Is Israel Surrounded by Enemies?

 The argument for drafting Haredim is that Israel is surrounded by enemies so the whole country needs to be in the army.

Is Israel surrounded by enemies? Here's a graphic of deployment of American military hardware and personnel in the Mideast. It's all there to attack Iran on behalf of Israel:

In other words, America on behalf of Israel is being supported by Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, and Iraq. That's seven Mideastern Arab countries plus Egypt, the biggest of them all. There are only 10 Mideastern Arab countries in total. That's 7 of 11, plus Egypt, which is in Africa Only Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon are not assisting, even though they aren't obstructing.

Thus, the most wealthy Arab country assists Israel. The most populated Arab country, with the biggest army, assists Israel. 

During the 11 day war, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE all assisted in defense of Israel, by shooting down drones and missiles, sharing intelligence, etc.

That is not what you call being surrounded by enemies. It's more like being surrounded by friends. If you want to say they only do it for the money, so be it. You still don't need Haredim in the army. You only need to keep paying off the Arab states. 

The attempt to draft Haredim is an attempt to stamp out Haredi life, to turn all Jews living in Israel into Zionists. Rav Hirsch opposed Zionism:

"It was not the land that Moses had been commanded to proclaim to his people at the outset of his mission as מורשה, as the inheritance they were to preserve (Ex. 6,8). The Law, to be translated into full reality upon that soil, was to be the true מורשה, the one true, everlasting inheritance, the one true center around which the nation and its leaders were to gather as one united community. Herein lay the goal and the destiny, the character and the significance of the people."

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "The Kehillah," Collected Writings, Vol. VI, p. 62

"Israel was not given the Law so that it might win political independence and national prosperity; rather, Israel was given political independence and national prosperity so that it might be able to observe the Law. תורה, the Law, remains the eternal, unchanging goal, the purpose of the national existence of the Jew. This purpose does not vary with the degree of independence or prosperity that the Jewish nation enjoys at any given time. Freedom makes it easier for Israel to observe the Law; prosperity enables the people of Israel to accomplish its mission more fully. Political pressure will make observance of the Law more difficult, and lack of independence will leave the fulfillment of Israel's mission incomplete. But all of Israel's apparent fate signifies only a greater or smaller allotment of means for accomplishing the mission assigned to it by the Law of God. Israel's mission as such remains unchanged, and hence also remains the one unchanging bond that unites the larger Kehillath Ya'akov as a whole, as well as each small Kehillah that exists only as a daughter branch of the great, total Kehillah." 

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "The Kehillah," Collected Writings, Vol. VI, pp. 64-5

It comes back to haunt you

Regarding the recent disturbance in Bene Brak, former Prime Minister Bennett, who deceived the public to get the job, made a declaration:

“Everyone who was involved in this incident will be thrown into jail as quickly as possible. And I say in the clearest terms: under my leadership there will be no place for anarchy or violence. Everyone will serve, everyone will enlist, everyone will uphold the law — and that is how we will unite the State of Israel.”

What you are hearing there is a dictator. He learned that goyish mentality in the military. He is deciding what you should do with your life. He intends to enforce it using force, i.e. guns, soldiers, billy clubs, stun grenades, prisons, and torture chambers.

How do Jews come to talk like that? The Zionists violated the Talmudic edict not to take the land by force. Since Ha-Shem helps you go in the direction of your choosing, the entire society is built on militarism.

And what does it lead to? Bnei Brak City Council Director-General Yisroel Ehrenstein describes it:

“They brought in forces not connected to the area who behaved in a disgraceful manner,” he asserted. Referring to municipal security camera footage, he claimed to have seen instances in which residents who were not involved in any disturbances were treated harshly. “They take a woman who is simply standing on the side, trembling in fear, and throw her to the ground. It’s horrifying,” he said.

 “I saw how they acted toward an eight-year-old child when a stun grenade exploded near him, a woman being humiliated, and a young boy wearing tefillin returning from cheder being taken even though he did nothing,” he said.

You looked away when the Zionists, including the so-called Religious Zionists, violated the Three Oaths described in the Talmud. Now it comes back to haunt you. You looked away when the military and police brutalized the Arabs. Now it comes back to haunt you.

It's time to realize finally that the state of Israel is not Jewish, it is not anything you should identify with or anything you should be happy about. They are coming to destroy Haredi life, which, despite its many flaws, is the only real Jewish life. Modern Orthodoxy is a fraud really. They let you get a parnassah but that's necessary so you can save up enough money to buy a million dollar 3 bedroom dump in Israel. They let you study a slightly broader range of Torah, but that's only so you'll study the heretical works of the religious Zionists like Mr. Kook. Aliyah is the only Modern Orthodox avodah, and it's not a real avodah. It's secular if you are coming to the Medinah and not to do mitzvos in the land, which is what nearly every Modern Orthodox oleh does.

Rav Hirsch foresaw all of this. 

"Israel should be one nation, an entire nation that should have no other foundation for its existence, survival, activity and significance other than this Torah. It is to see the realization and devoted observance of this God-given "fiery Law" as its one contribution in world history for the edifice of human salvation. What the Phoenicians sought to bring about with the keels of their ships, what the ancient Greeks sought to achieve with their chisels and what the ancient Romans sought to attain with their swords, Israel is to accomplish with its Torah. Nay more, Israel is a nation that became a nation only through and for the Torah, a nation that once owned a land and existed as a state only through and for the Torah, and which possessed that land and that statehood only as instruments for translating the Torah into living reality. This is why Israel was a people even before it possessed land and statehood; this, too, is why Israel survived as a people even after its land was destroyed and its statehood lost, and this is why it will survive as a nation as long as it does not lose this only מורשה, this sole foundation for its survival and significance. That is the kind of nation that Israel, that all of us, should be."

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "The Character of the Jewish Community," Collected Writings, Vol. VI, p. 35 

Men and women are different

Switzerland Women’s Team Gets Destroyed By Under 15 Boys. Final score 7-1.

Women cannot compete with men in sports. They can't even compete with boys.

All over the Modern Orthodox and Yeshivish world, the authority and dignity of the man is undermined. Chassidim and Sephardim suffer much less from this problem. But in the Litvish world, the men are undermined, their manhood is taken away. They are not allowed to earn a parnassah until they can only get the worst kind. They are made to feel like losers it they are not giant Talmudic scholars. Their personal autonomy is handed over to a rabbi who doesn't know or care about them. They are told that they are less spiritual than the women (which is false). All problems in the home are blamed on the man. The divorce courts, including the batei dinim, punish the men, and the women even while married, know that they have this advantage. The men are emasculated and the women try to be men. But they can't be men. The Swiss women's national adult team gets smashed by under 15 year old boys. When women try to be men, you get a disaster. But that's what happens when you emasculate the men. 

Rav Hirsch anticipated all of this:

“It is not good that the man should be alone.” The object would be missed or imperfectly attained if only men were to strive for it unaccompanied. The task is too great for one, it requires essentially two human beings who can share the work and carry it through by supplying one another’s deficiencies. “I will provide for him a help meet for him.” כנגדו עזר) cf. אזר,אצר,עזר, עזרה (is that kind of assistance which through taking over a part of the work to be performed allows the other partner to concentrate his attention on the part which is left to him to perform, and so enables him to perform his part properly, thus securing the proper performance of the whole. This

is the essence of the division of labour."

“This will-subordination of the wife to the husband is a necessary condition of the unity which man and wife should form together. The subordination cannot be the other way about, since the man as זכר has to carry forward the divine and

human messages which through every marriage are to be a living force in the household, and to which the husband and wife are in union to devote their forces.” 

R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch, Judaism Eternal, Volume 2 (New York: Soncino, 1976) 

Mikki Willis on his experience with new age culture and philosophy:

"It's also where men also learn to be less masculine because the whole thing is about, you know, that none of that, no force, you know, no strength, just everything is just is Tai Chi through it all, Aikido through it all. And so I tried that for a long time and it wasn't until I had children and then we were trying to teach our children that and I realized these kids are developing a mentality and they're running us. Our children were, you know, four and six and they were running us because they saw dad as soft and because we were trying to do this conscious parenting thing where I remember one time I was at the park in Ohigh and I was watching this little boy pummel his mother in the face sitting on her lap pummel her and she's going, "Okay, I see that you're angry and something must have really ow ow ow ow. Okay, that's hard. It really upset you and you're angry"  and it's like just the whole thing just talk through it all. 

"And it wasn't until one day I just went, you know, I'm gonna scrap all this and I'm gonna do I'm gonna follow my instincts and I'm going to be a man. What the result of it was this. My kids discovered that their dad is not to be messed with. And as a result, they felt safe in a dangerous world. And so they didn't try to pull the same BS on us. They stopped all of that because they also had a sense of respect for the pecking order in our home which I started to really lay into it heavily like you never disrespect your mother. Let's go back to some old-fashioned like all of our history, all of our old ways which have just been deemed as kind of barbaric and archaic and wrong because that's what's led to capitalism and the destruction of everything. I don't know. I think we kind of have thrown the baby out with the bath water with a lot of those practices. So, I just went, I'm just going to go. And thank God my wife was willing to let me go there. And there were a few times when she said, "I don't know if you need to yell like that." No, I'm going to yell because that's what I feel inside. And it turned out to be the right thing to do because, like I said, in the end, my kids, they're balanced. Um they're good kids and they have respect for their elders. They have good old-fashioned respect....

"We're so sensitive that now all these words and terminologies that we've used forever are now being frown frowned upon and you want us to bend everything to make you comfortable so you're not and I realized later I'm like, Oh, this is the feelings over facts crowd. This is where it's starting, like we're shaping  everything in our physical world to make us feel better instead of dealing with the realities of the world and and doing  something about them. And so that's why I say that it was an incubator for the woke movement because it really did a lot of damage to a lot of men who are now stepping out of it. Talking with a lot of my friends that can look back and go, Wow, you know, not only was I a big phony, but it really did some damage to my strength, who I am as a person and my personal strength." 

 

5:36-8:08

How Rabbi Moshe Feinstein almost became the lubavitch Rosh yeshiva in 770

 

A weekly newsletter with insights from Gedoley Ashkenaz Parshas Yisro 5786

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A weekly newsletter with insights from Gedoley Ashkenaz Parshas Yisro 5786