I have had more than a little difficulty posting this screed of Rabbi Nesenoff, the dude who took down Helen Thomas. I think her "controversial" remarks were not so great but not so horrible either. She seemed to be a feisty respondent to a baiting challenger and she said nothing that her chief accuser, Rabbi Nesenoff, does not say, in his message to his son, Adam. Only the Rabbi justifies and excuses the expulsion
of Palestinians from their homeland, the homeland that the Rabbi claims is the property of Adam!
Helen Thomas's dismissal from service and her self-effacing apology tells us what Chomsky has been telling us for decades, that the so-called journalists and new media are propagandistic in nature, not objective news media. Helen Thomas was already on the edge of voluntary ideological conformity. Her immediate apology suggests her own Zionist leanings but her love for humanity got the better of her and she said forbidden things to a Rabbi who probably hoped he could bait her into saying something "anti-Semitic". He claims it was an opportunistic act but I am skeptical.
Below we see Rabbi Nesenoff making truly malicious statements. The Rabbi justifies the expulsion of "the Arabs", from Palestine. Rabbi Nesenhoff's crackpot theology and history lesson for his son, Adam, is similar to the religious and political beliefs of such notorious mass murderers as General Armstrong Custer and President Andrew Jackson. Modern Zionism is an out of date slaveholder, genocidal ideology with no place in a multicultural tolerant world at peace. Surely Israel can organize on the basis of some sort of humanistic mutual embrace of the Israelis with the rest of the world.
of Palestinians from their homeland, the homeland that the Rabbi claims is the property of Adam!
Helen Thomas's dismissal from service and her self-effacing apology tells us what Chomsky has been telling us for decades, that the so-called journalists and new media are propagandistic in nature, not objective news media. Helen Thomas was already on the edge of voluntary ideological conformity. Her immediate apology suggests her own Zionist leanings but her love for humanity got the better of her and she said forbidden things to a Rabbi who probably hoped he could bait her into saying something "anti-Semitic". He claims it was an opportunistic act but I am skeptical.
Below we see Rabbi Nesenoff making truly malicious statements. The Rabbi justifies the expulsion of "the Arabs", from Palestine. Rabbi Nesenhoff's crackpot theology and history lesson for his son, Adam, is similar to the religious and political beliefs of such notorious mass murderers as General Armstrong Custer and President Andrew Jackson. Modern Zionism is an out of date slaveholder, genocidal ideology with no place in a multicultural tolerant world at peace. Surely Israel can organize on the basis of some sort of humanistic mutual embrace of the Israelis with the rest of the world.
Below is a copy of Rabbi Nesenoff's publicly posted message to his son, Adam and some of my criticisms. His words are in black and mine in red.
So this past summer we went to Israel to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah
of my son Adam. You know, Israel, it’s that place we sometimes visit.
So this past summer we went to Israel to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah
of my son Adam. You know, Israel, it’s that place we sometimes visit.
{I'm glad you and your son can visit the very recently invented state of modern Israel, Rabbi, but why can't the Palestinians visit? Why are millions of recently expelled Palestinians and their descendants not allowed to visit? Are Palestinian sons less precious than your own. Are not their families and properties still there to abide with and within? Why is it that you and Adam can come and go to this stolen land while the owners are locked out or even within as in Gaza?
Israel must take down the check points, withdraw the troops and settlers. Rabbi, I want you and your son to make sure that the 1.5 million people of Gaza can also come and go as they please.
End the siege of Gaza, Rabbi!}
End the siege of Gaza, Rabbi!}
Sometimes we send money there.
Sometimes we buy a bond.
Sometimes we plant a tree.
(OK, Rabbi, you give money to Israel, you buy bonds and trees for Israel. Isn't that the new Zionist campaign, to ramp up those three items now that they realize that a lot of Jews are too sophisticated to believe this Golden Book version of Zionist history and your thugish version of theology.}
Sometimes we read about it in the newspaper.
Sometimes we say a prayer in the synagogue.
Sometimes we hear really mean people say really nasty things about that country.
{Are they really mean unfair critics? Is that how you answer every UN Resolution violated and never enforced against Israel? Do your Palestinian victims sometimes bleed all over you when they are killed by Israelis? What is your real gripe? You don't even think critics, Arabs, Muslims are human, do you?}
Sometimes we see the TV showing the aftermath of blown up buses there.
{What if you gave back Palestine? (note ridiculous diamond ring story below) Would the relatively ineffective violence of those frustrated by having their land stolen and rights denied, would they have been nicer and less violent?
Did Israel ever have an opportunity or even care to share the stolen land it now dominates? I think the opportunity for a relatively just peace was there again and again, in the last century. Unfortunately Rabbis, Zionist fanatics and their mental zombies in office supported a ruthless expropriation of all Palestine. Those few Palestinians not expelled by men like the good Rabbi, or murdered by good sons like Adam, are confined to only ten percent of Palestine today.
Let's get back to Rabbi Nesenoff's ridiculous "poem"?}
Sometimes we see tanks and jeeps and rockets and missiles and people are arguing about what’s going on over there.
Sometimes politicians are supporting that country.
Sometimes there are rallies and sometimes there are parades.
Sometimes we see that country represented as a contestant in the Miss
Universe pageant and sometimes we see them in the Olympics.
Sometimes there are rallies and sometimes there are parades.
Sometimes we see that country represented as a contestant in the Miss
Universe pageant and sometimes we see them in the Olympics.
Sometimes
their athletes are shot and brought home in caskets and sometimes their
citizens are hijacked or held hostage and need to be rescued.
their athletes are shot and brought home in caskets and sometimes their
citizens are hijacked or held hostage and need to be rescued.
{And forty years after the 1968 Munich massacre at the Olympics the Palestinian leadership is mostly broken, capitulationist, with little power of any kind. Of course up to the Munich massacre Israel had effectively convinced the American people that Palestinians didn't even exist. It is something I think Rabbi Nesenoff would still assert.
Last year we saw 1400 slaughtered Palestinians in Gaza and on the Israeli side, fourteen dead. Yet Zionists like Rabbi Nesenoff believe these massacres are just fine, G-d's will so to speak, and he is teaching that crap to his son, Adam.}
Sometimes that country just gets labeled as the Middle East or
the Middle East conflict and sometimes we see people negotiating over
the conflict.
{Yeah, there is a lot of superficial so-called news about Israel and the rest of the Middle East. Zionists like to filter out the real facts and implant fiction, and even bad fairy tales. That is what Rabbi Nesenoff is doing here, replacing facts with wishful thinking and false propaganda. We should make our decisions based of facts, not racist self-serving colonialist mythology draped in religious garb.
Rabbi Nesenoff implies that the Middle East can be equated with Israel,saying "that country" is the Middle East. Maybe he is an ultra Zionist and wants to conquer the whole of the Middle East but the claim is absurd on any level. The Israelis and Zionists always like to play the expert about everything in the Middle enunciated. Usually they are just pushing the Israeli line.
In fact, Israel is a tiny nation of less than twenty million, more like ten million. Turkey, just for example, has seventy millions or more. Israel isn't the Middle East but a lot of Israelis have convinced and miseducated Americans into believing Israel is the Middle East. How convenient to reduce a dozen nations to nothingness, if only we believe the way the dear Rabbi and his even dearer son do. But we don't.
Israel is not, the Middle East. Israel ia a colonial settler state that is still fighting the indigenous inhabitants.}
And sometimes they are shaking hands and sometimes they are killing each other’s eighteen year olds’.
{But now 2007 to 2010 "they" put 1.5 million people in Gaza under siege and Rabbi Nesenoff doesn't see the metaphorical chimneys of Auschwitz! Just like a good German of the Hitler era, the nation of Nesenoff's true devotion can do no wrong!. This is Nesenoff's true heritage! The one he is passing on to his son, murder by siege.}
And sometimes they are just wounding and maiming them.
{But hardly ever anymore and usually because of a Palestinian engaging in some modest form of self-defense. Israelis hardly ever suffer and they are not starved, or held under siege. Plus the whole country is worse than South African apartheid was anyway.
Israel was the best friend of South Africa and even helped them make an atom bomb which the new South Africa, unlike Israel, reportedly renounced.}
So Nancy and I and Adam and Ashley decided to go and Bar
Mitzvah Adam in Israel because sometimes Jews from America do that sort
of thing there.
When I was 14 I went alone to Israel for a year to study in an
Agricultural High School in Ashkelon. And when I was in graduate school
I studied for a year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Some of us have
been there for short time periods and some have been there longer, or
some have gone more frequently and some of us have not been there yet
and some of us might believe that they will probably never journey to
that country.
Israel was the best friend of South Africa and even helped them make an atom bomb which the new South Africa, unlike Israel, reportedly renounced.}
So Nancy and I and Adam and Ashley decided to go and Bar
Mitzvah Adam in Israel because sometimes Jews from America do that sort
of thing there.
When I was 14 I went alone to Israel for a year to study in an
Agricultural High School in Ashkelon. And when I was in graduate school
I studied for a year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Some of us have
been there for short time periods and some have been there longer, or
some have gone more frequently and some of us have not been there yet
and some of us might believe that they will probably never journey to
that country.
{It is there that I was train to be a Zionist cadre. }
But we all have a basic knowledge of Israel.
But we all have a basic knowledge of Israel.
{You have a very, very basic knowledge of Zionist mythology, not Israel, not the Middle East and not the real world.}
It’s a Jewish
country with a great history; it is ancient yet contemporary; it’s
religious but not everyone is religious. There’s a desert; there’s a
wall;People have accents; {there are Palestinians} they grow oranges; Hadassah has a hospital,
choumous, felafel, she
country with a great history; it is ancient yet contemporary; it’s
religious but not everyone is religious. There’s a desert; there’s a
wall;People have accents; {there are Palestinians} they grow oranges; Hadassah has a hospital,
choumous, felafel, she
{Yeah, not everyone is religious and those that are are at each other's throats if they aren't going after the secular Israelis. Not everyone is the same in any way except that they are American and European opportunists or their immediate descendants who took a chance on setting up the last white settler state on earth. Ian Smith failed in Zimbabwe and the South African whites had to give way to a form of black majority rule. Israel remains the last diamond of colonialism.
But Rabbi Nesenoff and the Israelis don't want majority rule so they define Israel as a "Jewish State" to restrict or abolish the votes of Arabs. Yet there are Arab Israelis, I wonder if the good Rabbi and better father will mention the Israeli Palestinians to his incredibly uninfomed son?}
And even though I was born in Glen Cove and grew up in Syosset
Long Island, Israel is my Jewish homeland. It is the homeland for all
Jewish people.
{Would Helen have lost her journalistic head if she had defiantly told the good Rabbi Nesenoff, or is it "Rib Eye" Nesenoff?, to "Go back to Glen Cove!" Would that be equally offensive to this believer in Israel's divine right to kill, murder and destroy in order to take another people's land?
So which nation has your loyalty, my good Rabbi? Are you a "real American" or an Israeli making hay for Israel whatever the price for America even though you were born here? And don't tell me Israel and the United States are always on the same page. They are two very different nations with vastly different prospects and interests. Tell me you will put America first over Israel any day and I will say you are a true American. I wonder if you would say that Israel is your priority?}
Why is it our homeland? Well ask anyone they’ll tell you.
Everyone knows why Israel is the Jewish homeland. We know, you know, I
know. The television knows. The media knows. The public knows, the
world knows. All the schools know. The senior citizens know, the
college kids know. Everyone knows why Israel is the Jewish homeland.
{And even if the good Rabbi is obviously saying nothing to justify the "Jewish homeland" he says, ask anyone, ask David Huet-Vaughn. I'll take that question.
Everyone doesn't know what Israel is, let alone agree about it. Read the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and you will find that Jewish Israelis especially the so called Haredi are always fighting with other Jews over all sorts of sectarian religious nonsense. Israel has become an open psychiatric ward where one delusional faction fights another with no end in sight. Adam, buy antipsychotics for Israel and your Dad, not Israeli bonds!
You are Jewish and live in the United States, Rabbi! You are loyal to Israel but reside here! Where is the home in your homeland my good repeater of Zionist mythology?
Yes we have all heard the myth and the Zionist propaganda that Israel ought to be a Jewish state where it is today, in Palestine, but those are just the views of the British Colonialists after terrorist Zionist organizations offered to make Israel an Anglo-American tool in the region. Dear Rabbi, tell dearer Adam about Israel being a dagger for America and England in the Middle East, not about Israel being the Middle East. }
Israel was sanctioned a State in 1948 after the Holocaust so
the remaining Jews who were almost wiped off the face of the earth by
the Nazis would have a place to go and call their own. So Jews started
arriving in the late forties to Israel to live and start a new life.
{This is a very bad and inaccurate version of history and it assumes that the creation of Israel was based upon a Zionist consensus; that everyone from Stalin to Truman suddenly thought a "Jewish" state was necessary. That is the Zionist goal, not the worldwide consensus and has throughout most of history not been the consensus of most living Jews.
Of course Zionism has a longer history than the Rabbi suggests, accentuating the ignorance of his own convictions not even realizing they are old fashioned colonial ideas from the nineteenth century.]
they {we? Us? them?} have a rightful claim to the land because thousands of years
earlier they once had lived there.
earlier they once had lived there.
{You mean that the survivors of the holocaust were themselves, each and every one, thousands of years old? Rabbi Nesenoff, are you telling me that your parents and grandparent and great grandparents they actually lived there, IN BRONZE AGE PALESTINE?
No you mean just the opposite! You don't live somewhere else for thousands of years and then claim that your absence gives you a right to the land that you imagine distant ancestors once dwelled upon! It is an absurd fantasy of entitlement sanctioned by the complete lack of humility of a religious man who has no humility but instead demands the land of others because he writes the name of the divine being he believes in as, G-D, pretending he has humility, and says G-D gave sonny boy Adam the Middle East or at least Israel!}
In today’s torah portion we read about Abraham who was in
Israel and who earlier in the torah was promised that land by G-d. And
in the following portion when his wife Sarah dies Abraham actually buys
with money land in Hebron to bury her.
{So the good Rabbi is telling us that IMAGINED ancestors bought some IMAGINED grave plot and that this means that He and Adam and other modern Jews own Israel? Helen Thomas should have put a microphone in Rabbi Nesenoff's face. But she didn't have to because here it is, his Zionist message to Adam, his son, co-owners of Palestine by divine right, living in North America. Alexander the Great used to like claiming divine sanction and such too to justify taking anything he wanted too.}
And then for hundreds of years Jews lived there,
{Yeah, there were ancestors of many peoples in the region including the Jews, but they were by no means the only peoples there.}
and then they
were slaves in Egypt.
were slaves in Egypt.
{It may or may not be true. There seems to be no archeological evidence that Jews were slaves to an Egyptian Pharoh, but who knows? It's the best story I know and if used to justify the liberty of all humans a very liberating one. Yet if Exodus is interepreted as a good reason to steal Palestinian land for "just the Jews" then I think it is very bad and just another narrow nationalist perverson of what could be a progressive nationalism, perhaps.}
And then they went back to Israel and Joshua
broke down the walls of Jericho and began reclaiming Israel again. And
then there was King Saul, and King David killed Goliath and Solomon
built a Temple and it was destroyed twice and the Jews left and went
into exile in the year 70.
So after the Holocaust in the late 1940s it was a natural for
the Jews to go back there-- to their land and reclaim it again.
broke down the walls of Jericho and began reclaiming Israel again. And
then there was King Saul, and King David killed Goliath and Solomon
built a Temple and it was destroyed twice and the Jews left and went
into exile in the year 70.
So after the Holocaust in the late 1940s it was a natural for
the Jews to go back there-- to their land and reclaim it again.
{It wasn't so much natural as nationalistic. The Europeans still didn't want the Jews and many Jews wanted to get the hell out of Europe. Jews went to America, Australia, Canada and Israel. Jew flourished outside of Israel so the necessity for an Israel to help Jews do well or be accepted is just not supported by worldwide Jewish successes. If anything Israel has become a millstone around the neck of world Jewry.
American Crackers like George Corly Wallace and many United States Senators like Strom Thurmond used to say that racism and segregation of the races is natural and that is just the way it is, forever. That is what the good Rabbi is saying today with regard to that retrograde remnant of colonial hubris, Israel. Let's not forget that Great Britain helped create the Zionist movement in order to counter the ideologies of socialism that most Jews embraced before WWII.}
And
with the world feeling really guilty right after the Holocaust it made
it that much easier to get the land back and kick out hundreds of
thousands of Arabs who were living there and dwelling peacefully with
their families and loved ones. But it was ours first as it was promised
to us by G-d in the Torah so we have a claim to it.
with the world feeling really guilty right after the Holocaust it made
it that much easier to get the land back and kick out hundreds of
thousands of Arabs who were living there and dwelling peacefully with
their families and loved ones. But it was ours first as it was promised
to us by G-d in the Torah so we have a claim to it.
{So here the Rabbi says it was and is OK to kick out "the Arabs". He may refuse to call them Palestinians because that underlines that they are being expelled unlawfully from their own land. Later he will assert no one but the Jewish invaders wanted to live there! Which lie is it Rabbi? Are all lies equally useful to you, in your unholy miseducation of Adam and others?
In the fairyland ideology of Rabbi Nesenoff's Zionism the Palestinians have no right to their land because there are other Arab and Muslim countries. Few Zionists have abandoned that position and Rabbi Nesenhoff says it is OK to expel the Arabs or Palestinians from their own land, but it would be horrible and terrible to send Jewish settlers to Poland or Germany, (something Helen Thomas said, I think rather tongue in cheek). Of course those Jews in Palestine/Israel today are mainly from European stock.
One thing is certain, no Jewish settler in the twentieth century ever came from the bronze age anyway!}
And that’s why we
have a Jewish Homeland and so I went there this summer with my family
for my son’s Bar Mitzvah.
And like I said, we know that, sometimes, American Jews do that today.
So, Shana Tova and Happy New Year.
You know, before I conclude, maybe, I should just mention one more thing.
have a Jewish Homeland and so I went there this summer with my family
for my son’s Bar Mitzvah.
And like I said, we know that, sometimes, American Jews do that today.
So, Shana Tova and Happy New Year.
You know, before I conclude, maybe, I should just mention one more thing.
{What do diamonds have to do with it? Is the Rabbi making fun of Jewish stereotypes or simply demonstrating that there is no Jewish stereotype he cannot eagerly embrace?}
If I stole your diamond ring and said that G-d told my
grandfather that the diamond ring was his, so therefore it is now mine.
I think we would have ourselves a conflict.
{So, first we get this ridiculous divinely sanctioned seizure of Palestinian land story, and now we have a story about stealing valuable jewelry. I can't believe it!}
{We will continue the dissection of this infection later.}
If I really believe that the ring is mine, even if G-d did tell
my grandfather something, I better show up to court with a few other
supporting facts with regard to my ownership of that diamond ring. And
even though I am an ordained rabbi if I want that ring that is mine I
better not bring up that G-d story like it is something anyone is
actually interested in hearing about.
I better show up with a case file and evidence and facts and
accounts and photographs and testimonies and data and particulars and
statistics and non-paranormal reality. Yeah I would stay away from that
G-d story when I’m presenting my case for that diamond ring in front of
the judge, the jury and the general public.
From 1517 to 1917 Turkey controlled the areas we know as
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. During World War I Turkey supported
Germany. When Germany lost the war, Lebanon and Syria was assigned to
France... and the area we know as Jordan and Israel was mandated to
Great Britain.
The Jews of numerous Arab countries had already begun mass
immigration into that area in the 1880's in an effort to rid the land
of swamps and malaria. This Jewish dangerous and painstaking effort to
turn uninhabitable marsh and malaria and mire into livable property was
actually becoming successful. The Jewish revitalization of the land was
paying off and then and only then attracted a large immigration of
Arabs from neighboring areas who were drawn by employment opportunities
and healthier living conditions than the Arab countries they were
living in.
In 1923, the British divided this area and gave 75% of the land
to the Arabs and 25% to the Jews. The Arabs launched never-ending
murderous attacks upon the Jews in an effort to drive them out. Most
terrifying were the Hebron massacres of 1929 and later during the 1936
to 1939 "Arab Revolt." The British at first tried to maintain order but
soon (due to the large oil deposits being discovered throughout the
Arab Middle East) turned a blind eye. It became painfully clear to the
Jews that they must fight the Arabs AND drive out the British.
The Jews were forced to form an organized defense against the
Arabs, thus was formed the Hagana, the beginnings of the Israeli
Defense Forces. There was also a Jewish underground called the Irgun,
led by Menachem Begin (who later became Prime Minister of Israel).
Besides fighting the Arabs, the Irgun was instrumental in driving out
the pro-Arab British. Finally in 1947 the British had enough and turned
the problem over to the United Nations.
The 1947 U.N. Resolution 181 partition plan was to divide the
remaining 25% that the Jews were living in, into a Jewish State and a
second Palestinian State. The Jews accepted the UN plan. The Arab
Palestinians rejected it. The Arabs still wanted ALL of the land both
east AND west of the Jordan River.
On May 14, 1948 the Jews finally declared their own State of
Israel and became "Israelis." On the next day, seven neighboring Arab
armies... Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and
Yemen... invaded Israel. Most of the Arabs living within the boundaries
of the newly declared "ISRAEL" were encouraged to leave by the invading
Arab armies to facilitate the slaughter of the Jews and were promised
to be given all Jewish property after the victorious Arab armies won
the war. The truth is that 70% of the Arabs who left in 1948 – perhaps
300,000 to 400,000 of them – never saw an Israeli soldier! They did not
flee because they feared Jewish soldiers or Jewish thugs…. But because
of a rational and reasonable calculus: the Jews will be exterminated;
we will get out of the way while that messy and dangerous business goes
forward, and we will return afterwards to reclaim our homes, and to
inherit those nice Jewish properties as well. They guessed wrong; and
the Arabs are still tortured by the residual shame of their flight.
The remaining 30% either saw for themselves that these Jews
would fight and die for their new nation and decided to pack up and
leave or they were driven off the land as a normal consequence of war.
When the, nineteen month war, ended, Israel survived despite a
1% loss of its entire population! Those Arabs who did not flee became
today's Israeli-Arab citizens. Those who fled became the seeds of the
first wave of "Palestinian Arab refugees."
In the final analysis, the Arabs of Palestine ended up with
nearly 85% of the original territory of that area, and it’s called
Jordan, or in reality, their ARAB Palestinian state! But that was still
not 100% and thus the conflict between Arab and Jew for "Palestine"
continues through wars and continuous Arab terrorist attacks upon
Israeli citizens.
Your Honor, that diamond-ring is mine. I dug into the cavern
and struck the walls and collected the stone and carved it and cut it
and set it and wore it and bled for it. This is not about my G-d or
their G-d. This is not about the Holocaust or the 1940s. This is not
about Kings Saul, David or Solomon. This is not about throwing Arabs
and their loved one’s out of their homes. This is not about ancient
times.
This is about the creation of a modern country in modern times
in a legitimate manner. This is about the blossoming of a fruit that
was planted in swamps and marshes and malaria.
This isn’t about 70 BCE or 70 AD. This is about 1517, 1880, 1917, 1923, 1936,1939, 1947, and 1948.
That diamond ring is mine and that diamond ring is my son’s.
And if I want him and his children to have that beautiful sparkling
gem, I better stop telling stories about how my G-d is better than your
G-d.
And I better remember to retell and recant and reclaim the history and facts surrounding that precious diamond ring.
Oh to live in a world with only one Hitler. We live in a world
of ruthless Muslim dictators who are counting on the big lie to
overtake the world’s ignorance and bring about the final solution. They
want to finally drive Israel into the sea. And they are telling the
story of how the Jews directed by their G-d came and took the land in
1948 away from the poor Arabs, and the post Holocaust UN and world felt
guilty so they gave it to the Jews. And these Moslem and now European
and South American and Eastern bloc nations are getting away with that
story because we Jews are telling the same story.
We must teach the world the real story. And we must start by
learning it ourselves…. And teaching it to our children in Hebrew
School, in Adult Education classes and on college campuses. We must
teach it to our friends and to the media. This is not about G-d. And
those who are defending Israel with divine support as their evidence
are killing us. We have got to focus on the truth that is undeniable:
the truth of facts, not faith.
The diamond is slipping off our finger. We can only keep it on
for so long by making a fist. We must learn and then educate our people
and our world about the facts regarding the creation of the State of
Israel, the Jewish Homeland. This is not about G-d
And so I went to Israel to Bar Mitzvah my son this past summer.
And Adam recited the blessings over the Torah on Masada in the middle
of the desert on top of this mountain where, in the year 72, one
thousand Jews drew lots to select two of them to slaughter all of them,
in a kind of suicide pact, rather than be killed by the Romans who were
about to breach the mountain fortress. When the Romans discovered all
the dead bodies, two Jewish women remained to tell the story of this
Jewish community.
Make no mistake about it, we have an ancient story to tell, but
we must testify with the contemporary facts of our homeland or we will
be destined to retell that ancient story again and again.
This past summer in Israel, I also stood in the home of Meir
Dizengoff, who in 1909, not 1948, 1909, gathered with 66 families on
the sandy shoreline of what was to become Tel Aviv. I stood in the bomb
shelter of his home where David Ben Gurion proclaimed the Independence
of the State of Israel.
Our Israel is still in the bomb shelter proclaiming her
statehood while Moslems and others deny their recognition of this valid
legal Jewish Homeland.
Don’t let anyone call you or your father or your children a
thief. That diamond ring is ours, but we better polish up on our
understanding of how we got it.
The Jews in that swamp land were not religious and they were
not Orthodox and they were not Chasidim, they were just pre-Holocaust
Jews who no one wanted and they were willing to try to settle in a
G-d forsaken place which no one wanted either.
Your Honor, that diamond-ring is mine.
Shana Tova.Israel - The Jewel of Our Peopleby Rabbi David Nesenoff
my grandfather something, I better show up to court with a few other
supporting facts with regard to my ownership of that diamond ring. And
even though I am an ordained rabbi if I want that ring that is mine I
better not bring up that G-d story like it is something anyone is
actually interested in hearing about.
I better show up with a case file and evidence and facts and
accounts and photographs and testimonies and data and particulars and
statistics and non-paranormal reality. Yeah I would stay away from that
G-d story when I’m presenting my case for that diamond ring in front of
the judge, the jury and the general public.
From 1517 to 1917 Turkey controlled the areas we know as
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel. During World War I Turkey supported
Germany. When Germany lost the war, Lebanon and Syria was assigned to
France... and the area we know as Jordan and Israel was mandated to
Great Britain.
The Jews of numerous Arab countries had already begun mass
immigration into that area in the 1880's in an effort to rid the land
of swamps and malaria. This Jewish dangerous and painstaking effort to
turn uninhabitable marsh and malaria and mire into livable property was
actually becoming successful. The Jewish revitalization of the land was
paying off and then and only then attracted a large immigration of
Arabs from neighboring areas who were drawn by employment opportunities
and healthier living conditions than the Arab countries they were
living in.
In 1923, the British divided this area and gave 75% of the land
to the Arabs and 25% to the Jews. The Arabs launched never-ending
murderous attacks upon the Jews in an effort to drive them out. Most
terrifying were the Hebron massacres of 1929 and later during the 1936
to 1939 "Arab Revolt." The British at first tried to maintain order but
soon (due to the large oil deposits being discovered throughout the
Arab Middle East) turned a blind eye. It became painfully clear to the
Jews that they must fight the Arabs AND drive out the British.
The Jews were forced to form an organized defense against the
Arabs, thus was formed the Hagana, the beginnings of the Israeli
Defense Forces. There was also a Jewish underground called the Irgun,
led by Menachem Begin (who later became Prime Minister of Israel).
Besides fighting the Arabs, the Irgun was instrumental in driving out
the pro-Arab British. Finally in 1947 the British had enough and turned
the problem over to the United Nations.
The 1947 U.N. Resolution 181 partition plan was to divide the
remaining 25% that the Jews were living in, into a Jewish State and a
second Palestinian State. The Jews accepted the UN plan. The Arab
Palestinians rejected it. The Arabs still wanted ALL of the land both
east AND west of the Jordan River.
On May 14, 1948 the Jews finally declared their own State of
Israel and became "Israelis." On the next day, seven neighboring Arab
armies... Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and
Yemen... invaded Israel. Most of the Arabs living within the boundaries
of the newly declared "ISRAEL" were encouraged to leave by the invading
Arab armies to facilitate the slaughter of the Jews and were promised
to be given all Jewish property after the victorious Arab armies won
the war. The truth is that 70% of the Arabs who left in 1948 – perhaps
300,000 to 400,000 of them – never saw an Israeli soldier! They did not
flee because they feared Jewish soldiers or Jewish thugs…. But because
of a rational and reasonable calculus: the Jews will be exterminated;
we will get out of the way while that messy and dangerous business goes
forward, and we will return afterwards to reclaim our homes, and to
inherit those nice Jewish properties as well. They guessed wrong; and
the Arabs are still tortured by the residual shame of their flight.
The remaining 30% either saw for themselves that these Jews
would fight and die for their new nation and decided to pack up and
leave or they were driven off the land as a normal consequence of war.
When the, nineteen month war, ended, Israel survived despite a
1% loss of its entire population! Those Arabs who did not flee became
today's Israeli-Arab citizens. Those who fled became the seeds of the
first wave of "Palestinian Arab refugees."
In the final analysis, the Arabs of Palestine ended up with
nearly 85% of the original territory of that area, and it’s called
Jordan, or in reality, their ARAB Palestinian state! But that was still
not 100% and thus the conflict between Arab and Jew for "Palestine"
continues through wars and continuous Arab terrorist attacks upon
Israeli citizens.
Your Honor, that diamond-ring is mine. I dug into the cavern
and struck the walls and collected the stone and carved it and cut it
and set it and wore it and bled for it. This is not about my G-d or
their G-d. This is not about the Holocaust or the 1940s. This is not
about Kings Saul, David or Solomon. This is not about throwing Arabs
and their loved one’s out of their homes. This is not about ancient
times.
This is about the creation of a modern country in modern times
in a legitimate manner. This is about the blossoming of a fruit that
was planted in swamps and marshes and malaria.
This isn’t about 70 BCE or 70 AD. This is about 1517, 1880, 1917, 1923, 1936,1939, 1947, and 1948.
That diamond ring is mine and that diamond ring is my son’s.
And if I want him and his children to have that beautiful sparkling
gem, I better stop telling stories about how my G-d is better than your
G-d.
And I better remember to retell and recant and reclaim the history and facts surrounding that precious diamond ring.
Oh to live in a world with only one Hitler. We live in a world
of ruthless Muslim dictators who are counting on the big lie to
overtake the world’s ignorance and bring about the final solution. They
want to finally drive Israel into the sea. And they are telling the
story of how the Jews directed by their G-d came and took the land in
1948 away from the poor Arabs, and the post Holocaust UN and world felt
guilty so they gave it to the Jews. And these Moslem and now European
and South American and Eastern bloc nations are getting away with that
story because we Jews are telling the same story.
We must teach the world the real story. And we must start by
learning it ourselves…. And teaching it to our children in Hebrew
School, in Adult Education classes and on college campuses. We must
teach it to our friends and to the media. This is not about G-d. And
those who are defending Israel with divine support as their evidence
are killing us. We have got to focus on the truth that is undeniable:
the truth of facts, not faith.
The diamond is slipping off our finger. We can only keep it on
for so long by making a fist. We must learn and then educate our people
and our world about the facts regarding the creation of the State of
Israel, the Jewish Homeland. This is not about G-d
And so I went to Israel to Bar Mitzvah my son this past summer.
And Adam recited the blessings over the Torah on Masada in the middle
of the desert on top of this mountain where, in the year 72, one
thousand Jews drew lots to select two of them to slaughter all of them,
in a kind of suicide pact, rather than be killed by the Romans who were
about to breach the mountain fortress. When the Romans discovered all
the dead bodies, two Jewish women remained to tell the story of this
Jewish community.
Make no mistake about it, we have an ancient story to tell, but
we must testify with the contemporary facts of our homeland or we will
be destined to retell that ancient story again and again.
This past summer in Israel, I also stood in the home of Meir
Dizengoff, who in 1909, not 1948, 1909, gathered with 66 families on
the sandy shoreline of what was to become Tel Aviv. I stood in the bomb
shelter of his home where David Ben Gurion proclaimed the Independence
of the State of Israel.
Our Israel is still in the bomb shelter proclaiming her
statehood while Moslems and others deny their recognition of this valid
legal Jewish Homeland.
Don’t let anyone call you or your father or your children a
thief. That diamond ring is ours, but we better polish up on our
understanding of how we got it.
The Jews in that swamp land were not religious and they were
not Orthodox and they were not Chasidim, they were just pre-Holocaust
Jews who no one wanted and they were willing to try to settle in a
G-d forsaken place which no one wanted either.
Your Honor, that diamond-ring is mine.
Shana Tova.Israel - The Jewel of Our Peopleby Rabbi David Nesenoff
