Sunday, March 23, 2014

Amman and Jerusalem - 1968

  
 “Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings  from 1960 – 1990 that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works.
“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:
Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life.

“Beyond Words” now can be bought at Amazon.com.  On the search line, type…  Beyond Words Kahane.

Beyond Words
Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,
1960-1990  
Volume 1

Amman and Jerusalem
November 22, 1968

There is great agitation and indignation within the United Nations today.  It all centers around demands for return by Israel of the land won from Jordan last year.  What land?  The area that is commonly known as the West Bank of the Jordan.  There is really more than a little irony in this demand.  Indeed, it approaches the heights of chutzpah.

It is not only that a state which attempted to destroy another one and lost has the gall to demand terms more properly suited to a victor.  It is not even the fact that the land Jordan demands was never legally and rightfully annexed by it in the first place.  It is really the fact that the state that calls itself Jordan is an entity that is illegal, per se.

As the great holy war swung into its full gear, the little king of the little Kingdom called Jordan began to rain his shells into Jewish Jerusalem.  His troops crossed the armistice line and seized territory in the no-man’s land in the city.  His words and acts were thrown into the battle to wipe out Israel and decimate its inhabitants.

Alas, Allah was unkind to Russia and the king’s legion, and uniforms flung aside, aircraft burning, shoes cast away – the Jordanians fled east.  From the plunderer came forth plunder and the Israelis swept to the Jordan to put an end to the insanity of a border that, in one place, was only fifteen miles from the Arab devil to the blue Mediterranean Sea.

The land that was taken, however, was not “Jordanian.”  It was part of pre-1948 Palestine; it was part or Eretz Yisroel, it was Jewish soil from the time of Abraham.

Here was the Old City of Jerusalem where Abraham brought his son Isaac for the Akeda; here was the city where David and his dynasty ruled; here was the sacred Temple Mount with its Western Wall waiting to be redeemed.

Here was Bethlehem were Rachel wept for her children on the way to Efrat.  Here was Hebron where the Patriarchs impatiently lay in anticipation of a speedy redemption.  Here was Jericho where the walls crashed down to herald the inheritance of the Holy Land by the Egyptian exodees.  Here was Judea and Samaria and all the places and sites that have become familiar to a Jewish and non-Jewish Biblical world.

Here was Jewish Eretz Yisroel, a land that had been reluctantly left outside the borders of a Jewish state in 1948 as the Jews of Palestine sorrowfully agreed to temporarily accept partition of their land in their desperate need of some land to house the displaced of Europe and the oppressed of greater Arabia.

But the agreement was conditional and the Arabs, predictably, relieved the Jewish state of any need to adhere to that condition.  The Arabs in psychopathic consistency refused any idea of compromise and rejected partition.  Their armies rushed in to battle the yahud, and the U.N. sat in an impotence that was destined to become its favorite pose.

It was Jewish blood that won and secured a Jewish state, and the plan that was rejected by the Arabs was buried, unmourned and unlamented.  And the West Bank of the Jordan? Under the U.N. plan it was to be given to an Arab Palestine state; under the Arab plan it to be given to an Arab Palestine state; under no circumstances did anyone foresee a usurper Jordan annexing it.

And yet, that is exactly what happened.  Possessed of a British-trained and run Arab Legion, King Abdullah proved to be the only foe that Israel could not overcome.  His army seized the West Bank and Old Jerusalem and decided that Israel would not have it and neither would an Arab Palestine be created.  From now on, it was to be part of Jordan.

No one accept this.  The U.N. denied the legality of the move; the Israelis refused to recognize it and the Arab states themselves fumed at the annexation.

On December 13, 1948, Egypt’s King Farouk served notice that he did not recognize Jordan’s right to the West Bank.  The Arab League threatened expulsion of Jordan from the body (Abdullah yawned and welcomed the move).  Faced with a fait accompli, the Arab League never did recognize the grab but adopted a resolution on May 13, 1949 “to treat the Arab part of Palestine annexed by Jordan as a trust in its hands until the Palestine case is fully solved in the interests of its inhabitants.”

So much for the Jordanian claim to the West Bank.  The land it claims is Jewish land, sorrowfully given up in return for a peace and friendship the Arabs never gave.  Their rejection of the latter doomed the former, and the land returned to tis true owners.

What is more important, however, is the need to examine the very basis of the travesty that calls itself Jordan.  In itself it is an illegality, a travesty of justice, a robbery of Jewish possessions.

There never was Jordan until perfidious Albion – the British Colonial Ministry – decided to invent one, and the story is one that more should know about.

When the Balfour Declaration backed the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, there was never any country that was known as Jordan.  The historic boundaries of ancient Israel included the east bank of the Jordan, and Balfour himself made this clear in a memorandum dated August 11, 1919:

 “Palestine should extend into the lands lying east of the Jordan?”

What happened?

A desert chieftain named Abdullah ibn-Hussein and his brother Feisal, fleeing the Arabian wrath of Ibn Saud, were offered in 1920 the thrones of Iraq and Syria, respectively.  Unfortunately for the Arabs, the French, who were given mandatory powers in Syria by the League of Nations, informed Feisal that he was most unwelcome in Damascus.  The Arab took the Gallic hint and departed

Since both brothers were British pawns in the struggle by the Colonial Office to make the Middle East British, Feisal was given the throne of Iraq by the British Foreign Office, while Abdullah was left holding an empty kingdom-bag.

Faced with this, Abdullah began to make all manner of bellicose sounds about marching on Syria and ousting the French.  While Paris hardly lost sleep, the British did not relish the idea of a confrontation between their puppet and the French and so, in 1921, Winston Churchill met with Abdullah and offered him an annual subsidy and established a new country to be known as “Transjordan” for Abdullah to rule.

It little mattered that such a step was illegal and that it robbed Jewish Palestine of a major share of its land.  Whitehall proposed and Whitehall disposed.

Transjordan came into being, a comic-opera illegality, ruled in theory by Abdullah but in practice by London.

This was the state that on May 31, 1967 signed a defense agreement with Nasser to destroy Israel; this was the state that declared through its king, on that same day: “With the help of G-d and the solidarity of the Arabs we will see the victory of truth over the lie-s of the enemy”; this is the state whose radio declared during the terrible days of June 1967.

“How long did we wait and prepare for these hours of honor and for the day the Arabs would advance . . . Be ready to meet on the soil of eternal Falastin [Palestine].” (June 1, 1967)

“Free citizens, heroic sons of Jordan.  The hoped-for moment has arrived.  Forward to arms, to battle, to new pages of glory.  To regain our rights, to smash the aggressor, to revenge.”
                                                                                                                        (June 5, 1967, 0915 hours)

“We are living through the most sacred hours of life . . . Long did we wait for this battle in order to erase our shame.”
                                                                                                            (The Premier, June 5)

“Today the soldiers of Hussein have brought doom to the Jewish strongholds in Jerusalem . . . They destroyed the Knesset and have liberated the holy soil from the Zionists.  The heroic soldiers are marching forward towards Tel Aviv.”
                                                                                                            (June 5, 1800 hours)

“Froward toward your meeting with Rabin in Tel Aviv.”
                                                 (June 5, 1155 hours)

Rabin was waiting, but the Jordanians never came.  They busily were heading in the opposite direction, where they sit today, and demand the return of a territory that was never theirs to a state that was illegal from its inception.

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Thursday, March 13, 2014

FORTY YEARS

FORTY YEARS

Rabbi Meir Kahane 1983

Forward to the Second Edition

It was in 1982 that I wrote this book, “FORTY YEARS”.  In the seven years that have passed, the words I wrote and the thoughts I put down here have only been sadly affirmed.  The tragedy, the awful national tragedy and catastrophe I wrote about and that need not be, comes closer and closer.  And my people see nothing and hear nothing.  There are those who, in their tragic ignorance of Judaism and Jewish destiny, simply do not understand what they see and what they ear.  And there are those who do not wish to see and do not wish to hear.  And so it comes closer.
           
My people, my poor people…
           
More than 2500 years ago, the Prophet Ezekiel spoke, in the name of G-d, to the people of Israel, saying: “If I shall bring upon the land a sword – the inhabitants shall take a man from amongst them, and they shall appoint him a tzofe, a watchman for them.  And when he seeth the sword come upon the land he shall blow the shofar and warn the people.” (Ezekiel 33)

            The tzofe the watchman.  Appointed to see the sword come upon the people of Israel and cry out; to blow the shofar and warn his people!  That is the role of every Jew who can see and hear and understand – and who loves his people.  To cry out, to sound the shofar, to warn them!

            That is why this book was written.  It is the nation shofar of our times.  One will hear it’s warning by reading it, by studying it, by taking it to heart.  May the Almighty give us the wisdom to understand and the courage to act on that understanding.  For the forty years of which I speak, have passed.
            And the days of Judgment are here.
26 Tevet 5749  -  3 January 1989                                                    Meir Kahane

An Introduction

            It is seven years since I wrote the manuscript, FORTY YEARS, and with the passing of the 40 years of which I speak in the book, with the Jewish State now past its fortieth year, the terrible realities of which I wrote hem, become starkly clear.  Terrible visions become awful realization.  The Jewish State crumbles and shakes and shudders before our eyes as the gentile enemies gather strength and momentum and the Jew stands astonishingly impotent and paralyzed – at best – and deeply divided by defeatism, abnormal guilt and suicidal tendencies from within.  The dream of centuries becomes a nightmare; the hope that was never lost becomes a thing to be questioned, doubted, attacked.

            But, of course, it could never be anything else.  The fate of the Jew, despite the foolish arrogance of the secularists and the unfathomable loss of the way of apparently religious Jews, has always been based upon the iron law of Divine determination:  “If you shall walk in My statutes and keep My commandments … I will give you peace in the land and you shall lie down and none shall make you afraid… But if you will not hearken unto Me and will not do all these commandments, and if your soul abhor My ordinances so that you will not do all My commandments but break my covenant…I will set My face against you and you shall be smitten before your enemies; they that hate you shall rule over you and you shall flee when none pursueth you.” (Leviticus 26)

FORTY YEARS

The idea first entered my head as I sat, one day, in Ramle Prison. It was the eve of Tisha B”AV, the tragic commemoration of the destruction of both Temples, the beginning of both terrible exiles.  I sat, reviewing the book of Jonah, with its message of repentance, on the day of national tragedy.  Jonah enters the city of Nineveh, to which he has been sent by the Almighty, to warn them of impending destruction unless they repent.  And as I read, the words of Jonah to the people suddenly leaped out at me:  “In forty years, Nineveh shall be overturned!”

            Forty.  The thought suddenly struck me:  How many times, again and again, does that number arise in connection with sin and punishment?  “And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.” (Genesis 7:12), the punishment of a world flooded for it s sin.  Forty.  And centuries later, as the Jews of the desert “despised the pleasant land” and wept over their “home” in Egypt, the Almighty angrily decreed that the generation of the desert would not enter the Holy Land saying: “And your children will wander in the wilderness forty years and bear your faithlessness.” (Numbers 14:33).  Again, forty.  And the punishment of stripes, whipping, is one of “forty shall he strike him, he shall not increase”, and the atonement for sin and the purification process begin with a study of Torah given forty days at Sinai, continuing in a mikva, ritualarium, whose water must be a minimum of forty S’ah.

            Forty.  Again and again, the number forty connected to sin and punishment.  Why forty?  I do not know except to quote the rabbis in Bamidbar Rabah  5:5: “And why does the Torah obligate forty stripes?  For he (the sinner) violated a Torah given in forty days and brought death unto himself (man) who was created in forty days.  Let him therefore, be whipped forty times and be relieved of his punishment, as was done to Adam who sinned, was deserving of death, and was punished with forty.  For the world was cursed, due to his sin, forty curses:  ten for Adam, ten for Eve, ten for the serpent and ten for the land.”

            And in that tiny cell in prison the thought expanded.  Not only was the concept “forty” tied to sin and punishment, it was specifically connected to the warning of G-d to the sinner, a warning designed to avert that punishment.  Jonah warns Nineveh of impending punishment and this gives them a grace period of forty days during which they might search their souls and change their ways.

            In the case of both Holy Temples, the Almighty gave the Jewish people a period
of forty years of grace; time to think and rethink their ways.  Time to return to Him
and save themselves from that punishment.  In the awful final days of the first Jewish
State, the L-rd tells the prophet Ezekiel: “And thou shall lie again on your right
side and bear the iniquity of the House of Judah, forty days; each day for a year,
each day for a year.”(Ezekiel 4:6)

            And the Biblical commentator Rashi declares: “We learn that the time of the
exiling of the ten tribes until the destruction of Jerusalem there was a period of forty
 years.” Forty years:  The Almighty, having brought down His wrath on the ten tribes of
 Israel, begins the countdown to the terrible day of punishment that is decreed for a
 House of Judah that has turned its back on its G-d.  But one final opportunity is given
them, a grace period.  A grace period of forty years.  And so a prophet is chosen, a
 prophet of grace, of final warning – Jeremiah.  And in the words of the rabbis:  “The
 book of Lamentations was more effective for Israel than the forty years that Jeremiah
 prophesied unto them” (Eichah Rabah 4:27)

            And the Second Temple “Forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the lot (for the Yom Kippur sacrifice) never was chosen by the High Priest’s right hand; and the red slip outside the Holy of Holies never turned white (as a sign of divine forgiveness) and the western candle would not light and the doors of the Sanctuary opened by themselves until Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai admonished them, saying: “Sanctuary, sanctuary…I know that you are destined to be destroyed…(Yuma 39b).

            And again: “For forty years did Rabbi Zadok sit and fast in the hope that Jerusalem not be destroyed.” (Gittin56a)

            And again: “For forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin exiled itself (from the Temple) and sat in the market place.” (Avoda Zara 8b)

            Once again, the period of grace.  Forty years.  The final hope of the Almighty that, perhaps, His final warning would be heeded.  The countdown of forty years, the last chance.

And it was then that the full impact of the thought stuck me:  if it is true that in the first Jewish state and in the second, the Almighty granted us a grace period of forty years – is it possible that the same could be true with the third state?  Our state – the State of Israel?

            The thought has become an ongoing one; call it obsessive, if you will.  After all, the final redemption is one that our rabbis have explained as coming in one of two ways – and there is no third.  “In its time, I will hurry it (the Redemption).” (Isaiah 60).  And the rabbis explain:  “If they, the Jews, merit it I will hurry it.  If they do not merit it, it will come in its time”.

            The difference is more than chronological It is a qualitative difference that goes to the very essence of our existence.  A “hurried redemption is one that comes with majestic glory and free of pain and tragedy.  But one that is “in its time”, by the very fact that it comes despite our unworthiness, is accompanied by terrible destruction and holocaust as the deserved punishment that precedes the final glory and salvation.  How important it is for us to avoid this awful and needless suffering!  And how convinced I am that the Almighty pleads with us to do just that; to replace a redemption “in its time” with one that is “hurried”; to search our ways and return to Him  And how convinced I am that just as in the past He has given us a period of grace, so, too today we have been granted it.
            And it becomes clearer and clearer to me that, once again, it is forty years; forty years of warning, admonition, opportunity.  The final chance.

            The State of Israel, that most incredible of miracles, marked the beginning of the final redemption, a redemption born – not out of the betrothal of Jew to his Maker through faith and return – but rather out of the wedlock of Holocaust that was the depths of desecration of the name of G-d, the Hillul Ha’Shem that was mockery, humiliation, and denial of the prowess or very existence of the G-d of Israel.  It was that Holocaust which broke the patience of a G-d of Israel who watched His name mocked and dragged in the gentile dust for 20 centuries.  “Not for your sake do I do this, O House of Israel, but rather for My Holy Name that you desecrated by the very fact of being among the nations.” (Ezekiel 36).

            And so, a Jewish State rose from the crematoria and ashes, not because we deserved it, but because the gentile did.  Because the punishment and awesome wrath of G-d were being prepared for a world that had mocked and humiliated the name of the
L-rd, G-d of Israel.

            The State of Israel, which rose up in the year 1948, I am convinced, is the beginning, not only of the redemption, but also of the grace period granted us.  In the very marrow of my bones, I feel that the Almighty, in His infinite mercy and goodness, gives us the final beseeching opportunity to turn needless suffering into glorious and instant redemption.
 
            Forty years. The number may not be exact; it may be a few more, a few less, but the period is clear.  Forty years of warning, of heartfelt cry from our Father in Heaven.  Forty years of grace, of a last opportunity to reverse needles disaster, to bring the redemption with grandeur and majesty

            For make no mistake.  The magnificent miracle of return and rise of a Jewish State is surely the beginning of the Final Redemption, but hardly the end.  The true finality, the magnificent era of the Messiah, comes to fruition gloriously and majestically and breathtakingly only if we cleave to the great axiom “If you walk in My statutes…I will give peace in the land.” (Leviticus 26)

            This is the immutable law of the People of Israel.  There is no escaping it. What will be with the Jew; whether his future will be bright or black; whether he will enjoy peace or horrors, depends only on his cleaving to his role, obligation and mission in this world, upon his bending his neck and will beneath the yoke of Heaven.

            “If you walk in My statues… I will give you peace…  But if you will not hearken unto Me… I will appoint terror over you.” (ibid.).
             
This is the choice; the only choice. All the rest is nonsense. And time ticks away and the decision is in our hands.
           
Dear Jew, the Almighty gives us this day life or death.  Will be choose life?

My people; my dear and foolish people!  We speak of your life and that of your seed, your children and grandchildren.  Choose wisely!  Choose life!  The magnificence is yours for the asking.  The horror will be yours for the blindness.  Choose life, but quickly; there is little time left.  The forty years ticks away.

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Tuesday, March 4, 2014

ALONE - 1989

From Barbara Ginsberg’s Desktop

Beyond Words
Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,
1960-1990
Volume 6

“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings  from 1960 – 1990 that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works.
“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:
Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life.
 “Beyond Words” now can be bought at Amazon.com.  On the search line, type…  Beyond Words Kahane.


ALONE

The United States decision to speak with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a thing that in effect means recognition of the terrorists as the party that Washington looks to as the representative of the “Palestinian people,” is a thing that should shock no one.  And yet it does.

It shocks and angers Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres coalitionally and it shocks the twins Moshe Arens and Yitzhak Rabin and it shocks American Jewish leaders.  It should not, and the fact that it doesn’t speaks volumes for the impotence and lack of Jewishness of those who are the leaders (G-d help us!) of the Jewish state and people.

The Arab-Jewish ongoing struggle must, of necessity, become a thing of which the United States public and Administration will either grow weary or, seeing it as a threat to their own interests, will take steps to attempt to end it.  The “Palestinian” uprising is only the latest in a series of events that have moved both Washington and the American public to a more hostile attitude toward Israeli policies (or to be more exact, its total lack of any policy).  Indeed, the truth is that the history of U.S.–Israel relations is far less strewn with roses than the Arab lobby in the United States would have people believe.

From its inception, indeed even before that, the United States placed immense difficulties in the path of a new Jewish state.  American withdrawal of support for the United Nations Partition Plan in April 1948 was followed by an embargo on all weapons to the Middle East, which hurt only the Jews.  U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall warned the future first Foreign Minister of Israel, Moshe Shertok (Sharett), not to declare a Jewish state, since the U.S. would not help save it from the Arab armies.  President Eisenhower, in 1956, compelled Israel to give up the Sinai and Gaza to Nasser and brutally threatened to prevent money from the UJA and Israel Bonds from reaching the Jewish state.  Not a bullet was sold to Israel by the United States until the early 1960s, and in the crucial weeks before the Six-Day war of 1967, as Israel’s fate hung in the balance, the United States refused to implement its promise of support made by Eisenhower, in the event that Egypt again closed the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping and blocked the Gulf of Eliat.  It was fear of United States reaction that moved Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan to make the criminal step of allowing Egypt and Syria to strike the first blow in the Yom Kippur War and thus doom 4,000 Jewish soldiers to die.  And it was the United States that prevented the Israelis from destroying Egyptian power, their Third Army, when Israel had them surrounded. 

This American policy of snatching the fruits of victory from Israel continued in the Lebanese war, as the golden opportunity to physically liquidate the terrorists and their leaders in Beirut was frustrated by Ronald Regan’s pressure.  Since then, the United States has condemned Israel regularly over the intifada, and Secretary of State Shultz, a man with a reputation as a friend of Israel, exerted enormous pressure on the Israelis to agree to a disastrous International Peace Conference.  And now, of course, recognition of the PLO.

So let there be no surprise.  It will get worse, and there is nothing the secularists of the Hellenist State of Israel can do about it, except.  Except weep and wail and protest and capitulate.  Or understand what being Jewish is; what the miracle of the rise of a Jewish state is; what faith in the G-d of Israel is.

To be alone is the destiny of the Jew ever since it was decreed, “Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone” (Numbers 23:9)  For to be alone is to do two things.  One, it is to create a separate Jewish society and state, free of the influences of the gentile culture and abominations.  Two, it is to manifest in the most graphic way possible the total faith in the
G-d of Israel that is the foundation of the Jewish people and of Torah itself.  Indeed, the final redemption of the Jewish people cannot come as long as the Jew has even one ally upon whom he leans.  And that is why, whether the Jew approves of not, the All Mighty will guarantee that there will be no ally, that Israel will be isolated.

For as long as the Jew has even one ally, he will always convince himself that his salvation was due to that gentile.  A secularized people that has lost its moorings, its anchor of Judaism, has lost, too the ability to even conceive of life in a way that transcends what it calls “logic” and “practicality” and “reality.”  It will always cast its bread upon the waters of the gentile ally, and it is only when they are so soggy that they sink, and the Jew is left starving, that there exists even the remotest possibility of his returning to the one and only hope – the G-d of Israel.

And so Israel slides towards isolation.  Not the isolation that G-d demands, the deliberate move of the Jew towards separation and isolation and trust in the All Mighty.  But the forced isolation of nations moving away from Israel either through support of its enemies or by taking an “even-handed” stance.  The ally, American is becoming much less than that today, and tomorrow it will be worse.

But say not “worse,” because in Jewish terms it is better. Best. Salvation and redemption for the Jew will come only when he is isolated and alone with his G-d.  It will be whether the Jew likes it or not.
Written January 1989

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