Too long have I dwelt with those who hate peace. I am peace, but when I speak, they are for war. (Psalms 120:6-7)
We did not want it. We did not expect it. But now we see all the world hurtling deeper and deeper into wars all over.
Here in Israel, we today face active warfare on no less than seven fronts, with the ongoing conflict in Gaza, daily attacks from Lebanon and Syria in the north, terror from Arab centers in Judea, Samaria and the Galilee, incursions from Jordan, missiles from Yemen and Iraq, an increasingly empowered Iran, and terror threats against Israeli assets across the world.
We hoped for miracles and swift victories. Miracles we have undoubtedly witnessed, yet victory continues to elude us, like the fruit that constantly eluded Tantalus’ grasp. May G-d Himself save us!
Meanwhile, the Russian-Ukraine war escalates every day, having already caused colossal damage to infrastructure on both sides, not to speak of the unspeakable human suffering (but who cares if they aren’t Palestinians?). Now France, UK, Germany, Netherlands, and other countries are in the process of sending in troops on the ground, Poland and the Baltic states are getting drawn in, while all sides are daily threatening each other with nuclear warfare. At the same time, China is menacing Taiwan, with her forces currently surrounding the island from seven directions in a military “simulation” of what an attack might look like. Meanwhile, less publicized conflicts continue to rage across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe (see https://geneva-academy.ch/galleries/today-s-armed-conflicts).
Could Donald Trump-style diplomacy and deal-making have avoided any of these conflicts? If he should win the 2024 presidential elections, will there still be a chance for diplomacy? But will the 2024 elections even take place at a time of growing crisis everywhere? After the former president’s conviction for purported felonies by a New York kangaroo court, it is easy to envisage a situation where the 2024 elections are “suspended” indefinitely, with no telling what will be next for USA.
Many see the Russia-Ukraine conflict as having been fomented intentionally with the steady building up of Ukraine by the western powers as a bulwark against Russia ever since the breakup of the old Soviet Union in the early 1990’s. This is seen as a willful provocation against Russia despite security guarantees agreed upon at the time of Ukraine’s independence. But this is already ancient history, as the war is now in full swing, with every prospect of drawing in more players and causing unspeakable damage to all. (It could be precisely this war that will torpedo the 2024 USA presidential elections.)
Without doubt wars on such a scale hugely benefit the arms manufacturers and their wealthy shareholders. Moreover, if the situation deteriorates further, the governments of Britain, France, Germany and USA are now floating suggestions about imposing forced conscription of eighteen-year-olds, who will be obliged to either serve in the army or perform community service. In other words, after the vaccine mandates, lockdowns and social distancing decrees of the “pandemic”, authoritarian governments are now benefiting from the wars inasmuch as they can exert further control over the personal lives of their citizens from their earliest years. Governments have turned against their own citizens.
It remains a mysterious paradox that all the above-named countries are getting more deeply immersed in international wars at a time when they all have been experiencing massive influxes of illegal immigrants into their own territories, mostly military aged 20–35-year-old men having no loyalty whatever to the prevailing culture into which they are being imported. There is abundant evidence that these imports are being secretly facilitated by hidden-state players in the governments themselves, which provide them with food and housing, pocket money and smartphones. Some theorize that if the native youth of those countries are called away to fight wars and their governments then want to exploit a new “pandemic” or other crisis to enforce police-state control over all their remaining populations, these migrants will turn out to be their new “police” in the guise of “United Nations Forces” coming to impose World Health Organization mandates on civilians, etc. With world leaders warning of a “Disease X” and a pandemic “twenty times worse than Covid” such a scenario is far from unimaginable. (“Bird flu” is now being actively promoted as the villain of the next health “crisis”.)
These migrant imports have been officially justified in the name of ‘inclusivity” and “cultural enrichment”, but for many of the native British, European and Americans life has become hellish because of the incessant muggings, robberies, random violent assaults, gang warfare, stabbings, rapes and other barbarities in cities, towns and villages all over. The racial and religious groups perpetrating these crimes are perfectly evident, yet the facts are intentionally smudged and covered over by the police, the judiciary and the mainstream media, all of which are dominated by those who evidently have no shame in watching these barbarians unleashed into the populations with whose protection they are charged. Liberal judges let off serial criminals with the lightest if any penalties. The police are afraid to engage even with those caught in the crime, be it in an assault on the streets, robberies, burglaries, etc. The criminals well know this and have little difficulty intimidating those who are supposed to enforce the law. It has become normal for the police to silence and persecute the victims instead of the perpetrators of crimes.
All this catalog of woes comes as Israel’s wars have now become internationalized as never before since the October 7 Hamas terror invasion. Israel’s flimsy publicity machine has little chance of making any inroads against the massive resources that have been poured into the worldwide outcry against the supposed “genocide” and other “crimes” of precisely the actual victims, the innocent men, women and children of Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran together with her other proxies have made it abundantly clear that their plan (G-d forbid) is to forcibly remove all Jews “from the river to the sea” through war and violence, while it was Israel that pursued every peace initiative ever proposed since the foundation of the state, while the Arabs and their “Palestinian” proxies have rejected and destroyed every possibility of mutual accommodation. Yet it is Israel that stands accused by the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the mainstream media, the professors, faculty and students on the campuses, the “Palestine Solidarity” marchers and all who fly their flag.
It is no news that Jews in America, Europe and elsewhere now face antisemitism and actual physical danger on a scale unprecedented since the Nazi edicts against Jews in the 1930’s, with no knowing what is to come next. It has come before the USA Senate that the campus insurgencies across the country were lavishly financed with dark money channeled by a small group of mega-donors, including David Rockefeller, George Soros and Democrat supporters Susan and Nick Pritzker. Soros and the Pritzker’s are nominally Jewish, leading one to wonder what interest they might have in fanning the flames of anti-Israel hatred.
A catalog of woes indeed – and yet we believe that everything is under the watchful providence and guiding arm of the One God, and that everything can only be for good. Could there be any louder wake-up call than this?
It is my hope and prayer that you, dear friend, will be spared personal pain from what we can and must only see as the Birth Pangs of Mashiach, now increasing in intensity in Israel, throughout the Jewish Diaspora and across the entire world.
Clearly a process of Birur, sifting, sorting and clarification is taking place through the harsh events now taking place and their ramifications. People on all sides are now showing themselves for what they really stand for, depending on whether they condemn or applaud Hamas terror.
Prior to the October 7 outbreak of the Gaza war, Israeli society was apparently deeply polarized on account of the right-leaning government’s proposed reforms to the High Court. The country was regularly paralyzed for hours by demonstrations in city centers and on highways – also evidently financed by George Soros and his ilk. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, this issue has been relegated to a back burner, and instead, new publicity campaigns and demonstrations are constantly taking place on behalf of the Israeli hostages still held captive in Gaza (a just cause), but at the same time explicitly and even violently against the handling of the war by Israel Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. The latter highly publicized crusade against a serving Prime Minister in the middle a war is highly divisive, yet actual opinion polls of the Israeli public indicate that 70 per cent are supportive of the war effort, and even more significant, a similar percentage of the actual fighting forces on the ground in Gaza are fully supportive of the war they have been forced to fight. So much for media-created opposition.
Soros’ and the other dark donors’ publicity machines can do much to give an impression of opposition to Israel’s war both in Israel and throughout the world. But all the evidence is that among Israelis, Jewish people all over and their true friends and allies have become galvanized by the waves of “Palestinian solidarity” to a stronger sense of our identity as Jews and lovers of Israel and a deeper appreciation of our heritage. As our enemies become more and more vociferous in their venomous hatred, so we are drawn closer to the Torah of Israel and the G-d of Israel. We are no longer in the days of pre-holocaust Jewish subservience. The Jews are fighting back, and hard, to the consternation of our enemies. Most important of all, we are doing so in the name of G-d and His Torah. The cowardly war of the keffiyeh-touting, masked, machine gun toting “resistance fighters” against defenseless families, tiny babies, young girls, etc. is not a holy religious war, despite their invocations to their “deity” when committing their crimes. It is the war of Satan against Israel, the God of Israel and His Torah. The war is accelerating against the people that seek only peace, yet the growing intensity is in fact – we hope – the Satan’s death throes.
All this adds tremendous personal significance to the coming festival of Shavuot (Tuesday night June 11-Thursday June 13), when we commemorate G-d’s choice of the Children of Israel as His “treasured nation, a kingdom of priests” and the revelation of His Torah through Moses our Teacher on Mount Sinai.
To any student of the Torah, the so-called religion invoked to justify “Palestinian solidarity” (with the ridiculous spectacle of woke leftists prostrating themselves on the campus lawns) crumbles into emptiness when compared to the Torah itself. As Rambam (R’ Moses Maimonides) writes in his Iggeret Teiman, the other major religions compared to the Torah are like wax-work artificial dolls (clones) compared to a live human with bones, flesh, arteries, veins, nerves, etc. etc.
Nobody today can predict exactly when the complete Redemption will take place, but if the unfolding events are already propelling us to prayer, faith and Torah, that indeed is their purpose. The coming Redemption depends on two main pillars: (1) Study and practice of the Torah (2) Acts of kindness and charity.
As we approach the festival of Shavuot and take part in the great process of separation and clarification taking place throughout the world, we may truly thank G-d Almighty for moving us to the side of Torah, faith, devotion, service and the knowledge of G-d at a time when all the mainstream media, “leaders”, politicians, celebrities, professors and other influencers of all kinds are spewing venomous hatred against Jews and Israel.
The Torah sages foresaw that the tyranny of Ishmael will spread across the entire world for the final, hardest stage of nine months of birth pangs of Mashiach immediately prior to the final redemption. As little as a year ago, few could have predicted how this tyranny is now sweeping across the world, and today we cannot know what awaits us.
Happy are we that we have been called the G-d Almighty at this time to sanctify His name with our strong Emunah and unbreakable devotion at this time of trouble for Jacob, from which we shall surely be saved.
