Not all things are compatible, and there comes a time when choices must be made.
Not all of Israel’s internal news makes it to the foreign press. The IDF is having a bit of trouble, beyond Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, etc. Like the US, it has decided to put women soldiers into combat. In the past, such a move would have been considered ridiculous and ill-considered. But today, women are in all branches of the armed services. I don’t recall how many articles spoke of the female Israeli Air Force officers who helped bomb Iran. The kerfuffle is not that women are going into tanks; for decades, women have been tank instructors for the IDF’s armor divisions. No, the issue is the response from the religious Zionist camp. Their rabbis are opposed to the move, and though they send their students to the army, they are telling them to avoid the Armored Corps. This is not the ultra-orthodox, but rather the Orthodox Zionist (often referred to as “knit kippah”) wing, which is super pro-IDF. Their rabbis do not accept guys and gals in the tight spaces of a tank and have expressed their displeasure. About 200 female IDF officers have expressed their support for the move. As they say, stay tuned for further details.
The story of who sits in Israel’s Merkava tanks is played out in countries throughout the world: what happens when competing ideologies or worldviews clash? Can there be a compromise not liked by either side but nominally acceptable to both? Will one side win out, to its joy and the consternation of its vanquished foe? Jews rarely express their religious activities outdoors. Public candle lighting during Chanukah is one exception. Jews do not go outside of their synagogues to pray on the local soccer field or on a major thoroughfare. One cannot say the same of certain Muslim groups in the US and Europe. When they pray in large urban spaces, they do so not because of any lack of mosques or space in the same. They are telling their mainly Christian hosts that they are there to take over places once known as Germany, Britain, France, and Canada. In a more rational world, maybe there could be some compromise where Muslims would live in Western countries as proud locals while maintaining their customs and religious traditions. But with the Qatari/Turkish support for the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the West, the current version of Islam sees no need for compromise. I cannot write on this website the words read in the UK Parliament, a quote from a Muslim immigrant as to why he is present in the King’s realm. Let’s just say that he says that he is there to take advantage of the local damsels and the government, reproduce, and then eventually conquer Britannia. Compromise means both sides give; the Muslims see no reason to give when the British officials are more than happy to let them take — including the 250,000 white British girls abused by mostly Pakistani men.
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When one side wants to win, it generally denigrates the other side, so as to make its own appeal greater. The attacks on Israel from Tucker Carlson and his ilk are meant to delegitimize the only democratically run country in the Middle East. Turkey’s Erdogan often arrests his political rivals, as do other tinpot dictators who pretend to hold elections periodically. JD Vance’s recent public attacks against Bibi Netanyahu (“he got things wrong”) and Israel (“you can’t kill your way” out of problems) fit nicely with Tucker’s approach of blaming Israel for Charlie Kirk’s death and Donald Trump’s foray into Iran. Jews, unlike Muslims, want to live and let live. We don’t hold our prayers out in the streets because we have no interest or desire in conquering the US or any other country.
There is a form of anthrax bacteria that is completely safe and is used as a vaccine for livestock. What is the difference between this version and the potentially deadly strain? Often just one protein. The safe version, which I used to have in my refrigerator for testing, lacks one gene for a lethal protein. What is the difference between religious Jews and religious Muslims, other than everything? Orthodox Jews live according to Jewish law, which is grounded in the Talmud. And one of the rabbinical teachings in the Talmud is “dina d’malchut dina”: the laws of the land are the laws. There is no religious tenet or driver for wanting to take over a state or country, even if orthodox Jews have higher-than-average birth rates. The one time when Jews do celebrate quite publicly is once every seven years when the daily study of the Babylonian Talmud is concluded. Massive celebrations at Met Life Stadium and other venues in the US and throughout the world celebrate the completion and restarting of the learning cycle. This one-page-a-day learning started in Lublin, Poland, and is now practiced throughout the Jewish world.
When no compromise can be found, then it behooves the locals and their leaders to put their interests first. Iran can say whatever it wants, but its goal of destroying Israel and the West—in that order—has not changed. Giving it financial relief and allowing it to continue to play its nuclear shell game will not make the US safer. We assume that they think as we do: we lost, we need to change, and if we behave, we’ll get some money and relief. That’s how normal people, like the Germans after World War II, think. Muslims, whether they be in Tehran or on the streets of London, see their religious task as one of domination in the name of Islam. They are not hiding this view. Our feckless leaders translate their words and actions to mean that hey, we can all get along. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent outburst at AIPAC and its supporters, on the one hand, makes no sense. Americans support many groups that lobby Washington for specific interests. Additionally, many countries spend far more than AIPAC does to influence US foreign policy. His explosion was based on antisemitism; he might tolerate some Jews being around, but he wants them neutered, and he—like Tucker and his goofy friends—wants Israel gone. When someone wants you dead, you probably would not agree to be dead from the legs down or from the nose up. Israel has for decades realized that the world loves dead Jews; it has chosen to support live Jews, however much they are hated and maligned by left-wing lunatics like Mamdani and former right-leaning clowns like Megyn Kelly.
Compromise is wonderful, but can only happen when both sides offer to give up a little in exchange for a resolution. The Talmud and subsequent Jewish legal scholars praised “p’shara”, which means compromise. We unfortunately live in a day where certain strains (but not all—see UAE) of Islam have removed the compromise button, just as the West has given up through self-loathing on its past and its future. If England had a Churchill during the past decade, it would have acted like Poland and Hungary to keep out too many immigrants who do not want to blend into the UK. Unfortunately, England was ruled by feckless fools from right and left who simply kept the boats coming and the benefits going. One cannot fight for his country if he hates it. England was a world power, and that position involved colonial rule. One can still love the present version and even fight for it, acknowledging whatever past sins were committed. The Democrats in New York chose socialists in primaries because they no longer love the United States. They see no reason to fight for the country and want it dismantled.
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