Although I do not support everything Meir Kahane has ever said or done, I believe in free speech, fighting Terrorism, and the truth. In addition, the more I learn about the progressive machine’s standard operating procedure for shutting down debate on issues they wish to completely control, the less I care what the politically correct ignorant smear mongers call me – when I know it is they who are wrong! In the end, the truth is more important than their paper thin emotions. When the truth is ignored, the silence can result in death. I will no longer allow that to happen out of fear of being called names. Avoiding the truth does not make it any less true.
It is my personal belief that Meir Kahane was exceptionally misunderstood by naive, small-minded, and politically motivated hucksters, who slandered him with disgusting epithets in order to serve their own power and agenda. This is just like how these same forces excuse away the Islamic connection to Terrorism, and whitewash Socialism. The most commonly held negative opinion of Meir Kahane is one based on misrepresentations of his message, misquotations, lies and ignorance.
But the aforementioned is solely my opinion, and I do not want you to simply take my word for it. Thus, I greatly encourage you to read his books, and speeches then make up your own mind.
The best way to know anything about someone is to hear it from their own mouth, and then to make up your own mind. The more I actually hear from Kahane himself, the more I realize one thing….he was right!
Meir Kahane in his own words on issues including violence, democracy, Arabs, Israel, the U.S., and more…
(The first 6 minutes or so is an intro about Kahane. The direct interview with Rabbi Kahane begins thereafter.)
Meir Kahane was a man who could clearly see through the forces at work to blind us from the uncomfortable truths about Progressive myths. He warned Israel (and by association the U.S.) of the horrors of Islamic terrorism and the unfortunate necessities in fighting it long before most of us were even thinking about Islam or terrorism at all. Sure, he wasn’t politically correct, but now I see that to be to his credit!
Kahane was assassinated in a Manhattan hotel in 1990, after concluding a speech warning American Jews to emigrate to Israel before it was “too late.”
The assassination occurred shortly after 9 p.m., following a speech to an audience of mostly Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn; as a crowd of well-wishers gathered around Kahane following the speech in the second-floor lecture hall in midtown Manhattan’s Marriott East Side Hotel. El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born American citizen, fatally shot Kahane in the neck. Kahane ultimately was a victim of the same Islamic terrorism he warned others about!
Instead of just accepting the progressive slander of Meir Kahane that many of us have heard (or will hear if you bring Kahane up in conversation) which is often spread by those who know nothing about him at all but are only repeating what they have heard from others who are also ignorant, hear Kahane from Kahane’s own mouth….and then if you still can, tell me he was wrong!
Tags: Arabs, Democracy, Islamists, Israel, Judaism, Mier Kahane, plo, Terrorism
row one seat one
wrath, i, for one, will look at his later when i can devote full attention.
i dont take your posts about anything Judaic lightly.
Speaking the truth (about the agenda of others) at any level in society is a sure way to make a lot of enemies.
Isn’t he the fellow the US considers a Jewish terrorist?
I am not going to argue that I am an expert on Kahane or the party named after him. It’s been a while and I would have to review much of the literature on him. I for one never protrayed him as the devil but neither is he the “messiah” that many of his followers would have you believe. As is usually the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle. But Israel did rule the Party named after him illegal and that complicates any discussion of him and his legacy.
teacake wrote:
Not him, perhaps the Party named after him
@ teacake:
hi teacake…
History will be the judge–
If anyone has the balls to write it anymore.
Frankly, discrediting everything someone says because of something in particular that that person said is illogical. It’s the old stopped clock thing. Sometimes Ron Paul is right. Sometimes Pat Buchanan is right. For that matter, Hitler said many correct things about the Bolsheviks.
Chucky can play that “gotcha” game, but it’s illogical. The people are who they are, the facts are what they are, and the arguments are what they are. Mushing them together is intellectually lazy and illogical, and most likely dishonest.
@ coldwarrior:
Hey CW
Poteen wrote:
We’ve entered the Matrix
Poteen wrote:
It’s being written right now in the US Senate. Does anyone have the balls anymore for anything?
Peres to meet Mubarak, discuss peace process
That’s funny because I thought Israel and Egypt were at peace. Well, sort of anyway?
OT and i’m outta here:
let M know about this
http://www.saint-m.com/
its my wife’s favorite reisling
by all!
Thanks Wrath.
It’s my belief that we are on the cusp of some very dark days; 9/11 was but a prelude. We have been engaged in a religious war and inoring that reality, as has been our wont, makes it no less real.
The words of Patrick Henry are as salient to day as they were then:
Mary Landrieu to vote to allow debate
I’m outta here netizens, have a great day!
What he says about Israel and Jews can be said for the problems we face now in America as well. Resident aliens can live among us, without political rights.
I really liked how he stated, palestinians get nothing, but if they want Jordan, Israel will help them. That really would have solved a lot of problems, in hindsight.
Hey guys~ Wrath was holding this post until Monday morning when he’d be around to comment on it.
Rodan saw the first email and wasn’t copied on the last and scheduled it for today~
Do any of you mind if I put it back in drafts, and we can take it up then?
All of the comments will be saved with the thread~ but he did tell me he’d wait until Monday so he could be here.
Herrooooo… I know youse out there, sitemeter tells me you are~
Going once…
@ Nevergiveup:
Just great.
//
Kiss the American health care system ‘good bye’.
@ m:
Go 4 it.
Ok thread back up and back in business.
@ MacDuff:
I had actually never read the full text of that very famous quote, and am quite surprised by how true it is still today in context of the Islamist threat we face.
Unfortunately, it is rare to find one that would make that comment today.
@ Poteen:
Someone will write the “history”. Whether it will have any resembalence to what really happened is another thing…
Why are you so obsessed by that man Kahane? I met him once and he had the ugliest look of hate and rage on his face (and he was just sitting in the synagogue in Riverdale). By the way for a man like your self who wants to make adultery a crime (stupid idea by the way), Kahane was an adulterer as well.
@ Speranza:
And Patton was a bit of an anti-semite but he’s still held up as a hero. Nobody’s perfect.
Wrath, would you mind it I went OT and posted an update on the 2009 Weblog Awards here?
Speranza wrote:
You are concentrating on the individual. I however care and know very little about the individual, but am more concerned (impressed?) by the message. But to answer your question, my intent is a result of your type of response.
When one discusses Kahane, they are often repeating the lies of others who know nothing about his message, and often concentrate instead on him as a person, or those in his political group – very few however dare discuss his message; which to me is the whole thing!
The title and point of this post is not “hey isn’t Kahane a great guy” but as it states “seriously, tell me he is wrong!”. What I wish to get out to the public is not the message that Meir Kahane was the “moshiach”, nor that he is a good individual…what I feel needs to be heard is his message. Concentrating on him as an individual is a spin/deflection tactic.
When one states Kahane was right when he said that Terrorism must be ruthlessly defeated, you often hear the response of “I won’t discuss this, his followers were….”, or “Wasn’t his political party deemed Terrorists by the State Department”.
You notice that none of those common responses have ANYTHING to do with his message, and his arguments. I wish to get his arguments, and messages out there because unfortunately, I think they are right, and will save lives in the long run. Like him, I wish to break the myths that keeps the Middle East in a quagmire of death and violence.
@ song_and_dance_man:
nope. rock & roll
I know very little of Kahane, but I did watch the video a few days ago. It is long, but well worth the time and will shed light on what the Rabbi really believes.
OT
We are in the running at The 2009 Weblog Awards
The nominations have been closed for the categories where we have been nominated. Here are the tallies so far.
Best Blog – 7 nominations – total first nomination vote 63.(the first nomination is the one that counts) So far we are in second place here behind a blog called I Wrote This For You, which has 232 votes, I call BS on this one because if you go there hardly any of the threads reach 20 comments. Third place is Ace of Spades with 56 votes.
Best New Blog – 11 nominations – total first nomination vote 67. We lead here with no other blog even close. In fact, our 11 nominations lead the rest as well.
Best New Political Blog – 6 nominations – total first nomination vote 58. Second place here, once again behind a blog with 113 votes, where there are less than 10 comments per entry.
Best Online Community – 6 nominations – total first nomination vote 51. Third place.
Best Conservative Blog – 11 nominations –total first nomination vote 69. First place and way out in front here.
Best Political Blog – 1 nomination – total first nomination vote 29. Tied with Ace of Spades in second place with Wonkette way out in front
If you have not voted for us yet, please do. And make sure the first nomination is voted on.
If we win in one of these categories (and it’s very likely we could win more than one) the exposure will cause this blog to grow even more faster than it already has.
@ WrathofG-d:
Sorry Wrath, I didn’t see your comment on the previous thread in time to move the one I had scheduled out.
I’m getting whipblog here
oh that’s what happened…made a post and got lost
The truth shall set you free.
(If I want to bury my head in the sand I can read 1.0)
@ m:
We won’t win best coordinated, that’s for sure!
/lol, hey… we try!
OT 1.0
LGF readers are probably aware that I’m a strong supporter of good science education, so I’m really pleased to see the President putting a spotlight on the subject — and curious to see how the right wing will attack these initiatives, because you know they will.
so says charles “ienstien” johnson
m wrote:
Very funny. Are there other blogs that have multiple Admins like us?
@ mawskrat:
It’ll be there in a bit!
I can’t view the video onn my cell, but I’m curious as to why he pushed for american jews to leave america for Israel, as though they would be worse off here.
Doppelganger wrote:
You mean up your ass?
Thanks for this topic, Wrath!
I’m watching the interview on the video.
@ WrathofG-d:
Sure, but they have ONE person releasing them. With our schedules we can’t do that. Savage might want to post at 2am, and if it doesn’t go up then I’d be able to hear him waaaay over here!
(we just gotta remember to check for scheduled posts. If I had seen your comment at 9:56 that you released yours, I would have moved mine out. But it was set to post while I wasn’t around (at 10). I blame my copier! I was forever trying to fix that paper jam!)
@ Nevergiveup:
Yes, Israel outlawed Kahane’s party, but also ruled that Arafat and the PLO were legal.
As Kahane says, it is very difficult to understand some Jews.
@ LanceKates:
I cannot guess as to his motives (he doesn’t necessarily say generally from what I have read so far) but I believe he sensed the new tread of American Anti-Semitism coming from the Left that we are seeing today. He was very keenly aware of the rise in Islamistization of the World, and the American forced ignorance of it. Like those in Europe during the 1800s, he was trying to warn of what was to come. Since he stated this warning in 1990s, and 9/11 was only 10 or so years later (with the open Anti-Semitism, and Israel hatred that spread like wildfire thereafter), he was once again…right!
Wrath- Excellent post. (Anyone who is waiting to listen to the interview until later, please don’t forget to do it! You’ll be glad you did. It’s very interesting.)
I think Kahane would be pleased to see the change in Israeli economic policy in the time since his death. The country has moved in the direction he so strongly advised: toward a much freer market and away from reliance on US handouts.
I’m going to presume everyone is watching the video?
@ wolfie:
Thank you. When I read, or listen to Kahane I am often amazed to be reminded that his statements were being made decades ago. He was very ahead of the curve.
snork wrote:
It is a reflection of our intellectual decline that what used to be called the genetic fallacy is now considered a good, even conclusive argument.
Propositions themselves must be addressed. Whether the person stating them is Stalin, Hitler, or, worse yet, in league with Big Oil and the Discovery Institute, is entirely irrelevant to their validity.
snork wrote:
Chaz is really inot the 6 degrees of separation bullshit.
Note that Kahane was not advocating—as far as I could tell—a “theocratic state.” That is, he was not arguing that Israel should be run by Torah law. While he clearly believed that Jews should abide by Torah law, he was arguing instead for a democracy, but a democracy in which only Jews were allowed to exercise the franchise.
Now, one may argue, possibly justifiably, that this was merely a Trojan Horse for setting up a state run on theocratic lines. One may also argue that modern ideas of democracy consider the notion of limiting the franchise to members of a particular ethno-religious group to be unacceptable. And there are good arguments for this. On the other hand, given the manifest unwillingness of the world to accept the notion that the Jews are entitled to a state they have created with their own sweat and defended with their own blood in their historic land, it is also arguable that it is, perhaps, necessary to espouse such a restrictive demarcation merely because there is no other way that the existence of Israel will be taken seriously.
I am not sure I agree with that proposition, but if I am expected to at least recognize the possible validity of arguments against Kahane’s positions, I should also be able to observe that there is possible validity on the other side without being tarred as some kind of bigot.
One point of difference with Kahane: he said there must be a democracy for Jews, as civil war is unthinkable. Secular Jews are attracted to socialism. Socialism ultimately defeats democracy. The problems for the Israeli republic are the same as those that Benjamin Franklin foresaw for America.
I guess the other reason I am so “obsessed” with Kahane is that he is a counter to the prevailing
wisdomstupidity of the U.S., Israel, and the rest of the Progressively blinded World.Say what you will about Kahane and the “right-wing nationalists”, but no system, process is perfect, and instead of their problems we have the following. If I had to chose, I would chose the “right-wing nationalist’s”
Nov. 19, 2009
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
During a recent speaking tour in Canada, MK Nahman Shai (Kadima) shocked some of his hosts when he said that his primary goal in politics today is to bring down the Netanyahu government. Although indelicate, Shai’s comment was not surprising. Kadima is in the opposition. And like all opposition parties in all parliamentary democracies, the primary goal of its members is to bring down the government so that they can take power.
Given that this is the case, it is unsurprising that until this week, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni tried to blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for US President Barack Obama’s hostility towards Israel. Far more newsworthy than her criticism of Netanyahu was her public rebuke of Obama this week for his attempt to strong-arm Israel into barring Jewish construction in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood.
On Wednesday Livni said, “Gilo is part of the Israeli consensus… and it is important to understand this for all discussions of borders in any future agreement.”
Indeed. There is an Israeli consensus. The Israeli consensus regarding Jerusalem is based among other things on the understanding that no nation can give up its capital city and survive.
Livni wants to be prime minister one day. For that to happen, Israel must survive until she wins an election. And Israel will not long survive if it surrenders its right to its capital.
One might have thought that American Jews could be counted on to stand by Israel on this issue. But then, one would be wrong.
FOR THE past six years, Republican Senator Sam Brownback has repeatedly submitted a bill to the US Senate that, if passed into law, would revoke the presidential waiver that has allowed successive presidents to refuse to implement the 1995 law requiring the State Department to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. This year Brownback co-sponsored his bill with Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman. As luck would have it, the Brownback-Lieberman bill was submitted two weeks before Obama launched his latest campaign against Jewish building in Jerusalem.
In the 1980s and 1990s, American Jews lobbied hard to get the embassy moved to Jerusalem. But now some American Jewish leaders recoil at the very notion. In response to the Brownback-Lieberman Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 2009, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle published an editorial last Friday titled, “Bad move, Senator Brownback.”
The newspaper’s editors condemned their retiring senator and called his bill, “a cheap, grandstanding move by a conservative Republican on his way out the door, playing to Jews and Christian Zionists while trying to throw a monkey wrench into President Obama’s diplomatic spokes.”
According to Sen. Brownback’s office, the paper never had any criticism of the same bill when he submitted it during president George W. Bush’s tenure in office. But now, as Israel’s government and opposition stand shoulder to shoulder protecting Israeli control over Jerusalem from assaults by Obama, Kansas City’s Jewish newspaper’s editorial board willingly bucked what it acknowledged are the wishes of “Jews and Christian Zionists,” in order to stand by their man in the Oval Office.
Some of Israel’s most high-profile supporters in the US are conservative talk radio and television hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. But rather than thank them for their support, the Anti-Defamation League, which is supposed to be dedicated first and foremost to defending Jews from anti-Semitism, published a special report this week where it insinuated that they cultivate a climate of hatred and paranoia which could endanger Jews among others.
The ADL report, “Rage Grows in America: Anti-Government Conspiracies,” dubbed Beck the “fearmonger-in-chief,” for his opposition to Obama’s domestic and foreign policies. It similarly castigated the so-called “tea party” movement which has attracted millions of Americans opposed to high taxes, and the townhall meetings this past summer where millions of Americans peacefully argued against Obama’s healthcare policies.
The ADL’s decision to issue a special report attacking Obama’s political opponents and insinuating that Americans who oppose him cultivate an environment in which paranoid and dangerous fringe groups feel comfortable operating is strange given that the ADL never put out a similar report against parallel anti-Bush movements. As Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin noted this week, the ADL was more likely to see overt and vicious anti-Semitic statements and placards being waved around at anti-Iraq war rallies than at anti-Obama healthcare and tax policy demonstrations.
Ironically, the ADL has a specific institutional interest in combating leftist paranoia. A recent movie attacking the ADL called Defamation, by leftist, anti-Israel Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, is currently hitting the film festival circuit in the US and Europe. A major hit among anti-Israel activists and regular anti-Semites on the Left and Right, Defamation accuses the ADL of exaggerating the Holocaust and anti-Semitism to justify what Shamir views as its nefarious aims. Apparently, tribal loyalty to the Left trumps the institutional interests of the ADL.
It certainly trumps the interests of New York University’s Hillel director Rabbi Yehuda Sarna. As James Taranto reported on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, this week Sarna called for NYU’s Jewish community to join NYU Muslims at a rally that both commemorated the massacre at Ft. Hood and denounced NYU professor Tunku Varadarajan for writing a column in Forbes magazine. In his article, Varadarajan committed the crime of stating the obvious fact that Ft. Hood terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was motivated by his Islamic beliefs when he shouted Allahu Akbar and shot some 40 people, killing 13.
Given that people and groups like al-Qaida and Hamas that share Hasan’s views assert that all Jews should be killed, it would seem that the good rabbi would not feel the need to attack professors who point out that Hasan’s views are dangerous. But then, it is no longer strange to see Hillels on American university campuses behaving in a manner that is not in line with what might be considered the interests of either the American Jewish community or the Jewish people as a whole.
Take UC Berkeley’s Hillel center, for example. Since Ken Kramarz, Hillel’s regional director for Northern California, started his job in June 2007, Berkeley’s Hillel has adopted a hostile view towards Judaism and Israel. As pro-Israel community activist Natan Nestel notes, in the past year alone, Hillel held a dance party on Yom Hashoah, and it held a Cinco de Mayo barbecue on Remembrance Day for Fallen IDF Soldiers. It has also failed to hold community Seders for the past two years. Instead, last year, its members hung signs in the Hillel building declaring, “Matza sucks.”
Beyond its derogatory treatment of Jewish and Israeli holidays, Berkeley’s Hillel has allowed an extremist group called Students for Justice for Palestine to participate in its organizational meetings.
SJP calls for Israel’s destruction through unlimited Arab immigration. It also advocates for UC Berkeley to divest from Israel. Edgar Bronfman, Hillel’s International Chairman, has characterized SJP umbrella organization as “anti-Israel… anti-Semitic alarming…”
No doubt owing in part to Berkeley Hillel’s decision to permit SJP members to spread their propaganda at its organizational meetings, Hillel’s student leaders and members participated in SJP’s Israel Apartheid Week this past March.
The student meeting that SJP participated in at Berkeley’s Hillel was sponsored by a group called “Kesher Enoshi.”
This group describes itself as “a progressive Jewish community that engages directly with Israeli civil society. We do this by educating ourselves and others about the day-to-day struggles of people in Israel by making direct connections with human rights/social change organizations in Israel, linking their struggles with those on campus and in the wider community, and building a community of active participants in social change in Israel.”
This mission statement, which says nothing about Zionism, sounds an awful lot like the goal of the New Israel Fund. This month, three Arab “civil society” groups supported to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars by the NIF published a poster depicting an IDF soldier touching the breast of an Arab woman with the caption, “Her husband needs a permit to touch her, the occupation penetrates her life every day.”
The poster was issued to publicize a conference in Haifa called “My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality: Palestinians in the Shadow of the Wall,” whose purpose was to demonize Israel using post-modern jargon.
Unlike Hillel, NIF is widely recognized as a far-left fringe group. But as Arab Israeli NGOs use the dollars of American Jewish NIF donors to advance their “civil society” programs aimed at delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist, the Reform Movement – which is not a fringe group – decided unanimously two weeks ago to criticize and pressure Israel for what its leadership views as Israel’s unfair treatment of its Arab citizens.
As this column goes to press, if its board members don’t cancel their meeting, the San Francisco Jewish Federation will be grudgingly voting on a resolution that would prohibit it from sponsoring events that denigrate or demonize Israel or supporting organizations that partner with organizations that call for divestment, sanctions or boycotts against Israel.
The resolution follows the Jewish Federation of San Francisco’s decision to co-sponsor the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival last summer. That festival featured Shamir’s Defamation, and the egregiously anti-Israel film Rachel, about the late pro-terror activist Rachel Corrie. The film festival was also sponsored by the anti-Zionist Jewish Voices for Peace group, the American Friends Service Committee, which hosted a dinner for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York last year, the Rachel Corrie Foundation and other radical anti-Israel groups.
If the vote takes place, it will be a great victory for a small group of local Jewish activists. These individual Jews have banded together because they are deeply disturbed by the federation’s willingness to use community funds to advance events whose basic message is that Israel should be destroyed.
KADIMA’S INTERESTS as a political party place it at loggerheads with the government on almost every issue. But its leaders this week were rational enough to recognize that they must support Israel’s sovereign rights in Jerusalem despite the fact that doing so placed it on the government’s side. Their display of sanity is a clear indication that Israeli society today is healthy and capable of meeting the challenges it faces.
It is clear that most American Jews believe that it is in their interests to support the Democratic Party and the Left. But like the anti-establishment Jewish activists in San Francisco, American Jews ought to realize that on issues like Israel’s survival and their own survival as Jews they ought to stand by their interests even when they seem to clash with their leftist and Democratic loyalties. And they ought to stand by their friends on these issues, even when their friends are conservative Republicans.
It can only be hoped that the San Francisco pro-Israel upstarts’ campaign against the federation was successful yesterday. Then, too, if the American Jewish community is to long survive, these San Francisco Jewish activists’ demand that their community support Israel’s right to exist must be joined by their fellow American Jews throughout the country.
caroline@carolineglick.com
@ WrathofG-d:
Your post is very timely. Thank you.
By the way, without wanting to get into the 1.0 mudslinging more than absolutely necessary, I have to observe that medaura—who is, I understand, employed by Commentary—was (perhaps still is) avid in seeking to direct the banning axe towards anyone who utters anything that might remotely smack of a position in any way sympathetic to anything Kahane ever uttered.
The Torah is very clear that one shall not “go up and down as a talebearer among your people.” Her avidity in ensuring a Kahane-rein environment through baiting, innuendo and slander rather than dealing with ideas on their own terms was an ugly thing.
@ WrathofG-d:
Three cheers for Caroline Glick!
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Medaura is an avid and skilled defamer. Commentary should sack her.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
She isn’t alone. LGF (like others, and by way of example) was very quick when one even mentioned Kahane (or those who could be slandered “kahanists”) to mention that the U.S. lists Kach (a party started by him but he hasn’t been a part of since his death
) as a terrorist organization…THUS, any mention of that name or anything he has ever written, or anyone he has ever known…is VERBOTEN!
Excellent post, Wrath!
I totally agree with you.
Kahane was labeled a “terrorist,” despite never having killed anyone, or directed anyone to kill anyone. And JDL is considered a “terrorist group” to this day – despite not having committed any violent action in decades.
I don’t agree with Kahane’s concept of a Jewish state, but he was accurate concerning Islamic imperialism!
@ Overlook:
Yes, I often am very impressed by Caroline Glick. Its amazing that we as a community (Jews) and Conservatives in general have to self banish our leaders and voices because they are too extreme (says who?) while at the same time accepting the crazyness that Glick discusses in her column above.
You cannot banish Friends for Israel’s Destruction, or a Hillel that is Anti-Jewish (as you must respect difference of opinion) but if you even mention Kahane, or others who are more Conservative you must banish.
If we have to accept their Anti-Israel stupidity, they should suffer our Pro-Israel voices as well.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
What do you expect from an Albanian Jihadi?
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Instead of commenting I have been reading the words of Kahane. I can see why he is so controversial now with the little I have read so far. He advocated moving the Arabs out of Israel, had a problem with Jew/Arab marriage, and did, in fact, also push for Judaism to taught in Israeli schools.
And, as you noted, he wasn’t pushing for a theocracy, and those words prove it. He only wanted to give the Jews a chance to know what being a Jew really means. This is one of those issues where the Rabbi is totally misunderstood.
Now I tend to agree with him in these matters from a personal perspective, but getting there seems impossible.
savage wrote:
I know little of most people’s backgrounds. There are exceptions, of course—but inevitably, one must take people by, if not always at, their words when dealing with them online, and respond according to what they say and how they present themselves. The interesting thing is that no matter how skilled some person may be at assuming a persona not their own, the hermit crab eventually reveals who and what he or she is.
@ song_and_dance_man:
In a Jewish State, being Jewish is patriotism.
I believe that Kahane realized this. Once the Jews of Israel consider themselves only Israeli (a movement that exists today in Israel), there will no longer be a desire to maintain a Jewish State. At this point, the Jews themselves will vote or give away the unique character of Israel, and it will fade away into just another Arab/Mediterranian Country.
As such, Israel will have been destroyed.
This is not much different than the U.S. being cored out to a weak shell of its former self through Progressivism, Transnationalism, Liberalism, etc. The goal is the same, create nothingness out of something that was unique and great.
@ WrathofG-d:
Just finished watching the video.
When he spoke of some Israelis saying that they were tired of winning the wars, it hit me that Ehud Olmert said this as a Prime Minister within the last couple of years. He literally said, “We’re tired of winning.”
Need to do an errand – I will write more when I get back!
@ WrathofG-d:
Right. Without the heritage, which is based on the blessing of Abraham and the Law of Moses the Jew is no longer a Jew but only just another Semite.
mawskrat wrote:
If there is one subject about which Chuck knows nothing and understands less it is modern education. I think he is sincere in wanting the US to do a better job, but his ignorance and ideological blindness leave him clueless.
Just a couple of questions out of a great many that might be asked:
-Why has our K-12 science education declined in the very period when progressive nostrums, federal involvement, and massive expenditures on education have steadily increased?
-How is it possible that our greatest generations of scientists were educated in knuckle-dragging schools, many of which did not mention evolution and nearly all of which had prayer? Could this whole issue be —gasp!— trivial and irrelevant?
-When Obama himself had the power to distribute 100 million Annenburg Foundation dollars to improve Chicago schools, how did he spend it? What projects did he approve and which did he turn down? Did he approve the Algebra Project or Celebrate La Raza Week? Was there any demonstrable improvement in the schools?
-What prescriptions does the NEA, a loyal branch of the progressive movement and the great power in current educational policy, offer to improve science education?
Gaaaaaa
Drive by -OT
There is already a line around the bookstore where Palin will be signing books TOMORROW. According to the website she is signing on the 24th.
@ bellamags:
This is in Jacksonville at the Orange Park Mall. TV stations there as well.
@ song_and_dance_man:
Population exchanges have been done – especially after WW2. There is nothing intrinsically “racist” about it. As for Jew/Arab marriage, Kahane was quite explicit in saying that conversion is to be respected.
It always interested me that the (orthodox) conversion involved fulfilling the ritual to the punctilio of an honor, but did not provide any sincerity tests. Quite right. Who can judge sincerity?
As I head out to run an errand, I just wanted to share this video link that I got in an email this morning.
The violinist is Daniel Ahaviel.
The artistry and the joy in this Jewish man’s music says so much about the Jewish people (as a people) no matter what else is going on.
Please watch this, follow netizens of Blogmocracy.
It’s lovely!
@ bellamags:
Ok found out you have to get a pass to get in tomorrow. That’s kind of lame, but that is the reason for the line.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
“What oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed.”
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
If it walks like a Luddite, and it quacksalot…
@ wolfie:
“Science” is fast becoming “environmentalism” i.e. science in the service of politics.
A young high-schooler I know has just endured a year of explicitly policy-related science pedagogy. The end of year tests required the correct answer to such questions as “Should stem-cell research be federally funded.” “Should the nations agree to limit CO2 emisssions?”
@ song_and_dance_man:
Yes, once again it comes down to secularism vs. religion. I presume that was a Kahane quote. Either way, that person is exactly right. It is frustrating that success has bred ignorance. You see this in both Israeli and American societies. Those living the benefit of religion, struggle, pride, and patriotism don’t realize how good they have it and work so hard to destroy for the sake of that which will kill them.
An American today works to destroy the unique liberty from Government that created the greatness of America, and the Israeli the Jewishness, and Zionism that allows them their security.
@ Overlook:
Yes. I was reading about those population exchanges in some of his speeches. To summarize what I’ve read so far, he advocated more population exchanges as a means to move the Arab out and more Jews in.
As to the inter-marriages, it seems his concern had more to do with the Jewish women who marries Arabs. I may be wrong about that, and need to read more of what he has to say about it.
@ Eliana:
Absolutely beautiful! I love it when, around 1:45 he adjusts his hat, looks around and gives a little smile!
WrathofG-d wrote:
BINGO!
@ Lizzie_in_Texas:
Music, not forbidden by Judaism.
~Just another reason Judaism is better than Islam.
Wrath: I asked you, I think on the previous thread, if you have a good vid of “Al Kol Eileh.”
Much less over-exposed than “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav,” and, in my opinion, much more beautiful.
Eliana wrote:
I’m sorry, but that’s a clear incitement to violins.
@ WrathofG-d:
I’m saving that one to use later. Great quote!!!
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Sorry, didn’t see it. I have a great version on a CD, but will see if I can find a video for you.
As far as Jewish music, I am really digging “Yoshef Karduner” these days.
@ WrathofG-d:
I can not even imagine life without music.
On topic though, these are the kind of threads where I have to sit back and read and listen to others as my knowledge is very limited on these type of subject.
Lizzie_in_Texas wrote:
These are the best kinds of threads; where they become a learning experience, and of the kind that made 1.0 so attractive to me back in the day. They lost it and we now have it.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
So people have a clue what we are talking about, here is a version (not so great in my opinion) that gives a translation and sing-along.
@ song_and_dance_man:
That is really what drew me to 1.0 in the first place.
ok wrath…i am gonna get educated on this guy, kehane.
bacakground: i dont know a damn thing about him, so i’ll watch the vid and report back!
wish me luck!
@ Lizzie_in_Texas:
Well if you have any questions, don’t’ be shy. I’ll see if I can answer them for you, and if not I’ll get Eliana or Buzzsawmonkey to do so
@ WrathofG-d:
Thank you! I love that fact about theblogmocracy. The fact that you can ask questions without being attacked!
Overlook wrote:
This is a huge problem. Of course, progressives will go into Chicken Little hysterics if someone wants to insert a whisper of vague metaphysics into a lesson on evolution, but the constant injection of their own ideology and politics across the entire science curriculum is no big deal. (I am strongly opposed to both, but I am neither sufficiently ignorant nor stupid to think the creationists pose the bigger danger.)
An even bigger problem for science education, IMO, is mathematical illiteracy (“innumeracy,”) which puts most science out of the reach of the average student. It also makes the squishiest, least mathematical, and most easily politicized sciences dominate the curriculum. (The NEA wants it that way, BTW.)
Well Wrath and all. I also have errands and chores to do, but I have enjoyed this thread so far.
WrathofG-d wrote:
Here’s a moderately good translation, which does not—no translation can—carry the power of the words in the original:
For All These Things
Over the honey and the stinger
Over the bitter and the sweet
Over our daughter, our baby
My God, watch over what is good
Over the flame that is burning
Over the water running pure
Over the man returning home
from far away
Chorus:
Over all these, Over all these
God please watch over them for me,
Over the honey and the stinger
Over the bitter and the sweet
Do not uproot what is planted
Do not forget the hope
Return me, and I will return
to the good land.
Watch over this house for me, my God,
the garden, and the wall
protect them from pain, from sudden fear
And from war.
Watch over for me the little I have
The light, the baby
over the fruit that has not ripened
and over what has already been reaped.
Chorus:
The power is in several things: the words “ha tikvah” (the hope, which is also the title of the Israeli national anthem), and the words “hashiveni v’nashuah” (“return me and I will return,” which is part of the Hebrew liturgy and part of the end of the Book of Lamentations).
A wonderful organization, that many (unfortuantely) don’t know about – but you should – is Media Central.
Get to know it.
Wrath,
check your email.
At the risk of belaboring a point, I’d ask people to contrast “Al Kol Eleh” with the orc music that is favored by Hamas and Fatah.
@ wolfie:
You are probably well aware what is happening to the teaching of math.
Under the guise of “everyday” math, it is being forced into social relevance i.e. suspect classes are promoted in examples and illustrations.
The problem of rigor across the board is that socialist want equality of outcome. As with social justice, so with social education.
The poor standards in science will take us into that peculiar realm inhabited by the Muslims in the view of V.S. Naipaul: buying the products of scientific ideas in the great bazaar where they magically appear, but never originating it. But who will originate it, if America fails in science? Israel, perhaps, for a short time.
@ Overlook:
And China, India, too.
i watched the video. the rabbi made sense.
People who speak prophetically are not popular and are even opposed. As I recall, some of the Jewish prophets were not treated so well (Jeremiah was imprisoned, Isaiah was sawn in half and Zechariah was slain btwn the temple and the altar). Meir Kahane was such a man I think.
Those who brush him off as an extremist have likely not listened to anything that he has said.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
With unlimited time, and money I would actually write a book regarding (somewhat) this issue. You can really learn alot about Israel through its music -especially that of the formative years of the State.
The issues with the present Country can be similarily evidenced in their music today. What was once about love of Country, peace, flowers, the hills, the land, G-d, Judaism, etc., is now offensive, self-centered pap.
Rakefet!
@ Overlook:
Yes indeed!
Along with PC egalitarianism, the big villain in the piece is “relevance.”
Relevant to what? to whose agenda?
wolfie wrote:
Everything is “relevant” to the integrative mind.
I just watched the video. I couldn’t find any fault is what he said, especially regarding Israel being a Jewish state for Jews.
Volokh 1, NYT 0:
NYT Policy on Illegally Acquired Documents
Say it ain’t so!
ok, watched the vid.
i dont disagree with anything he said.
@ phoenixgirl:
@ JohnH:
His ideas, at least those presented in that interview, do not demand immediate agreement. But they are serious opinions that demand consideration, reflection, and critical judgment.
Of course, this is not something the thought police encourage.
@ Escovado:
@ coldwarrior:
The distance between the truth of what he says, and what is said about him is staggering!
We cannot forget that this video took place at least a decade ago.
G-d Bless Israel – this is our Hope, our Dream, and what the Islamists wish to destroy. Kahane is right, Kadima & Obama are wrong!
i may have to do some reading in his own words. i am impressed.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
AHA!
@ coldwarrior:
I am a personal big fan of his book “They Must Go!”.
But if you wish to hear a letter her wrote, here:
OT – do a copy/paste. This is incredible. Chaz thinks he is an artiste
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35197_The_LGF_2010_Photo_Calendar
coldwarrior wrote:
This is where I started when this thread was posted.
bbl
@ Speranza:
Now that is hillarious!
I wonder if the Jews noticed he didn’t mention Hanukkah, or the Atheists noticed he didn’t mention solstice.
@ snork:
LORD LAWSON CALLS FOR PUBLIC INQUIRY INTO CRU DATA AFFAIR
In response to recent revelations contained in leaked e-mails originating from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Lord Lawson, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the GWPF, has called for a rigorous and independent inquiry into the matter. While reserving judgment on the contents of the e-mails, Lord Lawson said these are very serious issues and allegations that reach to the heart of scientific integrity and credibility:
“Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals.”
“There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. But what is clear is that the integrity of the scientific evidence on which not merely the British Government, but other countries, too, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claim to base far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions, has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without delay.”
Lord Lawson added:
“Since the CRU is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and is part of the University of East Anglia, we should call on Edmund Wallis, the chairman of the NERC and Brandon Gough, the Chancellor of the UEA, to jointly commission an independent inquiry into the revelations, including, of course, their veracity.”
snip
GWPF LAUNCHED TODAY
<a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/news/136-launched-today.html The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 23 November 2009
Speaking at the launch of the GWPF in the House of Lords today, Lord Lawson introduced the new think tank:
“Last year I brought out a book on global warming which (rather to my surprise) generated an enormous feedback, almost all of it positive. A number of those who wrote to me, who included scientists, engineers and others with an experienced background, urged me not to leave the matter there but to follow it up in some way. It was this that led me to found the think-tank we are launching today, which can achieve far more than I could on my own.”
“I am most grateful both to all those who have agreed to join it as Trustees and to those who have provided the funds to enable it to get off the ground. My hope is that the birth of the Foundation may mark a turning-point in the political and public debate on the important issue of global warming policy.”
The Global Warming Policy Foundation is unique. We are an all-party and non-party think-tank and a registered educational charity which, while open-minded on the contested science of global warming, is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated. On the eve of the UN climate change conference at Copenhagen, designed to secure agreement on such policies, this has become particularly timely.
snip
Speranza wrote:
OK, one more post then off I go. Did you happen to see this?
The Eternal Banality of the Photography of Charles Foster Johnson
WrathofG-d wrote:
Well, Hanukkah celebrates a bunch of fundamentalist black hat religious fanatics, who killed the multicultists of their day.
Wrath of God, if Kahane was wrong, I can’t say for sure where he was wrong. I liked what he had to say, and I must confess I have a hard time right now disagreeing with Rabbi Kahane on anything (except, perhaps, on foreign aid). What he had to say about foreign aid to Israel has certainly made me think about my position on the subject. I have long supported the aiding of Israel, but it makes me wonder if encouraging Israel to pursue capitalism and free market economics instead of giving them money would be a better approach.
Watching the video, I come away much more doubtful of those who claim Rabbi Kahane was an extremist (and I’m not a Jew, for that matter).
@ WrathofG-d:
excellent letter!
ok wrath, i prefer books, i like them on shelves, so is there a preferred place to purchase his books, or should i just use my normal places
@ Speranza:
Does it have Chucky’s birthday? The Night of the Long Knives? Spencer Excommunication Day? Darwin’s Birthday? De-linking Day? The Ember Days of Excoriation? Thanksgiving ‘Hit-the-Tip-Jar’ Day? Kindlemass?
@ Speranza:
$25? You have got to be kidding.
@ coldwarrior:
I have had trouble finding many of his books at Boarders, etc., but know that you can get “they must go!” from Amazon.
Personally, I’d love for people to go into the major (liberal) chains and ask for his books. The more they hear about him, the more they will stock them, the more chance people will have to make up their own minds.
Maybe you can buy them from Kahane websites too, I have no preference.
Lizzie_in_Texas wrote:
Good grief he is charging $25 for his calendar of stupid photos?
wolfie wrote:
you are funny! Let’s not forget the Obama Did Not Bow day and the Vann Jones is not a Truther Day.
@ Morgan:
Your last statement is all I could ask for. One doesn’t have to agree with Kahane after hearing them, but it is important that whatever opinion they have, it is based on facts, and having the true information (not 3rd person slander)
I go back and forth on the American aid to Israel. I agree with Kahane in many ways on this issue, but understand as well how important the assistance, and cooperation is between the U.S. and Israel.
@ Speranza:
Stupid is not selling a calendar of those photos for $25 but buying them.
I would point out that the wholesale dismissal of someone’s arguments on an ad hominem basis, as was done with Kahane when he was alive, and now is done even more so after his death, is a quik’n'easy way to avoid having to actually deal with the issues the arguments raise.
That is what became the standard modus operandi at a certain other location—the argument became treif because of who had uttered it, or who the utterer’s friends were, not because of the argument’s lack of merit.
That is also the operation behind the designation of certain things as “hate speech”; if it is “hate speech,” you needn’t look at it, needn’t think about it, needn’t answer it. You merely dismiss the “hate speech”—and anything that might conceivably sound like it—as beyond the pale, along with anyone who might advertently or inadvertently utter something akin to it.
Ultimately, this is a method of thought control, because—like the Newspeak which is designed in 1984 to eventually render it impossible to formulate or utter a “politically incorrect” thought—it operates to prevent exercise of the critical faculties.
@ WrathofG-d:
ok, i’ll go mess with the libtard latte sippers at the local wannabe-oh-so-trendy-and-hip-bookstore for ‘they must go’.
they hate me there.
WrathofG-d wrote:
Sharmuta probably ordered a case load (and billed it to her dad).
@ Lizzie_in_Texas:
I love this part, too!!
@ Speranza:
What have the Loozards had to say about it?
~I really should put up an Open Thread for this, but it is just too hard to schedule posts these days.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
@ WrathofG-d:
I have all of Yosef Karduner’s CDs!!!!
He’s awesome!
coldwarrior wrote:
Just go in there and say, “Yes, We Kahane!”
@ Eliana:
yes, very good. I also like “Moshav Band”. (since we are exchanging music)
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Why must you insist that we get meir’d down in puns?
WrathofG-d wrote:
They are falling all over themselves in praise of Chaz’s enormous photographic talents.
@ Speranza:
Typical. Pathetic. Hilarious!
WrathofG-d wrote:
I was going to try and volley one back, but it’s a serious question. Russell Baker—one of the last sensible people to write for the New York Times—many years ago did a piece contrasting seriousness and solemnity. He pointed out that the two are often, even usually, mistaken for each other; that if one is solemn people think you are serious. He then observed that solemnity is actually a counterfeit of seriousness; that you can be serious about issues and still crack a joke, but that solemnity is a hard, dour shell which will not tolerate levity. Baker advocated seriousness over solemnity.
For precisely that reason I am not—refuse to be—solemn, the more so since solemnity, that dour, drab, joy-leaching cloud which PC has settled upon all our lives, is utterly humorless. There is truth in a joke; that is why Shakespeare’s comic menials are, along with the mad, the only characters in his plays that are always privileged to speak the truth.
I am doing my bit to make laughter the trumpets at the PC walls of Jericho.
Well, there you go blowing your own horn.
As for Rabbi Kahane’s interview – I agree with everything that he said.
He’s been described in extremely negative terms quite unfairly over the years due to a type of political correctness that exists in Israeli (and also American) politics. The Israeli government called his political party “racist” and banned it from the Knesset.
In the Arab world, the government owned news outlets still promote the Elders of the Protocols of Zion while picturing Jews in their editorials as the sons of pigs and monkeys (or as spiders swallowing the planet). The world doesn’t care.
The “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas (who has a PhD in Holocaust Denial and who was Arafat’s right hand man in the murderous PLO/Fatah terror gang for decades) runs a P.A. government in 2009 that still promotes suicide to their society’s children as the height of morality if it’s done while murdering Jews. The world doesn’t say a thing.
The whole point of the Arab-Israeli conflict (from the Arab point of view) has always been to kick the Jews out of the Middle East. They claimed that they would push the Jews into the sea when they attacked Israel. If they can’t force Jews to leave, then the idea is to EMBITTER Jewish lives so badly in Israel that nearly 6 million Jews (as of this year) will simply say, “Ok, it’s not worth it to have a Jewish state if they’re going to hassle us all the time.”
The Jewish people are NOT giving up Israel, though.
The Israeli Arabs today call themselves “Palestinians” and they are (as a group) denying Israel’s right to exist. This is what their Arab elected leaders are promoting at the Knesset: Israel does not have the right to exist.
The Israeli Arabs refuse to pay municipal taxes and then complain that the Jews in Israel aren’t giving them enough money for municipal expenses (such as local roads, schools, etc.)
The Israeli Arabs (as a group) are trying to EMBITTER Jewish lives within the Jewish state by hassling Israel all the time.
It isn’t politically correct to say that these people should leave if they hate Israel so much (and I doubt that any Israeli leader has the political will to pronounce that Arabs can only have citizenship if they swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state – AND make this policy happen in Israel) – but the Israeli Arabs are making themselves more of a pain in the neck as time goes on (even though it ends up hurting their own lives in one way or another).
Rabbi Kanahe has been blamed for things his followers have done as if he is responsible in the grave for the actions of a very few individuals. He’s not.
Sometimes the Kahanists do things (and say things) that make bad PR for Israel. Not that Israel gets good PR no matter what Israel ever does.
Kahane was not a racist or an extremist. The people who call themselves “Kahanists” are not racists or extremists.
The threshold for calling Jews “extremists” is microscopically small in a world where calling Jews “the songs of pigs and monkeys” isn’t considered to be extremist AT ALL.
So there are a lot of things going on in this. It’s a very complicated issue that tends to be fraught with PR danger for Israel at every possible turn. Not that this is unusual. It’s a day to day reality in the world where Israel resides.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
That, and often ridicule is the most effective weapon against the pompous. Blowhards can just holler back harder if you pick at their logic. But they are, as a group, utterly unprepared for ridicule.
It also reaches a wider audience. Often the serious debate is so esoteric and involved (such as climate, or Israel) that you lose 90% of the people in the details of the debate. But snark and ridicule have a way of cutting through all of the esoterica and exposing the blowhard. Yes, it can cut both ways, but the broader audience can usually sniff out the truth much more readily in a contest of ridicule than in a formal debate. They just don’t have as much bob and weave room.
Hi Everyone…
I sat down with a cup of coffee ages ago and have been gleud here ever since!
What a great thread, not the kind I can post on really, I`m learning today!
This lurker must run for now, catch up on all the work I haven`t done, but I`ll be back later to read the rest of it.
Thank you all for such an illuminating afternoon..I`ve thoroughly enjoyed this, I`ve learned a great deal too.
Great thread Wrath.
I do so Luv This House!!!
@ Eliana:
In many instances I have been practically shunned from many a conversation for even mentioning Kahane. When pressed however, all who would shut me down for bringing him up, haven’t actually read him, or heard him. They base their opinion on the uneducated statements of others (who have not heard or read him), and dismiss anything thereafter.
In many ways (although there are major differences) this all sort of reminds me of Gert Wilders (whom I know very little about).
When you bring him up (like Kahane) you just hear “racist”, and then the other will end the conversation and dismiss anything thereafter you have to say.
snork wrote:
Stan hates to be mocked.
Reminds me of CNN actually fact-checking the SNL skit that dared mock Obama. “But it wasn’t factual!” Comedy, not factual? You don’t say. There was a flurry of fact-check jokes on twitter that day.
That is not actually an arrow through Martin’s head. #cnnfactcheck
Gumby is a fictional character and was not in fact shot. #cnnfactcheck
@ WrathofG-d:
Yes, I know what you mean.
It’s a very touchy subject although many of the things that he actually said back then have become mainstreamed into common Israeli knowledge now.
There are a lot of people who freak at the mention of his name, though.
@ Eliana:
I’m not sure I would go as far as to say that much of what he said has become “common Israeli knowledge now”, but its too bad that Israel didn’t get it decades ago. If they had, it is more likely that both the Arab and the Israelis could be living in peace today!
I’m probably more predisposed to think of Kahane in better terms. I have a Christian friend who has lived in Israel since 1991. He knows Meir’s brother so my first intro to Meir was through someone who saw him in a much more positive light.
@ WrathofG-d:
It boils down to how foreign aid to Israel is defined, whether it comes in the form of funds to the nation’s government, or if it comes in the form of sharing military technology, selling military equipment, etc. At this point, I don’t know what stance I should take on the subject of foreign aid to Israel; something I need to go over thoroughly. Thank you, Rabbi Kahane, for challenging my stance.
I am ashamed to admit that I do not understand this topic at all. Where the hell was I when the world was happening? You have piqied my curiousity about this man though. Good on you Wrath.
Wrath,
Thank you for this. I must admit, until I frequented the “original” LGF, I had never heard of Meir Kahane. I listened to the whole thing and like almost all of what I heard. As a “non” Jew, I found little I could disagree. However, there is one statement I would like to make and a couple of questions to any American Jew on this board. Buzz, I know you’re one.
As a Jew in America, are you ever “frightened” or do you feel threatened of being Jewish? May sound like a strange question for our generation, but it is a question of personal curiosity.
And I am not exactly clear is to why Kahane felt the state of Israel and Western Democracy were incompatible. Was it because of the “51%” rule? Could you help clarify this?
Now my statement of truth; actually two. First, like Kahane I have often perceived an inherent weakness in most Jews – a lack of faith. Kahane is right in that God is greater than America, greater than George Bush, greater than the human collective. Second, as an Evangelical Christian, and I believe I speak for millions, my support of Israel is not based on ushering in the rapture, or even a greater love of Jews than any other though I support the cause, or even a self-serving interest, but as a Christian I am command to. I don’t even profess to completely understand why God has instructed me to be as such. I simply believe in the covenant God made with Abram.
I tell you that because I truly believe Jews have no better friend than Evangelical Christians – not based so much on friendship but based on something much deeper.
Thanks again for the post…well worth the time to listen.
@ Goodbye_Natalie:
You asked:
Short answer is yes. Every Jew has experienced at least one act of Anti-Semitism against them, and actual fear for being Jewish. This is why most Jews spend so much time trying to be unidentifiable as Jews.
You misunderstood him (or I do). Kahane was saying that Democracy and a Jewish Israel are uncompatable. This is because you cannot be a democracy that has a State religion. You either represent all of your citizens, or you ensure a special majority (ie: Jews). This is especially true, as in Israel, when you have a growing minority that wishes to destroy your Jewish character, and State. How can you represent fully the opinion of the Anti-Semitic Muslim (Democraticly) while at the same time ensuring a Jewish character of your Country? How can you have as your national anthem the “hativah” which discusses the yearning of the Jewish heart to once again live its 2000 year dream of being in Jerusalem, while trying to be a Democracy that represents the will, and desires of your Muslims citizens that do not share in this 2000 year dream, and Jewish heart?
It is because of the rejectionism of the Muslims that Israel cannot be both Jewish and Democratic. If the Muslims accepted the Jewish character of the State, as Americans of all strips accept our Constitution (or as they are supposed to) then it wouldn’t be so much of a problem. There is also the 51% problem as Democracy cannot be a suicide pact. You cannot have an arrangement where the Muslims could out birth the Jewish character of the State.
As to your comments about Evangelicals, G-d bless you all. I as a Jew am a huge fan, and very thankful for the support of the Evangelical Christian community.
Great post, Wrath. Do you know if there is a transcript of this interview available anywhere?
@ The Osprey:
Unfortunately I don’t know. I was looking for a date of it as well but without any luck.
At 1.0 one could not have this conversation about Kahane. It seems to be a very reasonable discussion to have. NY NANA was banned for being a secret Kahanist by supporting Carl in Jerusalem.
Israel is a small state surrounded by enemies. Enemies dealing in the evolution of Nazi hate. Yet supported by the UN and the US. I would prefer Israel to be a Jewish state with Jewish only voters. Other wise population growth will eventually be the method to undermine the Jewish state.
No land should be given up in exchange for death cult hating.
Rav. Kahane’s idea on kicking out the Arabs is a very good one. Just because some of my Liberal brethren scream and move out Jews instead; e.g., Gush Katif; etc., does not negate the reasonableness of such an idea.
If we listened to Rabbi Meir Kahane, Zt”l, Israel and America would not be in the trouble they are today.
Incidentally, I am probably one of the few people who know The Jewish Defense League Marching Song.
I only heard one other person sing it and that was the person who taught it to me.
The Stars and Stripes Forever
Kahane’s last book, Revolution or Referendum, is available freely:
http://www.archive.org/details/RevolutionOrReferendum
It is a short book and quite an interesting one. It focuses on the deformities of Israel’s political system (which benefit leftists and Bnei Amalek [Muslims], but endanger Jews). This book is serious political science.