Thank you Israel Kaplan and Zvi Katzover, mayor of Kiryat Arba for forwarding Elyakim Haetzni's article Where is American Jewry? (see below)
So why is Agudath Yisroel of America, the Young Israel, the OU and Lubavitch Headquarters silent regarding our rights to the Land of Israel based on the Torah and the Prophets? Where is a massive calling campaign protesting the dismantling of roadblocks in Yesha or against the State of Palestine and protesting the impending incarceration of the Chalamish brothers who believe that they have a right to defend themselves against Arab Aggression especially when the gov't of Israel has abandoned their security. It has been told to me by insiders that the reason for the silence is NOT because these established organizations are in favor of a Palestinian State G-d forbid. It is simply because they are afraid of jeopardizing their not for profit tax exempt status if they were to speak out against American Foreign Policy. They are afraid their entire organizations would fall apart.
Now let's assume this is there is truth in this assumption. That explains the Silence on the part of the mainstream Jewish Organizations.
So where do we go from here?
This is my advice. Why not say that we will take the mantra of the Breslev Chasidim and rely on Rak Hakadosh Baruch Hu, only on the Holy One Blessed be He. G-d is forcing us to choose our loyalties. Do we put our faith first and foremost on America or on Hakadosh Baruch Hu and His Holy Torah? We know that choosing G-d's Torah will bring blessings to all of mankind especially to America which has been a Medina Shel Chesed, a State built on charity, One Nation under G-d.... True we have much to be grateful to America. Yet, what is good for Israel is good for the world including America.
Let us speak the truth irregardless of the possible political ramifications and risk loss of funding from Federal sources for our schools, our school books, libraries, school bus transportation, special ed services, insurance for infertility treatments, etc. running into the millions of dollars, and even possibly risk losing our jobs and our political clout.
This is the message of Shemittah. We rely totally on Hakadosh Baruch Hu and the graciousness of our fellow brothers and sisters and we are promised much blessings. We will not starve.
The alternative approach, which is to continue to remain silent brings with it the risk of G-ds wrath which can be in the form of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of our enemies, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis etc.
At the very least, if these organization are afraid to take this courageous step to speak out for our ancient homeland, let the public know and understand the reason of their silence. Let us clear up any misunderstanding that the reason of the Silence regarding a Palestinian State is not because the Arabs have a legitimate claim to the Land of Israel. The silence is simply because the mainstream Jewish organization are afraid to lose their tax exempt status by speaking contrary to American Foreign Policy and are therefore Silent.
Please call and discuss the points of this article "Where is American Jewry?" with your Rabbanim and ask them to direct their concerns regarding the deafening Silence of American Jewry to
Rav Shmuel Kamenetzky, Rosh Yeshiva at the Yeshiva of Philadelphia and spiritual mentor of the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation 1-215-477-1000
Rav Perlow, the Noveminsker Rav, Rosh Agudath Yisroel of America.
* Rabbi Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Rabbi Avi Shafran, and Rabbi Gertzulin - Public Affairs Department, Agudath Yisroel 212-797-9000
* Rabbi Pesach Lerner at The Young Israel 212-929-1525
* Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb of the OU 212-563-4000
* Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, Chabad Headquarters 718 774.4000 / fax 718 774.2718
plerner@youngisrael.org, dzwiebel@agudathisrael.org, shafran@agudathisrael.org, execthw@ou.org, hq@lubavitch.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Israel Kaplan <israelkaplan@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 9:40 PM
Subject: WHERE IS AMERICAN JEWRY
To: IZZY <israelkaplan@yahoo.com>
You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.
From: Israel Kaplan <israelkaplan@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 9:40 PM
Subject: WHERE IS AMERICAN JEWRY
To: IZZY <israelkaplan@yahoo.com>
HOW DO YOU FIND THIS ARTICLE ?TOO DISRESPECTFULUNGRATEFUL TO THE DIASPORADISRESPECTFUL TO RABBIS IN NORTH AMERICAI REMEBER WITH GREAT CLARITY ARTICLES SIMILAR TO THIS THAT WERE WRITTEN MONTH AND WEEKS PRIOR TO THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM GAZA. I REMEMBER LONG AFTER IT WAS SHOWN THAT THE JEWS OF GUSH KATIF IN FACT WERE NOT GIVEN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS INREPERATIONS THAT MOST WOULD NOT DEAL WITH THE TRAGEDY. AND NOW AS THE DAILY TORTURE OF SDEROT CONTINUES AND AS A RESULT OF THE REMOVAL OF JEWS FROM GAZA THAT THE JEWS OF AMERICA CANNOT BE RELIED UPON TO SAVE ERETZ YISRAEL .Where Is American Jewry?
By: Elyakim Haetzni
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Complaints we have in Israel against American Jews are not directed at the various George Soroses or Noam Chomskys, or at those Jews uninterested in the fate of the Jews in the Jewish state. We address our cries to those for whom Eretz Yisrael still holds a place in their hearts – and to their organizations and institutions. We ask them the following: Where are you in our hour of need? Don't you know that if we sink, the ground beneath your own feet will quake? Have you not yet learned that the very fact that the Jews have their own country has buttressed your status in the Diaspora?Until this very day you regret your silence during the Holocaust, which derived from your great admiration for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and from the fear of being accused of dual loyalties. Today when you weigh those fears against the annihilation of the millions, you see matters in their proper proportions. Yet today your conscience is called upon once more to make a similar decision – albeit one much simpler, for today's America is not like the anti-Semitic America of that time.Don't you understand the danger looming over Israel? The entire world, led by the United States, is hunting Israel down to wrest from it Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, the Land of the Bible – its entire raison d'etre as a Jewish state.Don't you see how the entire Negev and the country's south are being shelled or are under threat of shelling from rockets and missiles as a result of the Gaza withdrawal, the destruction of dozens of settlements and the transformation of 10,000 Jews to refugee status? Did their outcry touch your heart? Do you hear today's cries coming from Sderot and Ashkelon?Don't you know that while the rockets are falling in the south, Syria and Hizbullah in Lebanon are preparing an attack from the north, and that at this moment tens of thousands of their missiles are aimed at the heart of our country?Take note that only the center of the country still enjoys calm. The only reason for that is that the army controls Judea and Samaria, and that is because there are hundreds of Jewish towns there ("the settlements," in the language of our enemies). And now, the United States is pressuring your Jewish brethren in Israel to dispense with even that defense. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have sworn to establish a Palestinian terror state right next to Tel Aviv, Netanya, Hadera and Haifa before year's end – and toward that end, expel 300,000 of our Jewish brothers and sisters.And faced with all this, you remain silent? Worse, most of your organizations support this anti-Jewish, pro-Arab policy! Today, missiles are flying from the ruins of Gush Katif and landing in the Negev. On the day that missiles are being launched from the ruins of the Jewish towns in Samaria, please don't say, "We didn't see. We didn't hear. We didn't know."You knew very well! The Annapolis Conference, in which a blind, stumbling, defeatist Israeli government open to American pressure knowingly consented to commit national suicide, occurred in your country. Rice, whose total identification with Palestinian interests is patently obvious, is applauded by your audiences. And you call President Bush, the man with the "vision" of a Palestinian state that will endanger every city and village in Israel, "the greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House." You say this when in reality (and history will be the judge) he is the first president openly and explicitly raising the demand and exerting heavy pressure to establish in our midst a devil, a dragon, a dybbuk – in the form of an Islamic, Arabic, radical terrorist state called by the false name of "Palestine." That state would transform every day in the life of the Jewish state to Hell. And all this for the sake of a fictitious people and a fictitious land that never existed throughout history.Other voices in the Republican camp, namely Vice President Dick Cheney, senators and congressmen, have not enjoyed support from most of American Jewry, and have subsequently become silent. Quite the opposite, countless Jewish organizations have been supporting the Palestinian agenda.Many Jews in America have good reason to be embarrassed that the only organized American community supporting the rights of the Jewish people to its historic homeland in Judea and Samaria and its eternal capital, Jerusalem, consists of non-Jews. They are the Evangelical Christians. For Jews faithful to their patrimony, some Christian churches are more open today than many Jewish temples. Their organizations and media are more open to nationalistic Jews than are the mainstream Jewish establishment. They visit Hebron, Shiloh and Beit El – places that many Jewish leaders stay away from.Everyone talks about the political power of American Jewry, but from here we see only the weakness and lockstep obedience to every presiding administration. We ask ourselves, "Why do Christian pastors have no inhibitions about criticizing their president regarding his policy toward Israel, while Jewish rabbis wouldn't dare?"Today, money is not the critical factor. It is political pressure capable of meeting the enormous Arab pressure. Regarding your historic omission during the Holocaust, when you failed to exercise your power as Queen Esther did in her time (ignoring the risk to her own life), you have tried to atone with money. Yet all the money in the world cannot bring back to life a single Jewish child. Even today, it is not money that can save us, but rather the political power that you are afraid to exercise. It looks like today, when the American Jewish community is flourishing as never before and enjoying the height of acceptance by the public at large, you do not feel secure enough; hence you are doing the only safe thing – swimming with the flow and cheering on the regime, even at the expense of your besieged brethren in the Holy Land.I conclude with two requests: First, that those Jews who support the Palestinian line should at least not emphasize their Jewishness, and add the weight of their "Jewish witnessing" to the brunt of pressure being applied on us. Second, that the not insignificant number of Jews who, like Mordechai in the Scroll of Esther, do not bow down before the president of the United States when he sets out to replace the vision of the prophets with the "vision" of Palestine, should organize themselves and establish an organization paralleling the Jewish protest organizations that in Israel face off with the government and block with their bodies the slippery slide down the Palestinian slope.Today, like the air we breathe, we need an organized Jewish political force in the United States that, together with our non-Jewish friends in America and the Jewish nationalist camp in Israel, can breach the siege that is closing us off.Attorney Elyakim Haetzni, among Hebron's original settlers, is a prominent publicist for Eretz Yisrael causes.Send comments to Zvi Katzover, mayor of Kiryat Arba, at Rivka@kiryat4.org.il.
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IZZY KAPLAN
416 824 2858
416 256 2858
Check out my new blog http://israelonisrael.blogspot.com
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