The only way for Israel and America to win the War on Terror is to just give up. Not give up winning the war but give up trying to grasp the moral high ground. We can either hold the strategic high ground or we can try to clamber up on the moral high ground.

Holding the strategic high ground means that we are defending our nations and the world against a ruthless and genocidal enemy. In past times this would be considered the moral high ground as well but today holding the moral high ground means being the designated victim.

The Jews were considered to be holders of the moral high ground after the Holocaust because we were the murdered who didn't do much in the way of fighting back against our murderers. As soon as we founded the State of Israel, we were informed that we had lost the moral high ground once we had begun to fight back against the 100 million Arabs determined to kill us. By resisting our murderers, we were told, we had become just another bunch of murderers.

We are repeatedly told that the world loved America after 9/11, when the world was being treated to scenes of courageous rescue workers digging through the rubble, grimy survivors heading in lines uptown and over the bridge breathing through masks. We made great victims. But when we began fighting back, then we were informed that the world no longer loved us anymore.

As with Israel, America was sternly lectured on how we had lost the world's love by actually lifting up weapons and pursuing our killers. We had been loved as victims and despised as defenders. The truth behind this idyllic facade of pacifistic devotion is that neither America nor the Jews were ever loved, not after the Holocaust nor after 9/11. For a brief moment though it had become somewhat shameful to hate people who had gone through hell. So the hatred was pushed down a little, overlooked at least in public because it was politically incorrect to sneer openly during that time.

Once America and Israel began fighting back, they could be safely hated again. All the prejudices, vendettas, bigotries could be resurrected from the halls of European capitals to the beer gardens and pubs. Everything that had been briefly concealed during the funeral orations was unveiled again and cast at the door of Americans and Jews.

"Look how you made us hate you," they proclaimed, "we tried to love you but you just wouldn't let us. Now we hate you again and it's your fault!"

If this kind of rhetoric smacks rather obviously of the drunken husband smacking his wife around and telling her it's her fault, plenty of Americans and Israelis are deluded enough to want to play the part of the battered wife fervently apologizing for defending ourselves and having such evil things in our possession as soldiers and armies to protect ourselves with. They look forward to a bright golden future when we abandon such things and then the world, or at least our European brethren will finally love us.

Stockholm syndrome is truly a painful thing to watch. When people take on the point of view of the oppressor, they believe it makes them better, morally superior. The brainwashed wives of cult members look down on the police who liberate their children from being raped. College professors and journalists sneer at the troops who stand between them and the same fate as Daniel Pearl. They accept the hypocritical justifications of the enemy as gospel. "We have sinned and we must atone for it," they recite.

When they control the debate, people are drawn baffled into an unproductive and unfair argument with them that cannot be won. It cannot be won because its very premise is biased. Its premise assumes that whatever America or Israel to to fight terrorism is bad and whatever the terrorists do may not technically be right but it is understandable in light of their sufferings and deprivation and of American\Israeli oppression. You can no more prove otherwise to them than you can prove to any bigot that say, the Japanese aren't bad people. Bigots selectively interpret information and selectively process it. Logic is useless against bigotry and the perspective of the educated classes in America and Europe is saturated with bigotry they refuse to acknowledge.

Stockholm Syndrome spreads when these educated classes pressure the government and the military to make further concessions, use greater restraint, all in the belief that the criticism can be somehow appeased. But of course it's impossible to please someone who is prejudiced against you from the start. Israel pulls back further and further, piles on more firing regulations on soldiers, takes greater and greater care to avoid harming civilians; yet instead of making things better, they not-so mysteriously become worse.

Whatever restraint Israel or America show is exploited as a strategic weakness by the enemy. If we show that we will work hard to avoid harming civilians, then the Muslims will use civilians as human shields. If we demonstrate that we are horribly upset when children are killed, they will use children and they will stage attacks themselves in which children are killed, just to shock and horrify us and make us question our morality and purpose. In the end the weaknesses we reveal are responsible for their tactics.

Human shields would not exist if we showed that we could not be manipulated that way. Female suicide bombers would not exist if being from chivalric cultures, we did not demonstrate that we treat women with greater concern and respect than men. Children as human shields would not exist if we had shown once that it doesn't matter to us. Instead we wear our hearts on our sleeves and reveals chinks in our armor with which to hurt us. The enemy which cannot defeat us military, can defeat us psychologically by constraining our tactics and making us question ourselves, until we retreat and that has been their goal all along.

And what of the educated classes, the chattering liberals who ceaselessly demand restraint. If anything they only become more infuriated. Concessions to a liberal have the same effect as concessions to a terrorist. When Israel pulls back, the media runs more stories on the poverty and deprivation Israel leaves behind. When Israel sets up a barrier as a passive defense, they cry it is an 'Apartheid Wall' and dedicate enormous pressures to demanding that it be pulled down. When Israel simply uses checkpoints to prevent the entry of terrorists into Israel, the media does endless stories on how degrading and humiliating checkpoints are (presumably unlike checkpoints anywhere else in the world which are spectacular fun.)

In fact it seems to be passive defenses, checkpoints and the separation wall, that have inspired far more fury than Israel's bombings. The futility of believing that the public relations battle can be won or that Israel's critics are sincere in any remote way becomes obvious in that fact alone. When passive defenses are the subject of more criticism and outrage than active ones that actually kill people, it demonstrates the complete absence of any moral compass to the criticism. It is not about anything Israel does. It is about the fact that Israel exists and still isn't dead.

The media is infested, the universities are infested, the battle cannot be won on those fronts. Rather than being a gloomy dispatch this should be good news. It is liberating to give up on pleasing people who can't be pleased to focus on what counts. Winning the war as wars should be won. Actions speak louder than press releases. Strength triumphs over weakness. A people will in the end back leaders who fight an enemy and ignore the anti-war whining. It is only when the leadership fails that the anti-war propaganda begins to succeed.

Wars are not won through restraint or seizing a pacifistic moral high ground which you've been tricked into competing for, while the enemy brutally butchers your men. Wars are won by destroying the enemy through superior firepower. America and Israel have that. The only reason we're losing is because we've allowed our hands to be tied by world opinion, by the chattering of our liberal classes. We tie the hands of our soldiers behind our backs, come down on them for the least infraction and expect them to win and throw up our hands in defeat when they don't.

Wars are won by doing whatever it takes to win them. If the enemy comes up with a strategy you demolish it. If the enemy uses human shields, then you teach him that human shields will not protect him. Hundreds may die in the process but far more will be spared in the long run once the enemy realizes that hiding behind women and children will not protect his troops anymore. No Middle Eastern regime has ever been defeated by an insurgency, because no Middle Eastern regime will tolerate one. The infitada ended on the Jordanian side in a matter of days because the Jordanians did what the Israelis wouldn't, they shot to kill. Over 20 years of killing, rockets bombarding Israeli towns and thousands dead on both sides could have been spared if we had done the same thing. But we don't learn.

We can win the war and survive and gain the true moral high ground that comes from protecting our people and insuring the survival of our nations. Or we can delusionaly continue chasing the moral high ground of the liberals like wanderers lost in a desert stumbling toward an oasis that grows further away with every step. We can break free of this self-inflicted Stockholm Syndrome and survive or clasping our phony morality, perish.

In Parshas Vayigash we have the famous double meaning of Agolot, Agolot both meaning literal wagons and Agolot also serving as a reference to the Eigel Arufah, the calf that has its neck, which was the last halacha Yosef studied with his father before his abduction and sale. But this reference was not chosen merely because it was the last halacha they studied and thus served as a sign from Yosef that he was who he said he was and that he had held on to his Torah learning, it also referenced the actual situation which called for Eigel Arufah.

The brothers had taken Yosef's garment dyed in blood to assure their father that he was dead. As such they had become suspects in his murder. The Eglah Arufah is a public demonstration that they are not guilty of it. The recitation incorporates the ritual statement, Yadei Lo Shafchu Et Hadam Veinenu Lo Rainu. Our Hands have not shed this blood and our eyes have not seen it.

When Reuven argues with the other brothers against killing Yosef, he speaks similarly saying, Al Tispechu Dam...VeYad Al Taslichu Bo. Do Not Spill His Blood...And Do Not Put A Hand On Him. Yehuda repeats the theme when arguing to sell Yosef into slavery asking what profit there is in killing him and concealing his blood. The end of the Eglah Arufah ritual comes with a plea to put away the innocent blood from Israel.

Yosef's message carried to Yaakov was not merely that he was alive and had remembered his Torah but was a defense of the brothers stating that they were not guilty of his blood. Yaakov's words beforehand to the brothers had suggested that he suspected them of killing Yosef. Yaakov's relief does not come when he only knows Yosef is alive, for this makes certain that his remaining sons were guilty of a horrible crime. It is only when he sees the Agolot, Yosef's statement to his father that his brothers are not guilty, that the family is reunited. By using the vehicle of Torah to convey this message, Yosef was conveying a higher message that the brothers were not guilty because their actions were part of G-d's plan.

As the Agolot were the vehicles to carry the sons of Israel down to Egypt on the way back, on the way there they were the vehicles to carry the message that all this had been planned all along by a higher power. Only then could Yaakov begin the descent of his family to Egypt and only then could his spirit live reassured that everything that had happened was a part of a greater plan. He had not failed by losing Yosef, by the strife that tore his family or the hunger that forced their descent to Egypt. He was playing his role in G-d's plan. Thus at peace he went with his family to reunite with his beloved son understanding that all had been and would be as it was meant to be.

In his Foreign Affairs article Tony Blair, Prime Minister of England, New Dhimmiville and Craven Appeasement County and spewed the following.

"To me, the most remarkable thing about the Koran is how progressive it is. I write with great humility as a member of another faith. As an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins, much as reformers attempted to do with the Christian church centuries later. The Koran is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance.

Under its guidance, the spread of Islam and its dominance over previously Christian or pagan lands were breathtaking. Over centuries, Islam founded an empire and led the world in discovery, art, and culture. The standard-bearers of tolerance in the early Middle Ages were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian ones."

Now let's take this point by point. The Koran is progressive only in the sense that it aimed for an Islamic state over tribal ones. This is roughly in the same sense that Nazism or Communism or any greater totalitarian system is progressive.

Blair extols the 'tolerance' of the Islamic empire and describes its spread and dominance in neutral terms ignoring the fact that the spread occurred by the sword, by conquest and mass murder. The Prime Minister of what was once the British Empire has just declared his admiration for the Islamic extermination of the Christian populations of the Middle East. This is truly a new depth in Europe's headlong rush into Dhimmitude.

The leader of Europe's mightiest nation expresses his admiration for the 'breathtaking' decimation of his coreligionists. It's a position that should be taken by Mahatir or Osama Bin Laden, not by what comes down to the leader of the West on the other hemisphere. Yet this is how far liberal values have taken us that few eyebrows are raised by such celebration of ethnic cleansing. When Muslims were supposedly being ethnically cleansed in Kosovo, Europe sprang into action to murder its fellow Christians and dismantle Yugoslavia. But as usual ethnic cleansing is praiseworthy when Muslims do it.

Next Tony claims the Koran is inclusive. Inclusive to whom? The Koran treats women as temptresses damned to hell who are the property of their husbands or captors. It treats anyone who isn't a Muslim as an enemy to be killed or enslaved. It treats the world as the rightful property of Muslims. You can't get more bloody inclusive than owning the whole world.

He praises the Koran's "practical attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance." If by practical he means treating women as property, dictatorship by illiterate prophet bandit and beating your wife... that's certainly practical. It's also evil.

Tony claims the Koran abhors superstition. This is the same Islam that has Mohammed possessed by magic spells and demons and that tells Muslims not to interact with cats as they prevent angels from visiting and that women's hair sends out evil rays.

These are the standard bearers of tolerance, not in Islam which is as tolerant as a hungry shark, but in the West which tolerates the poison it drinks even as it is killing it.

Extremely bored readers of this blog might remember last tuesday's post dealing with Ynet's new non-Rabbi, Rabbi Paul Arberman brought in after their previous non-Rabbi, Rabbi Mordechai Gafni developed a little sexual abuse problem. Rabbi Paul Arberman decided the best Torah topic was to write a piece agitating for rapist Benny Sela's civil rights by comparing him to Yosef HaTzaddik.

Google being the odd piece of software it is, turns out I rank rather highly on search results for Rabbi Paul Arberman thus possibly directing convicted rapists looking for a biblically based defense, Arab terrorists looking for someone to protect their weapons smuggling tunnels and liberal Rabbis trying to learn the guitar tabs to Blowin' in the Wind to my blog.

Sometimes when you blog about the abyss, the abyss comments on your blog. I've had Rabbi Moshe Yess show up (another fellow who isn't a Rabbi but likes pretending to be one) and with Christmas over, Rabbi Paul Arberman showed up accusing me of Lashon Hara and claiming my post on him was libelous.

"Furthermore, your personal attack on me is entirely not fair – even libelous and lashon hara. You cross the line in comparing me to disgusting offenders and describing the imaginary charges from which I am preparing to defend myself... However to sling serious accusations is not okay. I ask that you voluntarily take down this article."

I always love it when left wing Jewish activists working hard to destroy Israel and the Jewish people accuse me of Lashon Hara. It's completely mind boggling that a member of an organization, Rabbis for Human Rights, which was the only Jewish organization that worked together with PLO terrorists to smear Israel at the Durban conference, which has taken the lead in pushing the "olive tree scam" to slander and imprison innocent Israelis and raise money for their own organization which was then donated to the families of suicide bombers... is actually opening its mouth to complain about being libeled.

I will quote from the IMRA story on the subject.

"Whenever Ascherman was asked about the distribution of funds collected by Rabbis for Human Rights", Rabbi Arik Ascherman became suddenly vague.

Yet when Ascherman was pressed about how the "Rabbis for Human Rights" determine which Palestinian families should get the money for the loss that they have incurred from the losses of their olive trees, Ascherman had a clear answer: The Rabbis for Human Rights rely on Palestinian contacts to figure out which families should receive their support.

Which contacts? Ascherman identified the LAW organization, the PLO legal advocacy lobby. Yet a call to LAW revealed that LAW does not deal with the question of uprooting of trees. The LAW spokesman, Arjan El Fassed explained, that while LAW is not a humanitarian organization per se. he mentioned that monies that they receive from the Rabbis for Human Rights go to the families of the "martyrs" who have been killed over the past ten months. Asked to define what he means by "martyrs", El Fassed described the various attacks in which Palestinians have died in attacks on Israelis.

In other words, the Rabbis for Human Rights have been providing funds for the families of suicide bombers."

Compared to this Benny Sela is a piker. The Rabbis for Human Rights primary work is to expand Arab control of Israel, drive Israeli farmers off their land, slander Israel in every international forum, protect smuggling tunnels used to bring weapons into Israel to murder innocent civilians. As seen above they've even contributed funds to the families of suicide bombers, which serves as incentive for terrorist attacks. The Rabbis for Human Rights and every member of their foul organization have blood on their hands, including Rabbi Paul Arberman.

With headlines like "Ethiopian Forces Press Offensive Into Somalia" and "US Urges End To Fighting" and this bizarre entry from the Los Angeles Times, "Ethiopian offensive in Somalia Could Mirror Iraq War", it's clear the media has gotten bored with supporting the terrorists in Iraq and is busy supporting the terrorists in Somalia.

Ethiopian forces were already in Somalia in order to support the Somali government and were responding to an attack on them by Islamic militia, but the media's headlines continue to imply that Ethiopia invaded Somalia and is acting aggressively, which is the typical way the media reports any conflict between Muslim terrorists and anyone else. The terrorists are always the victims and those defending against them always the aggressors, regardless of the real facts of the case.

Barely does a war begin which the Al Queda affiliated Islamic thugs began then the media desperately carries water for them comparing the fighting to the War in Iraq which they compared to the War in Vietnam, because if there's one thing the media thrives on it's simplistic analogies. The fighting in an African country is somehow just like the fighting in the middle east which is just like the fighting in Asia which is just like the fighting on Mars which is just like Conan's quest for Tamerlane's Gold. Liberals begin by conflating all wars between a Western and Non-Western country as imperialistic conflicts. The absurdity then reaches the point where Ethiopia fighting off a Muslim invasion in Africa becomes treated as the imperialistic conquerer. Talk about liberal ignorance and arrogance.

Then we have the Bush Administration doing the usual State Department thing and ordering a halt to the conflict, which when involving Muslim terrorists means a halt to defending yourself while the terrorists go on doing exactly what they were doing all along.

"The State Department says the United States is concerned by the deteriorating security situation in Somalia, and by the humanitarian impact of the fighting."

Yes, as opposed to the humanitarian situation that occurred when Islamofascist thugs took over major portions of the country and began executing people for watching televised soccer matches. Compared to that the fighting can only improve the humanitarian situation by driving the terrorists out. The reality that diplomats can't seem to grasp anymore is that in some situations it takes fighting to improve the humanitarian situation.

But instead the media is happy to let the Islamists play their usual game reporting the supposed case of a woman wounded at the airport during the Ethiopian bombing raid. How many women were murdered by the Islamic militias is a matter left unasked of course.

Meanwhile this is what it's really about.

"Militia leaders have expressed a desire to form a greater eastern African Islamist state, incorporating Islamic communities from Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya."

An Islamic African superstate that will serve as a base for terrorism and conquest of African nations. That's what the real stakes are and what the media isn't reporting on.

"John Berger rallies artists for cultural boycott of Israel," is the Guardian headline in much the same tone as the Guardian might report rallying artists to fight world famine or AIDS. Which is sensible enough since for Eurolefties Israel is in the same category as world hunger or AIDS, something very disgusting and awful they'd like to see blotted out.

What follows is Berger's call by artists, musicians and various useless cultural wastes of culture to boycott Israel in order to "force a change in Israel's policies." Signed are 85 names, of which only ten are listed on the off chance anyone has heard of them, and most haven't. There will no doubt be wailing and weeping in the cafes of Haifa at the prospect of being deprived of the films of Ken Loach, the writings of Arundhati Roy and the music of Brian Eno.

If you have no idea who any of these people are, congratulations you haven't missed much. They're mainly the sorts of people who would join Al Queda if Al Queda had a "pissy artistes impatiently awaiting their canapes" division.

In an introduction to a book of the aforementioned Arundhati Roy's essays, John Berger wrote, "the nineteen hijackers gave their lives on September 11 as did three hundred and fifty-three Manhattan firemen."

After the London bombings John Berger wrote, "The calm of Londoners, who suffered the outrage of the explosions and the ordeal of waiting for news from dear ones who may have been there impressed the watching world, as did the calm of Madrid's population the previous year. Such calm could hopefully encourage clear and, above all, precise thinking. In Spain, circumstances allowed it to do so, and one of the first acts of the subsequently elected government was to withdraw Spanish troops from the war in Iraq."

John Berger himself will give up his 50 shekels in royalties in hopes of bullying Israel with his own variation of the same message he delivered to New Yorkers and Londoners, your murderers are the innocent, stay calm and surrender and all will be well. Unfortunately for John to whom all Israelis and likely Jews are a single vague splotch resembling something between a praying Hassid and Ariel Sharon, the very small segment of Israeli society that would actually care about being deprived of the great insights of John Berger, Arundhati Roy and Eduardo Galeano are precisely the ones who are already as determined for Israel to surrender to its murderers as John Berger himself.

Little aware of the futility of his wasted effort, Berger will go on doing what the John Bergers of the cultural elite have always done, walk alongside the victims and scold and shush them to stop complaining, stop resisting, acknowledge the moral superiority of their murderers and bare their necks for the knife.

Now considering that it is the Palestinians who are currently killing each other (and inconsiderately upstaging Jimmy Carter's 'Blame Israel' book tour) perhaps Berger and Co. should deny the residents of Ramallah access to his great body of work. Without Berger's ranting essays about his childhood, American militarism and how hard it is to get a good pudding in France, the Palestinian Arab conflict will quickly lack fuel for its fire. Co-signer Director Sophie Fiennes (thoroughly obscure sister of Ralph Fiennes) will leave the battling hordes of Hamas without her copy of 'The Pervert's Guide to Cinema' no doubt sapping them of their will to resist. Then Brian Eno will move in denying Fatah gunmen access to his masterpiece album, "Ambient 1/Music for Airports." Without his collection of ambient music as a soundtrack to bore them to tears it is unlikely that Fatah will be able to fight on. And that will end the fighting right there.

If only it could be so easy.

- The future Prime Minister of Israel is covered in lice on the lower decks of a prison boat headed for Siberia. The criminal gangs control most of the boat, killing the political prisoners, taking their clothes and shoes. A dying Jewish Communist who was the former assistant editor of Pravda asks him to sing him a song he remembers before he dies. The Lashuv song. Lashuv El Eretz Avoteinu. To Return to the Land of Our Fathers. The Hatikvah.

- In a Soviet Gulag when men were dying of the forced labor and the cold, when food and warm clothing were more precious than gold and hope was gone, a prisoner sat translating a copy of Leon Uris' Exodus. It is a mediocre book and unknown to him others in the USSR are engaged in the same task. When the translation is done it will be smuggled out again and circulated among those Russian Jews desperate for their homeland. Their true homeland.

- It is 1944 and a young Jewish girl is crossing the border into Hungary. Before she crosses over she passes on a poem and then she is gone. She had come out of Israel off a Kibbutz to warn Hungarian Jews about the Nazi death camps, to help her mother and to join up with the resistance. Instead she is captured by the SS, tortured and executed. Before her death she goes on carving poems into the walls of her cell. The words of the poem she passed on at the border were once known by every Israeli schoolchild. They take the form of a blessing.

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart

The story of Israel, the story of the Jewish people, is the story of the struggle between those who fought and died to keep that flame burning and the betrayers of the flame. It is the same battle we have been fighting for thousands of years. We are still fighting it today until we have at long last come face to face with the enemy in our own ranks that truly represents the nullification of the flame.

Our enemies today in the ranks of Kadima, among varieties of Judaism so liberalized it has thrown out everything but a handful of customs, among Jews to assimilated their only connection to Judaism is a pronounced distaste are not motivated by a fire of their own, by a burning passion for anything; but by a moral, religious and nationalistic vacuum. We are no longer fighting the left. We are not combating an ideology. We are fighting arrogant men and women devoid of ideology who have no beliefs beyond their own careers and wallets. What they do is not in the name of Marxism or Socialism, Fascism or any known ideology. They represent the corrupt breakdown of all values to the point of anarchy where nothing exists anymore but criminal conspiracies with no further end than power and greed and no thought or concern for the consequences and the future.

The dream is dying. The dream a hundred thousand matches kindled into a great flame is in danger of going out. There is no longer a leadership. There is no longer one way. Name any national movement and it has splintered into many fragments. From the students of Jabotinsky to Religious Zionism from the followers of Kahane to the Haredi parties to the Labor party, the Kibbutz movement and even Shinui itself. All that remains are many quarreling factions who often as not fight as each other more vigorously than they do anyone else. Everything has fragmented into chaos. No one leads. Everyone contends. The flame that burned in those three I named above and in so many others. The flame is going out and the Betrayers of the Flame are winning.

Today Israel and the Jewish people face a choice. It is not between left and right or between religious and irreligious, Sefardi and Ashkenazi or any of the ethnic, political and social strains tearing apart Israel. It is between the darkness and the flame. It is a choice between lighting the match that burns in us and holding it with others to form the flame that is the Jewish nation or to go off apart into the darkness of apathy, self-interest and greed that Kadima and the Betrayers of the Flame represent.

The movements that formed Israel, even the Labor Zionists, held a dream for which any sacrifice was worthwhile. Right or wrong they pursued that dream. The forces that have taken over Israel now are the anti-thesis of all forms of Zionism, of all forms of belief. They represent cynical greed and a lust for power. They feed Israelis disillusionment, convince them that only fools and fanatics like the settlers sacrifice for Zionism and that smart men are only out for themselves, out to grab as much as they can, to live the high life at anyone else's expense. Olmert and Peres and the rest of the followers are the perfect patron saints for such a poisoned worldview. They are men who climbed to power despite their incompetence, their corruption and utter lack of merits. They are professional careerists who always land on their feet and care for no one but themselves.

The men and women who struggled and sacrificed to build Israel left behind comfortable lives for the hardships of Israel. The men and women who have taken over now shovel their accomplishments into the rubbish heap while proclaiming with their actions and attitudes that the only worthwhile goal is a comfortable life. They lead the way in selling out their country, in selling out their friends and colleagues, selling out their parties and government positions; and encourage the rest of the country to follow their example leading the people into the lowest imaginable depths. They go to each man and say to him that the match that burns must be put out, the flame dampened and replaced with the dark abyss of complete unbelief in anything at all.

They have set up gods of gold and silver in foreign bank accounts and when they pray it is not to Jerusalem, but to Brussels, Washington D.C. and Rome. They are the new Yerovams cutting apart the nation not in the name of any belief or cause but in the name of their own power. In that name they destroyed Gush Katif. In that name they have waged war on religion in Israel. In that name they plan to destroy Yehuda and Shomron. And they will go on to destroy every shred of belief, every ideology from the left to the right, every part of Judaism, root and branch, and ground under every man and woman who still believe in something, in anything at all. Because belief is a candle and their way requires an utter darkness in which none can see or judge the evils that they do.

With each step on the road they have destroyed from within, undermined and corrupted the major political parties, the major nationalistic and religious movements. They have no opposition and they rule now. With each person they make complicit in their actions, with each policeman or soldier who plays a part in forcing Jews out of their home, with each voter who votes for a corrupt party because he believes it makes no difference anyway; they spread their darkness into more souls. They corrupt more and more Israelis, they deaden their hearts and sink low their souls into a well of apathy, disillusionment and despair. Their greatest victory is when people stop caring. When they believe in nothing and only look for personal gain.

Their war against the settlers is not only a means of destroying the strongest source of belief and Zionism remaining in the State, but to deaden the hearts of the Israeli public to the abuse of Jews and to make the military and the public complicit in their crimes so that they will have to excuse the crimes, to excuse themselves.

We stand now on the brink of an annihilation few can comprehend. Not merely the atom of Iran or the knives and bullets of the Palestinians. Those will come in time and do their work when all the flames are dimmed and the people of Israel are no more than a mob and every man's hand is raised against his neighbor and none stand together and all die together yet alone. While the former rulers of Kadima eat at expensive restaurants in Brussels and Rome, the blood of the people they have led into darkness will cover the streets of Haifa and Tel Aviv. When the ethos of Kadima fully rules Israel, when the people of Israel know no emotions beyond hatred, greed and fear, then they will have become beasts as the nations which surround them; and just as a man who descends to the level of an animal can no longer command it, they too will no longer be able to overcome them in war and they will be slaughtered.

As once was so will be again unless the matches are held together to form a flame. Unless a national movement forms driven by men who believe in something who are prepared not just to sacrifice for it but to stand together for a greater cause. Who care nothing for power or position. Who cannot be bought off with ministries and government cars. Who cannot be silenced with threats and warnings of civil war. There are many still who have the match lit in them but they lack leadership and direction and the Betrayers of the Flame, the enemy that rules now in Zion, picks them off one by one.

If we continue to focus on the pointless divisions that generate the infighting we will fail. If we continue to fight one another so that a handful of leaders and activists can retain their positions we will fail. If any further proof of that is needed the fall of second Bais Hamikdash is ample evidence of where we are headed. There is no virtue in being right while the Bais burns. There is only virtue in preserving it.

The greatest challenge we face now is not Kadima, it is ourselves. It is not giving in to the darkness, to the disillusionment and despair that has been fed to us over the last decade. It is not merely to reflexively and reactively oppose Kadima but to take the initiative back and to take the country back from a corrupt leadership of ministers, rabbanim and activists. We must recognize both that we can win and that we can lose. To believe that we can't win or that we can't lose is to give in to different kinds of apathy and inaction. Both lead to darkness, to an extinguishing of the flame.

As in Chanukah if we can relight the sacred flame we will win. If we cannot then the exile awaits.

Dear friends shalom,

The travesty of justice in Chaya's case has finally come to an end.

On 22 Sivan 5765 {29.06.05} Chaya decided to lend moral support to her friends who went to protest Ariel Sharon's plan to expel Jews. What follows is a direct quote from the official indictment filed against Chaya. She is accused of standing on a sidewalk while her friends proceeded to block traffic. After her friends were arrested a policewoman asked Chaya to leave the area. Chaya refused, saying that she wasn't doing anything illegal, that she had every right to stand on "every inch of the Land of Israel". The policewoman, unimpressed, warned Chaya that if she didn't leave immediately she would be arrested. To which Chaya replied:" So, shut up and arrest me then". That's it. This is the case that the State of Israel has against Chaya.

And, because Chaya participated in a similar demonstration once before, the State prosecutor asked the juvenile court to remand Chaya into police custody UNTIL THE END OF LEGAL PROCEEDINGS AGAINST HER - a process that can last for MONTHS!! What is truly unbelievable is than this unprecedented request was granted. Judge Dalya Korn wrote a 10-page dissertation about the danger to society inherent in Chaya's disregard towards the law passed in the Knesset (Sharon's expulsion law). That, combined with the fact that Chaya participated in a similar "unlawful" demonstration before, has made her into a REAL PUBLIC DANGER, thus justifying her imprisonment until the end of the legal process.

To understand the severity of the above decision one must know that, as a rule, an average ADULT criminal - be he a thief, rapist, or a drug dealer - is never kept in jail until the end of proceedings. Even if he is a repeat offender, and even if he repeats the same crime while he's awaiting his trial!! The worst they usually get slapped with is a house arrest. And juvenile offenders are treated even more leniently.

The above holds true for all criminals, except for those whose crimes are "IDEOLOGICALLY BASED". And, according to the State prosecutor's words, herein lies Chaya's true danger to the society. You heard it right. What is even more outrageous is that the judge agreed!! The most outrageous part of her decision was her agreement with the prosecution that Chaya represents a "danger to the society because of her ideological motivation". This is coming from a judge who had absolutely no problems releasing not only common criminals, but also even terrorists with blood on their hands!! Over the past few months alone the Israeli government released hundreds of these beasts, and even though appeals for filed against this release, Judge Procaccia upheld the decision of the government. They were allowed to go back home. Procaccia is sure THEY won't be dangerous to our society anymore.

What is it like for a 14 year old to be in jail? Well, for the first week - including Shabbat - Chaya was kept in solitary confinement. She was not allowed to shower or call home. We could not send her clean clothes. The food she was given was not on the level of kashrut she could eat. For the first two weeks she was not allowed to have a fan in her cell - that's in the stifling, muggy Ramle summer, with temperatures reaching the high 90's. She is bored to tears and immobilized by the heat. Once a week she has to go through the degrading procedure of her cell being searched, with male jailers rummaging through all her personal belongings. She is not allowed out of her cell in the evenings, which means she has to eat her Friday night meal in the darkness of her cell. As of now we are not allowed to bring her any food from the outside, which means she gets almost no fruits or vegetables. We are only permitted to visit her for a half hour every week. This is how this young girl is being forced to spend her summer vacation - and I could go on and on.

Sunday, December 3rd, the trial came to an end. Being pretty certain that the judge would convict Chaya on at least one of four counts in the indictment, I prepared some remarks regarding our case, which I was going to deliver in court during the closing arguments. At that point the parents are given the opportunity to plead for reduction of the punishment which the child faces.

What follows is the translation of these remarks from Hebrew: " I hoped for justice, but instead behold iniquity; for righteousness, but instead behold oppression" (Isaiah 5:7) Thus does Isaiah the Prophet describes the judicial system of his time. Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun.

Clearly, Chaya was not the one standing trial in our case. It was rather the State of Israel in general, and its judicial system in particular, who had to prove themselves innocent. The test was simple and clear: Will the judicial system remain true to those very values which it itself proclaimed as sacred; or will it willingly become a tool and an aide to political persecution of the opponents of disengagement.

To my great dismay the system failed miserably in this test. It brutally trod upon all those enlightened values it itself sanctified: civil rights of its citizens, the rights of children, freedom to protest, and most important - equality before law. Our case is a classic example of outright judicial discrimination, based on the political needs of the government.

The justice system made a complete mockery of its own judicial precedents. My 14-year-old daughter was arrested until the end of judicial proceedings against her. She spent 40 days in jail, under arrest for the very same "crimes" that the Israeli Left commits almost daily. They are never treated in the way my daughter was treated. Here is just one example of this outrageous discrimination.

On July 10th, 2006 Ms. Dana Olmert - none other than the daughter of our Prime Minister - together with a number of Left wing activists organized a demonstration against the IDF in front of the Chief of Staff Halutz's home. They carried signs saying, " Halutz is a murderer - intifada will prevail!" and shouted out to the residents:" Beware - a murderer lives next to you". Why didn't any of the more than 30 policemen at the scene arrest Dana for insulting a public official and supporting terror?

And what about the case of two Left wing radicals - Netta Golan and Shelly Nativ? { See attachment #2} In April 2001, at the height of the Arab riots, Netta and Shelly decided to protest against the uprooting of Arab trees near the village of Dir Istyah. Hundreds of Arab attacks against Jewish motorists were carried out from this orchard. That fact didn't bother Netta and her friends, who chained themselves to the trees to prevent the IDF from uprooting them. Netta and Shelly were arrested for "preventing a police officer from carrying out his duties".

They were prosecuted and convicted of this crime (which is more serious than Chaya's "insulting a police officer") by judge Maimon-Shaashua in a Kfar Saba court. The judge sent them to be interviewed by a probation officer (just as Chaya was) to determine their punishment. The probation officer recommended being very lenient with them, because " their actions were motivated by a positive humanitarian ideology". Judge Maimon-Shaashua was so touched by this that she overturned her own previous decision to convict them and acquitted them because they were motivated by positive humanitarian ideology. Maybe you can explain to me why protesting the uprooting of Arab trees is more positive and humanitarian than protesting the uprooting of Jews from the Land of Israel?!

You said in your decision to convict Chaya that" the criminal conviction causes a permanent stain on the accused, a stain that will follow him wherever he goes". Sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes, a criminal conviction causes a permanent moral stain on the judicial system itself. This was the case with judicial system in Soviet Russia when it used criminal law to persecute the refuseniks. And what about such famous criminals as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King? They too were convicted when they protested against unjust laws. It took decades for the American justice system to recognize its own injustice towards these people, and the moral stain that their criminal prosecution left on the system. Today, these "criminals" are considered national heroes and all of America celebrates Martin Luther King day.

After going through this whole mockery of justice we have come to realize that those teenage girls who refused to recognize your moral right to judge them were indeed absolutely correct. We cannot hope to get justice in your courts."

Chaya was acquitted, as I expected from the very beginning, of two of the more serious charges in her indictment - rioting and interfering with police work. None of the prosecutions' witnesses - police officers present at the scene - made any claims in their testimony that Chaya rioted. It will be interesting to find out how and why the prosecutor's office decided to indict Chaya for this crime, without having any facts at all to base this accusation on. As for interfering with police work, the only one who made this accusation was the policewoman who claimed Chaya insulted her. During her testimony, however, she could not explain or demonstrate in any way exactly how Chaya interfered with her police work. The judge, therefore, had no choice but to acquit Chaya of that charge.

I was fairly certain that the judge would convict Chaya on the charge of insulting the policewoman. It was the officer's word against Chaya's, and even though the officer was forced to admit a number of times that she didn't remember many of the details of the event, the judge accepted her version of the events over Chaya's.

So, if everything was so clear to us from the start, why did we go through with this farce of a trial? The truth is, I had a very faint glimmer of hope that the judge would have enough courage to throw this case out of court. Our case was so clearly political and discriminatory that any judge with an ounce of guts should have thrown it out of court. The guts, unfortunately, where nowhere to be found.

And so, Chaya was convicted. The punishment? 500 shekels fine. Even though Chaya had already spent 40 days in jail before her trial even began. Even though, according to their own rules, she should not have spent even 40 seconds there. So why the fine? It is clear to me that the judge wanted to add insult to injury. Throughout the duration of our trial none of the judges involved made even the smallest effort to pretend that they were interested in justice. To the contrary. Their message was crystal clear: We are at war with you, we want to break you and your child, and none of the rules we created for the justice system apply to you. What I saw was a vicious, brutal determination to break us, to show us our place - at the back of the proverbial bus.

Many of you will find the above rather disturbing. Please consider that I arrived at these conclusions based on my experience with no less than 6 judges, a year-and-a-half spent in courts, and statements made regarding our case by numerous lawyers and law professors (including those from the Left).

What can we do to protect ourselves? We must organize and unite behind our own civil rights organization - Honenu. Honenu is the only way to stand up and fight these types of abuses. Honenu was there for us every step of the way. Just as it is always there for hundreds of other Jews, young and old, who are persecuted by the injustice system for being Right. Please get in touch with me if you are interested in getting involved. ydf@013.net.il

May we live to see "Restore our judges as in former times...”

Chanukah sameakh,
Moshe Belogorodsky

Yediot Aharonot via its Ynet website just never seems to learn. Why a tabloid with all the moral values of a diseased bum searching through the gutter for a used crack vial would want to do Divrei Torah in the first place is incomprehensible, but what they manage to do instead is find people to write Anti-Divrei Torah in the classic Abraham Cahan style.

Let's call them Anti-Rabbis. (Note, persons is this article will be referred to as Rabbis purely for purposes of identification rather not because they are legitimately Rabbis or have any authentic religious values or affiliations. They are not legitimate Rabbis or members of any authentic clergy)

Their usual formula seems to be to find a young liberal 'Anti-Rabbi.' Their previous catch was 'Rabbi' Mordechai Gafni who was into sexual acts with minors. Many of the same liberal bloggers who rant endlessly about cases in the Orthodox community worked hard to defend Gafni until they just ran out of steam.

So Ynet replaced Rabbi Mordechai Gafni with (drum roll) Rabbi Paul Arberman. Rabbi Paul Arberman hasn't been convicted of molesting anyone yet, but he's already readying his defense apparently. This week's Anti-Dvar Torah compares Yosef with rapist Benny Sela. "The unfair treatment of Joseph in prison seems to mirror the allegations of police mistreatment of accused rapist Benny Sela."

Of course Rabbi Paul Arberman is likely to end up in court for a different reason as he is a member of Rabbis for Human Rights, what amounts to the Rabbinical branch of the International Solidarity Movement whose main causes are slandering Israel in every forum and working with Arabs to launch attacks on Israeli farmers.

Lest anyone think this Anti-Dvar Torah was awful, they can scroll back two years ago when Rabbi Paul Arberman's deep thoughts on the same parsha were entitled, 'Joseph the Gay Tzaddik.'

For a sample of the deep thoughts in the article he believes Joseph is gay because he wore a colorful coat, talks about dreams and refuses to sleep with Potiphar's wife.

"The guy is second in command of Egypt, and women are throwing themselves at him. There's no reason to refuse because they are single and he is ALLOWED to marry as many as he wants. So Solomon married a thousand, but Joseph doesn't even take a peek!" says Rabbi Paul Arberman.

Is it really any surprise that liberals like this are on the side of the Arab terrorists and the rapists? It makes perfect sense in his mind, doesn't it. No one can possibly be moral. Anyone who appears to be moral is really hiding some dark and dirty secret. Joseph couldn't possibly be a moral man who stuck to his principles, this is only proof that he didn't sleep with a thousand women because he was gay.

The flip side of denying morality is of course affirming the immoral. We can't possibly hold it against Benny Sela that he did rape women, because after all liberal Rabbis like Rabbi Paul Arberman don't really believe that anyone out there doesn't want to rape women. Some like Benny Sela or Rabbi Mordechai Gafni just make the mistake of actually acting on it...something which demands our sympathy, not so much for the victims as the perpetrators.

This has been the ideology behind their support of Arab terrorists all along. In their minds it is a given that Israel cannot be moral because it attempts to be moral, which as with Joseph, only further establishes its immorality. The Arab terrorists by contrast who act in flagrantly evil ways must be sympathized with because their very evil makes them human.

In the warped moral universe of liberals, evil humanizes, good dehumanizes. A rapist, a murderer is someone they can relate to. A Joseph or a Begin is someone they cannot, until they pull him down to their own filthy level. Heroism is an indictment, criminality a redemption. Yosef the Tzaddik becomes a filter through which their own vileness seeps through.

A final entertaining note for anyone who may be misled into taking the titles of people like Rabbi Arik Ascherman or Rabbi Paul Arberman seriously, these people are not Rabbis, they are not legitimately part of Judaism and they are thoroughly and utterly ignorant. I will quote one last time from the sewer that is Rabbi Paul Arberman's article.

"I put on my detective kippah. I just wanted the facts. My first question: Did Joseph have a wife? As I quickly opened my pocket TaNaCh to check, I remembered that he did have two children -- Ephrayim and Menasseh."

Yup, the phony Rabbi couldn't even remember that Yosef was married or even had kids without looking it up.

Back during the Tsunami I spoke out against providing aid to Indonesia. People condemned me for my lack of humanity while I pointed out that the money would get diverted to a corrupt Islamic government and would fail to aid the general population. The following story is a good demonstration of what kind of evil a lot of that money would go to perpetrating.

"WHEN people around the world sent millions of pounds to help the stricken Indonesian province of Aceh after the tsunami of 2004, few could have imagined that their money would end up subsidising the lashing of women in public.

But militant Islamists have since imposed sharia law in Aceh and have cornered Indonesian government funds to organise a moral vigilante force that harasses women and stages frequent displays of humiliation and state-sanctioned violence.

International aid workers and Indonesian women’s organisations are now expressing dismay that the flow of foreign cash for reconstruction has allowed the government to spend scarce money on a new bureaucracy and religious police to enforce puritan laws, such as the compulsory wearing of headscarves.

Some say there are more “sharia police” than regular police on the local government payroll and that many of them are aggressive young men.

“Who are these sharia police?” demanded Nurjannah Ismail, a lecturer at Aceh’s Ar-Raniri University. “They are men who, most of the time, are trying to send the message that their position is higher than women.”

In one town, Lhokseumawe, the authorities are even planning to impose a curfew on women — a move that social workers warn will force tsunami widows to quit night-time jobs as food sellers or waitresses and could drive them into prostitution.

None of that daunts the enthusiasts for sharia, who gather in droves whenever there is an opportunity to glory in its enforcement.

The scene is always the same, and it has been enacted at least 140 times in squares and market places in front of mosques, from the towering minarets of Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, to humble village places of worship.

The transgressor can be a man accused of gambling or drinking alcohol. But if it is a woman guilty of wearing “improper” clothing or being caught in proximity to a man, there is a particular ritual to the punishment.

She is dressed in white robes and veiled. Policemen escort her up on to a stage erected before a jeering crowd, which, witnesses say, is usually almost exclusively male.

Forced to kneel, the woman waits while a masked man ascends the platform. He is carrying a cane with a curved handle designed to give the inflictor of God’s punishment a better grip. From the loudspeakers, a man’s voice sonorously recites the appropriate religious chastisement. Then he begins to count. With each number, the cane descends with a vicious lash.

According to witnesses, male onlookers often roar in delight and hurl pious imprecations at the victims, working themselves up to a pitch of excitement.

In one collective punishment last summer, four women denounced for gambling were given between six and 10 lashes. One passed out as she was dragged off the stage.

For international donors, who gave generously to end the nightmare of the tsunami, the next few months will pose hard choices. “Nobody intended our aid to subsidise this,” said one United Nations official."

Except that from Africa to Asia 'This' is exactly what is subsidizes. The price for getting aid through in totalitarian regimes involves bribes, kickbacks and payoffs to the authorities and in many cases letting them control the money outright. For every dollar that actually reaches someone in need, 99 dollars go to administrative expenses and to the waste, graft, bribery and kickbacks of dealing with the civil authorities.

When the money goes to the civil authorities it is used to build up the power of the bureaucracy and the state. Aid money buys guns, bullets and child soldiers in Africa. It buys smuggled luxury goods, goes to terrorists and funds Islamofascism in Muslim states.

After natural disasters, a Muslim country becomes a playground for Islamists who proclaim that it was caused by the wrath of Allah and the solution is the enforcement of Islamic practices. Despite the billions that were poured into Indonesia's disaster relief, the outcome was more hatred for America and Westerners; not less.

Palestinian internal violence, gangs, tribal feuds, honor killings, is commonplace but tends to go unreported and unheard in the West. The killing of three boys by Hamas gunmen as part of an attempt to assassinate their father, who is a Fatah intelligence officer, is a glaring exception because Fatah still controls the bulk of the media access. That disparity alone should be a demonstration to what extent the press reporting from Gaza and the West Bank are captive to the demands of their terrorist hosts.

Bush and many politicians and pundits boasted of the democratic elections in 'Palestine' treating it as a meaningful sign of civic and political progress. Of course this sort of cluelessness is typical and as Hamas and Fatah have been busy demonstrating since then, just because an election is Democratic doesn't mean that the resulting government or its opposition will be. Africa and Latin America provide ample examples of that. A democratic election is merely a means for a faction to get to power. What they do once in power is defined by their principles and morals, by the way they do things every day, not just on election day.

Hamas and Fatah are terrorist organizations. When the elections were done, they began playing brinkmanship games hovering on the verge of civil war but with neither side quite ready to step over the line yet. Knowing only how to be terrorists, Fatah and Hamas 'activists' went around shooting at each other and trying to assassinate each other's top officials, seize control of the security forces and win the propaganda war at home. The Palestinian Arab inability to compromise with Israel is not merely limited to Israel, but it is equally an inability to compromise with their own.

The irony of course is that Israel's own targeted assassinations for the most part went after 'ticking time bomb' terrorists who were on the verge of carrying out attacks. The Hamas government has no such restraint. Israeli troops used tear gas and rubber bullets against stone throwing protesters, forbidden to open fire unless their lives were in danger. Hamas security forces by contrast responded to the usual Palestinian stone throwing protest after the killing of the three boys by opening fire into the crowd. Fatah leaders predictably claimed it was only a few children throwing rocks.

All told Israel was a good deal more restrained and respectful of civil rights, than the democratically elected Hamas government, Jimmy Carter praises so highly. Unsurprisingly when terrorists get into power, they rarely care very much for restraint or civil rights and the tactics they use to govern, are the tactics of terrorists, kill, kill and kill.

Unable to change or grow, Hamas and Fatah are simply rerunning their days fighting Israel, casting the other in the 'Israel' role, thus proving once again that if Israel didn't exist, the arabs would have had to invent it. They can't do anything else like build an actual country and make it work. They can however keep killing each other over land that they've managed to make worthless in a short amount of time and over a population whose wealthiest and brightest are leaving as fast as they can with a remaining citizenry that just can't get away anywhere else.

There was never any country called Palestine. There was never any Palestinian people. Nor was there ever meant to be one by the Arab powers, until they lost a war and the myth of a Palestinian nationality was born. The bearers of that nationality were terrorists and their objective of a state was not based on any dream of building a nation, but of destroying Israel. They can't function as a civic body because they aren't one. If you turn over Los Angeles to the Crips and Bloods, they won't begin running city services. They'll begin fighting amongst themselves and use whatever authority they're given to shake down and demand protection money. That's been the history of the Palestinian state until now.

While Western politicians, activists and aid workers continue to try and maintain the fiction of a Palestinian state, inside are two gangs in uniforms tearing away at each other and occasionally Israel, while Israel and the West maintains what they have left in the way of infrastructure. Palestine thus becomes the new Iraq or the old Iraq as the case may be. When the first suicide bombing takes place in a mosque, the media will finally figure it out too.

Lacking the social and political tools for compromise and with a local branch of Al Queda operating there, the hellhole referred to as Palestine has all the elements needed to turn into a proper zone, exactly the direction it's going in. But if Al Queda's strategy in Iraq successfully destroyed America's hopes for building democracy there and is getting American soldiers out, in Gaza it's doing nothing beyond melting down any possible functioning Palestinian state and thus keeping Israel exactly where it is.

In the beginning after the flood there was Abraham. As a child in a Godless world, Avraham looked around for G-d. He looked up at the sky and saw the moon and wondered if that was god. Then the sun came up and he wondered if that was god. And realizing that neither was god, he came to find the true G-d.

Avraham had been a shepherd and like most shepherds he had to live a nomadic life moving from place to place, so did his son Yitzchak after him and his son Yaakov after him and his adult sons.

Yitzchak had emerged miraculously at a time when even Avraham himself believed that Yishmael, the stronger aggressive son, would inherit. Yitzchak like Avraham too believed that the stronger of his two sons would inherit, Esav, the hunter and warrior. With Yosef the pattern repeated itself, the beloved younger son, was hated by his older brothers and this time the pattern seemed to have been nearly broken. Yosef was abducted and sold into slavery in a distant land and all seemed lost.

Before this Yosef had related two dreams he had had. Let us turn to those dreams for a moment. His first dream was of sheaves of wheat bowing to him. On the simple level these represented his brothers and the coming support he would provide them in grain but there is a deeper context. From Avraham's time, the family of the patriarchs had not been city dwellers but nomadic shepherds. With the curse of Adam the ground had been cursed and though the curse had diminished, cities had been built, but on to Jacob's family they continued being shepherds. But a sheepherding people can never be properly settled, it takes farming to claim land and become settled in it.

Yosef's first dream showed that he would not merely dominate the brothers or support them, but that he would pave the way for their eventual entry into Israel, the land where the family of Jacob would finally become settled, would become farmers who would bring the produce of their fields to the Beit Hamikdash, truly becoming a people with a land. This was a fundamental transformation of their way of life that would have threatened the brothers, as it threatened another ten men, the ten meraglim, sent to spy out the land of Israel, who did their best to prevent it from coming about. There too it would be Yehoshua ben Nun of Ephraim of Yosef who would oppose them.

Yosef's second dream showed the sun and moon bowing to him. Avraham had at first wondered if the sun and moon were deities before realizing they were subject to the true deity. The deeper meaning of Yosef's dream showed that even the sun and moon would be subservient to the forces that would redeem his descendants, which would indeed come about when his descendant Yehoshua would command them to stand in place, in order to win a battle part of the conquest of Israel. In its many forms idolatry was often a worship of the sun god or the moon, relics of which continue to remain even in our language today and in world religions, G-d's action was to demonstrate that idolatry had no power in halting the redemption.

Avraham had begun as a powerless man subject to the whim of kings and ended by defeating the most powerful kings of the region and bringing the rest to their knees. Yaakov had been the rejected younger brother and had emerged as the head of a mighty clan that was able to fight for its rights and slay an entire city. Yosef had been a despised slave, a foreigner and a prisoner and wound up ruling the mightiest empire of the time. Tamar had been the wife of unworthy men born of a Caananite wife, forced to pose as a harlot and facing death and had wound up becoming the mother of a dynasty of kings.

All this would be a lesson to the generations of Jews suffering under Egyptian slavery how quickly what seems like the inevitability of fate and destiny changes. Men of the ancient world believed themselves bound by natural forces, the sun and moon, the rivers and the seas and all these would be overturned. Nothing in the world is inevitable but G-d's will would be the message that would resound from the redemption of the Jews.

This is not merely a matter of history. In a decade the Jews went from despised victims murdered by the millions while the world watched to one of the boldest respected armies and nations in the world. What was true for Yaakov and Yosef and Tamar is true for us as well through the ages to the present day and beyond. We may be slaves one day and freemen the next. Dust one day and the next as high as the stars.

Now let's be clear about it.

Any facility that fails to put up a Christmas tree is declaring war on Christmas. Any store that fails to use "Merry Christmas" is declaring war on Christmas. Christian organizations that sue or boycott either of the above are completely in the right.

By contrast a Rabbi who asked the airport to put up a Menorah alongside NOT instead of the Christmas trees is in the wrong. Why? Because apparently fighting to put up a Christmas tree makes you a hero in the Judeo-Christian culture war. Asking to put up a Menorah makes you the villain. So much for the Judeo part of our 'Judeo-Christian Heritage.'

Rather than put up a Menorah the airport announced it was taking down the trees so as not to be exclusive (an utterly backward phrasing because the whole point of their action was to be exclusive) and the comments vituperatively blame Rabbi Bogomilski for the whole thing warning that America as we know it is about to fall apart.

In other words a War on Christmas is wrong but a War on Chanukah is just dandy. There's an inalienable right by Christian spiritual leaders to demand Christmas trees go up whether on public or private property, but a Jewish spiritual leader who asks for a Menorah is not only in the wrong but downright wicked.

The usual comeback to this is that America is a Christian country and the vast majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, which bluntly reveals the charade of a 'Judeo-Christian Heritage.' It's all Christian with no Jews wanted. Neither presumably are those Christians who shun Christmas trees or Christmas, like Jehovah's Witnesses or Lowell Ponte over at Newsmax who wrote that he was happy to see a symbol of paganism removed from the airport.

To be fair Bill O'Reilly who was one of the top promoters of the War on Christmas interviewed the Rabbi and pointed out reasonably enough that it was the airport that chose to eliminate the trees, rather than add one menorah. But plenty of conservative Christian columnists took a nastier line.

"Once again, in a country touted as a “Christian Nation” where a majority of the people identify themselves as Christians and where tradition certainly attests to the veracity of this claim, an individual has forced the majority to bend to his will," Doug Bower wrote at the American Chronicle.

Let's see, America was never set up as an exclusively Christian nation. Christmas tree celebrations were not part of American Christian traditions until they were imported by German immigrants and Christmas only became a national holiday after the civil war during the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. That's a good century later.

But see how when an evangelical Christian sues over school prayer or displaying the cross, they're fighting for religion but when a Rabbi, who's the representative of a sizable movement, does so, he's an individual forcing the majority to bend to his will.

"I just wonder what would happen if a Christian went into an exclusively Jewish neighborhood..."Bower goes on to wonder. Somehow now the Seattle airport has become an exclusively Christian neighborhood.

Considering that Seattle has a roughly 7 percent Jewish population, a sizable portion of the city is Jewish. In a survey only 37 percent of the city listed any religious affiliation. Of those only about 30 percent identified themselves with any Christian faith. Yet that third of Seattle is the majority and the other 7 percent have no right to have one menorah corresponding to the many Christmas trees there.

But with the magic of rhetoric people like Bower transmogrify multi-ethnic and multi-religious American cities into a solid Christian block and stuff the Deist founders of America into that same block who they presume, despite all statements to the contrary, would have supported their religious and political agendas.

The irony is that a Menorah is a biblical symbol present in Christianity. The Book of the Maccabees is considered by many Christians to be part of the Christian Bible. The story of Hannah and her Seven Sons was retold by Christians as a lesson in martyrdom for one's faith. For Christians to become offended by a menorah is senseless, unless they're also offended by the G-d who commanded Moshe and Aaron to construct and light one in the first place.

The story of Chanukah is a story about resisting paganism and fighting for one's faith. It should be the kind of idea that those Americans who are concerned about the erosion of religious values should embrace, rather than scapegoat and demonize.

Al Gore's enviro-preachamentary An Inconvenient truth has been a huge hit with the self-righteous environmentalist crowd. Gore has positioned himself as a prophet in an expensive suit traveling by jet plane and limo around the country to lecture us unwitting slobs on how we need to conserve energy, reduce pollution and reduce consumption to go green (around the gills)

If you go to An Inconvenient Truth's website, you'll encounter a list of tips for conserving energy use and recycling and a prominent ad for the DVD. Click on the ad and it will take you to the Amazon.com page where you'll be offered a chance to buy a DVD. That's right, buy a physical DVD. A plastic box wrapped in packaging containing a physical DVD disc.

Belaboring the obvious? Well every year 45 million tons of CD's and DVD's will be dumped into landfills (this isn't even counting the packaging just the discs alone.) Al Gore's movies are likely to end up in a whole lot of landfills, yet Paramount Home Video which is distributing the movie doesn't provide any information on recycling the DVD's or their packaging which are hardly made of biodegradable materials.

Then we come to the factories that make the DVD's and the packaging. Nope they sure don't grow on trees. Instead they involve factories and lots and lots of chemicals and energy use.

Then there's the delivery. DVD's don't fly by themselves to your Blockbuster or ship themselves to your home. They require planes, trucks, trains. Big polluting engines that tow them to where they need to be.

The same people who wallow endlessly in their self-righteousness will be shelling out money for a physical product whose manufacture, distribution and disposal involve the utilization of large amounts of pollution, energy, resource consumption and waste.

Now I might just be belaboring the obvious, if there wasn't a stunningly simple alternative. Go digital. Instead of selling DVD's, sell digital downloads. Broadband connections are now widespread in American homes, even video game consoles like the X-Box 360 are integrating purchasing and downloading videos online.

Unlike fueling cars, heating homes or manufacturing goods, the alternative to all the polluting and wasteful activity described above is a snap. All a digital download consumes is the amount of energy it takes to power servers and home computers. A truly green solution. Yet instead Gore is pushing physical DVD purchases through Amazon.

So why hasn't Gore gone digital? The answer is as always cash. The other kind of green Al Gore loves even more than the environmentally sound kind of green.

Gore could limit himself purely to digital DVD download sales but that would lose him customers who don't have that capability. More importantly he'd lose out on the impulse buyers and rentals of a Blockbuster or your local video store. On top of all that Paramount Home Video would oppose digital downloads because they make piracy too easy. Gore could distribute the movie through a non-profit group but then he'd lose out on the distributing muscle of a major studio.

Why isn't An Inconvenient Truth going digitally green, because of the bottom line. Same as every corporate polluter and consumer, the money comes first. Al Gore and the Horsemen of the Environmental Apocalypse won't shut up about conserving, reducing and cleaning up but when given an easy way to cut the amount of waste and pollution he's responsible for, Al chose to pollute.

Yet even that is still only the tip of the iceberg. Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth first into theaters and only months later began selling the DVD's. This is a common aspect of Hollywood done as part of a deal with theater owners to maximize profits. Yet if Al Gore had really wanted to inform people and cut some waste, he could have sold DVD's of the movie in theaters, as Mark Cuban had tried to do. Yet Gore chose to follow common Hollywood practices to pad the bottom line. For that matter releasing the movie as a digital download on the internet would have gotten word out far more efficiently and bypassed theaters and the kind of wasteful consumption that takes place when hundreds of thousands of people drive cars to movie theaters, consume overpriced junk food just to see Al Gore's giant head on the screen warning them about the dangers of wasteful consumption. Et Tu Al.

Purchasers of Gore's movie might like to pretend that they're somehow superior to the hoi polloi who wastefully shop and consume, but when they take home a plastic DVD box with a physical DVD inside that had to be manufactured, shipped, distributed, transported, packaged and sold, they're engaging in the same kind of waste. And their waste had an easy alternative. The reason for all that waste was greed. And that's the real Inconvenient Truth.


Postscript:

"Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year, the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent."

A Marxist in her 20's, a Republican in her 40's, she was the first woman to serve as US Ambassador to the UN and one of a handful of courageous outspoken ambassadors who stood up for America and the free world against the forces of tyranny and evil that had come to dominate the United Nations. She was a strong voice against the Soviet backed dictatorships, against liberals who blamed American first and in fact she coined the phrase 'Blame America First' to describe that very mindset.

She was a strong voice for Israel's survival and she remained that long after she had left the UN writing numerous articles and columns, delivering speeches, speaking the truth and warning that a Palestinian state would be a disaster. "When we accept a terrorist state as legitimate, we strengthen terrorist groups," she said. And she was right.

Well into her late 70's she continued making trips around the world, attending conferences and trying to make her voice heard in a world bent on self-destruction. Her time at the UN had all too acutely shown her the real face behind diplomacy and her time there was ably chronicled in "The Kirkpatrick Mission: Diplomacy Without Apology" available on the right hand side.

Looking back now I will quote now from her speech to the Republican Convention in 1984. Like Ed Koch and Senator Zell Miller did in 2004, in 1984 Kirkpatrick broke ranks with her fellow Democrats to speak at the convention.


"That's the way Democratic presidents and presidential candidates used to talk about America. These were the men who developed NATO, who developed the Marshall Plan, who devised the Alliance for Progress. They were not afraid to be resolute nor ashamed to speak of America as a great nation. They didn't doubt that we must be strong enough to protect ourselves and to help others.

They didn't imagine that America should depend for its very survival on the promises of its adversaries. They happily assumed the responsibilities of freedom. I am not alone in noticing that the San Francisco Democrats took a very different approach.

Today, foreign policy is central to the security, to the freedom, to the prosperity, even to the survival of the United States. And our strength, for which we make many sacrifices, is essential to the independence and freedom of our allies and our friends.

The Carter administration's unilateral "restraint" in developing and deploying weapon systems was accompanied by an unprecedented Soviet buildup, military and political.

The Soviets, working on the margins and through the loopholes of SALT I, developed missiles of stunning speed and accuracy and targeted the cities of our friends in Europe. They produced weapons capable of wiping out our land-based missiles. And then, feeling strong, the Soviet leaders moved with boldness and skill to exploit their new advantages.

The American people were shocked by these events. We were greatly surprised to learn of our diminished economic and military strength. We were demoralized by the treatment of our hostages in Iran. And we were outraged by harsh attacks on the United States in the United Nations. As a result, we lost confidence in ourselves and in our government. Jimmy Carter looked for an explanation for all these problems and thought he found it in the American people. But the people knew better. It wasn't malaise we suffered from; it was Jimmy Carter - and Walter Mondale.

They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do - they didn't blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians - they blamed the United States instead.

But then, somehow, they always blame America first.

When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.

But then, they always blame America first.

The American people know better.

The American people know that it's dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause. They understand just as the distinguished French writer, Jean Francois Revel, understands the dangers of endless self- criticism and self-denigration. He wrote: "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, one of the top Rabbanim in the Sanhedrin who had served in the paratroopers unit that liberated the Kotel, was arrested for conducting an independent investigation into the infamous detention orders evicting men from their homes and arresting those who return to them. After Rabbi Ariel issued a Psak saying that an officer who gives such an order may not be called to Aliyah, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel began to be hounded by the police and was finally arrested and brought to the Russian Compound and then warned not to discuss what he had been questioned about.

The charge levered against him by the tools of Olmert's corrupt government was the usual one used to silence and intimidate and imprison political opponents of the Kadima Regime, "Suspicion of Incitement."

Sanhedrin spokesman Rabbi Hillel Weiss who had also been questioned stated, "It is part of a war on religion that is being waged by the government to expel faithful Jews and destroy their homes."

The video shows Rabbi Yisrael Ariel at Amona. In the beginning he is protected by an Israeli soldier from Border Police thugs, later by a medic. The cries you hear throughout are, "Al Tigu Ba'Rav', 'Don't Touch the Rav.' Later he finds himself in the way of the advancing police line.

The campaign against religious Jews began with Sharon's attack on the Religious Ministry, slashing social services and the Disengagement and assault on the National Religious.

Olmert is continuing that campaign aided by much of the press which is happy enough to bombard the public with phony sex scandals involving the President and Defense Minister, a phony sex maniac on the loose, even as Olmert is now moving to comply with Saudi directives delivered by way of Baker's new Hamilton Commission and planning massive withdrawals... withdrawals that will require breaking the settlers, religious Jews and any remaining population that is still Zionist and Nationalist, rather than being willing to sell out their country and themselves in hopes of hanging on to the good life.

The war goes on and it's only one of many.

Tony Blair, the Arab world and much of the world's supply of talking heads are telling us that Israel (or getting rid of it) is the key to peace and stability in the middle-east.

Let's go along with the John Lennon song for a moment as sung to the tune of Nazis and Islamists and Leftists everywhere. Imagine there is no Israel ...now what?

The Sunnis and Shiites are still fighting. Theirs is a dispute going back over a thousand years. Israel had nothing to do with it and eliminating Israel from the board won't resolve it.

America is still in Iraq. Saddam invaded Kuwait to capture Kuwait, not because of Israel. America went to war with Saddam because of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia not Israel (much as a lot of the usual anti-israel cretins try to pretend otherwise.) America's second war with Iraq stemmed from that first unresolved war...which was itself unresolved because America feared unleashing Iran and the Shiites.

Iran's hostility to America stems from America's support for the Shah of Iran and the collision between Fundamentalist Islam and American culture. That hostility would still be in place, whether or not Israel existed. America, if you remember, is the Great Satan. Israel is only the Little Satan. Remove the Little Satan and Iran isn't going to like the Great Satan any better.

Our current War on Terror goes back to 9/11 which goes back to Al Queda which goes back to Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. Russia's invasion of Afghanistan had absolutely nothing to do with Israel, it did however serve as the battleground for training generations of Al Queda terrorists...which would have happened the same exact way whether or not Israel had ever existed.

Al Queda itself, as well as much of the current Islamic global threat stems from Wahhabi Islamic Fundamentalism, an ideology long predating the modern State of Israel, whose key goal is ensuring the purity of Islamic doctrine and the Muslim Brotherhood whose goal was to ensure true Muslim rule over Arab and Muslim nations and eventually the world. Both of these ideologies stem not from Israel but from a reaction to the spread of Western culture into their home countries and the resulting Islamic backlash. Israel remains a small item on that agenda tied up with leftover Nazi ideology about Jews and Freemasons. Their rage does not originate from Israel but from globalism and colonialism.

Imagine there is no Israel but the sources and current problems of the Muslim world and the threat it poses cannot and will not be resolved by pressuring Israel.

I usually respect Ralph Peters point of view on military affairs, I quoted verbatim the great series of articles he did reporting from Israel during the Lebanon war. He does however come with some agendas and lately he's been on the Anti-Islamophobia bandwagon. And that's not a good bandwagon to be on.

His article, 'The Eurabia Myth' is an attempt to attack the prediction of an Islamic takeover of Europe. He doesn't argue that the Muslims don't want to do it, because obviously they do. What Peters argues is that the Europeans won't allow them based on centuries ancient history like the Spanish expulsion of the Moors. It's not exactly credible Realpolitik analysis.

Three pages of arguments come down to the oft repeated premise that since Europeans have frequently committed atrocities throughout their history, that they're not about to allow themselves to be taken over; all evidence to the contrary. The problem of course is that they are allowing themselves to be taken over. Arguing from history is no substitute for arguing from reality. Peters makes no attempt to address the rising Muslim birth rate versus the falling European one, rising Muslim immigration, rising tide of conversions to Islam and the continued obeisances by European officials towards Muslims.

It's all very well to point to the expulsion of the Moors, but it's a good deal more relevant to point to the daily riots in France and Belgium and the takeover of entire cities in England. Peters pins a lot of his argument on European antisemitism against Jews but antisemitism towards Jews is inherently a unique example. Antisemitism endures now simultaneously with the transformation into a EU Vichy state at the beck and call of the Caliphate. Europeans continue hating Jews while kowtowing to Muslims. They can maintain their legacy of Jew hatred while abandoning their legacy of protecting their own countries.

"When Europeans feel sufficiently provoked and threatened - a few serious terrorist attacks could do it - Europe's Muslims will be lucky just to be deported," Peters says.

Yet the bombings in England and Spain have produced no such response, instead they've produced the opposite reaction of enabling those politicians who preach appeasement to strengthen their political ascendancy. France has seen decades of Muslim terrorism and yet Muslims are better positioned in France than ever.

What is sufficient provocation anyway? Are the outrageous rape statistics sufficient provocation? Obviously not. What about Imams who proclaim that Western Women are unattended meat. Doesn't seem to have done it either. What about nationwide riots? Worldwide boycotts? Still nothing.

Peters Europe is apparently some sort of slow patient fellow who repeatedly takes beating after beating and then when the last straw is bent, leaps up out of his cafe, gripping his briefcase filled with union regulations and begins chasing the armed Lebanese gangsters down the street screaming bloody murder.

"Far from enjoying the prospect of taking over Europe by having babies, Europe's Muslims are living on borrowed time. When a third of French voters have demonstrated their willingness to vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front - a party that makes the Ku Klux Klan seem like Human Rights Watch - all predictions of Europe going gently into that good night are surreal."

Again Peters researches proves rather poor since LePen's National Front is high on antisemitism but rather low on actually doing anything about Muslims. Its latest incarnation is actually surprisingly pro-muslim. Further it's actually the KKK that makes the National Front look like Human Rights Watch, since the KKK has a long history of terrorism and assaults. The National Front is little more than another wannabe bunch of European fascists torn between their adoration of Muslim brutality and attempts to appeal to the working class by being anti-immigration, a cause that doesn't move them nearly as much as Antisemitism, in which they're allies with the Muslims.

"I have no difficulty imagining a scenario in which U.S. Navy ships are at anchor and U.S. Marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe's Muslims."

The far more likely scenario involves U.S. Navy ships rescuing the last remaining French, Swedes and Belgians to then be taken to refugee camps in the midwest while the new Islamic regimes transform the Louvre into a Mosque. Peters may want to take a better look at history and ask himself the simple question, how many Islamic lands have become Christian vs how many Christian lands have become Islamicised.

Hint: Byzantine Empire

"AND we're lucky. The United States attracts the quality. American Muslims have a higher income level than our national average. We hear about the handful of rabble-rousers, but more of our fellow Americans who happen to be Muslims are doctors, professors and entrepreneurs."

Not to mention pilots and engineers. Most of the Muslim terrorists we've dealt with domestically had a college education and were professionals in one field or another. That made them more dangerous, not less. Peters seems to be buying into the silly liberal idea here that it's the economically disadvantaged or the working class who are the terrorists. The reality is your Muslim college student is far more likely to be a terrorist than your Muslim taxi driver.

"And the American dream is still alive and well, thanks: Even the newest taxi driver stumbling over his English grammar knows he can truly become an American. But European Muslims can't become French or Dutch or Italian or German. Even if they qualify for a passport, they remain second-class citizens. On a good day. And they're supposed to take over the continent that's exported more death than any other?"

Amusingly enough Peters wallows deeper in the same liberal European fallacy that is precisely the reason that Europe is being taken over by Muslims. He presumes that the problem is that Muslims aren't being allowed to become Europeans, he doesn't seem to grasp that the problem is that Muslims DON'T WANT to become Europeans or Americans for that matter. If integration was the problem, then why has America had major terrorist attacks on its soil with virtually no support or cooperation from its domestic Muslims, except to bewail their own victimization at airports.

Muslims want to be part of Europe and America on their terms not on ours, and their terms are the supremacy of Islam. They have no interest in integrating into secular European states or into America where women have equal rights, gays have their own parades and every practice and idea abhorrent to Islam is a virtue.

By shifting the onus onto the Europeans for lack of integration, Peters falls for the old multicultural victimization fallacy that allows the Muslims to slap Europe around like a dog while the Europeans try to figure out how they can appease the Muslims better. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so damned tragic.

"The jobless and hopeless kids in the suburbs may burn a couple of cars, but we'll always have Paris."

Where have we heard that before? Right. "The Germans may be on the other side of the border but all is lights and gaiety in Paris. What's to worry about?"

Granted it's actually tens of thousands of cars burned (slightly more than a couple) and people have been burned with them as well. Granted the 'kids' burning them are members of well organized gangs. Granted there are thousands of police casualties as a result of the riots over just the last two years.

But we'll always have Paris, right?

The population of France is 10 percent Muslim. 37 percent of all immigrants in France live in Paris and its suburbs. We'll always have Paris? Not for long.