akuperma

Did anyone give a different reason?

The British government has a long history of being anti-zionist. In the 1920s they sabotaged the agreement between the Jews (both zionist and non-zionist) with the Arabs, and did their best to ignite a Jewish-Arab conflict under their “divide and conquer” strategy. In 1947 and 1948 their whole policy was to help the Arabs win in the hopes that the zionists would be forced to ask the Brits to rescue them, and thereby keep Palestine British (though it was half hearted since by May 1948 they had already been forced out of India when their “let’s get the natives killing each other” strategy failed to result in the natives begging the Brits to stay on as colonial overlords).

And it isn’t surprising that Braverman, whose roots are in South Asia (even if married to a Jew) might not share those traditional British ideas.

CTALAWYER: “Camelot” was hardly extinguished on Nov. 22. Indeed, the clearest consequence was the Lyndon Johnson was able to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, and for the first time made discrimination against Sabbath-observant Jews illegal, opening up tremendous opportunities for frum Jews to enter professions that had been closed. A large faction of the Democratic party was opposed to civil rights laws, and Kennedy’s death proved to be the catalyst for the coalition of Republicans and Northern Democrats to get the law passed.

John Kennedy actually wore a proper frock coat (kapote, as we call it), and a top hat to his inauguration. The hat got misplaced and when he walked down Pennsylvania Avenue he was bare headed. What actually killed hats as part of male dress was the automobile (which also killed kapotes as a standard business dress – though George V decision to stop wearing them was a recognition of the change).

Ideologically, Kennedy’s tax policies (similar to Reagan and Trump, meaning he is a DINO by today’s standards) serious stimulated the economy. His militant opposition to the the Soviet-China alliance was similar to Reagan, and a lot more than most of today’s Democrats. His support for Civil rights is why frum Jews today have career options beyond working for other Jews or opening their own business – while the five day workweek was due to FDR, a prohibition of religious discrimination in employment came from the Civil Rights Act (proposed by Kennedy, the Republicans and the liberal wing of the Democrats – most of the opposition came form the conservative wing of the Democrats).

I suspect it has more to do with anti-Semitism. The library profession from which I recently retired has always been very tolerant of anti-Semitism, and the current waive of anti-Semitism which is now considered normative in the WOKE community (and most librarians are very WOKE) is the most likely explanation.

While the NYPL public libraries are government agencies, complaining to the politicians probably won’t help as most of them are progressive Democrats who probably see closing the libraries on Sunday as a cost efficient way to show their dislike of Jews.

With many goyim, including important political leaders, are marching through the streets of the world calling for the murder of Jews, and clearly not distinguishing between frum or frei, Hareidi or Reform, Israeli or living in golus – then it is not the time to be philosophizing after Zionism or the nature and halachic status of Medinat Yisrael.

The MARC (Maryland commuter rail) has announced that due to a “First amendment event” the trains may be very crowded on Tuesday. I would not be surprised if non-frum Jews and goyim come. The issue of the WOKE left endorsing murder, kidnapping and rape is actually quite important to more than just the frum community, as they (the pro-Hamas demonstrators) appear to have alienated more than just Orthodox Jews.

Given that the political left is holding rallies calling for genocide of Jews, it might be useful to make it clear we object. The “WOKE” demand is for a Judenrein world, and it is in our interests to force left-wing Democrats to confront this and decide if they really want to include a faction that supports mass murder as a matter of policy.

To the one saying “how many unemployed…”. If one holds that the laws against homicide, and the public international laws against genocide and murder of civilians in war time, no longer apply to Yidden– Kal ve Homer the law as against employment discrimination don’t apply.

1. Quotes from dead rabbanim are irrelevant since political parties change over time. In the last century the core principle of the Democrats was white supremacy. Both parties have gone through phases of being isolationists or interventionists. Quoting a rav about which party to favor would be like quoting a rav on whether to wear a raincoat (without including information such as the weather when he made the quote).

2. In 2023, the Democrats include an openly anti-Semitic wing and they may be able to exercise of veto over the party. The Republicans contain an isolationist wing which while not anti-Semitic, and sympathetic to Zionism, would render the United States incapable of giving Israel meaningful assistance if (as appears to be happening) the fighting shifts from disorganized terrorists, to regular armed forces supported by Russia, China and Iran.

3. We should be asking for the Democrats to treat their WOKE wing the way the Republicans have dealt in the recent past when white supremacists managed to get he Republican nomination (e.g. David Duke, they said to abstain or vote Democrat). One would like to see Democrats refusing to support WOKE candidates who endorse mass murder of Jews.

4. But the Republicans’ price for aiding Israel is to throw Ukraine under the bus, leading to a major victory for the Sino-Russian alliance. Another Republican is deliberately trying to block all promotions for a reason unrelated to national security. What Israel needs now is a strong United States military, which the Republicans are just as unenthused about as the Democrats.

American foreign aid is for weapons. Recipients are normally expected to pay their own military wages.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia is actively involved in supporting the people attacking Israel. Eretz Yisrael is a front in a war that includes Ukraine, and threatens to expand to all of Eastern Europe, Taiwan, the Philippines and Korea.

Those who say they support Israel but not Ukraine, or the reverse, are similar to someone who says they support a baseball team but only the players on the left side of the infield, but definitely not the first baseman or the relief pitchers. War is a “team sport”, and our team (speaking as an American) includes Israel, Ukraine, NATO, Taiwan, Philippines, South Korea and Japan. The other team consists of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The only difference between war and baseball, is that if one team is really good, the other team loses interest in playing, and unfortunately Joe Biden and the Congresses (meaning, for all purposes both parties) are too distracted to get our team ready for the next season, which could be disastrous.

“Do they have a point”

If someone runs a fire safety campaign (there always is in out community, especially in Kislev), they have a point when they say “I told you so” when the house catches fire. But it doesn’t do any good to lecture on fire safety when the house is burning.

The Zionists (both the various socialist groups, and the nationalists) can be blamed for the current war (and arguably the Holocaust) based on dumb decisions made 100 years ago (and sharing credit with the British Colonial Office and the various Palestinian leaders, in that order). But the house is on fire now, and that fire is very much capable of spreading to engulf the world. And absent time travel or going to an alternative universe, there is anything we can do now to repair the mistakes of a century ago (so yes, Neturei Karta has a point, but it is moot).

“Hostage” implies a criminal. It suggests Hamas is an organization such as the “Mafia” (which at this point in time probably should not be capitalized). It also means that Israel can execute them after a brief trial, but can not attack civilians or infrastructure in retaliation (just as if the local drug pushers live next door, you can’t blow up the building and everyone in it).

“Prisoner” implies a government. It suggests that Hamas is the lawful government of Gaza (they did win the last election), and its forces and the armed forces rather than a gang of terrorists. This means that their kidnapping civilians violates the Geneva Conventions (which apply to official armies, not criminals).

If Hamas is the genuine armed forces of a largely independent state, it makes things much more awkward for almost everyone.

The decisions that matter were made a century ago. Both the moderate zionists and the Hareidim were negotiating with the Arabs for what have been a Jewish “commonwealth” but not a sovereign nation (complete communal autonomy, economic freedom, unrestricted immigration). Two groups were outraged. One were the more fanatical zionists (both nationalists and socialists) since their dreams of a sovereign Jewish state would be destroyed. The other was the British Colonial Office, which greatly feared the emerging Arab state (possibly including all Arabs in western Asia) which included a Jewish commonwealth (and access to western tech) would undermine the British Empire. The Arabs had expected an independent state, as promised by the Allies during World War I, and had no problem if it included a non-sovereign Jewish entity.

The socialist zionists murdered the Hareidi negotiator and told the rabbanim to stay out of politics or meet the same fate. The Brits organized a pogrom targeting the Hareidim (note that encouraging religious and ethnic clashes was the standard modus operandi of the British Empire). Most Hareidim learned to live with the zionists and avoid anything more than asking for handouts and a bissel of autonomy. Neturei Karta went on saying “I told you so”, but its a century too late to do anything to end the war. Almost all Israelis will settle for nothing less the full national self-determination, and almost all Arabs will settle for nothing less than a single Islamic state “from the river to the sea”. It could indeed lead to World War III and the destruction of the world as we know it, but that is up to Ha-Shem, and it would be reasonable to notice that the goyim’s persecution of the Yidden would be the ultimate cause.

If Israel gets all the hostages back, alive and well, it might be worth it for Israel to avoid having to level Gaza and schecht its population (no other way to do it). They can insist on a rigid ban on Palestinians entering Israel, engage in targeted killings of Palestinian leaders, and annexation of all West Bank settlements – but resign themselves to having to go back to the old system of reserves doing over a month per year, until age 55. Israel was, and probably still is, unprepared for a full scale war, which for Israel would be an “all or nothing” proposition (the “nothing” is a Judenrein Eretz Yisrael. They have assumed they would be dealing with terrorists and occasional rockets – not a full scale war on the model of World War II in which one side wins by permanently eliminating the other.

Israel also has to consider its own internal divisions, that in the United States there are strong blocks of isolationists and anti-Semites (separate blocks who hate each other), and when taken in a global context (including Eastern Europe, Iran, and East Asia) the Middle East would be single theater of world war that the “Free world” is hardly prepared for.

After the next election, it is unlikely Bibi will still be the leader. The question is will Likud still be considered a right wing party, as opposed to a left wing party in a world in which the “center” are those in favor of “transfer”.

Animals do not kill without a reason. When the Romans wanted to throw someone to the beasts (a punishment for religious crimes, and a particularly bad way to die), they had to starve the animals first. If you ever get thrown into a lion’s den (has happened to the best of us), you will probably survive if the manage to get out before the lion gets hungry. Mosquitos don’t bite unless they are hungry. Bees don’t sting unless threatened.

So the people who refer to Hamas (or the Nazis, or whomever is being annoying at the moment – we do encounter more than our share of such people), should stop insulting the “animals”.

1. The Israelis have no incentive to target a hospital (since in the end, they’ll have to treat the patients when they retake Gaza) unless it was being used as a military base (e.g. guiding drones from the roof, which the Israelis didn’t claim).

2. The Americans said the Israelis didn’t do it, and Biden stuck his neck out to say so.

3. The Palestinians have a history of inferior weaponry, which is why even though they have been harassing the Israelis for years by sending rockets at civilian targets, they were seen as more of a nuisance than an existential threat (until they switch to ground assaults and started trying to retake territory that was on the Israeli side of the 1949 armistice (green) line. So the “friendly fire” explanation is credible.

Perhaps the caption should have been “End game for Zionism”. What happens to the Zionists will be at most an inconvenience. While have legal and political rights, whether in America or Eretz Yisrael is nice, Jewish survival has always been related to Torah and Mitsvos.

The Zionist future in the long run is bleak. Zionism was found on the dual principles of socialism and secularism. The former has largely been sent to the “dustbin of history”, and the latter is incompatible with the other peoples of the Middle East. The Zionists always believed that anti-Semitism was a reaction to what Jews did (dress differently, worship differently, value different classics, etc.), and they never have been able to realize that racism is not based on logic but on hatred.

The Hareidim have always been the heart of of the Jewish world, and will continue to be so in the future, since there is where Torah and Mitsvos rule, and all the secular false idols are rejected – and this makes no difference where we are living, or under what regime.

After all, if you don’t go to non-kosher stores that actively support murdering Jews, who will???

Given modern technology, no country can launch a surprise attack involving a large army. Satellites in orbit will see everything. That is why the world press reported the Russian invasion at least a day or two before it happened. Similarly, something such as Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor over 80 years would be impossible in 2023.

One thing a country can do is limit the attack in size, to basically a glorified commando raid, and to have bases close enough to the border that the other side won’t see the troop movements. This is what Hamas did in Gaza.

Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Golda Meir was politically much closer to her generals in 1973, so it was harder for her to escape the blame. If the Israeli voters perceive the leadership of the military, and especially the intelligence service as allied with Bibi, he is out after the war ends (and remember that most of the current opposition consists of Likudniks who can’t stand Bibi, whereas most of Golda’s oppositions were anti-socialists who rejected her entire agenda rather than just her). If the public perceives the military elite as allied with the economic elites whose demonstrations crippled the government and may have encouraged Hamas to think Israel was “easy pickings”, the reverse is true, and Bibi’s replacement will probably be an ultra-nationalist who can say “I told you so” when pointing to past left wing policies (such as Oslo, withdrawal from Gaza, etc.).

If the people are Jewish (by halacha, not “culturally” or “genetically”), and they are living together as man and wife, and its their child, the only possible objection to the marriage is that the woman didn’t go to mikva. It might be an issue if they they weren’t living together, or if the child wasn’t there child, or the man was married to another woman -but what the question describes is a proper Jewish marriage by a couple that is already de facto married, and wants to “make it official” for a legitimate reason. Consider if the reason was so that they could easily file taxes as a married couple or to own a house by the entireties (since it is very hard to get a marriage recognized without the expected paperwork, even though it is a valid marriage).

They most probably would need a “get” to marry anyone else, as well as a government divorce, since New York, like most states, recognizes the validity of religious marriage ceremonies even if you don’t have the marriage license (the couple and the clergy might owe a fine, but that’s a revenue measure, not a domestic relations matter).

Or they will both drop out. Both of them are deeply unpopular which much of the country, and neither wants to be remembered as a one term president whose vanity resulted in an evil opposition movement coming to power and destroying the country. Also, if they lose and the opposition gets control of Congress, Trump or Biden could end up in jail (and in the case of Trump, die a pauper), so they both have an incentive to drop out and support the member of their party with the best chance of uniting their party, and winning independents and discontented members of the other party. And if one drops out an endorses a successor, the other probably will.

Also, based on polling, there is a real possibility of a third party to win the election (for the first time since 1860). Much of the country detests both MAGA and WOKE, and there is still strong support for a foreign policy that favors America leading the “free world” in opposition to Sino-Russian imperialism.

OF course time is not linear. We always have said that Ha-Shem exists outside of “time”. That is why no one has any problem saying how Matan Torah could have impacted Bereisheis (and many other examples in our literature discussing non-linear time).

If you have trouble with visualizing this, I suggest reading the SciFi classic “Flatland” (not about Brooklyn), explaining how a multi-dimensionsal multiverse can exist, even though it is not easily understood by beings (e.g humans) with limited ability to perceive all its dimensions.

Frum Yidden, at least the Chareidim, tend to be influenced by their rabbanim (and their families, especially as pertains to clothing).

Under the Muslims (in this case, the Ottoman Empire, since we are talking about Eretz Yisrael n the pre-zionist period)we had a status somewhat better than, for example, Blacks in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, 1865-1954 period, (and much better than Jews in most Christian countries who had fewer rights and were subject to frequent violence, excluding America which has not been a “Christian” country since 1789). There was no forced conversion (unlike the zionists who try to force Yidden to become secular), we controlled our own welfare and educational institutions (the government didn’t try to restrict Torah learning), we had our own courts whose decisions were respected by the state, and we were exempt from (and in fact, banned from) military service. Those Jews who preferred a financially oriented lifestyle were allowed to do so without having to adopt a non-Jewish lifestyle, and those whose primary concerns were Torah and Mitsvos were unmolested. And there usually was peace in Eretz Yisrael (except for the time Napoleon invaded).