Rabbi Yitzchok Isaac Sher the rebbe of Rav Avigdor Miller

 

Rabbi Yitzchok Isaac Sher, Rosh Yeshiva of Slobodka (1875-1952)

It happened in the fledgling Slabodka Yeshiva in Bnei Brak. The war was still raging in Europe the angel of death had almost full reign in the killing fields of Europe. As Lithuania was being decimated Rabbi Isaac Sher resolved to rebuild from scratch in the Holy Land, and founded the Slabodka Yeshiva in Bnei Brak. Thus a rejuvenation was beginning in the land of Israel.

Rabbi Sher asked to small group of students if eventually they would want to return with him to Slabodka in Lithuania after the war. One student replied, “Absolutely not! I should go back and leave behind the Holy Land?”

But Rabbi Sher countered, “We will accomplish much more there. We will be able to learn and grow more over there.”

One of Rabbi Sher’s early students was Rabbi Shlomo Hoffman. He witnessed this exchange and recalled:

We students living in the Holy Land were not swayed. We could not contemplate how the Rosh Yeshiva could even think of going back there and leaving the Holy Land! Rabbi Sher then told us, “I see that you have been drugged by Zionism.”

I remember asking Rav Isaac, “But how could I be drugged by Zionism? I have not even read one Zionist book. I have been within the four walls of the Yeshiva and nowhere else.”

Rav Isaac replied, “Just like mushrooms grow from the moisture in the air, a person is influenced by the sentiments in the air. If I am telling you that you will accomplish much more in Lithuania and you still insist on staying here, that means you have been drugged by Zionism. The air is permeated with Zionism and it has an influence on you, even unknowingly.” (Yated Neeman, Sep 23, 2022)

Idolatry

The Brisker Rav said, “Two things are certain: 1) Zionism is idolatry, and 2) every Jew living in Eretz Yisroel stumbles in Zionism.”

(Uvdos Vehanhagos Leveis Brisk, v. 4 p. 197)

 Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch on idolatry

If a man follows after any being as God except God, he necessarily sinks to a lower level. As soon as a man thinks of any being as independent and as belonging only to itself, it must appear to him as tyrannical, intent only on self-aggrandizement and producing only for self-gratification. Hence the man who reveres such beings as gods must of necessity regard unbridled violence and self-indulgence not as something bestial and so beneath man but as something Divine and so above man, and purse them as such. Nay, more; when the law of Unity has vanished form his conception of the world and the universe breaks apart for him into isolated deities which serve only themselves, he will soon count himself among the gods, and, recognizing no law in his own life either, he will break out into all kinds of excess and abandon himself to arrogance and dissoluteness.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Horeb, 12

And where are we now in the state of Israel? 

 

Gaza after Israeli bombing

Gaza after Israeli bombing

Gaza after Israeli bombing

Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu late on Monday called for the bombing of Gaza food warehouses and for starving Palestinians in Gaza.

"There is no problem in bombing Hamas' food reserves," the extremist minister told the Israeli Channel 7 during an interview.

 

In a recent interview with Israel's Channel 14, Moshe Saada, a Likud MP, called to completely starve Gaza and expel its population to other countries.

Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon; born Moshe Smilansky former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces saying that Israel is committing war crimes

He says that they are putting the Jewish soldiers of the IDF in the position of deciding whether to commit war crimes. 

And then there are the hundreds of killed soldiers and 16,000 crippled.

the strategy must change

Israel's security cabinet unanimously approved expanding military operations in Gaza. According to an Israeli source, PM Netanyahu said that Israel's plan included "the occupation of territory and a sustained Israeli presence in Gaza," and relocating Gaza's population to the south of the enclave. Far-right minister Smotrich said the cabinet decided that Israel will not retreat from territories it occupies in Gaza, "not even in exchange for hostages." The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that the plan proves that the Netanyahu government decided to "give up on the hostages." The government decided not to establish a state commission of inquiry into October 7. (Haaretz) 

 

"There is a painful truth at the heart of this war: Israel's military campaign, while degrading Hamas' military capabilities, is also devastating the lives of ordinary Palestinians. If there is to be any hope of ending this war without planting the seeds of the next generation's extremists, the strategy must change" – Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Peter Lerner

Zionism and the Shema

Zionism is heresy. G-d sent us to our room for misbehavior and we returned to the dining room without permission. Zionism is a violation of the Shema, which we say four times a day, every day, and at the end of Neilah on Yom Kippur. If you sin on the land you will be expelled. It's in clear language. You can't return while still sinning, and who were bigger sinners than the people who set up the state? They were atheists. And the country's leaders are still anti-religious. 

So-called Religious Zionists have all their little mind manipulations to justify themselves. Gradual redemption. A wink from up above. The oaths against taking the land by force (which they did) are Aggadata, as if that makes them non-binding.

Regardless of the oaths, Zionism violates the Shema. 

And what is the result, a million Jews left the Torah when they came to Israel. Millions of others build their identities around being secular Israelis. 25,000 killed via war and terrorism. 20,000 permanently disabled soldiers from the assault on Gaza alone, and on top of that there's the biggest chillul Hashem in the history of the world with this crushing of Gaza.

Zionists don't care. Originally, they cared only about the land. But today they have very little to do with it. So now they only care about their completely dysfunctional state. 

Rav Hirsch:

It was not the land that Moses had been commanded to proclaim to his people at the outset of his mission as מורשה, as the inheritance they were to preserve (Ex. 6,8). The Law, to be translated into full reality upon that soil, was to be the true מורשה, the one true, everlasting inheritance, the one true center around which the nation and its leaders were to gather as one united community. Herein lay the goal and the destiny, the character and the significance of the people.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "The Kehillah," Collected Writings, Vol. VI, p. 62


The land of the Divine Torah is there for the people who live in it. Its most valuable product, the purpose and goal of the whole of God's Blessing directed to it, is every human life nourished by it, through its means able to dedicate itself to making God's Torah into a realisation. The land is only given on the condition of every human life respected as being unassailably sacred to the Torah. One drop of innocent blood shed and no notice taken of it drops a stitch in the bond which connects the land with the nation and both with God. (see verses 33 and 34). This holding human life to be so sacred is to be made evident immediately on taking possession of the land in the division of it by instituting the arrangement which the Torah had already referred to in the fundamental laws of Torah social life. (Ex. XXI, 13).

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on Bamidbar 35:10

20,000 permanently disabled!

 

Wounded IDF veterans find a home in Israel’s state-of-the-art rehabilitation centers

The Zahal Disabled Veteran Organization’s Beit Halochem centers expect to welcome a large portion of the projected 20,000 permanently disabled soldiers from the war this year

https://www.timesofisrael.com/wounded-idf-veterans-find-a-home-in-israels-state-of-the-art-rehabilitation-centers/

20,000 permanently disabled! That's along with the 850 killed so far.

[Side note, I guarantee that the facility is not state of the art.]

Why? Is Israel being attacked by an army, you know, one with actual tanks, fighter jets, and battleships? Did the Turks attack Israel and nobody told us? Is this all because a year and half ago some hoodlums climbed over a fence that the IDF couldn't manage to guard? When you get revenge, it's supposed to be sweet. This is pretty darn bitter. 

If you start a country in the Middle East, particularly if you start it where 500,000 people are living (and you mistreat them) you are going to have to live with a certain amount of hostility. There will be an occasional missile that lands in the dirt. You have to just accept it. Killing a thousand solders and maiming 20,000 more is not even going to stop the occasional missile. It helps nothing.

Lets do the math. From 2004 to 2014, rocket attacks from Gaza  killed 27 Israeli civilians, 5 foreign nationals, 5 IDF soldiers, and at least 11 Palestinians. In the ten years following that, approximately 35 rockets were launched from Gaza each year. I believe there were a handful of casualties. But the continuing assault on Gaza over the last year has killed 400 soldiers and has maimed thousands. So 10x as many soldiers have died in the assault on Gaza as people were killed by all the Gazan rockets over a 20 year period. 

Where is the war? Why is the word war even used? You need to two sides for a war. Israel conjures enemies out of fire hydrants. Oct. 7 is over. What is the point of continuing to risk the lives of soldiers and hostages (not to mention the guaranteed killing of Gazan civilians)? And now this:

IDF calls up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of expanded Gaza offensive

Israel's security cabinet unanimously approved expanding military operations in Gaza. According to an Israeli source, PM Netanyahu said that Israel's plan included "the occupation of territory and a sustained Israeli presence in Gaza," and relocating Gaza's population to the south of the enclave. Far-right minister Smotrich said the cabinet decided that Israel will not retreat from territories it occupies in Gaza, "not even in exchange for hostages." The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that the plan proves that the Netanyahu government decided to "give up on the hostages." The government decided not to establish a state commission of inquiry into October 7. (Haaretz) 

Yet 

 "There is a painful truth at the heart of this war: Israel's military campaign, while degrading Hamas' military capabilities, is also devastating the lives of ordinary Palestinians. If there is to be any hope of ending this war without planting the seeds of the next generation's extremists, the strategy must change" – Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Peter Lerner

The people, if you can call them that, who run Israel are crazy. In the last year, they have bombed Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Gaza, and the West Bank. And they keep wondering why people are mad at them? 

Shall I mention that this conflict didn't begin on Oct. 7. In 2018-2019, IDF snipers shot across the Gaza fence into Gaza at a nine month long march and demonstration (held entirely in Gaza) and killed 223 people (including 46 children) and injured 9,204, crippling many. The demonstration was peaceful for months, but then after much IDF sniper fire, they started to burn tires and try to throw rocks 200 meters to the fence. That's what Israel calls a riot. 

Did I mention that the people who run Israel are crazy? But they are not shopping cart lady crazy. They are crazy with other people's lives and limbs.

They refuse to stop. It just gets worse and worse all the time. Don't even think of moving here. It is osur to put the lives of your children at risk. And by that I not only mean physical risk but the spiritual risk of being around lunatics!