The phrophetic words of the heathen prophet Balaam

As I was going through, my extensive files of historical writings and information, that I have read and accumulated in my fifty some odd years as a teacher of history, Lately in my "free time" of retirement I find myself drawn to be spokesperson a "Hasbaranik" for Israel. I would define "Hasbaranik" as: "a concientious reader of Social Media News sources who sees the fabrications and mendacious lies of those who post "falestinian dezinformatsiya" and replies to them."

As a very "learned" -educated and knowledgeable from reading ACTUAL historical documents- pro-Zionist Israeli and Jew, I find it my duty to enlighten the passive unknowing "audience" of those who take the "click bait" and are exposed to the utter fabrications and blatant viciously mendacious lies presented by the minions of the "falestinian Nachba Tragedy Tourists™" and their brainwashed and bamboozled sycophants on "Social Media". 

As I was reviewing and reorganizing I came upon this article from several years ago, "The Case for 'Dwelling Alone" by Yehuda Avner who had served on the staff of five prime ministers, including Golda Meir and Menachem Begin.

In light of today's "headlines" of the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as well as the isolation and profound criticism of Israel by the UN, I found Avner's words and quotes of those famous Zionist Israeli leaders quite prophetic. Though long this article is well worth the read:

Golda Meir, Israel's most celebrated model of straitlaced probity, once gave a pep talk to 15 diplomatic probationers at the Foreign Ministry in 1958. Clearly wishing to take our measure, she leaned leisurely into her chair, combed back her bund hair with the fingers of both hands, lit up a cigarette, and eyeing us through the flame of the match, said in a Hebrew filled with Milwaukee-sounding pronunciations, "Are you sure you greenhorns want to join the Foreign Service? 

"Representing the Jewish state can be a very lonely experience. I'll tell you why: When I'm at the United Nations I look around me and think to myself, we have no family here. Israel is entirely by itself in the international community, less than popular, and certainly misunderstood.All we have to fall back on is our own Jewish, Zionist faith."

Whereupon, her tone gritty, her fists balled, she proceeded to ask herself;

 "Why should this be?""Why such solitude?"

"Why is it that we are the one country in the world that is Jewish?

"Why are we the one country in the world whose language is Hebrew?"

"Why is it that we have no independent kith and kin, or any historic relationship with any other state, or group of states, or cultures, or religions, or languages; as do say, the Anglo-Saxon nations, or the Christian nations, or the Muslim nations, or the Nordic nations, or the Slav peoples, or the Francophonic nations, or the Spanish-speaking, or the Arabic-speaking, or the Chinese-speaking peoples?"

Here she paused to rummage inside her copious black leather handbag, from the depths of which she extracted a handkerchief with which she blew her bulbous nose, and then, shoulders stooped, face glum, voice pensive, continued;

 "Everybody in the world has sovereign and cultural family except us. Everybody in the United Nations is grouped into blocs bound by a common geography, or religion, or history, or culture, except us. They vote in solidarity, like family.

We belong to no family. Our most natural regional allies - our Arab neighbors - do not want anything to do with us. Indeed, they want to destroy us. So, we really belong nowhere and to no one except to ourselves, impelled by our own Jewish, Zionist faith."

With that, the foreign minister stubbed out her cigarette and brooded over the ashtray, clearly pondering her next thought. When it came her voice was mulish:

"Since we have no blood ties to stand by us in solidarity, we suffer severe diplomatic consequences. 

Nobody recognizes Jerusalem as our capital city. We have no membership in any international regional alliance. We have no membership in any trade area. We enjoy no international recognition of our national medical emblem, the Magen David Adom. We have no accredited membership in any United Nations regional grouping.

Consequently, we are the only UN member that has no prospect of ever becoming a member of the Security Council.

"Of course," she added with a pious smile, "there is one important exception - our natural blood ties with our fellow Jews in the Diaspora. But everywhere they are a minority, and nowhere do they enjoy any form of national or cultural autonomy, let alone sovereignty."

Thus spoke this extraordinary woman, then in her early sixties, making no attempt to answer her own earth-shattering question: why, indeed, was the Jewish state without any sovereign kith or kin in the family of nations? Why was Israel the odd state out?

Years later, when she was prime minister and I a member of her staff, I discovered she had an aversion to analytical, conceptual discourse of any sort. A tough character with a domineering streak, Golda Meir knew to ask the right questions but was wont to simplify the most complex issues and go straight to the crux of the matter for a practical answer. Impatient with the convoluted theorems favored by academics and seasoned career diplomats, she wanted bottom-line answers. And, for her, "Jewish, Zionist faith" was a bottom-line answer.

This enigma, of Israel's diplomatic solitude, once came up for discussion at the Bible study circle which Menachem Begin regularly hosted at his home when he became prime minister in 1977. Every Saturday night 20-odd people, among them Bible scholars of repute, would seat themselves comfortably around the couch on which Mr. Begin sat, and for an hour or so would zestfully delve into an attention-grabbing biblical text.

On the Saturday night in question the chosen text was from the Book of Numbers,chapters 22 to 24, in which the Bible records how, 38 years after the children of Israel embarked on their Exodus from Egypt and two years before entering the Promised Land, the heathen prophet Balaam was coaxed by the Moabite king Balak to curse the advancing Israelites and thereby devastate them. However, Balaam, impelled by God's command, and much to Balak's fury, found himself involuntarily blessing them profusely instead.

The discussion that evening centered primarily on the evocative verse nine of chapter 23, in which Balaam foretells with remarkable prescience the future destiny of the Jewish people, predicting that "this is a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations."

Reading the verse out loud, prime minister Begin fixedly peered at the page of his Bible as though studying a museum manuscript and, sounding a mild chuckle, said, 

"One does not have to be a mystic for the imagination to be stirred by such an improbable vision of a nation 'dwelling alone.' What Balaam said is a startlingly accurate prophecy of our Jewish people's experience in all of history."

Professor Ephraim Urbach, a rotund, semi-bald scholar of refinement, wit, and brilliance, cited classic commentators to suggest "dwelling alone" really meant voluntarily setting oneself apart. In other words, the Jewish nation distinguished itself from other peoples by virtue of its distinctive religious and moral laws, and by the fact that it had been chosen by God as the instrument of a Divine purpose within the family of nations.

A woman in her fifties raised a finger for attention. She was fairly tall and lean, her face equine, her dress an unfussy nut brown, her beret a plain gray, her shoes sensible, and her eyes brilliantly intelligent. This was Nehama Leibowitz, famous for her profound biblical scholarship and for her immensely popular weekly Torah discourses, composed in a comprehensive and highly comprehensible style, graspable even to laymen.

Deftly, she drew attention to the verse's grammatical structure, elaborating upon and reinforcing Professor Urbach's comment, explaining that the verb yit'hashav, generally translated in English to mean reckoned - "this is a people that shall not be reckoned among the nations" - was here rendered in the reflexive form [hitpa'el], meaning, "this is a people that does not reckon itself among the nations."

As an aside, she pointed out that this form of that particular Hebrew word - yit'hashav - occurs but once in the whole of Scripture.

Professor Ya'acov Katz, a slight figure with dour features and a deeply analytical disposition, broke in to refer to the eminent talmudist Marcus Jastrow. Citing Jastrow's talmudic sources, Katz showed the hitpa'el of the root word hashav, ["reckon"] signifies "to conspire," meaning that Israel "is a people that dwells alone and does not conspire against other nations."

Another participant, whom everybody knew simply as Srulik - a ginger, bushy-haired archeologist and Bible prodigy in an emerald-green yarmulke which he had picked up at the door - provocatively remarked that whatever which way one interpreted Balaam's prophecy it stamped the Jewish people as an eternally abnormal nation within the family of nations. This flew in the face of the classic Zionist creed which expounded that Zionism's aim was to normalize the Jewish people so that it should become a goy k'chol hagoyim - a nation like other nations.

Indeed, the central thesis of the Zionist theorists and thinkers of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries was that once Jews possessed what every other normal nation possesses - a country of their own - they would automatically become a normal nation within the international community. And the consequence of that, so the classic Zionist theory went, would be that anti-Semitism would wither and die.

To which Dr. Haim Gevrayahu, chairman of the Israel Bible Society, and involved in one way or another in many high-profiled Bible study circles throughout the country, added words to the effect that, in making their confident predictions, one wondered in hindsight what led those brilliant secular Zionist founding fathers of yesteryear to believe that Jewish self-determination would, of itself, lead to national normalization and put an end to anti-Semitism. 

Indeed, were Jews to become a normal people they would cease being Jewish. But that could never happen because nothing could ever put an end to anti-Semitism. In fact, one thing to be learned from the biblical portion under review was that the so-called prophet Balaam was the archetype anti-Semite. His whole intent was to curse the Jews, not to bless them. The blessing was God's doing, not his.

This triggered off a firestorm of controversy because some of the scholars present took the Bible as a paradigm of God's own writing, while others related to it secularly as a piece of extraordinary literature.

Listening attentively, Mr. Begin lowered the temperature by saying in an earnest voice that it could hardly be denied by any reading of the text that the Jewish people did, indeed, live separate, apart, and often alone. And to prove his point he picked up a volume called A People That Dwells Alone. 

This was an anthology of the utterances of Dr. Ya'acov Herzog, confidant of several prime ministers, and universally admired for his remarkable gifts as a diplomat, philosopher, Talmudist, and theologian. Scion of a famous rabbinic family, he was the son of Israel's first chief rabbi, Yitzhak Isaac Halevy Herzog, and younger brother of Chaim, who was to become Israel's sixth president. He died in 1972 at the age of 50. To me, (Yehuda Avner)-he was a mentor, counselor, and tutor.

The prose of Ya'acov Herzog's anthology reads like a great rolling stone, accumulating intellectual threads and philosophic concepts as it gathers momentum and accelerates deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Jewish identity and eternity. And it was one such concept that Menachem Begin chose to quote that night to the members of his Bible study circle. He read:

“The theory of classic Zionism was national normalization. What was wrong with the theory?

It was the belief that the idea of a "people that dwells alone" is an abnormal concept, when in actuality, “a people that dwells alone" is the natural concept of the Jewish people.

That is why this one phrase still describes the totality of the extraordinary phenomenon of Israel's revival. If one asks how the ingathering of the exiles, which no one could have imagined in his wildest dreams, came about, or how the State of Israel could endure
such severe security challenges, or how it has built up such a flourishing economy, or how the unity of the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora has been preserved, one must come back to the primary idea that this is "a people that dwells alone." More than that, one must invoke this phrase not only to understand how the Jews have existed for so long; one must invoke it as a testimony to the Jewish right to exist at all in the land of their rebirth.”

"So, there you have it," concluded Begin, closing the book with a resolute air. "Cease 'dwelling alone' and you cease to exist. What a conundrum!"

The REAL Truth regarding the "Disputed Territories"

As I have stated over and over again the Minions of the Usurpers of Falestine" are like a Tsunami of viral hatred in Talkback sections of ALL news sites. 

I see that almost ever "news article" -read slander and lies- regarding the issues here in tiny Israel are so misconstrued by unscrupulous and unvirtuous news editors and journalists who totally lack the very basic integrity in their relaying of a story that ones brain fries!

As one who consistently states that WORDS DO MATTER!!! and that so does HISTORICALLY RECORDED and DOCUMENTED FACTS! I am sickened that the public of ALL ages is being exposed to the "art of dezinformatsiya" to vilify and negate the existence of the one lone Jewish State!

Besides the endless lies regarding the Temple Mound we are now exposed to the BIG LIE state once more by Palestinian PM Mohammad Shtayyeh:

"This is not a disputed land. Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, and this occupied land will be liberated. Jerusalem is ours, and Palestine is ours."

So world news sources how about the TRUTH for once in your coverage?

1) The Green Line, (pre-)1967 border, or 1949 Armistice border, was intended ONLY as a DEMARCATION line rather than a permanent border between the armies of Israel and those of its neighbors (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

2) The drawing of the "Green Line" SUPERSED entirely the partition lines proposed and voted on by the United Nations in the Partition Plan of 1947, which the Zionists Jews had accepted in the Israeli Declaration of Independence and founded the sovereign State of Israel. 

3) The Arabs of the Mandated Areas (those who have usurped the term palestine- a long story in of its self) and Arab leaders had repeatedly rejected any permanent partition of Mandatory Palestine and at the 1949 Rhodes Armistice Conference the Arabs INSISTED that they were NOT creating permanent BORDERS. 

4) With the seizure of the area, beyond the "Green Line" to the West Bank of the Jordan River by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1948. The area came to be designated the West Bank. And furthermore the "Eastern Part" including the ETHNICALLY CLEANSED Jewish Quarter became known euphemistically as "East Jerusalem". The area, though under the control of an Arab nation, the Arabs of the Mandated Area DID NOT assert sovereignty to create a "Palestinian State" from May 1948 - June 1967.

5) Ergo, the Arabs of the Mandated Area DID NOT assert sovereignty leaving the territory as "Terra nullius" which is a Latin term meaning in INTERNATIONAL LAW as 'land belonging to no-one' or land not under the sovereignty or control of any other state or socially or politically organized grouping; or by prescription, where a state acquires territory through a continued period of uncontested sovereignty.

6) This "Terra nullius" area was part of The League of Nations Internationally agreed Mandated Area given as a Mandate to the British to Govern in 1922 as per the preamble which states; "... in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."  "...recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;"

7) And as stated in the INTERNATIONAL agreement of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Sèvres (San Remo conference ) and later ratified in the Treaty of Lausanne July 24th 1923. 

THERE IS NO MENTION OF THE "PEOPLE" nor "Sovereign NATION of PALESTINE! 

8) TO CLARIFY what IS MENTIONED is; 

"... it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," 

9) After the DEFENSIVE Six-Day War, the aforesaid "Mandated area for ‎‎the Jewish Homeland" (Article 8 Mandate for Palestine) was liberated from Jordanian "Occupation" in 1967, the ‎‎‎"West Bank" officially became Israeli territory under Uti ‎possidetis juris (Latin for "as you possess under law"). 

10) INTERNATIONAL LAW and the U.N. Charter states that not all wars are illegal. Indeed the U.N. Charter expressly reaffirms the legality of a defensive war. Since defensive war is not illegal, it follows that the defender’s territorial gains from such a war would not be illegal.

In fact the legality of defensive conquest was endorsed by the International Law Commission, a body created by the General Assembly, and tasked with providing fuller explanations of the legal significance of the U.N. Charter and related documents. All agreed that post-war frontier adjustments were justified to help protect the victim of aggression.

So it is way past time that the REAL TRUTH be told by real News sources, journalists and above ALL else political leaders with integrity!!!

The World's purposely selective amnesia of the Holocaust

On the 11th of April 1961 an attempt to awaken the world to the immense banality of evil that laid behind the Holocaust began with the trial of Adolf Eichmann,  the principal architect of the Holocaust in Jerusalem.

SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann was in no way a "simple" bureaucrat. 

Eichmann was head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Reich Security Central Office) Department IV B4 (Jewish affairs) that managed all the bureaucracy of the "total annihilation [Vernichtung] the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"—the deportation and the genocide of ALL Jews in German-occupied Europe. He was assigned this task by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich who was assigned by Hitler, Göring, and Himmler in all matters pertaining to the deportation, imprisonment, and extermination of Jews.

It was at the infamous Wannsee Conference that the highly detailed plans, plans drawn up by Eichmann and his staff, were laid out for the implementation of the Final solution to the Jewish question (German: Endlsung der Judenfrage).

In the beginning the Nazis encouraged emigration through violence and economic pressure. 

With the rise of the Nazi's to power in 1933 and after the publication of the atrocious Nuremberg Laws. The Nazi leadership were encouraged to take further more drastic steps when they saw that the whole world were reluctant to allow Jewish immigration, as witnessed in countless attempts by German Jews to flee. The Nazi leadership were encouraged were especially encouraged by the hypocrisy of the British in their appeasement of the Arabs by creating the "White Paper" limitation of Jewish immigration to the promised "Jewish Homeland".

After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Eichmann and his staff arranged for Jews to be concentrated in ghettos in major cities with the expectation that they would be transported either farther east or overseas. He also drew up plans for a Jewish reservation, first at Nisko in southeast Poland and later in Madagascar, but neither of these plans was carried out.

After the Nazis began the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 their Jewish policy changed from emigration to "relocation" the euphemism used for "extermination".

The plans of Eichmann's office were nefarious in that they implemented means never before used in a vast modern "computerized"  industrialized extermination resplendent with the means of mass murder-albeit cheaply, by zyklon b-B gas and the means of disposal of the bodies -read evidence - in "the finest German made" - baking ovens meant to turn the bodies through cremation to dust. 

It was also a "first" in it's  implementation of efficiency by the use of data collected and processed IBM punch card and card sorting system-a precursor to the computer by Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, or Dehomag, IBM's German subsidiary. 

It was these machines that gave the Nazi regime the technology and the tools it needed to expedite and, in many ways, automate, all six phases of Hitler's war against the Jews.

It was a totally monstrous plan which encompassed a vast continental wide operation that committed such immense financial and transportation resources: to track down and murder every last Jew in Europe.

On 11 May 1960 an Israel team of Mossad agents captured Eichmann near his home on Garibaldi Street in San Fernando, Buenos Aires, an industrial community 20 kilometers (12 mi) north of the centre of Buenos Aires. He was secretly transported to Israel on 22 May, and Ben-Gurion announced his capture to the Knesset the following afternoon.

Eichmann's trial before a special tribunal of the Jerusalem District Court began on 11 April 1961 in Jerusalem, Israel.

The prosecution case, presented by Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hausner, as chief prosecutor over the course of 56 days, involved hundreds of documents and 112 witnesses (many of them Holocaust survivors).  

It was Hausner's intention to not only demonstrate Eichmann's guilt but to present material about the entire Holocaust, thus producing a comprehensive record. 

Hausner's opening address, meant to bring awareness of future historians of the  world to the crimes of the Holocaust began:

"It is not an individual that is in the dock at this historic trial and not the Nazi regime alone, but anti-Semitism throughout history." 

Complicity:

In 2006 US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)  declassified documents show that the capture of Eichmann caused alarm at the CIA and West German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). 

Both organizations had known for at least two years that Eichmann was hiding in Argentina, but they did not act because it did not serve their interests in the Cold War. Both were concerned about what Eichmann might say in his testimony about West German national security advisor Hans Globke, who had coauthored several anti-Semitic Nazi laws, including the Nuremberg Laws. The documents also revealed that both agencies had used some of Eichmann's former Nazi colleagues to spy on European communist countries.

Regretfully, as we have seen all too many times, Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hausner's prophetic words have been forgotten as there have been way to many hate filled racists  as well as Palestinians and their minions who have tried to brand it is a "Hoax" as the world has done it's best to forget.

That is why this quote by General of the Army and commander of Allied Forces Europe in WWII and later President of the USA Dwight D. Eisenhower is so important: 

“Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

Jews and the Ukraine: The long history of the Homelessness and Wandering

What is on my mind, thanks once again to the two old guys who would not stop arguing ALL night in my brain, was the story of the Ukraine and just how many different versions of this sad historical tale regarding "Our" history as the "Wandering Jews" is being spread but this time live online on the internet and social media.

And of course, we have the age-old Jewish part of the story, but with an ironic twist. In that the "hero" and leader of the nation of the story involved is Volodymyr Zelensky a "native born " Jew.

Zelensky is THE prime example of the modern-day Jew of the Diaspora. An atypical secular non-religious "person of Jewish heritage" who is totally assimilated in the culture and society of his native land. 

Yet, Zelensky is NOT the first "court Jew", whilst in our long diaspora several Jews have achieved a place of prominence in the lands we have settled in. There have been several Jews who have achieved-been appointed or been elected to "high office".

What is happening of course is an immense tragedy of human suffering that is caused by festering hatreds based on historical differences between peoples. These same areas that were latter termed the "Pale of Settlement" have been an area contested and vied for centuries between the Germanic tribes and those who would become the Polish people and the Russians.

What IS THE twist is that in THIS war is taking place in what   was once "The Pale of Settlement" "Galicia" that historical area   where Jews fleeing the immense hatred of the Catholic Church in the aftermath of the Alhambra Decree in 1492 against the Jews were invited to live and where confined to by Catherine the Great.

The area of the Ukraine is a vast burial ground of millions of Jews who were butchered and murdered by the Einsatzgruppen of the Nazis and their over eager local collaborators. The very presence of local Jews was totally erased from their villages during the "Holocaust" with the overly enthusiastic participation of many "fellow Ukrainians". Who out of fear in late 1943-1944 together with the Nazi's  brought Sonderkommandos; work units made up of Jewish death camp prisoners to exhume the bodies of the victims of the executions.

“We used to uncover the graves where there were people who had been killed during the past three years, take out the bodies, pile them up in tiers and burn these bodies, grind the bones, take out the valuables in the ashes, such as gold teeth, rings and so on, and separate them. After grinding the bones, we would throw the ashes up in the air so that they would disappear, replace the earth over the graves, and plant seeds so that nobody could recognize that there was once a grave there."

What IS different, THIS TIME. is that these Jews fleeing the hell of war are seeing the flag with the two blue stripes and the star of David flying on the borders symbolizing a place to flee to OUR homeland and freedom!! They see our representatives sent to shepherd them to life in OUR INDIGENOUS HOMELAND!!

Our enemies, the those ever so sad descendants of the self-inflicted tragedy of their ignomius defeat in 1948 whom I call the "Tragedy Tourists of Nachbaland™" and their overly enthusiastic minion of anti-Semite followers are once more frustrated and full of sick vile vulgar hatred once more!

Only this time they cannot refuse our people, who in dire need to flee death DO have the doors open to our homeland.

The long history of the Jews and the Ukraine

Many of the descendants of Jews in Europe are according to DNA studies descendants of the more than 100,000+ Jewish male and some female slaves sent to work the marble mines of Northern Italy with Vespasian's defeat of the "First" Jewish Revolt in 73CE.

Eastern Ukraine was home to the Khazar empire, a kingdom of Turkic people that arose in southeastern Russia in the 6th Century CE and extended as far west as Kiev, the capital of present-day Ukraine.

It is said that in the 8th Century, that the area was ruled by a semi-divine king called a Khagan, and local chieftains called “Begs”. Legend says that the Khazar king at that time invited representatives from the three monotheistic faiths to his palace and listened to each of them discuss their religion. It is said that the Khazar king was so struck with Judaism’s beauty and lucidity that he converted to Judaism and ordered that his followers do so as well. According to this story many Khazars became Jewish, embracing Jewish holidays and Shabbat and keeping kosher.

In the Middle Ages, the great Spanish Jewish sage Judah Halevi (1075-1141) wrote The Kuzari, a beautiful philosophical book that imagined the discussion between the king of the Khazars and the visiting rabbi. The Kuzari is accepted as a robust defense of Judaism against critics from other religions and from indifference.

In the early Middle Ages, the largely Jewish kingdom of the Khazars was buffeted by invading Russian forces, which ransacked its capital city in about the year 965 CE. The end of the Khazar kingdom came in the 1200s, when Mongol tribes invaded much of present-day Ukraine and Poland, causing huge devastation and loss of life.

In order to build back its power and wealth, Poland invited new residents to move into its territories from the west, primarily from Germanic lands. The Middle Ages were indeed a tumultuous time in Ukraine. Accounts describe the city of Kiev as being home to a substantial Jewish community in the 11th and 12th centuries. There were two heavily Jewish suburbs of the city, and one entryway into Kiev’s city walls that was known as the “Jewish Gate”. There are also references to a Jewish scholar at the time known as Moshe ben Yaakov of Kiev.

In 1264 Bolesław V the Chaste of what we call Poland today had invited Jews to settle and granted certain privileges to Jews. For example, he prohibited the kidnapping of Jewish children under penalty of death for the purpose of enforced Christian baptism, and he inflicted heavy punishment for the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. Casimir III the Great confirmed these privileges granted the Jews and allowed the exiled Spanish Jews to settle in Poland in great numbers and protected them as people of the king

Poland’s invitation for immigrants to come attracted Jews who were fleeing massacres in central Europe in the wake of the Crusades and the Black Death. Jews settled throughout Poland, including in territories that form present-day Ukraine, most notably the region of Volhynia, which lies at the intersection of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. By the 1400s, up to 30,000 Jews were thought to be living in 60 different communities across Ukraine, including in the present-day capital city, Kiev.

Hasidim and the Ukraine

The founder of Hasidic Judaism, the Baal Shem Tov (1700-1760) didn’t live in Ukraine; his home was a couple of miles outside the Ukrainian border, in Poland. But the friend and disciple who spread the ideas of Hasidic Judaism and developed it into a distinct religious movement did so within Ukraine, from his base in the city of Mezeritch.

Rabbi Dov Ber, also known as the Maggid (preacher) of Mezeritch (1704-1772), first consulted with the Baal Shem Tov when he was ill. The Baal Shem Tov was known as a healer, as well as a religious sage. Rabbi Dov Ber was so impressed that he adopted the Baal Shem Tov’s worldview, which emphasized worshiping God with joy. Within a generation, Ukraine was home to some of the most important and influential Hasidic masters, including Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev and Menachem Nachum (and his son Modechai Twersky) of Chernobil. Ukrainian Jewish communities embraced Hasidic Judaism, with its emphasis on rigorously religious practice combined with spirituality and an emphasis on infusing religious observance with joy.

Perhaps the greatest Hasidic rabbi in Ukraine was Rabbi Nahman, from the Ukrainian town of Breslov (1772-1811), a great grandson of the Baal Shem Tov and a direct descendent of the Maharal, one of Europe’s greatest rabbis who lived in 16th century Prague. Rabbi Nahman built a large community in the Ukrainian town of Zlapotol in the early 1800s. He taught that Jews should strive to feel close to God at all times, and that feeling happy is best way to appreciate all of God’s many blessings.

The Ukrainian town of Uman, about 125 miles south of Kiev, is where Rabbi Nachman of Breslov lived during his final years and is buried. Uman has emerged as a major pilgrimage site for thousands of Jews each year. The most popular time to go is Rosh Hashanah, when tens of thousands of Jews visit Uman to celebrate the holiday together in the place where Rabbi Nahman taught.

The Cossacks and the Chmielnicki Massacres

A series of Cossack raids began in 1648, aimed at freeing Cossack communities from the domination of Polish landlords. The leader of these attacks was Bohdan Chmielnicki, who agitated for an independent Ukrainian country. Reflecting Cossack culture, Chmielnicki blamed Jews for his countrymen’s problems and encouraged his followers to massacre Jews.

Between 1648 and 1651, Chmielnicki’s followers killed about 20,000 Jews with unimaginable barbarity. Approximately half of all Jews living in Ukraine fled. So great was the Cossacks’’ depravity that some terrified Jews even fled into Crimea, where they faced slavery in the hands of Muslim Tatars.

The official records of the Jewish community in Kiev recorded the beginning of the massacres:

"Immediately after the death of the pious King Wladyslaw (1648) tens of thousands of villains, among them Cossacks…went forth and committed manu murders in the holy communities of Niemirow, Tulczyn, Machnowka, and other hold communities who congregated in order to save their lives from the…sword… Since the destruction of the Temple no other cruel murder like this one was committed for the sanctification of the name” of God."

Another eyewitness account described:

“they massacred about 6,000 souls in the town…and they drowned several hundreds in the water and by all kinds of cruel torments. In the synagogue, before the Holy Ark, they slaughtered with butchers’ knives…after which they destroyed the synagogue and took out all the Torah books…they tore them up…and they laid them out…for men and animals to trample on…they also made sandals of them…and several other garments.” The Cossacks knew no bounds in their sadism and cruelty and attacked and killed Jews – as well as some Polish nobles – with horrific barbarity."

Chmielnicki appealed for military aid from Russia and in 1654 much of Cossack-controlled Ukraine became a client state of Russia. Sporadic pogroms continued through the years, most notably in the city of Uman in 1768.

Ukrainians blamed Jews for their landlords’ greed.

Jewish life in present-day Ukraine became even more entrenched after 1569, when much of present-day Ukraine came under a new political alliance, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Ukraine was an uneasy mix of many different ethnic groups. Much of the farmland and industry in Ukraine was the property of Polish nobles who were Catholic. The peasants in Ukraine were a mix of Eastern Orthodox Ukrainians and groups known as Cossacks, who lived primarily in the southern part of Ukraine. In the far south, the Crimean Peninsula was owned by the Ottoman Empire and populated largely by Tatar Muslims, who engaged in constant, low level warfare with Cossacks along their border. Both groups would stage skirmishes into each other’s territories, seizing property and slaves.

With many farms and businesses owned by absentee Polish landlords and nobles, an exploitative system called "Arenda" developed, which allowed agents to manage farms and other enterprises on behalf of absent landlords. It was often Jews who were employed to manage the "Arenda economy", acting as caretakers for absentee nobles and landowners. Jews managed salt mines, farms, mills, and inns. They also became local tax collectors for Polish noblemen. Many "Arendas" were given out in the alcohol trade: brewing, selling alcohol and managing inns and taverns were often seen as Jewish professions.

Working for hated landlords put Jews in an impossible position: they needed the "Arenda" system in order to survive economically, but the local peasants blamed Jews for their employers’ increasingly abusive practices. When Polish nobles increased taxes on their already suffering tenants, it was their Jewish agents who bore the blame. In time, extreme antisemitism became engrained in much of Ukrainian culture.

The term “pogrom” was invented after riots in Ukraine.

In 1881, Czar Alexander II was murdered by a left-wing terrorist. Soon, it was being (incorrectly) reported across Russia that the new Czar Alexander III had ordered Russian subjects to kill Jews. Pogroms broke out, with the greatest number taking place in Ukraine. These weren’t the first massacres of Jews in Ukraine and elsewhere in the Pale of Settlement, but the frequency and intensity of the mob attacks resulted in the phenomenon being given a new name: pogrom, which means violence in Russian.

In April 1903 an Easter pogrom took place in Moldova’s capital, Kishinev.  Forty-nine Jews were murdered, hundreds brutally injured.

Pogroms continued throughout the end of the 19th century. Some of the most horrible pogroms took place in 1905, after Czar Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, guaranteeing all Russian subjects some basic political rights. The manifesto came at a perilous time in Russian politics, with political rivals ready to attack each other. As violence broke out, mobs turned on the Jews in their midst. Some of the worst anti-Jewish attacks were in the Ukrainian city of Odessa: The Jewish newspaper Voskhod reported that over 800 Jews were murdered in pogroms in Odessa in the days following the October Manifesto, and several thousands more were wounded.

Among the many towns engulfed in pogroms in 1905 was Kiev, Ukraine’s capital. There, the rampaging crowds attacked Jews for three days and nights. One of the terrified Jews during that ordeal was the well-known Yiddish writer known as Sholem Aleichem (his real name was Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich). For three days, he and his family hid in a hotel, listening to the terrible screams from their fellow Jews as they were attacked, maimed and killed outside.

Sholem Aleichem’s daughter later described the moment they realized their lives were in danger: “We ran from our beds to the windows on the street and looked down on the scene of brutality and murder – a gang of hoodlums beating a poor young Jew with heavy sticks; blood was running over the face of the young man, who was vainly shrieking for aid. A policeman stood nearby, casually looking on and not moving a finger.”

After the Kiev pogrom, Sholem Aleichem’s entire family fled Ukraine, eventually settling in New York.

The Russian Revolution in 1917, the Polish Ukrainian War of 1918-1919, the Ukrainian War of Independence, and the Soviet-Polish War of 1919-1921 sparked waves of hundreds of pogroms across the region which killed approximately 100,000 Jews. (Ukraine was briefly independent, before being divided by Poland and Russia.)

The violence was unspeakably intense. In the Ukrainian town of Proskurov, for instance, a three-day pogrom that broke out on February 15, 1919 killed 1,500 Jews. The town of Pogrebinschi experienced two pogroms: in May, 1919 Soviet troops went on a murderous rampage, killing 400 Jews. Three months later, Ukrainian nationalists staged a second pogrom and murdered a further 350 Jews there. Over 1,300 towns became scenes of horrific violence towards Jews.

 

 

 

Telling The Truth about the News

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”― Soren Kierkegaard 

As a teacher of History I do make long detailed entries because I want the truth and the whole truth to be told all based on carefully detailed research of factual and reliable sources. 

As I pointed out in one of my latest Blog entries, I abhor lies and the "art of dezinformatsiya", which is regretfully used way too often by unscrupulous "News Sources (Mass Media) and Social Media" today to pervert the truth. 

In the 1950's during the "Cold War" the Soviet Union initiated a super-secret program to undermine the Western Democracies through the use of the cherished democratic "Freedom of the press" by the cynical "art of dezinformatsiya", a format that was created by Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, who was chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). 

According to Vasily Mitrokhin, who was a former senior officer of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence service, and later demoted to KGB archivist.  It was Joseph Stalin who coined the term in Russian in a closed meeting with Beria. However, it was Beira who choose to use a French-sounding name to claim it had a Western origin. 

It is this “art” of dezinformatsiya that uses information inadmissible in proper historical discourse, by presenting known forged documents as genuine; inventing ingenious but implausible reasons for distrusting genuine documents; attributing conclusions to books and sources that report the opposite; manipulating statistical series to support the given point of view; and deliberately mis-translating texts (in languages other than the revisionist's) all have been fabricated around a kernel of truth, but unattributable to those who publish them to push lies and political agendas.

In recent times we have all witnessed the outcome of the success of this "dezinformatsiya" program in all the massive media campaign to discredit President Donald J Trump, as I pointed out in this Meme that I made to counter the utter lies. 

We have seen this also all over the world wide web and social media of how people ignorant of science are openly spreading lies and conspiracy theories based on fraudulent or "cooked"  information regarding vaccinations and the Corona Virus.

We have seen countless times how American TV celebrities' and newscasters have relayed incorrect and bogus lies many times to appease their viewing audience and all of which only to keep their ratings high so the networks will be pleased. 

The exact same is true of journalism today. The audience and paying customers today wish to watch rather than read has lead to the widespread demise of  the market for printed "newspapers" and magazines. This has led the editors and management of printed journalism to accept the change and adopt the World Wide Web and create web sites. 

Once management of the printed newspapers could guage their profit and attractability to advertisers by the amount of newspapers or magazines sold. 

For all news sources today it is a totally different form of assessment based on "visits" hits to their websites which are the major source for enticement to advertisers as well as paying customers who are drawn to the websites by articles designed to attract customers. 

There are editors of many once respected News sources who have cynically turned to the use of "click bait" on Talkbacks to lure in readers and to gain responses (clicks) and have turned their backs on the once taunted "Ethical journalism" like the New York Times whose byline was once "All the news fit to print".

The Editorial management of "News sites", as we have witnessed today, could care less about monitoring the vile comments made n response to their articles -because for them the more comments that are made the greater the "hits" their web page receive and this increases web page interaction and therefore increases the value of their web site to advertisers. 

Many times the articles posted are from unscrupulous or nefariously biased sources paid local journalists and photo-journalist known as "stringers" whose "photo ops" or "news stories" that they relay to the actual journalists are many times tainted by the use of mendacious lies, blatantly false and fictitious historical revisionism and abject hatred to draw attention.

The image of the ethical Journalist, and especially foreign news correspondents, who once would do his or hers own detailed and thorough research to present the news in an honest, ethical, and unbiased way is regretfully a thing of the past.

Freedom of the press and freedom of speech should not extend to political subversion and the spreading of false accusations and conspiracy theories nor to spread terrorist propaganda. Those "news sources" that do spread lies and defame the freedom of the press and speech should be openly ostracized and boycotted.

It should be ascertained that the core purpose of a journalist is to present facts objectively to allow the readers to form their own conclusions as in being a true unbiased News Source.

I hate and abhor falsehood and its name is Palestine

Psalm 119: 163 "I hate and abhor falsehood;" 

One of THE most cherished slanders and perversions of the truth is the use of the term "Palestine" and how the "Arabs of the Mandated Areas" who have usurped the term "Palestinians" to describe themselves. 

"When in 1921 I came to Palestine – until the end of World War I it was a barren, sparsely inhabited Turkish province – we, the Jewish pioneers, were the avowed Palestinians. So we were named in the world. Arab nationalists, on the other hand, stridently rejected the designation. Arab spokesmen continued to insist that the land we had cherished for centuries was, like Lebanon, merely a fragment of Syria." From an op-ed by Golda Meir printed in The New York Times January 14, 1976

As to the real truth - This morning I wanted to wish the "laddies and lassies" of the Community Standards Gestapo headquarters in Dublin Ireland a very pleasant work day as you tirelessly strive to delete and ban Jews and pro-Israel Zionist posters from your platform!! 

Ah yes Ireland… that quaint country of such glorious DEEP hatred of the "Christ Killers" (the Catholic Church's theological position that holds that Jews as a people group will forever hold a collective responsibility for killing Jesus)  and those ever so deeply passionate anti-Zionists!!!

LOL, I love it that a JINO -aka Mark, the "what Me, Jewish?" evidently anti-Zionist -same T-shirt, EVERYDAY Zuckerberg, is evidently missing quite a few marbles in the being a real Jew compartment of the brain. I understand he purports to assume he is a "Jew". 

To me it is so regretful that during the past two decades how atypical that a secular "liberal conscientious Jew" would allow such virulent anti-Semitism "hatred of Jews" -meaning him and his family to flourish on a "social" platform that HE created, reveals the immense void of the removal of "religion" that is evident in modern secular liberal Judaism.  

And one just has to love the idea how the term "social media" is used to designate what is in essence, a platform for the widespread ANTI-social propaganda and hatred media. 

As a historian I cannot help be see the similarities of history repeating itself with these "Liberal " Jews today, who like the Jews in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the "Third Reich" were labeled "Mischlings." 

We have seen with organizations like the "Jewish Voice for Palestine" and "Code Pink, how these modern day "Mischlings"- who are now referred to as "JINOs" -"Jews In Name Only", are flagrantly anti-Zionist Jews who would do everything to show they are "faithful" to the "motherland" of  anti-Israel "Liberalism".

"Most Mischlings did not identify with the Jewish community. Many had grown up as baptized Christians and even were themselves very anti-Semitic. They preferred to think of themselves as normal, as part of the whole of German fabric, as part of the "Volk". Their language, their culture, the societal relationships and schooling all had been German. Even for those who grew up knowing that they had had a parent who was Jewish, they preferred not be left behind and identified as Jewish. They yearned, worked and did everything within their capabilities to prove themselves as good, loyal members of the Germanic peoples. They needed to show the German world that their German blood was the dominant force that flowed in their veins."Hitler's Jewish Soldiers By Jerry Klinger "The Ideal German Soldier"

For those who aspire to be "anti-Zionistic" JINOs you should heed the wise words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z"l regarding the words of Moses and the meaning of why we Jews must remember and teach our children the story of Passover:

"Forget where you came from and why, and you will eventually lose your identity, your continuity and your raison d’etre. You will come to think of yourself as the mere member of a nation among nations, one ethnicity among many. Forget the story of freedom and you will eventually lose freedom itself."

Now getting back to my rant regarding the "Foreign Student" controllers of the "algorithm of entrapment" .... "What's on my mind?" 

 Ah but do you truly wish to know the truth, me thinks not? To inquire "What's on my mind?" to elicit a response is just SO Freudian!! 

To paraphrase Shakespeare; “Something is rotten in the Community Standards headquarters in Dublin Ireland”! and it ain't Irish! 

Could it be that there is a preference -advertised for the service center- that you are looking to "employ students from foreign" countries and that there is an overabundance of "Arabic" names and of course Pakistanis employed? 

And as ALL Hasbarnics (those who speak the truth and facts for Israel) know. Ireland IS THE HOME of the worst anti-Israel pro-Tragedy Tourist of Nachbaland™ "click bait" talkback trolls! 

Over the years I have seen them in their lavish support for the ISM -International Solidarity Movement in Gaza and BDS "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions" movement and their stated and explicit hatred for Israel, which is so massive they out do themselves as the most venomous ant-Semites I have ever read comments by or seen tweets by! 

Oh yes, regretfully we of the massively superior Zionist Hasbara intellect KNOW WHO you "Liars for Palestine™" really are!!

For we see them on EVERY Facebook /Meta "News" media page excreting their venomous hatred and totally mendacious lies of revisionist history and gross falestinian dezinformatsiya!! 

We know just how you "gang up" on those of the Zionist Hasbara to complain to have us banned so that we cannot counter your lies and fabrications. We see on your Facebook pages how some of them even listed their place of employment with the Dublin Headquarters of the Customer Service Center! 

How many of the Irish "Click bait" Talkback artists of venomously anti-Semitism have used this lie- so much I made this Meme to debunk them!!

These Liars for Palestine™"  have even attempted to usurp the term used to describe hatred of Jews to further their lie of an ethnicity of a non existent people!!

Just as in the total fabrication and mind boggling bamboozlement of the world with your invention of a "country or nation"(nationality) that supposedly once existed. 

A people whom usurped the name given by a Roman Emperor, who in his ignominious defeat by Jews, had meant to erase the memory of OUR INDIGENOUS homeland of Judaea by naming it after a people the "Philistines".

These Philistines who were called the "Pleshtim" or invaders from the Greek islands as described by the Greek historian Herodotus -whom you fabricate lies about as "proof", when you cannot even take the time to verify the actual Greek translation of the term "palaistes". 

You quote "The Histories" of Herodotus's Book VII as "proof"? 

"Thence they went on to invade Egypt; and when they were in Syria which is called Palestine, Psammetichos king of Egypt met them..." 

The problem is the term "Palestine" is NOT translated correctly. 

Herodotus the Greek who wrote in Greek around 450 BCE wrote in Book VII of his "The Histories", that the "sea People" were in essence Minoan's from the Mediterranean Sea who invaded the coastal lands from Egypt to Lebanon were descendants of Greek peoples -ergo his use of the Greek term "palaistes" from the term for "wrestlers" to identify them. 

These "Sea People" fled the eruption between 1642 and 1540 BCE of the volcano of Santorini -though dormant, is still an active volcano.

In its explosive eruption it created a group of small islands around its crater. The island of Santatori was called Thera in ancient times is an island in the southern Aegean Sea 

 "[The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestina], according to their own account, dwelt anciently upon the Erythraean Sea, but crossing thence, fixed themselves on the seacoast of Syria, where they still inhabit. This part of Syria, and all the region extending from hence to Egypt, is known by the name of "Palaestina"." 

You can review a scene from the north wall of Medinet Habu that illustrated the Egyptian campaign against the Sea Peoples in what has come to be known as the Battle of the Delta. 

It is true that the accompanying hieroglyphs do not name Egypt's enemies, rather they describe them simply as being from "northern countries". 

Fifteenth-century BC paintings in Thebes, Egypt depict Minoan-appearing individuals bearing gifts. Inscriptions describing them as coming from keftiu ("islands in the middle of the sea") may refer to gift-bringing merchants or officials from Crete. 

Early scholars noted the similarities between the hairstyles and accessories worn by the combatants and other reliefs in which such groups from the Grecian Isles are named. 

It never fails to astonish me how the "Liars for Palestine™" insist on posting this "Big Lie" of historical revisionism regarding the "actuality of a Palestinian People" and as "proof" of the existence of a "Sovereign country by the name Palestine" when there is ABSOLUTELY NO documented or archaeological proof that this claim is true!! 

These "Liars for Palestine™" insist on posting "ancient" maps where the term itself was created and spread on maps purposely by early cartographers to designate the "Holy Land". 

Very few remind readers that the early church was in competition with Judaism as seen by the repeated attempts to eliminate the Jews- (does the Spanish Inquisition ring a bell?)

And as in ALL conflicts there are those "victors" who purposely set out to erase the memory of a vanquished foe....

And pray tell when you "Liars for Palestine™" quote the "ancient" maps that labeled the area as "Palestina" as in the Roman province of Syria-Palestina ,do you not note that many times they either designate the Old Testament division of Eretz-Yisrael by tribal areas or as Iudea and Israel (Shomron)? 

That "ancient maps" by NON Christian cartographers do NOT mention Palestine but the lands of Syria-Palestina? 

In conclusion, of my long rant, allow me to state that by far the most vicious and hate filled pathological liars on the internet that I have encountered are those people that admire, the so-called nation that never existed “Falestine”. 

What liars fear the most is being revealed as liars and that is why they detest Israel so violently since we dare to tell them and their "audience" the truth. 

This whole "Big Lie" of historical revisionism by the "Palestinians" and their venomous defaming of Israel, that is allowed to freely spread openly by highly obvious and clear complicity by the social media while censoring the truth by pro-Jewish and Zionistic individuals. IS THE reason, why we Israeli's face such ignorance and hatred. 

It is fitting that the whole issue of anti-Israel social media hatred is in this infamous quote by the chief propagandist for the Nazi Party Joseph Goebbels: 

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” 

Epilogue: 

Do not say you were not informed because I have told you the whole truth. 

It is up to you to inform your friends so that the light of truth will spread. 

Psalm 116:118 "Thou hast made light of all them that err from Thy statutes; for their deceit is vain." 

Psalm 116:160 "The beginning of Thy word is truth; and all Thy righteous ordinance endureth forever."