Rav Avigdor Miller on Indians and Pilgrims
Q: Why is it that Indian tribes who lived all over America and it was their land, why were they destroyed?
A: The American Indians were the ones who owned the whole continent and today they’re almost non-existent except on a few reservations. Why did that happen?
We have to know that Hakodosh Boruch Hu sends puroniyus on the umos ha’olam when they’re wicked. And the Indians were wicked. Every Indian brave who was considered an important person wore a belt of scalps. And the scalps were not of white people; they were scalps taken off other Indians. And they didn’t fall off people’s heads by accident. It was a pastime to attack neighboring tribes and pull the scalp off. Of course if you pull the scalp off, the person underneath the scalp is already finished.
They used to torture their enemies by tying them up and putting them in front of a fire and sticking into their skin splinters and everybody was watching and being happy, applauding. And then they’d put the fire to him.
I'll repeat what I told you recently. There was a quaint custom among some American Indians. There's a story of a warrior who gave his life for his tribe. He sacrificed his life for his tribe. So his wife, his widow, was left now without anyone to defend her. She had no son, she had no brother and no husband.
So what happened? That same day that her husband was buried so all the squaws, all the women of the tribe, descended upon her and took away all her possessions. They were following the ancient Indian custom.
Isn't that a beautiful custom for a widow? That was the custom, to take away all her possessions. That nothing remained except the clothing that she wore. That was the practice from the oldest times. A widow, if she had not a son or a husband to protect her, even though her husband gave his life for the tribe, so all the women descended upon her right after the funeral and took away every possession. Even her wigwam. And she was left to freeze to death. That night she froze to death. That's from a book recently published from authentic sources. That's a picture of Indian life.
And so Hakodosh Boruch Hu said, “These wicked vermin—you’re vermin; that’s the way to call it. ‘Varmants’, they called them—so if you’re a vermin, you should be destroyed.”
So why were the Indians destroyed? Because they were vermin. They were a wicked people and therefore they lost their rights to the country!
We have to learn from that! Hashem destroys the wicked! That’s the purpose! There is no place in the world for mazikim. That's the plan.
Of course, new vermin could always arise. Hitler raised up a whole generation of vermin murders, but they also didn't last.
It doesn't mean it’s finished. There are others. But they will not be able to continue forever. No nation, no society will continue if it's based on doing harm. It has to be a society that has a function of welfare, of helping. It doesn't mean that everybody has to have kindly intentions, that everybody has to be benevolent, but the fact is that if a society is harmful, they won't last.
Now, I’m not saying that the pilgrims were tzaddikim. The pilgrims also were corrupt morally! Don't think the pilgrims were morally righteous. The pilgrims had a minhag yafeh that a young man and a young woman before they got married, they were ‘bundled up.’ Now what ‘bundling’ means I refer you to encyclopedias. I have rachmanus on this elegant audience here.
So we have nothing to envy among the pilgrims. But the pilgrims in general lived more civilly and they didn’t kill each other as a pastime. And therefore, you asked about the Indians and the answer is that the Indians were especially wicked and finally Hashem put an end to their control of the American continent.
(November 1996)
And today from Haaretz:
On Sunday, a few dozen Palestinian children from East Jerusalem were readying to perform the musical "Under the Olive Tree" at El-Hakawati Theatre. Costumed in traditional garb, the boys and girls were dancing and singing onstage when police officers, some uniformed and masked, others in street clothes, burst into the hall and ordered the show to stop. "Did you hear what I said? You hear? In five minutes, I want you all out of here!" a plainclothes officer told a theater employee. The frightened children began to cry and flee; one boy vomited. The adults had no answers for them.
The legal justification cited for the raid on the theater is a provision in the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, meant to incorporate the terms of the Oslo Accords into Israeli legislation. Section 3 prohibits the Palestinian Authority from operating in the territory of the State of Israel. Absurdly, the Israel Police, on orders from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, staged the raid in order to enforce the Oslo Accords.
Ben-Gvir is not the first minister to use the law to bully residents of East Jerusalem. Ministers have signed closure orders and dispatched police to forcefully break up a clown festival, a basketball tournaments, International Women's Day Events, press conferences and book launches, to name a few. All on the grounds that the PA had some involvement in the event, whether funding, sponsorship or even that the events hosted a figure connected with the PA. In most cases, the PA's involvement, if any, was tenuous.
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