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As a very "learned" -educated and knowledgeable from reading ACTUAL historical documents- pro-Zionist Israeli and Jew, I find it my duty to enlighten the passive unknowing "audience" of those who take the "click bait" and are exposed to the utter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.”