Free Speech Only For the Followers of Muhammad?

ב"ה

Maybe it's because I'm an American. Maybe it's because I've seen, in my life, what suppression of Free Speech has done around the world, the repressive, anti-equality, anti-Freedom, anti-feminist, anti-Jewish, anti-American regimes it has created. But I cringe when I hear about groups of people trying to kill others based totally on something that the other group believes or said.

That's why my feathers are ruffled. That's why I'm incensed that Hillary Clinton is talking and other people are talking about mobs attacking US embassies and talking about the Ambassador being killed in an attack in Libya over a movie that THEY see as being uncomplimentary about Muhammad.

It is time for the talking and the rhetoric and the speechifying to stop. It is past the time of asking Muslim leaders to control their people. It is past the time of diplomacy and negotiations. It is time for us to protect our rights to create a movie that is controversial. It is time for us to protect our television producers and our movie makers. It is time for us to show our enemies that we can "talk their language", that we can fight back and that we have just as much of a right to our opinions as they do.

The only way to do this is to fight for our rights, literally. And, while I don't for one moment underestimate the sacrifice our military people make, but the reason we have a strong military is to protect our freedom, our way of life and our lives. I appreciate the brave men and women who protect our freedom and our lives, but we are not being fair to them if we send them in to do a job and many of them lose their limbs or lives and then we pull out before the job is done. It's sort of like having a virulent, life-threatening infection and only treating part of it. By doing that, you create antibiotic resistant bacteria. By only fighting part of the war, we create an enemy that thinks we are weak and that strengthens them.

We, unfortunately, have a long history of striking hard and moving out. This started with Carter and his washy-washy way of handling the Ayatollah. It continued with Bush hitting but not finishing off Saddam Hussein. And it's still going on today with our indecisive handling of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Al-Qaeda, post 9-11.

This embassy attack is a symptom of the problem. It's a symptom of the entitlement that men in the Muslim world feel. It's a symptom of the Muslim world's belief that they are better than everyone else. As long as we appear weak to them, they believe that G-d is on their side. And we can't allow them to believe that. We have to fight for the real Face of G-d, the G-d who gave us an equal chance to succeed, an equal chance to shine in His/Her world. If we allow them to define G-d, if we allow the worst opinion of G-d to hold sway, we do ourselves and this world a disservice. Let's stand up for our values. Let's show our strength. Let's prove to the Muslim world that freedom is something we think is worth fighting for.

All We Need is Love

B"H

After reading my blog entries so far, you must all be convinced that I hate all Muslims. This is just not the case.

There is a story about a Medieval Rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Hanagid, who was an adviser to the Sultan. One day, while Rabbi Shmuel was walking with the Sultan, a man started cursing Rabbi Shmuel. The Sultan was outraged. He commanded Rabbi Shmuel to cut out the man's tongue.

Rabbi Shmuel couldn't cut out the man's tongue. So he thought about what he could do to change the man's mind about him. He sent him some gifts.

The next time Rabbi Shmuel was out walking with the Sultan, the man again started shouting at Rabbi Shmuel, only this time he was praising Rabbi Shmuel. The Sultan turned to him and asked, "didn't I command you to cut out that man's tongue?" Rabbi Shmuel answered him, "I did as you asked, your majesty, I cut out his cursing tongue and replaced it with a praising tongue."

I wish we could take all the people who hate Jews and hate Israel and "cut out" their cursing tongues and replace them with praising tongues. But, unfortunately, giving gifts to these people doesn't change their opinion of us for the better. It only convinces them that we are morally weak and that G-d is on their side.

There are Muslims (and former Muslims) out there who support Israel and fight the Islamofascist. Unfortunately, there aren't enough of them yet. I say yet because I see more and more people joining this group. I hear stories of people who knew even when they were young and being taught to hate Jews and Israel knew this was not right. This gives me hope for the future.

Jews say hello and good-bye with the word Shalom which means peace. We crave peace. We desire peace. We fight for peace (as oxymoronic as that sounds). Every day, at least 3 times a day, we pray for peace in the Amida and in every Whole Kaddish or Mourner's Kaddish (said many times throughout the prayer services daily), we say Oseh Shalom BiM'Romav, Hu Ya'aseh Shalom Aleinu -- may the One who makes peace on high make peace upon all of us. If we could have peace by giving gifts to our enemies, we would.

But, unfortunately, it's not that easy. We are dealing with people who are using Israel and Jews as a scapegoat. The leaders want their people to think that Israel and the Jews are the problem when in reality, it is their leaders who are causing all the horrors in their lives. It is their leaders who are keeping the money that the US, Europe and Israel (yes, Israel) are giving them for themselves rather than using that money to help the people. Instead of building schools and parks and hospitals and an infrastructure, they are using the money to build bombs and train terror murderers and spread lies about Israel. What a shame for the world that so many people are falling for those lies. And what a shame for the free world that they are giving in so easily to the enemies of liberty.

Happy Hanuka everyone. May the light of Hanuka spread to the hearts of our enemies and turn them into friends.

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Imagine......

B"H

Imagine:

Police in New York arming burglers and thieves in hopes that they will fight with (and kill) all the murderers and rapists on the streets.

Imagine:

Mexico starts bombing Southern Texas, killing people, including children, and putting the people in Southern Texas in fear of their lives. Mexico claims they are doing this because the US took Texas in an illegal war.

Imagine:

Young Canadian men and women strap bombs to their bodies and detonate them in the middle of crowded US places like Grand Central Station in New York, a McDonald's in Chicago, and an Atlanta Braves games. They are protesting, we are told, the US "annexation" of the states of Oregon and Washington.

How long do you think the US government would stand for these things?

So why is Israel expected to give guns to the terrorist Fatah organization? Why is Israel expected to give land (NOT, mind you, give BACK, since it never belonged to the Palestinians in the first place) to their enemies who will use the land to bomb Israel, like they are using the land formerly known as Gush Katif. Why is Israel expected to open its land up to people who are trying to kill Israel's people, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Baha'i, Hindu, Zoroastrian and just about every religion on the planet, with homicide bombs?

Israel is held to a different standard from all the other countries in the world. For some reason, the world feels the need to allow Israel's enemies to do whatever they want. They feel the need to kowtow to the Islamofascists and criticize Israel for everything Israel does (and even fabricate lies to add to the criticism while ignoring example after example of Palestinian horror).

I can't really understand this. Why do people think that if they allow the Islamofascists free reign the Islamofascists will leave them alone?

At the New England Holocaust Memorial is a poem (attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)):

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

The people of the world need to realize that just as the Islamofascists have subjugated the people of Afghanistan, Iran, and are working on subjugating the people of France, Italy, Scandinavia, Holland and many other countries in Europe, just as the people of India know, and many people in Israel and the US know, the Islamofascist will not stop with Israel! They are intent on turning the world into one gigantic Sharia government. And unless we stop them, unless we stand up to them, unless we fight them with everything we have, that's just what they are going to do.

People who value freedom and liberty need to fight and need to vote in leaders who know the importance of the fight. After 9/11, so many people knew what had to be done. Why have they forgotten in the space of 6 years? Nothing has changed except the urgency of the fight and the urgency of the victory.

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Vietnam and My Generation

B"H

I grew up in the Vietnam era. By the time I was old enough to know, most of us knew that the war in Vietnam was a huge mistake. We had seen the footage on TV. We heard about the massacres of civilians. Our side, we thought, had never massacred civilians before. We learned about all the terrible things that were happening and we protested. We protested with rallies, we protested with letters to the editor or articles, we protested with songs. And the more we protested, the more we felt that war was just not the best way to resolve any issue.

As a matter of fact, in my opinion, the Vietnam War and its predecessor, the Korean War, did a lot to damage the heroic image of the military in the US.

World War II was the classic war of Good vs. Evil. Hitler epitomized the evil in this world and, while his partners in war (Mussolini of Italy and Tojo of Japan) weren't quite as evil as he was, the US and its allies had right on their side to the extent that they were fighting this evil. And after WWII, people saw war as a way to deal with evil, a way to fight the enemies of righteousness, liberty and freedom.

Unfortunately, most of the people who are around today didn't live through WWII. Most of the information we have about war is from M*A*S*H, the very popular TV show (from a movie that came from a book) about doctors in the Korean War. Though the program took place during the Korean War, we all knew in out heart of hearts that they were really talking about the Vietnam War.

And that left us with a bad impression of war. Part of that impression is well-deserved. War, after all, is fought by young men (and women), people who have their whole lives ahead of them unless their lives are cut tragically short. War causes destruction of lives and of property leaving many people dead and many more homeless and mourning dead relatives.

But there are times when war is necessary. And, because of the bad taste Vietnam and Korea left in our collective mouths, and on our collective psyches, people have a hard time understanding this. They have a hard time understanding that, had Israel lost any of the wars it has been involved in, from the 1948 War of Independence, to the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the 6 Day War of 1967, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and on and on to the recent Lebanon War, Israel would have ceased to exist.

So Israel is condemned for defending itself. But that's not the only issue with war in the recent past. The US and Israel both need to fight to survive. We need to fight evil in every form.

But because we in the US fought an unfortunate war that lasted for over 10 years and was broadcast into our living rooms in every gory detail, people still think, as Benjamin Franklin said, that there's never been a good war or a bad peace. But I disagree with both ends of that statement. WWII was a good war. What we have now with terrorists and Islamofascists is a bad peace.

And, so, we need to see that Vietnam is not the only face of war. We need to realize that in some cases, war is the only answer. We cannot afford to allow our distaste of war to cloud our judgment. We need to be strong and show the enemies of freedom that they can't get away with threatening our lives and our way of life. We need to be the Supermen and fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way. And we need to do it now.

The Jewish Sandwich

B"H

Last night, I was one of the privileged few (I heard 15 hundred???) who was part of Brigitte Gabriel's conference call "town meeting". I missed the beginning (I was talking to my best friend), but I was on the phone listening (with the mute on the phone) for over a half hour.

Brigitte Gabriel's organization, American Congress for Truth, is trying to defeat Islamofascism in the United States and the World. For that I applaud her and the organization.

But as a Jew (in particular, an Orthodox Zionistic Jew) I have an issue. The issue is not specifically with Brigitte. We have for centuries had to deal with hatred and people wanting to destroy us and most of the time they fell into one of two categories: the Hamans of the world (represented by Purim), who wanted to destroy our bodies, and the Antiochuses of the world (represented by Hanuka), who wanted to destroy our souls.

Hitler was a Haman. Torquemada, for all the Jews whose murder he had a hand in, was an Antiochus.

But in this century we have to deal with both Haman and Antiochus. The Muslims want to kill us like Haman and the Christians, with all their "love bombing" and deceptive Messianic tactics, like Antiochus, want our souls.

This puts us in a very strange position. Politics makes strange bedfellows and for us right now we have to "to go bed", so to speak, with the Christian right, the very people who are after our souls with their financial support of Jews for Jesus, because they are the people in the US who are actually supportive of Israel. These are the people who visit Israel, who get up on their Radio and Television shows and promote Israel. These are the people who are working on fighting the Islamofascists, the ones who lauded Israel for attacking terrorists in the south of (the Syrian puppet regime of) Lebanon.

But these are also the people who are trying to convert us. These are the people who think that their quickest route to heaven is by converting Jews. These are the people who believe we will burn in hell for all eternity. And these are the people, who, in their heart of hearts, believe that when Jesus "returns" in his "second coming", those of us who don't join them in the final war of Armageddon will die.

These are the people who use the word "crusade" to describe a holy mission against the Muslims. But what they either don't know or choose to forget is that for us Jews, the Crusades were hardly a picnic. Just as we are today, we were sandwiched between the two big religious "super powers".

What neither side seems to understand (probably because both sides are so entrenched in societies where their religion holds sway to the extent that they don't need to analyze other ideas) is that there is a very good reason that Jews have historically not converted. Obviously, it's not because we lived in societies where OUR religion held sway. So maybe, just maybe, there's something more to Judaism than either "side" wants to admit. Maybe, just maybe, our way of life is so meaningful that we just don't want to live any other way. But as a Rabbi I know once said, it's like being inside a circle and all the people inside the circle understand what's great about the circle. But the people outside the circle don't understand. And they probably never will until they come into the circle, if only for a short time.

Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, doesn't claim that its adherents have a corner on truth, justice or goodness. We don't say that if you aren't Jewish you will "burn in hell for all eternity". That's because we don't have to scare people into following our Tora. The Tora has a special place for Gentiles. There are laws that non-Jews are responsible for. These are basically moral laws, like not murdering (yes, murdering -- it doesn't say in the 10 "commandments" that you shall not kill, it says you shall not MURDER), not stealing, not having inappropriate sexual relations (like adultery and incest), setting up courts, not worshiping idols, not pulling a limb off a live animal, etc.

We don't need to scare people into following our Tora because we know that following the Tora is to everyone's benefit. From my perspective, you only need to scare people into following your religion if you instinctively know it's not the truth.

So what can we do? How can we protect ourselves from the two pieces of bread in the Jewish Sandwich? I don't know. But one thing I do know -- we can't protect ourselves by giving away our land or by arming our enemies or by ignoring the missionaries. We can't protect ourselves by ignoring the Tora. And we can't protect ourselves by turning our backs on G-d.

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