Israel

Saturday morning when the terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas began, the world changed.  There is the world before Simchat Torah 5784 and the world after.  And there is the transition zone which, sadly, is where we are now.

We are not only on the brink of World War 3, but we have people cheering for annihilation of not only Israel but of all the Jews.  Pro-Palestinian protestors around the globe, including right here in the USA, shout “Kill the Jews”, “Gas the Jews”, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” (meaning that the entire State of Israel, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be destroyed). 

The history and facts of Israel from times before Christ to the present, do not support or justify the claims by Palestine against Israel.  An objective recitation of this history is hard, but not impossible, to find these days and I wish that more people would study it.  But, even assuming that the claims against Israel were true, even if one chooses to see Palestinians as some sort of victims of Israel, and even if they choose to mount pro-Palestinian protests, it does not justify supporting the heinous, violent, and inhuman acts committed by the Hamas terrorists.

We have totally lost our moral compass.   The bleeding hearts, who want to excuse every offense and create offenses where none exist, still cannot bring themselves to distinguish a terrorist from someone with an alleged grievance.  To do so would disrupt their utopian false truth; they cannot see that their utopic vision is not and never will be a reality.  And yet their hearts are cold as stone towards the atrocities committed against Jews.  That, in my book, is clear antisemitism.

The Current Dysfunction

How did we come to this point?  The answer to that has many layers.  We can start with the present which includes the current administration’s completely dysfunctional international policies and actions. America has gone from a strong international voice for, and beacon of, democracy to a weak and dysfunctional shadow of its former self.

The dysfunction of this administration includes:

• The Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco that allowed terrorists to supply themselves with American weapons.
• A failure to even attempt to understand the Russian view on Ukraine, while pushing Putin into a position where he was left with little choice but to attack Ukraine.
• Supporting not only the military actions in Ukraine but also the corrupt use of American funds to sustain the entire Ukraine economy.
• Failing to support the Abraham Accords and not only allowing but tacitly encouraging the rise in anti-Semitic behavior here and around the world.  
• Providing $6 billion to Iran, knowing that Iran is a supporter of the terrorist acts against Israel.

The press has not been silent, but it carefully edits its words to downplay the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah (also attacking Israel from Lebanon) are terrorist organizations:

• Rather than use the word terrorist they call them simply militant groups.
• The defensive acts of Israel are equated with the unprovoked terrorism of Hamas.
• Israel is blamed for collateral damage of their defensive strikes, but there is little notice that the terrorists intentionally targeted innocents, children, and babies and further that the death they imposed upon those innocents was prolonged with pain and horrendous suffering.
• The media mostly fails to report that while Israel attempts to avoid civilian and other collateral damage, Hamas actually uses civilians and especially children as shields as they place their military sites directly under or above places such as hospitals and schools.

You cannot equate the aggressive and horrendous actions of Hamas with the self-defensive acts of Israel!  Yet too many, whether with or without knowledge of the actual facts, do.

Beyond the Surface – Humanity, Purpose, and Amalek

The misguided and dysfunctional political and media actions only touch the surface.  We live in a country where the people have a voice.  Yet, that voice remains either silent or simply a thoughtless mouthpiece for the buzz words, phrases, and memes of the Left.  How did the American people lose not only their voices but their minds?

An Israeli soldier currently fighting in Gaza referred to his enemy as Amalek.   In the Hebrew Bible, Amalek is both a nation and a nomadic tribe seen to be the arch-rival of ancient Israel.   While the Amalekite nation no longer exists, Jewish wisdom holds that the memory of the devious enemy Amalek lives on in in all forms of antisemitism carried out against Jewish people.

According to Midrash (Hebrew Biblical interpretation) Amalek represents the belief in chance, of the haphazard dictates of “fate” and “destiny,” which oppose the Jewish belief in Divine providence. Amalek’s philosophy negates the concept that there is a purpose to humanity or to creation itself, again the antithesis of Jewish philosophy.   Amalek’s chief weapon is to foment doubt among the faithful.

Regardless of whether one believes in or has even read Judeo-Christian scripture and teachings, I think this description of Amalek provides a wonderful way to characterize and personify much of what we see around us and the causes of this void and valueless place in which the world finds itself today.  

Let’s just take the phrase, “Amalek’s philosophy negates the concept that there is a purpose to humanity.”  All around us we see that human life has become or is becoming meaningless, with no value.  It has become disposable.  Why is it so easy to kill another human being over such simple things as who gets a parking spot?  It is easy if one believes that humanity is meaningless.  And if one’s life is meaningless, why would several lives suddenly have meaning?  Mass shootings, if life is meaningless, then are themselves meaningless; they are easy to carry out if one need feel no guilt about killing what one sees as a purposeless nothing nor compassion for meaningless corpses.  It becomes easy to be only concerned with satisfying one’s own urges at any one moment if anyone who might be hurt by that satisfaction is nothing but meaningless and valueless.

That sentence continues “or [no purpose] to creation itself.”  If there is no purpose to creation, no need to find meaning in something greater than oneself, then, again, there is no need to even have a moral compass let alone consider whether performance of some heinous act might violate it.  Indeed, “Amalek’s chief weapon is to foment doubt among the faithful.” 

The influence of Amalek is seen well beyond Israel and the Jewish faith.  All around us we see people leaving their faith, people who have a huge void within themselves because they have nothing greater than themselves to believe in.  This loss in faith, this loss in human purpose is killing us all.

Will the world awake; will we save ourselves?

What has happened to us as a nation and a world?  We have listened to the voice of Amalek who has led us to doubt who and what we are.  But it is not just our belief in something greater than ourselves that is doubted and lost.  With a loss in faith we have lost all the values that come with that faith.  Our whole culture now leads us to doubt and deny everything that has made us the great nation that we are.   We are led to believe that we can and do take the place of God; that we need nothing but ourselves.  And with that seems to come the belief that we are entitled to whatever we desire regardless of whom that may hurt.

Those who see this as the Utopia they dream of do not want it questioned. They take command over what we learn.  Schools no longer teach children to use their minds to think and critically assess an issue.  We erase history, ignoring not only the sage wisdom that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” but also the fact that “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” 

We evolve as a society and civilization in part because we learn and grow from the past and in part because we value our purpose as one individual within humanity at large.  And when one has a purpose, one generally sees that purpose as a part of a greater good.  As such, one values human life beyond one’s own selfish being. 

Today’s leaders leave much to be desired.  But we the people also leave much to be desired.  We have stopped thinking.  We have stopped caring.  We have stopped believing.  We are being led by false but devious dreams created by Amalek and many leaders along with their followers whom he represents.  We have lost our purpose and our soul. 

There is time.  The terrorist attacks on Israel have shaken the world as have the reactions to those attacks.  The question is:  Are they enough to shake us all awake from the nihilistic nightmare future that the devious tactics of Amalek have put before us?

Joshua fighting Amalek, A print from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations in the possession of Revd. Philip De Vere at St. George’s Court, Kidderminster, England.  CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Thoughts Provoked by Prince Philip’s Funeral

 

As I was watching Prince Philip’s funeral yesterday, I was struck by what a beautiful display it was of Tradition, Faith, and Family.  These are the bedrock that holds us together, that makes us whom we are, that gives us strength, especially in troubling times.  These exemplify core principles that allow society as well as mankind to grow.  And these foundations for a healthy society are rapidly disappearing if not gone in America.

America used to be a land of Tradition, Faith, and Family.  Now those values are derided by the Left.  What the Left does not understand is that with those values comes a tolerance and a respect for others, as well as a stable society able to address its shortcomings and better itself.  Those principles do not hold a society static but give it the power to grow.

               Tradition

Tradition is defined as “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way.”  But the goal of the Left seems to be to completely cleanse America of the customs and beliefs that built her and made her great.  (Note I do not say perfect, but the beauty of America is that she aspired to a perfection and addressed the problems that stood in the way of that aspiration.) 

But now we have Cancel Culture which, in collaboration with identity politics, is a horribly destructive process.  The goal of the Left seems to be to rid the world of any trace of America and her traditions.  The Left has designated “winners” and “losers” in their identity labels.  If one is not a member of a favored identity group, they are being trained to deny and apologize for their heritage – for their customs and beliefs.  We have heard that White people are evil as are Christians or political conservatives. 

Just yesterday Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters told protesters in Minnesota to "get more confrontational" if Derek Chauvin isn't convicted of murdering George Floyd. (We’ll save the discussion of how this is a direct threat on that trial’s jurors as well as our concept of a fair judicial system with verdicts based on facts, not emotion or political agenda.)

This threat came on the heels of CNN’s Chris Cuomo saying “White people’s kids need to start getting killed” so there can be police reform.  And a Mercer Theology Professor writing and publishing a prayer in which she asks God to “please help me to hate White people.”

Yes, Whites, along with other unfavored identity groups would happily all be cancelled if not killed by true Left believers.  This while they select other, favored groups, to receive benefits denied to Whites simply because of the color of their skin.  Haven’t we been here before?  Racism is racism and, while this country has had a history of racism, it has also, because of its customs and beliefs, not to mention its form of government, been able to address those problems and move forward without turning around and destroying some other identity group.

               Faith

Faith is defined as “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.”  Generally, this means one’s God or religion or more generally a belief in something greater than oneself.  It is based on “spiritual apprehension rather than proof.”  But now it seems that the predominant focus is not on others or something beyond oneself, but rather simply on the self and making that self feel good.

We have self-love, self-care.  We have access to all sorts of material pleasures, all designed to make the self feel good.  Church attendance is at an all time low.  Respect for others (something every legitimate religion teaches) is becoming non-existent:  that is probably most reflected in the ease with which so many take the life of another as both a way to solve problems and a way to make oneself feel good. 

The Left’s new religion of “Wokeness” of which a part is their proclamation that this is some sort of humanitarian effort, is just the opposite.  Take one trip to the border to see the “humanitarian” efforts of young children so crowded (into what once when far less crowded were called cages) that they cannot even leave their “beds” (which are nothing more than a cover as they sleep on the floor).  How humanitarian is it when the Left’s border policies encourage child traffickers, coyotes whose greed often gets the border crossers they are “escorting” killed, or the huge increase in drugs which will end up destroying the lives of so many?

With the dismissal of Faith comes the end of true humanitarianism.  With the dismissal of true Faith comes the religion of self.  And we see that flourishing now as the real motivation of many in power as well as many of the Left acolytes is simply their own pleasure and power.  Faith gives a person, a family, and a country strength.  Its absence puts that country on the road to destruction.

               Family

Family is both “a social group made up of parents and their children” and “a group of people who come from the same ancestor.”  The family is the basis of all civilization and the family group, because it shares ancestors and customs, will include the elements of Tradition and Faith as those have developed within that family history. 

The Family – parents and children – is the basis for broader groups.  Families form tribes or villages.  Villages form towns.  Towns form cities.  Cities form countries.  What each of these groups will have in common is a similarity of Traditions, customs, and Faith.  They will not be identical, but they will be tolerant and find a way to live with one another to achieve goals that are common to their individual customs and values.

That is what America used to be.  But that is being destroyed as the Cancel Culture Left and its hate for seemingly everything that is, also is attacking the family.  Children are no longer a part of a family’s history and future; rather, they are simply something of convenience to be disposed of if they are inconvenient.  That includes not only early abortion, but late term and even post-birth abortion.  The current administration has just made fetal tissue approved for far more scientific studies.  That fetal tissue in large part comes from aborted children; demand for that (and thus for necessary abortions to provide it) will now increase.  And we’ve already mentioned child trafficking, and here we will include child pornography as more evidence that children are for many nothing more than a convenient furtherance of their own self pleasure

But the Family is also under attack in other ways.  Somewhere between 40 to 50 percent of marriages end in divorce in this country.   I suggest that is because of the loss of Faith and Tradition that make the sanctity of marriage less meaningful and condone ending that union when it becomes inconvenient or interferes with one’s personal pleasures.  And there is no question that the children of destroyed marriages suffer in so many ways.  Again, what is happening to the Family in this country is the result of a culture of self-love as not just the dominant but indeed the only important value.

               In Conclusion

Holding Tradition, Faith, and Family dear does not mean that a society is static or bound by intolerances of the past.  Great Britain, with it strong traditions, is not the same country that it has always been; it continually evolves yet maintains its Tradition, Faith, and Family.  Those foundations give a society the strength to evolve.

Those who care about this country should take a minute to reflect upon what we are losing as we allow the Woke Cancel Culture to ride roughshod over our Tradition, Faith, and Family.  The road we are on does not have a pretty ending, and, when we get there we will have lost something beautiful.