AAQ – it’s not me necessarily who sees muslims as enemies, but rather the vast majority of our community, so much so that associating something with islam/arab culture would be automatically a pejorative – i wasn’t saying whether or not this is proper or not, nor do i have a clear opinion on the matter. On the one hand, I’ve looked at the arab/muslim community with an open mind, not wanting to listen blindly to the zionists who consider them all our enemies. However at every turn I’m confronted with evidence that points to extremely high levels of anti semtism, largely due to zionism, endemic in the Muslim and particularly the Arab world. Not every single one hates us, but studies show that a very large percentage does, in Europe and the middle east at least. The amount of mainstream Muslim organizations that are found to have funded terrorist ones, politicians who espouse anti semitic views, and media which perpetuate anti semitic libels….i don’t believe that the zionists are completely lying in this issue. Just based on what my fellow talmidim in brisk encountered when mistakenly entering an Arab village is enough to make me want to avoid it as well; i don’t see why these sentiments are hateful or buying into the zionist narrative that they alone can protect us from our enemies. They lit the fire, threw us in it, and are now saying that we only can be saved by them.
I definitely don’t think that they’re irredeemable like the zionists say that they are; they grow up on lies about Jews, and i believe that educating them and the rest of the world that zionists do not represent all Jews will solve a great deal of the problems.
The fact that they are monotheistic would have been relevant 140 years ago before zionism came and spurred the arab countries to expel sefardi Jews etc, but now my point is that regardless of their religion, they are not something most jews would find flattering to be compared to, whether or not those feelings are justified is unclear to me entirely, but also not relevant either.
Re, Rav Ovadia; he addressed married men very clearly – those who leave their families are acting irresponsibly and without menthlickeit (he didn’t use that word, i forget his exact language); he didn’t mention bochurim at all…as for the misbehavior of some attendees; I’ve never been there, so I don’t know, but it seems to me that if someone wanted to sin, tel aviv is a while lot closer than uman.
I’ll admit i am not knowledgeable in Ukrainian politics, or even the exact details of tach vetat that you mentioned ( i.em chimilnicki’s political views); i just know that he killed hundreds of thousands of jews in his hatred and that he is still venerated by poles and Ukrainians as a national hero. I think what you said about Ukraine being a very different country than it was pre-war is very relevant; perhaps a wholesale boycott would be fruitless, as would abstaining from visiting uman due to an indirect boost to their economy. In my family, the Germans are collectively, not individually irredeemable and we would not drive Germans cars etc even if they paid us to; lots of European Jews feel the same way, as Germany is still Germany