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