Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Welcome To The Machine

Have you seen the movie “The Matrix”? Gigantic machines have enslaved mankind, sucking the energy out of humans to sustain themselves. Men are attached to tubes and wires, and live in an imaginary reality, simulated by computers wired directly to their brains. Men feed on recycled, liquefied dead humans. To me, it was a documentary, plain and simple. The only difference between reality and the movie, is that reality doesn’t need big bloodsucking machines nor sophisticated and conscious computer programs to subdue the masses. People feed very well on puke, and willingly slip into imaginary worlds.

The Kasztner train just rolled out of town to its final –yet originally intended- destination. To save a few hundred Jewish traitors from going down in history as what they are – traitors, murderers, power-mad maniacs who care about nothing but their own status, fortune and halo. So much so, that even in the afterworld, in which they don’t believe, they want to be seen as saints.

Two articles slipped under bloggers’ radars: one outright whitewashes Kasztner, while the other claims charedim hush the holocaust because the Gerrer and other rebbes escaped it while abandoning their flocks. Furthermore, claims the article, the Shoah is a taboo subject because charedim are unwilling to deal with the question of ‘where was G-d during the holocaust?’. Why are they doing this right now?

It seems that as ingenious as they are, evil men are prone to shoot themselves in the leg. Had Ben-Gurion’s mafia ignored Grunewald’s accusations against Kasztner, today probably no one would have remembered him and his actions. But they chose to stir the pot, sued Grunewald, and not only Kasztner’s crimes, but the entire Mapai party’s organized and willful collaboration with the British, and their purposeful prevention of Hungary’s Jews’ rescue came to the fore. Consequences were null, (except Kasztner’s assassination by Ben Gurion’s henchmen to prevent him from talking more), but certain facts that Weitzmann & Co. would have better liked concealed was made public.

Now, too, it would have been wiser for them to just keep quiet and let the public sip Hollywood’s morphine. But their egomania wants to placate even the few scholars who may accidentally bump into Perfidy, the Wyman institute or any other scholars and studies that may incriminate the fiends who ruled the state from day one. Just as the Nazis wanted to eradicate all memory of the Jews, the Labour wants to eradicate the Jews’ memories. They have no doubt that the stupefied masses – the coke drinkers, baseball watchers, partygoers and little academic wannabes who feel oh-so-important by parroting their professors’ lectures – lectures tailored to suit the politicians who fund them – will swallow any sweet lie, hook, line and sinker.

I have a terrible revelation for those unfamiliar with charedim: first, in what you call “charedi society” there is nothing ‘official’ but Talmud. Anything else is dealt with amateurishly or traditionally, i.e. from father to son, from teacher to student, from buddies to buddies schmoozing during leining. To a modern-day Western man this doesn’t sound all too professional, and it definitely has many pitfalls. But organized education is centralized and ruled by one mindset only. Deviation from its bias, corruption, peer pressure and orchestrated blacklisting inevitably carries failing grades, ostracism, ridicule and obstruction of advancement. The Israeli curriculum alone is completely purged from the slightest mention of Rumkowski, Stephen Wise, or that Weitzmann publicly stated that European Jewry must be abandoned to its fate and many other 'inconvenient truths'.

Of course, learning only this side of the coin, as many Meah-Shearim children do, is rather idiotic. What the know-all intelligentsia forgets to tell you is that this narrow knowledge will be completed, not to an academic level by any stretch of the word, but to little more realistic dimensions, in the course of the average charedi’s lifespan. Purposely instilling hatred against Zionists is questionable, especially in the minds of those who do the same to charedim - yet deny it. Not that honesty is an outright excuse, but c’est la vie; it wasn’t charedim who forced little chiloni children to wear pajes and tsitses. Neither did they sink shiploads of refugees for political gain (Struma, Patria et al).

And what about that ultra super-duper education the exalted freia kids get? Well, they probably couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean or the USA on a world map, but they sure know all the topography of Britney Spears. They learn a lot about Dovid and Yehonoson being homosexuals, but someone forgot to remind them that Adolf Hitler was really a homosexual – based on historical facts, not some professor’s phantasmagoria.

But slowly, there is a suspicious change in attitudes. The frontal attacks, at least in academia, have been toned down to a large extent. Lo and behold, the “official” charedi party line is also changing. The Deiah VeDibur article is fairly frightening. Did the Yated Ne’eman suddenly contract “YUfrenia” (‘insatiable desire to crawl in academic colon’ disorder - IDCACD)? Are they suddenly concerned to be seen as moderates? Or is there a silent pact of “I don’t criticize yours, and you don’t criticize mine” between the charedi mouthpieces and the Israeli establishment?

What’s so frightening is that the only thing that possibly charachterizes all charedim - their unbending opposition to the secular establishment's official hogwash - seems to be slowly eroding. Surely, many enlightened leftists who drool at the mere thought of Arafat, Castro or Clinton will say this is a welcome change in charedi approach. Until now, the dreaded charedi tiger (chumera frummis annoyensis), with its uniforms, fire-eyed “leaders”, trashcan-burning armies, oppressed wig and headscarf wearing women, threated not only Israel, but all living civilization. They are intolerant, they force their agenda on others, they withhold degrees from those who disagree with them.

But now the tiger has been tamed, it shed its fangs and there will be no more opposition to undeniable academic truths. All dissent will be suppressed and excoriated – even from charedi outlets. Long live the ministry of truth!

So welcome my son, welcome to the machine.

© Joseph Izrael 2008

Monday, March 17, 2008

Blood Brothers In Arms



I was infuriated and horrified that there were very few famous charedi figures at the levayah of the eight slain bochurim in Yerushalayim last week. R’ Elyashiv and the Belzer attended, while the Gerrer sent his condolences via messengers, and the Pinsker –who adheres to the Yerushalayim Aida Charedis and their ideology- gave a lecture in Mercaz Harav.

Now, I am not a great fan of hassidism and certainly not of the Belzer. But in this case, he behaved like a true leader. He went to the levayah, he went to visit the injured in the hospital, he did the right thing, and that is exactly what everyone should have done. Ditto for the Pinsker and even Aaron Teitelbaum of Kiryas Joel. I very seldom have good things to say about hassidim, but in this case, I totally take my hat off to these Rebbes. I think these are great steps forward, and shows that at least in times of tragedy we are still, to some extent, able to put our quibbles aside and be quasi-Jews.

But of course the hatemongers and ignorami who can’t read simple Hebrew, much less understand a shmuess by an elderly rav, had to turn reality on its head. It seems the words of Rav Don Segal made some people very angry. “How dareth he”, declares pompously a blogger, “voice such opinions right now, in middle of shiva! This tears us all apart”. But if that blogger isn’t outright lying, he can’t read Hebrew too well: first off, R’ Don was giving a ‘vaad’ – a shmuess to a regular group of talmidim – not for the media. How and why the lecture was aired, I don’t know. But the fact of the matter is, the aforementioned blogger completely twisted R’ Don’s words, and took them out of context.

What Rav Segal really said was that the chiloni government, through their actions and their defiling of the Torah put the Jews in danger. He mentioned that the media reported the murder and immediately turned to sports, as if nothing had happened. He also mentioned Ben-Gurion and Dayan’s futile capture and immediate release of the Sinai (the first time, in ’57, when many soldiers were killed just to show muscle, while the corrupt government momentarily relinquished the occupied land.) The Rav was clear in putting the blame squarely on the secularist government.

The controversial part of the speech: "...I'll tell you what I think You know what happened in the Yeshiva, רח"ל. Why specifically there? These are things from heaven, ...because that ideology that [the State] is part of the redemption, is the opposite of emunah and a transgression of the three oaths... ..They are all beloved and holy, but there is a greater demand (by G-d, i.e. responsibility) from observant people."

Reb Don didn’t at all blame the victims. That’s Brainless Blogger’s phantasmagoria. Although I don’t like when people –even great people- make statements as if they’d speak to G-d face to face, I don’t turnin a blind eye to our History either. Perhaps Blogger Brainless still has his Gideon’s Bible open at page one, but during the fourteen centuries from kibush ha’aretz until churbon bayis sheni, whenever Jews sinned, disaster was brought upon them by their enemies. And especially for those who do believe that the current occupancy of the Promised Land is akin to previous ones, there is no reason to forgo the immense responsibility that goes with it.

But of course, if one can stir up a little hatred while pretending that all he wants is love and peace, why not? Proof that this blogger is malicious, is that he harshly condemned rabbis and others who called for vigilante forces to safeguard Jews and rebel against the treacherous government. So this idiotologue holds “the Law” above all. Just like the murderers who put the heiliga “White Paper” (British prohibition of immigration to Palestine while the Deutsche crematoria were raging at full-force) above refugees’ lives, sending them back to the ovens, just as the appeasers call for quiet and restraint while they are bombet to smithereens and the Israeli politicians sell them to the Arabs for less then a stew of lentils, so too they side with The Law again, and oppose any and all self-defense. To Brainless Blogger and his ilk, the greatest evil in the world is Neturei Karta. Not Olmert and his eleven predecessors, who invariably chose Jewish deaths for a bone from Gentile politicians over Jewish life, honor and victory at the price of a British frown.

Such people do not care about Jewish unity, Jewish survival or Jewish victory. They are those who opposed Moishe Rabeinu and Mordechai the Jew. They gobble down everything the government and media tells them, and take pompous airs of self-importance. That they cause more death and killing? Who cares? We do our job, we keep the Law! When the Law is to stuff Jews in trains, they still adhere to the Law.

Despite such drugged demagogues, it seems that we finally start defying gravity. In the common Jewish psyche, something is maybe starting to sink. The good news just came out that many rabbis signed a prohibition on employing Arabs. And with a little more good will, common sense and willingness to stand up, unite and fight evil, we may again see true leaders leading a true nation.

© Joseph Izrael 2008

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Operation: Mindcrime



Our times are often touted as “the age of information”. But it is also the age of misinformation. Because information inconvenient to the powers-that-be is not only suppressed and purged from all forms of academia, but countered in big, glossy official misinformation campaigns.

Says Ruth Linn of the Technion: “Ever since I saw the Lanzmann documentary, this question stayed in my mind: Am I the only crazy Israeli who fell asleep in class when we studied this in the Holocaust? Or maybe we never studied it ... In terms of literature, [Escape from Auschwitz: I cannot forgive] is in the class of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, first-class novelists of the Holocaust. But then I turned the book back and forth and I see on the cover, “First published 1963”, and the year is 1994. I said to myself, “Where has this book been for 31 years? I never read about it in Israel.” [*]

We need not suspect Linn of being a charedi stooge. I honestly doubt the Gerrer Rebbe is investing money and time to alter the course of academic consensus. But she is clearly in a very small minority of historians who ever address the subject. In her book escaping Auschwitz: a culture of forgetting, she further alleges that a “family of Israeli historians” have spinned Rudi Vrba’s story to fit their agenda. Who is this “family of historians”? They are the stooges of the Labour party, the ruling bureaucrats of the State of Israel, whether they are actively in power or not. Their ‘leader’, so to speak, is Yehuda Bauer, a dye-in-the wool apparatchik of Mapam and Mapai.

But what am I talking about at all? I’m talking about the willful, premeditated and purposeful obfuscation, purge and confusion of the Kasztner affair and its extended implications (namely, that the leftist-Zionist ruling elites knowingly sabotaged any and all rescue efforts during the Holocaust in order to retain power, further their ideology and defeat their political opponents).
In mainstream Israeli curricula there is absolutely zero mention of the entire affair. In higher education, the affair is being misinterpreted and presented from the sole point of view of the mainstream left. But the mainstream left has two little thorns in its ribs: the hardcore left’s historians, now marketed as “new historians”, and the eternal splinter in Israel’s eyes; the evil, filthy, degenerate charedim, those vermin who plague Israeli society, rob it of its freedom, its identity and its wonderful welfare services.

The new historians are in sync with the mainstream left about Kasztner – but little else. According to them, the Revisionists, and especially their armed divisions, the Lechi, Etzel and “the Stern gang” are simply terrorists, no different than Hamas, Fatach and Hizb’Allah. So far, this is fairly in line with the Mapai (now Labour) party line, albeit a bit too explicit to the Peresoid Wizards of Oz(rael). But to their misfortune, the new historians hold Mapai, Ben-Gurion’s party, as almost equals of the Revisionists. To them, Mapai were hatemongers who instigated a “30 years war” (now 60) with the Arabs. And to this end they are willing to shed light on many crimes that were taboo for a very long time in Israel’s academia and history curriculum.

To the Labour’s even greater horror, the works of certain historians and authors “have been harnessed” to the “charedi conspiracy theory” that Kasztner and his clique, indeed, collaborated with Nazis to a great extent.

This trend is, however, very far from reaching anywhere near ‘mainstream’ status, in either academia or even popular distribution. The Labour, though, is now in high gear to counter this tiny and sadly insignificant trend. It’s well known that Ben Hecht’s Perfidy was censored for a long time in Israel. (Later it was available only with a “refute”, published by Mapai. The “refute” was so childish and idiotic that the Israeli censor soon realized it harmed their position more than Perfidy itself, so it was pulled off the shelves.) But it is in print again, and is widely available. New studies and information reaffirming all that was said therein emerge all the time, but the internet makes it hard to censure completely.

Thus, any book or opinion which runs contrary to “academic consensus” (read: what Labour wants you to think) is being suppressed and purged from any and all educational institutions. New books, reports and exhibitions in different Holocaust research and commemoration establishments (mostly Yad Vashem) are being aggressively promoted. According to Yehuda Bauer, people should learn about the Holocaust only from Yad Vashem.

But why the panic? Haven’t Israel’s traitors learned that the best censorship is freedom of speech? Isn’t “let ‘em say whatever they want, we’ll just ignore them” the modus operandi of contemporary Western pseudo-democracies? What are they afraid of, why the sudden rush?

Because we stand at the end of an era. The last eyewitnesses of the Holocaust are joining the eyewitnesses who didn’t live to tell their tale. And with them will die the memories of betrayal, the memories of Weitzmann and Ben-Gurion’s steamroller that flattened all hope of salvation for two million Hungarian Jews, paving the way for the Mapai State. So Jewish children don’t learn about Joel Brand, how he was arrested, they do not learn about Stephen Wise and Sally Myer, teachers don’t tell them about Henry Morton and the Evian convention, just as they ignore Hillel Kook (a.k.a. Peter Bergson), Michael Bear Weissmandl, Rudi Vrba, Alfred Wetzler and others, who have a tale different than Mapai’s.

Now is a crucial time for the ruling elite to clear their name forever, and determine how History will portray them.
And that is why they are on a rampage now. Every trick and tactic will be used to rewrite history and mislead the public. Historians, librarians, websites, books, magazines, spin doctors and every imaginable vehicle of information are now being revved up to put a thick layer of gloss on the Mapai leaders’ crimes. It is imperative not to let History be misshapen, not let the Left’s crimes be forgotten, and not let them become the Jewish Nation’s saviors.

And there is an even greater, more sinister, and more pressing reason to examine the past from an independent point of view. For “מה שהיה הוא שיהיה ומה שנעשה הוא שיעשה ואין כל חדש תחת השמש- For that which has been is what shell be…” Just as then the Labour were betraying their brothers to the Nazis for political gain, today they sleep with the Arabs while abandoning us again. And just as back then different factions were busier warring one another than concentrating on rescue and salvation efforts, so too we’re busier today with concerts and bans and politics and vindication and finger-pointing.

And, with our now-characteristic docility, we merrily march to the slaughter again.


© Joseph Izrael 2008