Category Archives: Judaism & Jews

Impressions From Jerusalem

Ancient History, Family, Ilana Mercer, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Religion

THE FOLLOWING EVOCATIVE PIECE was written by a special young woman, my daughter. She traveled to Israel with the common political perspective, imbibed in insulated, privileged, propagandized North America—and shared by left-liberals and paleos alike. Once in Israel, she underwent a transformative experience.

Most individuals who write about Israel, pro and con, should not be doing so, as they have never experienced the place or the people. I’m proud of my girl. Aside a talent for spare, strong writing, she had the heart and the head to rethink received ideology when confronted by something far more powerful and persuasive.

Impressions From Jerusalem
By Nicky

My idea of a militarized society was that of the USA. Soldiers and armed guards are visible only where security is needed. They are stern, unsmiling, erect. They signify danger and command respect, wordlessly and humorlessly.

In Canada, my only experience of the military is the odd soldier in fatigues on the street, perhaps on the bus: an object of casual consideration. I view him with the privileged gaze of a Western pacifist, not obliged to look him in the eye. I think: “Why, friend, what are you doing in that uniform? What are you afraid of? What did the government tell you to make you believe you should don those clothes?” I don’t feel served or protected by this soldier because I don’t need his service or protection. My daily movements are free and unfettered; I am an independent Western woman. I cannot relate to my soldier. It saddens me that all I can summon for him is private condescension and the thought that my tax dollars could be better spent than on his meager salary.

I was certain that this attitude would be seamlessly transplanted to Israel. I was wrong; it simply would not stick. Not because I’m a Jew. I didn’t even consider myself a Zionist when I walked through the streets of Jerusalem: I still did not understand Israel, even then. And even now, after an intensive ten-day tour of the tiny country and its borders, I can barely bring myself to discuss it. There is too much history to learn, to read, too much to experience, to see, to understand with one’s full attention in order to speak of Israel, let alone flippantly as many who haven’t experienced it do.

You cannot fathom 3000 years of history, and yet there is rubble from that time, from the Temple’s first destruction. Here and there soldiers stand amidst the rubble. Jerusalem is beautiful but she is neither grand nor ornate. Even the Western Wall appears fragile. Only the Dome of the Rock shines gold and blue in a city of calcified limestone. A soldier steps graciously out of my camera’s view as I photograph one stretch of wall and rubble. At the Holy City’s entrance, a couple of young soldiers stand between the two opposing flows of traffic. They look into our faces, our eyes, their guns slung low, pointed to the ground. They are at ease, relaxed. One of them smiles warmly. A group of children scampers past, unafraid and wholly indifferent to the soldiers. Already this experience is markedly different from those I’ve had at the US and Canadian borders, or customs at Heathrow, London, where I have been treated like trash more than once. And yet I don’t doubt that these young boys could protect me. I feel safe and relaxed here amongst these soldiers.

THE HOLY CITY IS FULL OF YOUNG ISRAELI SOLDIERS. When they enter a museum together, they leave their guns in a pile at the entrance, guarded by one or two watchful but friendly soldiers who will smile for our cameras and bark no orders on how far to stand from the pile of guns. Many know each other from training and though they walk with different brigades you often see a handful stray for a moment to greet one other. They receive no reprimand for straying. No one barks commands. Gathered in groups, they sit or stand, laugh, smoke cigarettes and talk and text on cell phones. They are unabashedly affectionate: embracing and back-slapping; their faces light up at seeing one another. These are boys and girls in their late teens and early 20s. I doubt I will ever see youngsters this age behaving this way in North America. That would be “like, gay or something.”

Even in a group one can access solitude instantly while walking through Jerusalem. It isn’t unusual to fall silent mid conversation. Her history commands respect and quiet reflection. The closer you get to the Western Wall, the lower the tones, the greater the quiet. Everyone approaches slowly, atheist, agnostic, believer alike. Religious or not, you feel its power. Birds nestle in its crevices. They watch the people below and I feel certain even they know the Wall is special. It is fortified by a band of humans teaming at its base, palms and foreheads flat against the stone, as though holding it up. You approach slowly, your eyes travel through space and time, fixed on the wall. First you touch the wall, then you kiss your fingers. You gently wedge your note in with the rest, hoping it is profound, meaningful enough to be worthy of its stony recipient; worthy of its fallen defenders.

You are not speaking at all now, nobody is. You can only hear the sound of softly praying lips and of children hushed by admonishing parents. You do not turn your back on the Wall, but retreat slowly, facing it. Along the periphery, where the men and women’s sections are segregated, lone individuals, eyes covered, pray silently. Some are crying. Among the crowd, the elderly are seated, reading from Hebrew prayer books, mouthing the words in silence.

THE ISLAMIC CALL TO PRAYER booms through the quiet five times a day, everyday, even at 4am, with militaristic precision and pitch. Several mosques perform the prayer, one after the other. You cannot hear anything else for a full five minutes at a time, for up to thirty minutes a session. The speaker crackles from the distortion of the blaring volume. Secular tourists need to yell to hear one another, helping to shatter the erstwhile calm, easily distracted and pulled from their meditation. Tour guides turn off their mikes patiently and wait.

The worshipers at the wall cover their ears and pray more intensely, still silent. The soldiers, unmoved, stand sentinel at the ancient ruins.

Update II: Canadian Anti-Coulter Cretins Crave ‘Positive Space’

Ann Coulter, Canada, Christianity, Fascism, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Judaism & Jews, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Political Philosophy

I’m so very pleased that Ann Coulter has, by necessity, turned her wrath on one of the most oppressive instruments in the Canadian state, the Human Rights apparatus. The Human Rights Commission, a Kangaroo court, operates outside the Canadian courts, affording its victims none of the defenses or due process the courts afford. For example, mens rea, or criminal intention: the absence of the intent to harm is no defense in this “court.” Neither is truth.

The apparatchiks of this machine have designated certain groups as protected species. Thus, the bedrock of western law, the rights of the individual, is turned on its head. Based on your membership in a group, you get to claim protected species rights—and acquire a lien on the property of other groups, who become prime potential offenders. The quasi-judicial Tribunal then acts on these definitions in the substance of its decisions. It’s all great for social cohesion.

And the designations keep growing. Last I covered the quasi-courts, it was deliberating as to whether to extend protection against discrimination on the grounds of “social conditions.” In other words, much like in the US, you do not posses absolute rights to your property. However, over and above the infraction against freedom of association and property that is American Civil Rights law, the Canadian kangaroo code would make it an offense to refuse to rent your apartment, for example, to a welfare recipient.

Devastating complaints have been launched against individuals whose speech the protected species dislike, often bankrupting and destroying innocent individuals guilty of exercising property rights or expressing politically incorrect thoughts.

In a truly free society, the kind we once enjoyed, one honors the right of the individual to associate and disassociate, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. Simple. So long as your mitts stop at my mug, you ought to be free to do as you wish. (Including ingesting drugs and ending one’s life, for vices are not crimes. “If for harming himself a man forfeits his liberty, then it can’t be said that he has dominion over his body. It implies that someone else—government—owns him.”) People ought to be arrested only for crimes they perpetrate against another’s person or property.

Particularly apt is Ann’s swipe, in “Oh Canada,” at the mob mentality and congenital stupidity issuing from the free-thinking Millennials (whom I’ve described at length in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable”):

the Ottawa University Student Federation met for seven and a half hours to hammer out a series of resolutions denouncing me. The resolutions included:

“Whereas Ann Coulter is a hateful woman;

“Whereas she has made hateful comments against GLBTQ, Muslims, Jews and women;

“Whereas she violates an unwritten code of ‘positive-space’;

“Be it resolved that the SFUO express its disapproval of having Ann Coulter speak at the University of Ottawa.”

At least the students didn’t waste seven and a half hours on something silly, like their studies.

Update I (March 25): Where do you think “The Silly Sex?” would land this writer were she to return to Canada? Or “Women Who Wed the Wrong Wahhabi”? Or “‘Obsession’ By Muhammad”?

Update II: Coulter has never called for the conversion of Jews, as Myron (and lefties) contends. I’ve long since “Disentangled [That] Coulter/Deutsch Dust-Up”:

Although some Christian denominations have watered it down, a general filament of the Christian faith is the belief that salvation is predicated on accepting Christ. If Coulter were more than a brash, bonny (if bony) babe, she’d have explained that doctrine: To get past the Pearly Gates, Christians believe one has to accept Christ.

“But is belief in ‘perfection’ or ‘completion’ through Jesus tantamount to hostility to Jews?” asked Gabriel Sanders of the Jewish daily “Forward.” And he replied, quoting Yaakov Ariel, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a specialist in Jewish-Evangelical ties: “A conservative, Jesus-oriented faith doesn’t mean, in and of itself, that people are anti-Jewish. Some of the more favorable attitudes toward Jews have developed in Evangelical circles.”

Updated: The Law Of Medina (Debra)

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Elections, Founding Fathers, Islam, Judaism & Jews, Liberty

She bears the name of another extraordinary woman, the Prophet Deborah, who was judge and leader of Israel in antiquity. Debra Medina is in the race against the incumbent, Rick Perry, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison to “capture the government of the second biggest state in America,” Texas.

They, the far-gone establishment, have branded candidates like her “extreme candidates.” JD Hayworth, who is poised to whip McMussolini, is receiving the same treatment.

The Guardian:

Medina is no Sarah Palin. She has no need to write on her hand to remember her talking points. Instead her speech was a complex walk through her extreme anti-government philosophy, citing sources as varied as the Austrian school of economics, St Augustine and modern French philosophers. She said she wanted to get rid of property taxes and allow Texans to do whatever they wanted with anything they owned, whether that was dig for oil or build an extension. There was, she said, no constitutional basis for a federal Department of Education or an Environmental Protection Agency or the Federal Reserve. Texas should assert its rights almost as a nation-state, controlling over its own National Guard units. The disdain for government was visceral. The American way, she said, was simple. “There are two rights essential to freedom: private property and gun ownership.”

What I’d like to know is this: Why would Glenn Beck try to trip up this terrific candidate with a question about her supposed “Truther” proclivities?

Only once has Medina slipped up – in an interview she gave to the conservative radio host Glenn Beck. On his show Medina was asked if she thought the US government might have had a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She replied: “I don’t.” She then went on to expand disastrously upon that answer. “I don’t have all the evidence there… I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard. There are some very good arguments and I think the American people have not seen all the evidence there, so I have not taken a position on that,” she said.

I heard Beck proudly re-run the interview; he seemed flabbergasted that the woman had dared to doubt the integrity of the American state.

Not being a conspiracy theorist myself, it is my view that such a bent far from disqualifies a candidate. In the context of Medina, a hardcore, life-long advocate for natural liberty—a proclivity for conspiracy simply signifies a deep distrust of the Federal Frankenstein.

And that is a good thing.

Incidentally, in a previous post I alerted you to the theft of Jewish history. I see that the looting of the Hebrew language is proceeding apace too. The word Medina has a Hebrew root. Yet the freedictionary.com gives the word an Arabic origin. False.

“The root of Aramaic-Hebrew medina is din, ‘law,‘ and medina in both languages denotes a place in which a given body of law or legal system is applied, i.e., an area of political jurisdiction.”

In any event, here are 50 facts about Debra Medina. (“She was a high-level volunteer for Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign. She describes her relationship with Paul as “good,” but frames it more as the typical interaction a constituent might have with a congressman.”)

Update (March 3): “Republican Gov. Rick Perry and Democratic former Houston Mayor Bill White clinched their parties’ nominations for governor Tuesday. … Medina declined to concede. Her campaign claimed that if Perry fell below 50 percent in the final vote count that she would be in a runoff with him because Hutchison had conceded. … ” [Houston Chronicle]

The reporting is so shoddy that, other than in Dan’s comment, I have not found a vote count for Medina. If it is 17 percent, Medina did terrifically. I’ve said it before: The fight for liberty is slow. Since the economy will not be getting better, inflated as it is by paper, Medina will win the next elections.

Update III: Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values (Senegal Does It Right)

America, Celebrity, Christianity, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Media, Morality, Political Economy, The West, UN

The excerpt is from my new, WND.COM column: “Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values”:

“… in all its self-serving displays, humanitarianism is, overwhelmingly, a Western affair; a Judeo-Christian thing. It’s as simple as all that. Liberals like Angelina Jolie will trace Western generosity to the founding of the United Nations, to the League of Nations, or to some other supra-national structure.

I suspect that what is at play in Haiti, and in countless locales around the undeveloped world, began with the revolutionary, universal, elaborate moral and legal injunctions encoded first in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus – and, thereafter, throughout the Hebrew Bible – to protect and do justice by the poor, the weak, the defenseless, the widow and the stranger. The people of Israel were enjoined to practice what Christians later perfected.

That stuff stuck.

A different set of beliefs animates Haitian society, and helps explain its helplessness and hopelessness. ‘Haiti is not a Catholic country, Haiti is a Voodoo country,’ Erol Josue told National Public Radio. Josue is a Voodoo priest in a country whose former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, officially recognized Voodoo as a state religion.” …

The complete column is “Haiti: Trade In Voodoo For Values.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update I (Jan. 22): Martin’s comment hereunder reminded me what I clean forgot: the Obamas’ very public giving. I’m also grateful to Martin for bringing to our attention the DIRECT injunction in the New Testament against showy charity. Martin quotes the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them.” How has this country forgotten something as foundational as that?

Self-righteousness has replaced righteousness and self-aggrandizement has supplanted simple goodness.

Update II (Jan. 23): CHILD SLAVERY still thrives in Haiti in the form of the “Restavec system.” Children are kept in grinding poverty and worked to the bone. In the West this would be considered perverse in the extreme; in Haiti owning a Restavek is a status symbol. CNN has done stories on Restavec children, but has never connected the dots, as the favorite phrase goes. The angle is, invariably one of, “Look how good I am [Dr. Gupta here]; I’m crying.” Coupled with, “This happens in the US too.

No it doesn’t. When a slave is discovered, usually in the home of immigrants who imported their bad habit, American society shames and punishes the offenders.

Update III (Jan. 24): SENEGAL DOES IT RIGHT. Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade has offered Haitian refugees a “parcels of land – even an entire region. It all depends on how many Haitians come. If it’s just a few individuals, then we will likely offer them housing or small pieces of land. If they come en masse we are ready to give them a region,’ he said.”

Wade “insisted that if a region is handed over it should be in a fertile area – not in the country’s parched deserts.”

Wade’s got the right idea, or at least the righteous one. He is offering Haitians a most generous chance at self-sufficiency; at working the land.

“Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher and codifier of Jewish law, holds that the most praiseworthy and effective means of fulfilling the commandment of Tzedakah [charity] is through offering an impoverished person a business partnership, a business loan or a job. … the Prime Minister and [former Finance Minister] of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently understood this well. Speaking on the benefits of workfare reform in Israel, Netanyahu was once quoted in the press as saying that it is not enough to be a Thatcherite, a Jew should go even further and become a Maimonidite. [Excerpted from the monograph titled Judaism, Markets, and Capitalism: Separating Myth from Reality, by Corinne and Robert Sauer of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, with which I am affiliated.]

[SNIP]

Will Haitians be tempted by a chance at an honest living when hand-outs abound?