Yehuda Lave, Spiritual Advisor and Counselor

Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works  with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money,  and spiritual engagement

SEE YOURSELF AS HAVING THE POWER TO HONOR YOURSELF

.Look in the mirror and say, "I LOVE YOU." Do it every day. Focus on something you love about yourself and some victory that you managed to do today.

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The Arabs of Israel: No Surprise - 1988

“Beyond Words” is a published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works.“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life. Beyond Words, volumes 1-7. http://www.amazon.comVolume 5The Arabs of Israel: No Surprise - 1988

Once again, Israeli leaders and Jewish Establishment groups are “surprised.” In the wake of the riots which saw Arab citizens of the Jewish state stone Jewish buses, attack a police station and firebomb security vehicles — the one word which Jewish leaders, intellectuals and news media used over and over again was “surprise.”

Suddenly, all the years of efforts by Israeli and Jewish leaders to persuade the world — but more important, themselves — that the Arabs of Israel were loyal citizens of the Jewish state exploded in the wake of the Arab riots — not in the territories, but inside the Israeli cities of Jaffa, Lydda, Ramle, Acre, Nazareth, Um el Fahem and, of course, Jerusalem.

The most surprising thing about all this is the fact that Jews are surprised. It is this “surprise” and shock which is the direct result of decades of deliberate efforts to avoid dealing with the real, root cause of the problem, a madness that continues to this very day.

All the absurd “explanations” and rationalizations: the problem, we were told, is that the Arab economic and social position is not equal to that of the Jew. Or the problem is that the “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza is causing anger and upset among the Israeli Arabs. As if those are the reasons Israeli Arabs take to the streets and cry “Palestine! We will free the Galilee with blood and spirit!” 

As if giving Israeli Arabs more sewers and more indoor toilets will put an end to the problem. As if a “Palestinian” state in the territories will send the Israeli Arabs back to their homes, happy and satisfied.The root of the growing Israeli Arab revolt does not lie in economic inequality. It lies in a problem that is so basic and so painful and so terrifying for secular Israeli and Jewish leaders that they flee from confrontation with it — thus assuring that it will grow to proportions that will threaten the very existence of Israel.

The root of the Israeli Arab hostility and, indeed, hatred of Israel, lies in the very definition of Israel as a “Jewish state.” It lies in the very basis of Zionism, which arose to recreate the “Jewish state” that twice stood in the land. And Israel which, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, was to be “a Jewish state in the Land of Israel,” by definition could never allow the Arabs to be equal. It could never allow the Arabs the opportunity to become the majority — albeit peacefully — and democratically change a Jewish state into an Arab one, an Israel into a Palestine.

Indeed, the root of the problem and of the liberal Jewish nightmare is that there is a basic, immutable contradiction between Western democracy and a Jewish state.Western democracy eliminates all such concepts as national background or religion. Whoever are the majority rules, and both Arabs and Jews have the right to become the majority in Israel — under this Western democratic credo — and do with the country what they, the majority, will.

Certainly, such a basic law as that passed by the socialist Zionist government of David Ben-Gurion in 1950, the Law of Return, that allows Jews automatic right to immigrate and become Israeli citizens, is not what Western democracy would adopt.But that is exactly the kind of law that Zionism and a Jewish state did adopt and must adopt, for the Jewish people’s main dream is that of a Jewish state, and all that can be done to insure the Jewishness of that state is not only proper but mandatory. A Jewish people, for 1,900 years, lived in involuntary exile, as a minority in Christian and Moslem countries.

It enjoyed such minority benefits as Crusades and Inquisitions and pogroms and, of course, Auschwitz. It decided that never again would it be trampled upon, spat upon, gassed to death and burned alive. It decided that it would have a Jewish state in which the Jew was master of his fate, never dependent on others.That is Zionism and that is Israel — the Jewish state — and there is nothing for any Jew to be ashamed of. But let him never deceive himself. A Jewish state can never be a Western democratic one, and it can never allow the Arab political equality with the Jew, no matter how much the liberal and Left in Israel and the Jewish Establishment refuse to face it.

And that is why the Arab in Israel riots and hates the Jewish state. Because it can never be his, by virtue of the stark fact that he is not a Jew. It is the contradiction between Zionism and Western democracy that is at the heart of the inevitable Arab hostility. And all the economic benefits and all the Palestinian states in the world will never remove the reality of the Israeli Arab who will never accept the Jewish state. It will get worse. Much worse. The Arab birthrate and the new generation of young, educated and hostile Israeli Arabs guarantee that in the years to come, the world will watch on its television screens rioting and shooting of Arabs in the Galilee and the cities of Israel.The Arabs of Israel joined with the Arabs of the territories in rioting, for the simple reason that they are ONE. For them there is no nonsensical “Green Line,” of 1967. The Arabs of Israel and the territories, both, are logical and normal. They know and proclaim what normal Jews such as Kahane do. They believe and proclaim that there is but ONE “Palestinian” people and that all of the land — “West Bank” and Israel — is really ONE, “Palestine.” To be sure, the Arabs of Israel have no intention of leaving Israel, but surely not because they love Israel. The contention of so many vapid Israeli leaders that the Israeli Arab is caught in the dilemma of being a member of the Palestine nation and citizen of Israel is ridiculous. There is no dilemma for the Arab. His identity is not dual; it is clear and unmistaken. He considers himself to be a member of the Palestinian Arab nation. The fact that he is also a citizen of Israel and lives in the Jewish state is not a dilemma for him, but rather an unfortunate tragedy that he must live with at the moment, but which he strives, daily, to change.The problem in getting Jews to understand all this lies in the basic dishonesty of the Jewish leadership and the ‘gentilized’, liberal views that surround them, and from which they spring. It lies in the basic dishonesty of the Jewish news media, intellectuals and clergy (both non-Orthodox and, in great degree, Moderdox  Modern Orthodox).

This dishonesty is rooted in the terrible fear of admitting the fundamental contradiction between their beloved Western democracy and gentilized social values, and the values and definitions of Zionism and authentic Judaism. None of them has the courage to face up to this contradiction and choose!It is this cowardice that threatens the very existence of Israel, for the vacillation, the hesitation, the flight from the obvious and only choice — expulsion — sees the enormous growth of Arab population as well as the radicalization of an educated and boldly brazen new generation of Israeli Arabs. The cowardly refusal to choose and to act sees a growing sense of uncertainty and then guilt among young Israeli Jews, young people who — in any event — are naked of Jewish values, thanks to the ‘gentilized’, secular education they receive.

This cowardly fear of deciding for Zionism and a Jewish state, and rejecting Western democracy, is nothing short of criminal. The signs and the evidence of Israeli Arab hatred of the Jewish state have been there to see for decades! In recent years not even the most blind of people could fail to see it. When Arab Communist Party Knesset Member Tewfik Ziad hears Labor M.K. David Libai speak of Jews defending the right of the Arab minority, he calls out: “The minority that will be the majority, in the future” (Knesset minutes, Dec. 9, 1986).And when Muhamad Mussarwa, the Israeli Consul General in Atlanta (chosen by Israel as some Uncle Ahmed to show the greatness of Israeli token democracy), tells a group of Atlanta rabbis (come to drink from his feet): “Israel is my country. I do not perceive it as a Jewish state” (Atlanta Jewish Times, Nov. 20, 1987) — he is merely proclaiming what every Arab sees as the most logical strategy. Unable to demand a “Palestine” at this moment, proclaim Israel to be a Western democracy in which Jews and Arabs are truly equal, i.e., Israel is not a Jewish state and Arabs have the right to become the majority and create the kind of state they desire.This is exactly what the openly pro-PLO Arab M.K., Mohamed Miari (Progressive List), meant when he said: “The State of Israel is not the state of the Jewish people but rather of the citizens who are there by virtue of being citizens of the State of Israel” (Knesset minutes, Oct. 15, 1985).And this is what Na’ama Saud, an Israeli Arab teacher, tells the newspaper Ma’ariv (May 28, 1976): “Today, I am in the minority. Who says that in the year 2000 we Arabs will still be in the minority? Today, I accept the fact that this is a Jewish state with an Arab minority. But when we are the majority I will not accept the fact of a Jewish state with an Arab majority.”And Muhamed Muhareb, chairman of the Arab students at Hebrew University, tells Ma’ariv (January 20, 1978): “I am first and foremost a Palestinian, resident of Lydda. My Israeli citizenship was forced upon me. I do not recognize it and do not see myself as belonging to the State of Israel. With the final solution common to the Arabs of Palestine and of Judea, Lydda will be in the sovereign boundaries of the democratic state. What will that state be called? Palestine, naturally.” And that is why Arab mobs in the Israeli town of Taibe shout: “Katyushas will yet fall again on Kiryat Shemona,” and some 6,000 Israeli Arabs come to the Knesset to demonstrate and shout: “We will free the Galilee with blood!”The Arabs of Israel are a hostile, hating minority in the midst of a Jewish state they hate and despise and dream of overthrowing. The absurd shibboleth that is waved on high again and again by the ‘gentilized’ cowards to the effect that “the overwhelming majority of Israeli Arabs have never been involved in anti-state acts” is worse than stupidity. One could as well prove that the French or Dutch or Norwegians enjoyed living under the Nazi occupation because so few joined the underground against the Germans.

Most people do not risk life and limb by attacking authority. It takes courage to join an underground or a terrorist group. Most people do not relish being caught and serving long prison sentences. That does not mean that they do not admire the PLO or support it. And even those who are against violence are of that mind for the pragmatic reason that they feel it will not work. But all of the Israeli Arabs reject a “Jewish state,” reject the Zionist concept of a Jewish state in which they — the non-Jews — must, of necessity, be strangers.The Jewish leaders in Israel; the Jewish Establishment in the Exile; the Jewish news media and the intellectuals — all are bound to Western democracy as some Prometheus, to which their Hellenism so gravitates. All are too terrified and too weak to choose a Jewish state over Western democracy. That is why they doom Israel to years of slow and agonizing torture; to years of Arab rebellion within the country; to years of bloody confrontation with Arabs inside the Jewish state; to years of world condemnation of Israel.If we do not want that, we must throw off the yoke of the present Jewish leadership in Israel and the Exile. We must reject the sterile anger and protests of sterile Jewish liberals, who are the most dangerous enemies that Israel faces.If we do not want tragedy, let us throw off our fear of facing the contradiction of Western democracy and a Jewish state. And let us choose a Jewish state, with no guilt. The answer, the inevitable answer is — remove the Arabs to any of their 22 states, and Israel will remain the one Jewish state for the Jewish people. Without liberal guilt or apologies.

View from the top in Warsaw and return to Jerusalem 090219

On my return trip to Warsaw, I had time to go to the top of the museum of culture and enjoy the view from the center of the town

K Syndrome, the Disease that Saved Jews in Italy from the Nazis

In one Italian hospital, an invented disease helped save hundreds from the occupying Nazis.

Francesco Buscemi |

Behind the closed doors of the Fatebenefratelli hospital in Rome was a ward filled with patients being treated for K Syndrome. This new and unfamiliar disease – whose name evoked Koch Syndrome (tuberculosis) – was a strong deterrent to the occupying Nazi soldiers who carried out routine searches of the hospital for Jews, partisans and anti-fascists. Fearing infection, the Nazis did not dare enter the ward, turning their attention elsewhere.

Patients in this ward had been hospitalised and classified as suffering from K Syndrome in late 1943. On 16 October of that year, the Nazis combed the Jewish ghetto and other areas of Rome, deporting about 1,200 Jews. Only 15 survived the camps. After this, the hospital’s doctors and friars welcomed ever-increasing numbers of patients. These patients were, however, refugees. K Syndrome was an invented illness.

It was created by Giovanni Borromeo, the hospital’s head physician, with the assistance of its other doctors, with the intention of saving those Jews and anti-fascists who sought refuge there. Born in 1898, Borromeo was an avowed anti-fascist. Before taking his post at Fatebenefratelli, he had been offered the position of head physician in two other hospitals, but rejected both as they required that he become a member of the Fascist Party. He accepted the job at Fatebenefratelli as it was run by Catholic friars and, according to an agreement between the Catholic Church and the fascist regime, was therefore considered a private hospital, detached from state regulations. It did not require its employees to belong to a political party.

At the hospital, Borromeo hired many physicians who had been discriminated against by the regime for various reasons. Among them was the Jewish doctor Vittorio Emanuele Sacerdoti, who hid some of the survivors from the events of 16 October in the hospital. In the following months, it became a centre of political resistance.

But anti-fascist resistance at Fatebenefratelli was not confined to K Syndrome. In collaboration with the friars, Borromeo and his allies installed a radio station inside the hospital and used it to communicate with partisans in order to organise their fight. When Borromeo and the friars realised that the Nazis had identified the position of the radio, they threw everything in the Tiber.

Fatebenefratelli’s position on Tiber Island and its proximity to the ghetto created suspicion among Nazi officials. Borromeo and his colleagues prepared for the inevitable visit. Hospitalised Jews (and other ‘political’ patients) were listed in official documents as suffering from K Syndrome. The name, however, was also something of a risky joke: Borromeo named the fictitious disease ‘K’ after either Albert Kesselring or Herbert Kappler. Kesselring was the Nazi Commander-in-Chief South, and ordered Kappler, who was Nazi police chief of Rome, to undertake the massacre at the Ardeatine Caves, where 335 people (soldiers and civilians) were killed. Both Kesselring and Kappler were tried for war crimes and convicted after its end.

‘K Syndrome’ soon became a code which referred to the people hidden in the hospital. Adriano Ossicini (who later became Italy’s Minister of Health in the 1990s), among others, wrote messages to Borromeo asking for a precise number of beds to be reserved for K patients, who would arrive at the hospital within the following days. The hospital accepted refugees until the day the allies entered and liberated Rome.

Pietro Borromeo, Giovanni’s son, revealed that, as expected, at the end of October, the Nazis carried out a search for Jews and anti-fascists at Fatebenefratelli. Borromeo took them around the hospital and described, in detail, the terrible effects K Syndrome had on its victims. Having done so, he invited them to search the wards. The Nazis, who Pietro Borromeo says were accompanied by a doctor, rejected the invitation and left without further inquiry.

There are different versions of how the Nazis searched for the Jews in the hospital, different accounts of Borromeo’s misdirection and varied estimates of the numbers of lives saved. Each version confirms the invention of K Syndrome. Pietro Borromeo suggested that the entire venture was a planned and systematised campaign in the fight against fascism, while the physicians Ossicini and Sacerdoti conversely suggested that it was mostly improvised, one of the many forms of spontaneous and unorganised resistance to the dictatorship.

Whatever the reality of the story, we know that K Syndrome kept the Nazis away from the ‘patients’ and that the invented disease saved many lives. Borromeo’s bravery has been recognised in both Italy and internationally. In 2004, years after his death in 1961, Yad Vashem, Israeli’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, recognised him as one of the Righteous among the Nations, an honour bestowed on gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Like other men and women who hid the Jews in their homes, in public spaces, or who lied to save them, the doctors and friars at Fatebenefratelli put their own lives and freedom at serious risk. But the story also shows the ambivalent role of the Catholic Church under fascism: it was an institution that sometimes pretended not to see what was happening in Mussolini’s Italy, but at other times supported the fight against tyranny.

Nazi officials in Rome never became aware that K Syndrome did not exist. This was one instance where disinformation, fear and ignorance worked as a force for good.

Francesco Buscemi is a cultural historian. His latest book is From Body Fuel to Universal Poison (Springer, 2018).

Opinion: The real scandal is Democrats’ refusal to call out anti-Jewish bigots

The real scandal is the Democratic Party’s refusal to take any action against Omar and Tlaib, despite their support for BDS (and thus the destruction of Israel) and their anti-Jewish remarks.

By Melanie Phillips, JNS

There appears to be no limit to the sheer stupidity and reflexive malice with which people misrepresent what U.S. President Donald Trump has just said.

On Tuesday, he said: “I think Jewish people that vote for a Democrat—I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

Cue an instant storm of outrage by Jewish groups and commentators claiming that he had accused Jews of dual loyalty—one of the trademark libels of classical anti-Semitism.

“This is yet another example of Donald Trump continuing to weaponize and politicize anti-Semitism,” said Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

David Harris, chief executive of the American Jewish Committee, called Trump’s comment “outrageous.” Ann Lewis and Mark Mellman of the Democratic Majority for Israel called it “one of the most dangerous, deadly accusations Jews have faced over the years. False charges of disloyalty over the centuries have led to Jews being murdered, jailed and tortured.”

A moment’s pause to consider the logic of this reaction reveals it to be totally ridiculous. “Dual loyalty” means Jews have greater loyalty to Israel than to America. Trump was accused of claiming this of Jews who voted Democrat.

But the Democratic Party is hardly Israel’s friend. As the party has become more radical, its hostility to Israel has grown.

Outright embrace of anti-Zionist Jew-bashers

Last year, large numbers of both the House and Senate Democratic caucuses supported an end to the blockade of Hamas-run Gaza and suggested a more “even-handed” attitude to the conflict. The Pew Research center has shown that while 79 percent of Republicans say they back Israel against the Palestinians, only 27 percent of Democrats share that view.

And now the party is embracing outright anti-Zionists and Jew-bashers such as congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, whose proposed visit to Israel this month was aborted after the Israeli government decided that their itinerary was designed solely to incite hatred and do Israel harm. So the very last party that any supposedly “Israel-first” Jew would vote for would be the Democrats.

The full context of what President Trump said made it abundantly clear that this “dual loyalty” interpretation of his words simply didn’t stack up. Commenting on Omar’s call to cut aid to Israel, Trump said:

“Five years, the concept of even talking about this, even three years ago, of cutting off aid to Israel because of two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people, I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. Where has the Democratic Party gone? Where have they gone where they are defending these two people over the State of Israel? I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

Trump was thus criticizing Democrat-voting Jews not for their overriding loyalty to Israel, but on the contrary, for supporting a party that has become an enemy of Israel.

Indeed, the logical meaning of his words was that Jews who vote Democrat are being disloyal to the Jewish people. The following day, Trump himself confirmed this when he told Bloomberg: “If you vote for a Democrat, you’re being disloyal to Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel.”

The only Jewish group that got this straightaway was the Jewish Republican Coalition which, while other Jews were noisily losing their heads, coolly observed: “President Trump is right; it shows a great deal of disloyalty to oneself to defend a party that protects/emboldens people that hate you for your religion.”

Precisely. The astonishing fact is that Trump is sticking up for Israel against the enemies of the Jews within the Democratic Party, while that party, along with its Jewish supporters, is sticking up for the enemies of the Jews within its ranks.

The real scandal is the Democratic Party’s refusal to take any action against Omar and Tlaib, despite their support for BDS (and thus the destruction of Israel) and their anti-Jewish remarks.

Tlaib likened Israel to the Nazis when she compared BDS to a boycott against Nazi Germany, while Omar has made several anti-Semitic comments, including claims that Jewish money controls American foreign policy. And it was Omar who accused American Jews of dual loyalty when she questioned the “allegiance” of American supporters of Israel.

In addition, their proposed tour of what they called “Palestine” was being partly organized by Miftah, a virulently anti-Semitic outfit founded by the veteran PLO activist Hanan Ashrawi. Reports on Miftah’s website have praised Palestinian suicide bombers, repeated the blood libel that Jews kill gentile children and use their blood in religious rituals (for which it later apologized), and claimed equally repulsively that Israel steals children’s organs.

The malign nature of the congresswomen’s proposed visit was exposed when Israel agreed to Tlaib’s request to visit her 90-year-old grandmother provided Tlaib didn’t make trouble—only for Tlaib then to turn the trip down.

Yet despite all this, the Democratic Party refuses to censure these two. Instead, it has reportedly discussed censuring the Israeli envoy to the United States and the American ambassador to Israel. And Jewish groups in America have expressed outrage against Israel over blocking the trip.

Jewish Democrats are thus supporting a party that is tacitly enabling the expression of potentially murderous anti-Semitism. Yet they have the gall to attack as an anti-Semite the man who is calling out the party for the way it is progressively throwing Israel and the Jews under the bus—and who is all too correctly slamming those Jews who support it nevertheless.

There are many reasons why the Democrats and their Jewish supporters refuse to call out the anti-Jewish bigots on their own side and instead accuse President Trump, the most pro-Israel president in American history, of anti-Semitism.

Defending the indefensible.

As has also been demonstrated in Britain over the epidemic Jew-hatred within the Labour Party, there is an iron conviction on the left that they cannot be guilty of anti-Semitism because they are “anti-racists.” Their political identity is rooted in their belief that they are always on the side of virtue against evildoers.

If they were ever to admit evil attitudes on their own side, their political and moral identity would collapse. So they turn reality inside out to defend the indefensible. And to protect themselves, they project their own evil onto their opponents. Thus, they falsely accuse President Trump of having the odious views of which their own side is guilty.

Nor can they admit that the Palestinian cause they support may be vile. The journalist Peter Beinart tweeted in defense of Miftah: “Frustrating to hear people who’d never heard of Miftah until today use its alleged sins to distract from deep injustice [Omar and Tlaib] were going to witness. As if an anti-white comment by SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee which fought for black civil rights) justified segregation.”

Genocidal attitudes and attacks by Palestinians most certainly do justify the security measures Israel uses against them. Through this tweet, Beinart has not only supported a virulently anti-Semitic outfit, but also whitewashed the Jew-hatred and Israel-bashing of those it promotes—and promoted his own.

Such moral bankruptcy has become a pathology that is steady poisoning the Democratic Party against the Jewish people, towards which those American Jews who still support the Democrats are indeed displaying a most tragic disloyalty.

See you tomorrow bli neder

Love Yehuda Lave