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What can be assessed is the reaction to this massacre of innocents. In Gaza and the West Bank there were great public celebrations. This is the product of decades of incitement, hatred, mind-washing and calculated strategy. Pious declarations about making peace with enemies or having partners amongst the Palestinian Authority for a legitimate settlement of the struggle ring ever more hollow in light of the violence continually perpetrated against Israelis. The shameful conduct of Europe and the UN, the academic elites, the liberal media and the others who always know what is better for us than we do, all are part of the atmosphere that breeds such violence. The public and governmental anti-Semitism that permeated Europe in the nineteenth century created the conditions for the Holocaust of the twentieth century. The blind acceptance by the world’s intelligentsia of Marxism helped create Stalin’s gulag, allowing to the murder of millions. Islamic terror can only be stopped by calling it by its correct name, identifying its perpetrators and supporters and by stopping confusing the victims with the criminals. As long as we search for causes and excuses for murder, violence and unremitted hatred, for moral equivalency and no-fault mindsets, there will be little hope that this tragic incident will be the last one of its kind.
Jews have to raise their voices in support of other Jews. Jews have to raise their voices in support of the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace as a Jewish state. Jews have to continue to pray. Jews have to continue to insist on their rights and rites. No circumcision, no ritual slaughter, no public display of Judaism – all of these European parliamentary laws are anti-Semitism at its sugar coated worst and create the climate that eventually kills Jews at prayer. All of Jewish history proves this pattern to be true.
We have much to pray for. May the Lord hear our prayers and spare us any further tragedies of this type.
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Various Events FOR WHOM NOT TO VOTE
Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook stressed that Israeli politics is G-dly, so I have no problem answering this common question on a Torani blog. Also, Free-Will is a G-d-given right and obligation, to "destine one's fate" (R. Soloveichik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 67), so I obviously don't tell others how to vote. But once not a few (especially young) have already asked, a couple of personal words from experience and thoughts from chazal & Rav Kook which may be of help to others, mainly for whom NOT to vote.
P'ninat Mishpat Fallout from Failure to Install Elevator – part II
based on ruling 85007 of the Eretz Hemdah-Gazit Rabbinical Courts
