The Media Reform Act was the stumbling-block for those Arab MK’s. They lashed furiously at it, criticizing it as “sanction for Jewish war-crimes” and announcing their intention to lodge a complaint to the International Court in the Hague. A whole parliamentary day was given by the Jewish government to the Arab members to voice their seditious opinions. When the great session was closed, the Arab MK’s walked in the direction of the exit as usual—only to find it barred by Jewish policemen.

“What is this outrage supposed to mean?!” asked one of the Arab MK’s.

“It means,” said the policeman, “that, after decades of postponement, you are finally under arrest for sedition against the Jewish State.” They were subsequently handcuffed and led to the Great Jewish Court.

The trial lasted for about two weeks, with the loads of evidence of Arab sedition—decades’ worth, as the policeman had said—was presented. The attorneys for the defense of the Arab MK’s were overwhelmed, could not possibly counter such a wealth of accounts. The verdict was then announced throughout the state of Israel: That the Arab MK’s were all to be hanged for the offense of “conspiring against the fundamental idea of Israel being the Jewish State”.

It was with great cheer that the Jewish public received this news. A slogan was coined, not just for those within Israel but for all the world, saying: “If you dispute Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, we dispute your right to exist as a living, breathing human being.” For what had the constant calls for the de-Zionization (read: de-Judaization) of Israel been, except agitation to make it a new Rwanda and a repeat of the Holocaust? Finally, finally, the Jews’ basic security needs were being addressed.

Non-Jewish Leftists operating seditiously within Israel’s borders were dealt with similarly. A certain British writer who had spent years of writing anti-Zionist articles from within “Israel proper” (the pre-1967 borders, which a dwindling minority of Leftists still considered to be legitimate Jewish territory) was arrested. He had posted on the change of regime in Israel, and then on the Media Reform Act, on British opinion forums, where some posters pleaded before him to leave the country. “I don’t think this is serious,” he said. “It reminds me of the Sharon days, when he gave the Czechoslovakia Speech after 9/11, but pulled out the settlers of Gush Katif a few years after that. I feel perfectly confident.” He was arrested, tried, found guilty and hanged.

The trials were mostly reserved for high-profile personalities (as they would continue to be in the coming years). Populations exhibiting tendencies for sedition against the Jewish state were treated differently: The Druzes, for example, were given a warning to choose the right side or face the consequences. They complied immediately. Other Arabs adapted an equal cautiousness in the face of the sudden change of Jewish policy. They lay low, at least until the coming Land Day.

The Jewish self-haters, true traitors (the Arabs could not be considered traitors, for they had never really sworn allegiance to the state of Israel), had to be accorded another mode of treatment altogether. Here an ancient lesson was learned, the lesson from the darkest days of the siege of Jerusalem in Roman times: that it was of utmost necessity to avoid Jew-on-Jew violence, be the treason of certain Jews as high as it may. Of course, the self-haters, especially the academics, could not be left to continue with their provision of aid and comfort to the enemy, and with their blackening of Israel’s name far and wide. Their treatment, then, was a most pointed one: they were only to be prevented from engaging in those activities. They were arrested and tried, but the verdict was to be imprisoned on comfortable terms until the end of the threat to the Jewish State. The prisons for them did not feel like prisons at all. In fact, pretty much the only difference between them and life outside was the lack of communications facilities. For the purpose indeed was not to inflict pain on wayward brothers, only to stop their misguided activities.

The global mainstream media was permitted to know of the developments. A United Nations security council was speedily convened—this was not, after all, a genocide in Darfur or an Iranian atomic arms-race—to issue a strongly-worded resolution against Israel, ended with the promise to “try the heads of Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague”. The reaction of the Jewish State was the next pivotal change in Jewish policy.

Leftist Myths and the Facts Debunking Them

(By “Leftists” we mean the type that’s come to prominence since the Woodstock Generation, the ones that exhibit total incapability to take their own side in a war. Apologies to Rooseveltian holdovers whom we’ve offended.)

MYTH: Leftists oppose war.

FACT: Leftists are all for war when it’s directed against their objects of hate, such as Israel and the USA. They call it “resistance” then, while “war” for them is reserved to what said entities do, but a rose by any other name…

MYTH: Leftists oppose violence, thinking negotiations and concessions should always be preferred.

FACT: Leftists condone violence by those they think are the weak and wronged side, such as the Arabs in Eretz Yisrael or the Iraqi “freedom fighters”. They will wax apoplectic about Abu Ghraib, but relish retelling the story of South American tribesmen hacking Christian missionaries to pieces with their tomahawks.

MYTH: Leftists are against racism in all its forms, and fight to rid the world of it.

FACT: Leftists are little different from your average Aryan Nations member. The main distinction is in the object of their racial hatred: where the Neo-Nazis direct it toward anyone who isn’t white, Leftists direct it only toward whites, reasoning that they are congenital oppressors, imperialists and colonialists even when all the European colonies of the 19th and 20th centuries have been long evacuated, and when it is now Europe that is under colonial invasion (of the Arabs/Muslims). Also, Leftists are racists toward non-whites as well, in that they treat them as mindless automatons lacking decisions of their own. Or haven’t you noticed how 9/11 or the Arab rockets on Israel are “reactions to colonialist aggression”, while the US invasion of Afghanistan and the Israeli offensive in Gaza are “willful acts of aggression”?

MYTH: Leftists oppose ethnic cleansing.

FACT: Leftists fully support the ethnic cleansing of Judea, Samaria and Gaza (at the very least) of all their Jews. Leftists also support policies, whether of “family planning” (read: having no children, and murdering those that are accidentally going to come into the world) or accepting floods of immigrants, that can only lead to Europe being ethnically cleansed of its indigenous inhabitants, all in the name of “making amends for the West’s dark history”.

MYTH: Leftists respect the Other and their culture, as opposed to the insularity of the jingoist right-wingers.

FACT: The only things the Leftists actually respect in the Other are trappings: exotic clothes, quaint customs and other such romanticisms that amount to nothing but “the neighbor’s lawn is greener”, a portrait of their own internal emptiness. Other than that, the Leftists’ attachment to the Other has nothing behind it but “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.

MYTH: Leftists are both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.

FACT: Leftists think, and have gotten less and less reticent about saying so over the years, that Israel is a colonial enterprise that should never have been set up and that should now be dismantled. They’re either “anti-Israel and pro-Palestine” (thinking the Arabs should be entitled to one more state added to their existing 22) or “neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestine” (thinking nations should be done away with completely, to make way for a kumbaya-singing Brotherhood of Man).

MYTH: Leftists have great respect for Judaism, it’s just the perversions of Judaism, like Zionism, that they oppose.

FACT: Leftists have respect for those particular facets of Judaism that coincide with their own ideology. They pick and choose those, and throw away what they don’t like, such as the hardcore theistic beliefs (like the tenet that G-d controls the forces of nature), the ancient social dictates (separation of men and women except in the framework of marriage) and the basic nationalism (scores of Torah verses emphasizing the connection of the Jewish nation to Eretz Yisrael). Analogy to Christianity: “I deeply respect Jesus’ humanistic teachings, just don’t give me all that ‘Son of G-d’ stuff”.

MYTH: Leftists stand for liberal values.

FACT: Only when they can be paraded against their enemies, such as the “Republican Theoconservative Rapture-Ready Establishment”. If the enemies of their enemies are illiberal, like the homophobic Islamic cleric Yousuf Qaradawi, then liberal values can freely be thrown under the bus.

MYTH: Leftists always stand for international law and view the UN as the best hope for mankind.

FACT: Leftists usually stand for international law, because international law usually supports their defeatism. However, in those rare occasions when international law sides with their enemies, such as when it states that the Hezbollah terrorists too are war criminals (for using human shields), Leftists brush those parts of international law off as “having been written by Corporate Empires™ for Corporate Empires™.” As for the UN, they think it’s perfect but for the one mistake of OK’ing Israel’s birth in 1947, and say it should work to undo that momentary oversight.

MYTH: Leftists are opposed to stereotyping and demonization.

FACT: Leftists have no problem viewing all Jews in Eretz Yisrael in the stereotype of thieves, land-grabbers and ethnic cleansers. Neither do they have a problem in demonizing Israel as a “Nazi-like apartheid state”, and blaming it for Arab imperialist aggression worldwide.

MYTH: Leftists don’t really want to see Jews slaughtered.

FACT: The grain of truth here is that they, unlike their Jew-hating predecessors of 70 years ago, are averse to getting their hands dirty. Because of that, they entrust their Arab fellow travelers with that task, providing aid and comfort to them through justifications (“Sderot is paying for Israeli intransigence”).

MYTH: Leftists are patriotic citizens, they just don’t see the patriotic ideal the way right-wingers do.

FACT: It’s one thing to criticize particular points of your government’s policies, but quite another to engage in non-stop trashing of your own country and its very foundations, and justifying enemy actions (“We got 9/11 because we…”). Leftists’ patriotism isn’t just being questioned, there’s a search going on for signs of its existence!

MYTH: Leftists aren’t Jew-haters.

FACT: The Jew’s price of admission into Leftist circles is his open and constant declaration of opposition to Zionism. Failing that, Leftists will heap every type of abuse on him that Jew-haters used to heap on Jews 70 years ago (accusations of dual loyalty, blame for all the turmoil in the world, and so on).

The Media Reform Act

“You here too?” said the suited man to the other, also suited.

“Yep. I got a letter calling me to some kind of meeting here, to be held at five oh oh PM sharp,” he replied.

Both were standing near a government building in Jerusalem, with twenty minutes to spare. Suddenly, a couple more suited people arrived.

“What is all this? Did they decide to organize a Reporters in Israel convention or something?” asked the first man, bewildered.

The reporters gathered to talk in the remaining time, and it was clear this was a big order from the upper echelons. An uneasy feeling welled up in them all—Reuters, CNN, British Broadcasting Corporation, Agence France Presse and other representatives all alike. A feeling that it might have something to do with the recent political change.

The hour arrived. The door of the building opened, and out of it came another suited man, but different from all the others waiting outside. In what way different, it wasn’t easy to say; the Magen David badge on his chest was the closest you could come to a tangible explanation.

“Thank you, gentlemen. The Minister of Communications awaits you.”

They entered the building and walked through the hall into a dedicated room—a room complete with equipment for showing films, computer presentations and the like. A goodly part of the room was occupied by a conference table, with enough chairs for all the reporters and for the Zionist staff, and then some.

“Please be seated, gentlemen. We would like to begin with a presentation.”

They took their seats. A technician activated the presentation, and it was half an hour of audio-visual immersion.

In the presentation, the reporters viewed the journalistic treatment of Israel starting from back in 1982, with the reports of Israel’s “Blitz on Lebanon”; through the coverage of the First Intifada from 1988 to 1993; then the mainstream media footage of events from late 2000 to 2001, the Second Intifada; the Al-Dura Affair; the staged, or outright faked, photos from the Second Lebanon War; a side-by-side comparison of the coverage of Israel’s retaliatory strikes in Gaza in 2008 and the rocket attacks on the south of Israel, which, the audio commentary explained, the same media agencies failed to cover; and, in between, countless headlines with an underhanded, sneaky bias against Israel, all with a red circle flying in front of the Arab name written at the head of each item.

The presentation ended, and the lights were turned on. The Minister of Communications turned to speak.

“Gentlemen, I think the idea is clear enough: You mend your ways, or we yank your job permissions. You act as reporters, not as undercover propagandists for the other side, or else you go searching outside of Israel for a place to continue practicing your profession.”

A moment of silence. Then the Associated Press representative spoke:

“So… so that’s the first ramification of the new government in Israel? The end of free speech?”

“Free speech,” the minister replied, “ends where state security is at stake, my good fellow. And before you bring up examples of repressive regimes from history, you would do well to remember that it was the same on the Allied side back then. The only reason Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t need to employ an iron fist was that most of the press in his day had sense enough to be on America’s side. Seems so far-fetched nowadays, but history can be that way sometimes.”

The BBC representative spoke: “You are dictating to us, telling us to report against our conscience.”

The minister’s aide replied: “ ‘Against our conscience’? What about the basic journalistic errors you saw in the presentation? I gather these are not against your conscience?”

“What do you want us to do, in operative terms?” hazarded the CNN representative.

“Ah, now we’re getting someplace,” said the minister. “As a first step, you can, how shall we say it, diversify your staff. I mean, we could do with a few non-Arab names on those items of yours. Instead of Arab stringers, we want coverage of Israel to be done by Jewish, Zionist journalists.”

“Apart from the fact that it substitutes propaganda for actual reporting,” replied the CNN representative, “your requirement is racist!”

“We have already covered the bit about propaganda, namely, what’s good for the goose and all that,” said the minister. ”As for the racism part, in typical anti-Israel bias fashion you neglect to note that we are not demanding that all Arab stringers be dismissed, only that they not be the exclusive source for reports regarding the Jewish State. You, then, want to keep your exclusive anti-Zionist club, masking it as anti-racism, no less! But we now see through you, and we are not prepared to stand for it this time. You will comply with our demands or stop working as reporters in Israel.”

The Reuters representative turned to speak: “I believe, and I will verify this with the staff of lawyers at Reuters, that your demand is illegal, and could be grounds for a complaint to the international courts.”

A heavy silence weighed upon the room. Then the minister broke it:

“International law. I told you it would come to this,” he said, facing his aide. He then turned to the representatives: “The issue of compliance with international law will be addressed separately. I am not authorized to divulge further information. We are still at the question we started with: Do you agree to the Jewish State’s demands, or do you not? Your answer is the one crucial item here. Please give your response now.”

“No, we cannot agree to such demands,” said the Reuters representative.

The aide spoke: “Is this only Reuters’ answer, or do others share it?”

Another representative stood up, and spoke to confirm his colleague’s word. Then another. Then one more. And more, until all representatives were agreed in refusing the minister’s demands.

“Very strange unanimity, is it not?” said the minister to his aide, “Especially when you consider what is popularly said, that the job of journalism inspires diversity of opinion and militates against groupthink. Ah, but that too must have been true in Roosevelt’s day and not now.”

A tense silence of anticipation bore down on the representatives. The minister spoke:

“Gentlemen, your planes await you tomorrow at 7 AM. You will be taken back to your lands of citizenship. The meeting is closed. Thank you.”

---

It could be thought that the representatives would spare no moment in flooding the world media with the report of the “outrage”. The Israeli Minister of Communications, however, was quicker than them, and made a televised announcement to the whole world. Much of his speech was lifted from the presentation he beamed before the representatives at the meeting, with the commentary this time his.

“It was because of biased, pro-Hezbollah media coverage that we lost the Second Lebanon War, and no other reason! It was because of a press all too ready to toe the line of those who have no qualms about using women and children as human shields, as propaganda-pawns! Then, we could afford that loss, for it meant no more than letting the enemy regroup and rearm; but now, when our enemies are armed and grouped all around us, it could lead to the end of the Jewish State, G-d forbid! We will not permit that to happen!”

He continued with the future mode of reporting in Israel:

“You have abused the freedom of speech which the Jewish State granted you, singularly among Middle Eastern states, against that one and only state. You leave us no alternative: From now on, nothing will be known about the situation in the Jewish State and its war zones, except that which we permit to be known. Within the civilian areas of the Jewish State, any journalist hinting that certain parts of Israel do not belong to Israel, or comparing Zionists to Nazis, or similar abuses we have tolerated all these past years, will be arrested and tried for sedition.”

But even more severe was his announcement regarding future battlefield reporting:

“No reporter will be allowed to embed with Jewish troops unless he has clearance from the Jewish government, a clearance which will be very difficult to obtain, following stringent tests of trustworthiness. Anyone in the battlefield seen with reporters’ equipment and having no such clearance will be shot dead on sight, as per our new rules of engagement. You have been warned. The Jewish State no longer stands for underhanded attacks as it did in the past, when it tried to tread carefully on the toes of world opinion but to no avail. That is the price for failing to reciprocate goodness.”

The Media Reform Act was the first departure of the new government from the policies of all that preceded it. It enabled the Jewish State to fight its wars without the unnecessary shackle of considering “How will it go down in world media headlines”.

Jewish State Scenario

The scenario described here is not yet real; maybe won’t ever be real, or probably will be real only in outline form and not in the details. That is because we’re not the ones who determine the future, and that should never be forgotten. “Many are the thoughts in a man’s heart; the counsel of HaShem is the one that will rise.” We plan, we even do, but the Almighty determines whether we succeed. The original Zionists were big dreamers. They succeeded because G-d wanted their plan to come to fruition. So take the scenes here as wishes, not prophecies (can’t be, when the Temple is still in ruins) or dictations heavenward (chas v’shalom). As detailed calls to the establishment of a truly Jewish state.

After all this philosophical-theological opening, what is this blog actually about? I’m laying out a future scenario where the state of Israel is after having thrown out its galutnik “leaders” and the Jewish nation has installed people who fear HaShem rather than world opinion, the International Court of “Justice”, the Arab foes or the duped appeasers in Europe and the USA. I assume, indeed I pray for, a Jewish government installed through unanimous Jewish demand, without bloodshed, without coercion; the events concerning the rise of the Torah-adhering state are therefore preterit here, meaning they are past as far as this narrative is concerned. The events detailed here are what happens afterward: From the first act of the Jewish State, up to the final defeat of all of Israel’s enemies.

We’re a team of two bloggers. I’m Melopum, the dreamer, the one behind all these clamored-for scenarios. Also here is the co-blogger Piacere Di, who is the brains. She’ll be responsible for the interludes between scenarios: incisive commentary. We’re equals in this blog in all but focus (as I said, she does the brainy bits, while I take the more prayerful role). We hope this blog will serve all Zionist readers as a beacon of inspiration, and all anti-Zionist readers as a warning of what may well happen one day, once Israel has leaders the people truly want. May our salvation come soon. Amen and amen.