Having said that, it's important to note that if you personally feel a passion for kiruv rechokim, that likely means Hashems wants you to invest your kochot into kiruv rechokim. I'm not dismissing kiruv rechokim. I myself greatly benefitted from it.
Many Jews are not as ensconced in a like-minded frum community as I merited.
Others are, but spend a lot of time and energy under the influence of media.
The following is meant to strengthen the stances you already have.
The Correct View of the Incorrect Media
Being atheist outlets, they cannot report on religious-based miracles.
They can't even see such things when it happens in front of their faces.
For example, we've all heard many stories of people saved from the Gazan Slaughter by shemirat Shabbat. These are traceable stories, not myths, like that of my husband's cousin here: how-a-commitment-to-shabbat-during-the-rave-party-saved-one-jew-from-terror-slaughter-during-the-horrific-invasion-from-gaza.html
Also, the religious Kibbutz Sa'ad closes its gates on Shabbat.
With the gates locked and no guard at the entrance booth, the terrorists could not get in. Apparently, other secular kibbutzim kept their gates closed, but a guard stood watch to electronically open and close the gates on Shabbat. It's said the terrorists overpowered these guards.
But that wasn't an option at the Sabbath-observant Kibbutz Sa'ad.
In fact, a great many people saved themselves via prayer, thanking Hashem, keeping Shabbat or dressing modestly — or even just the mental commitment to keep Shabbat or modesty in the future.
(Many of these stories appeared on this blog, like here and here.)
I also heard (but not confirmed) the terrorists went past the Tifrach Yeshivah right outside Ofekim, with its hundreds of singing and dancing bachurim during morning Shacharit, and did not go in.
But these make not even a blip in the eye of the media.
Furthermore, so many call for NOT watching the videos of the slaughter.
I keep hearing both frum outlets and regular people say it is impossible to remain normal after seeing these videos (which also encourages the beast via the amount of views such videos receive).
And does anyone realize these videos give very bad people very bad ideas?
Not only does it grant ideas to like-minded psychopaths in the Middle East, but to like-minded people everywhere.
How to Avoid Buying into the Snake Oil of "I've Personally Visited Israel and Spoken to People on Both Sides!"
How many times have you heard a person say he or she has been to Israel and "spoken with both sides"?
Or heard from tourists who attended seminars in which they believe the event presented the audience with both sides?
It's super common. I've been hearing it for decades.
But how can you really understand the sides or speak to the people unless you know both Hebrew and Arabic — and know them well?
The above visitors remain dependent on whoever can speak to them in pretty good English.
Arabs, especially, get very savvy when speaking to people interested in their grievances.
Sure, many will state their support of suicide bombings against Jewish civilians in private conversation, but many will not, especially if they know their speaking with an influential person in politics or the media.
Certainly, they will not admit to their wholehearted participation in celebrations of murdered Jews or confess their secret desire to loot the dismembered bodies of Jews (as occurred during the Great Horror from Gaza).
My husband and one son can speak to them in Arabic, and another couple of sons can communicate in a combination of Hebrew and Arabic.
The rest of the kids and I can speak to anyone in Hebrew.
And of course, these supposedly enlightened visitors rarely speak with charedi Jews in their own language (Hebrew or Yiddish) when it was the profoundly religious non-Zionist Jews who maintained the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael, risked their lives to settle and expand Jewish settlement whenever possible, and who fought to keep Torah alive and thriving in Eretz Yisrael.
Side note: My daughter-in-law is the 8th generation born in Eretz Yisrael on her father's side after one ancestor came to Eretz Yisrael from Afghanistan and married a woman from Iran (which makes my grandson a 9th generation from that side of the family — HA!) The word "Zionism" did not even exist back then. Yet they came here and STAYED here.
Yes, contrary to the narrative promoted in the mainstream, ultra-Orthodox Jews proved the first to expand beyond the cramped quarters of Yerushalayim's Old City & the exploitation of their merciless Muslim landlords.
Unfortunately, those religious Jews endured threats, sabotage, and murder from their former Muslim-Arab landlords and from Muslim-Bedouin marauders outside the gates of the Old City.
Nonetheless, they persevered — long before the secular Zionists came along.
Anyway, going back to speaking with Arabs:
If you chat with an Arab as pal (and NOT as a journalist, truth-seeker, tourist, politician, etc.), especially if you speak Arabic (but Hebrew can work too, depending), you can ask them anything you want (as long as it's not something THEY consider offensive) and you will get a relatively honest answer.
Their value system is different. They tend to value and even be proud of some things we consider bad or dangerous.
For example (with common responses summarized in parentheses):
- What do you think of wife-beating? (It happens/It's a husband's right.) Do you do it? (I'm not into it./When necessary.) Would you? (If I thought it necessary.)
- What did you think of Arafat? (Many did not like him.)
- What do you think of Ahmad Tibbi? (Yuck.) What about Netanyahu? (I made money during his reign!)
- How do you feel about same-gender marriage? (Off with their heads.)
- How do you personally define who is a terrorist? (Not clear.)
- How do you feel about your fellow Muslim-Arab Palestinians in Gaza? ("a primitive guy who loses his head way too easily, and can just plunge a knife in me during a disagreement")
- Do you think randomly shooting a fully automatic machine gun in the air during a family celebration is appropriate? (Everybody's doing it!)
For example, studies & personal interactions indicate a lot of Arab men and women in Israel think domestic violence is fine as long as there is what they consider a legitimate reason for it.
Not all of them do. But even the ones who don't personally nonetheless accept the fact that it is totally acceptable in their community.
Here is a direct quote (as best I remember) from an Arab co-worker (overwrought & with tears in his eyes) told over to me by my son:
"My wife left me, Reuven! Why did she do it? I LOVED her! So what if I beat her? That means I don't love her?! I paid her health insurance!" (He is an Arab with Israeli citizenship and the same rights to super-cheap health insurance as I while his wife was Palestinian.) "Do you know how much that cost every month? Why would I do that if I didn't love her? She left because I beat her sometimes, so she said I didn't really love her. Also, she's my cousin! I love her just because she's my COUSIN! I didn't just love her because she's my wife. She's my cousin! So how can she say I don't love her? What, I don't love my own cousin? And she was also my wife! How can I not love a woman who is both my cousin AND my wife??!!"
Here's more from the same guy:
"You know, I just love my dad. We're so close. Why, I remember when I was a kid, he used to come home every night and beat the living daylights outta me (lifarek li et ha'atzamot)!" He laughed and shook his head. "Me and my dad...he was really into me."
Remember, he wasn't recalling a traumatic childhood event using humor to cover up the pain. He expressed this as a genuinely fond memory.
Note: The idea of abuse as love exists as psychological problem in some in Western culture and as a common value in other cultures, such as the Yanomamo people of the Amazon rainforest. There, wives show off scars and bruises to prove how much their husband loves them. I'm not joking. One woman even pointed proudly to a scar on her thigh where her husband once whacked her with his tomahawk as she tried to avoid getting hit.
The Arab guy does not speak English and if he did, even he would not be stupid enough to reveal his true feelings to an English-speaking visitor trying to "understand" Arab culture.
Here's an excerpt from a previous post about how an Muslim-Arab will say one thing during a friendly conversation and then say the opposite an hour later when approached by someone with an obvious agenda the-secret-harm-hiding-within-israeli-leftism.html:
Another son worked with a Muslim-Arab in an area with a lot of secular Israeli Leftists.
That son quickly developed a disgust for the customers who kissed up to the Arab employee by cooing at him & flattering him during business transactions, plus expressing fake concern by saying things like, "What can be done about the high rate of murder in the Arab sector?"
As if they care.
Apparently, the high rate of murder in the Arab sector (1-2 every day) has recently become a big issue in Israeli media.
The Arab guy always replied with something agreeable like, "Yeah! The police need go in & confiscate all the weapons! That's the only way!"
Then an hour later, the Arab guy turned to my son and said, "You know, the other night my neighbor started shooting off his AK-47 during a family simcha in his home and woke my toddler. I had to go over there & tell him to stop. He apologized & promised to be more considerate next time."
Needless to say, his neighbor was in the same clan or the interaction might not have gone so smoothly.
"Yeah," continued the Arab co-worker. "Every single family in my area owns an AK-47! We don't have ONE home without a fully automatic weapon!" he boasted.
And my son was like, Wait a minute. I could've sworn that just one hour ago, someone who looks exactly like you was saying the illegal weapons ownership in the Arab sector was a problem & needed to be confiscated by the police!
“I knew her! She was such a nice girl. Why did they have to kill her?”
This Arab also expressed outrage at the soldiers who killed the potential terrorist — a terrorist who was waving a large knife in search of a Jew to stab.
To be fair, other Arabs admitted to my husband that they were upset by the attacks on Jews and blamed them on the mosques, which rile up the brainwashed masses.
Yet you see where his sympathies lie.
Another Muslim-Arab used to boast to my husband about beating his wife when she disobeyed him.
"She went to her best friend's wedding even though I forbade her not to. When she got home, I beat her."
My husband asked why his wife stayed, why she didn't go back to her parents' home.
"Nah, she wouldn't do that," he answered my husband. "If her father found out she disobeyed me, he'd beat her too!"
They don't all do it. You'll meet a lot who don't. But it's common and acceptable.
And these comments occur in the normal flow of conversation between work colleagues.
Note: I'm not plugging Netanyahu. For one thing, it's appalling that a Jew of his stature living in Eretz Yisrael does not keep Shabbat when it is so easy & pleasant to do so here. And it's certainly not due to ignorance as is the case with other secular Jews. That alone says something very bad about him. However, he is only vilified by the Left because he is not secular and Left-wing enough for them. He is also one of the only Israeli prime ministers to maintain friendly relations with the religious communities and to slip phrases like "With God's help," etc. into his speeches. I don't trust him, but the Left makes him out to be so much worse than all the evil garbage they offer.
I'm telling you because we all need reinforcement for our own correct views.
And also because some of you are forced to interact with people who lack common sense or morality regarding this issue.
I really think we need to stop trying to prove ourselves to the rest of the world — or even to fellow Jews who are so assimilated and brainwashed, their sympathies always remain on the side of darkness.
I'm not referring to people who genuinely wish to know.
I myself used to be rabidly Liberal, and I'm grateful to all the people who took the time to create lectures, books, articles, or simply discuss with me why a particular value is wrong or right.
Even people who portray themselves as pro-Israel nonetheless intensely dislike the Torah-awakening reverberating through Israeli society, with its increasing brotherhood and unity.
They do not like any concessions to the religious Jews who maintain the banner of authentic Judaism, and they especially do not like charedi Jews or national-religious Jews who innocently and productively live in what the world calls "the occupied territories" or "settlements."
Simplistic Shallow Opinions
Or wax on about how "everyone used to just get along" and blame the leaders when yes, Jewish and Muslim neighbors often maintain friendly relations throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but generally only as long as the Jews remained second-class citizens.
Even Jews who succeeded economically and socially lacked equal rights to Muslims.
In fact, the handful of wealthy Jews in Turkish-occupied Yerushalayim needed to dress as poor Jews so they wouldn't be robbed or kidnapped for ransom.
I heard lots of stories about Muslim-Jewish relations from my husband's family in Morocco. I struggled to understand the contradictions in Moroccan life (which I heard echoed in Jews from other Muslim countries of that time).
Over time and with lots of listening, I realized that Jews simply got used to centuries of dhimmi status.
They saw no contradiction between the warmth and generosity of their Muslim-Arab neighbors and the sudden incidents of banditry, kidnapping, or murder — with absolutely no recourse to any kind of justice.
That was all normal and they knew nothing else. They were fond of their Muslim neighbors (who often treated them with warmth and generousity), but never felt able to completely trust them.
While their Muslim neighbors behaved however the mood drew them, the Jews needed to remain perpetually on their best behavior, never allowing even one toe out of line (lest it get chopped off).
This brings me to the next big topic of cognitive dissonance from which you need to protect yourself.
Ask Not What Israel is Doing Wrong, But What the Rest of the Middle East is Doing "Right."
For example, much of the world sees Gazan wrath and savagery as the natural response to the denial of equal rights, economic progress, hopelessness, and seeing nearby Israel living the good life.
Much of the world believes that Israel's military response to Gazan military attacks and terror causes Gazan Arabs to become even angrier and more vengeful.
WRONG.
Even when Israel fights back, they tend to be softer than an Arab nation (or any Arab clan) in the same situation, both in the retaliation itself (i.e. trying to limit civilian casualties with targeted bombs, ensuring hospitals are empty before bombing, and generally acting like they don't really want to do this).
As a group, Arabs don't respect this. Really.
They never handle such situations among themselves in such an accommodating manner.
What much of the world ignores is that Palestinians in every Arab country experience the EXACT SAME TREATMENT AND WORSE from their fellow Muslim-Arabs.
For example, Jordan (officially) hosts over 2 million Palestinians (off the books, it's more), with 18% of them living in terrible poverty, much worse than those in Gaza or the refugee camps in Israel.
Yet if you visit the Muslim-Palestinians living in miserable poverty and filth, you'll see photos of the Jordanian king everywhere and everyone will tell you how happy they are and how much they love him.
Why don't these oppressed, deprived Palestinians terrorize the Jordanians?
Why do they seem to experience no envy regarding all their fellow Muslim-Arabs around them who live such better lives?
And why do frustration and envy not cause them to shoot rockets and carry out terror attacks on Jordanian soil?
Why don't they slander the leadership and why is there no human rights group for them?
Why no world outcry?
Well, the truth is...they DID rise up against their Jordanian oppressors in 1970. It didn't go well for them.
(Hint: There's a reason it's remembered as "Black September.")
We haven't heard a peep from those Palestinians since.
On the contrary, they apparently insist they are so happy and love the king (whichever one is in power at that moment) so much.
Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia also live as second- or third-class citizens.
For example, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in Lebanon.
For 4 generations now, Lebanon denies them citizenship, equal rights, health insurance, and entry to many professions. They're not even allowed to learn those professions. Palestinians may not own any property. Their Muslim-Arab Lebanese brothers consider them thieves and liars.
Because of the above, most Lebanese do not want to marry Palestinians.
Lebanese Palestinians live lives of true hopelessness, poverty, discrimination, and oppression. They see their fellow Lebanese Muslims enjoying lifestyles forever denied to Lebanese Palestinians.
For their part, the Lebanese view the Palestinians as thieves and liars, not wishing to help them or associate with them in any way.
(Truth is, Palestinians a commit a large chunk of petty crime in Lebanon.)
So where are the thousands of Palestinian rockets, suicide bombings, stabbings of Lebanese civilians, and kvetching against Lebanon on social media?
Why do they not demand a 2-state solution from Lebanon?
Where is the world outcry against Lebanon?
Why are there no demonstrations against Lebanon's complete lack of humanitarianism?
Why do you think the Palestinian response to Lebanon is so different than to Israel?
Now let's go to Saudi Arabia:
Saudi Arabia hosts around 400,000 Palestinians.
Only those who arrived by the 1950s are naturalized. So even 3rd-generation Palestinians are not allowed citizenship.
Officially, Saudi Arabia treats them as any other foreigner, needing permits to work and live there. In Saudi Arabia, foreigners need sponsorship in order to work. Otherwise, it's illegal with legal consequences.
And many Palestinians (again, even to the 3rd or 4th generation) remain there as impoverished illegals.
Socially, Palestinians are looked down on by Saudis, forcing them to live truly hopeless lives while seeing how the other half lives in grand style.
Yet we don't hear of them committing terror attacks or firing rockets at them.
Why do you think that is?
Or in Gaza itself:
Millionaires live and thrive in Gaza. Palatial homes and opulent hotels sit right in Gaza (or they did before the bombings).
Why doesn't their high-society lifestyle cause murderous envy in the rest of the Gazans?
Why is it just Israel?
Or Egypt:
Why isn't Egypt opening its border to shelter its fellow Muslim-Arabs fleeing Gaza?
Look at how Europe opened its doors to the Ukrainians.
Why aren't Egypt and the rest of the Middle East expected to do the same?
Again, why is that when Arab nations treat the Palestinians the same or much worse than Israel's treatment, their oppressed Palestinians receive no coverage, no outpouring of world sympathy, and the Palestinians themselves do nothing to retaliate?
(Actually, in Syria, they did retaliate somewhat. But it hasn't been going well for them and the world doesn't care either way.)
Here's a quote from one of the Arab leaders in Israel. I heard this directly from a good friend, who is the woman in the following conversation:
It was a very well-known politician, maybe who even sits in the Knesset now, not sure.
Anyway, she got into a discussion with him & ended up leveling with him, "If you could solve the Palestinian problem right now, what would you do?"
He leaned toward her and said, "Honestly? You know what what I would do? You know what the Israelis really should do?"
"Yeah," she said. "Say it."
"Okay," he said, lowering his voice. "If you really want to solve the Palestinian problem? Then the Israelis need to gather up all the Palestinians, put them in Gaza, then build a wall around it. Three years later, they can open it up and go in to clean up all the bodies. Because by that time, the Palestinians will all have killed each other."
real-conversations-you-will-never-see-in-the-mainstream-media-about-middle-eastern-politics.html
The Torah Response to All This
The above is the derech-hateva stuff unfortunately necessary when dealing with people who lack any background of Torah scholarship and millennia of Torah attitudes and approaches to dealing with these horrific explosions of Jew-hatred and the right of Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael.
The real reason why we suffer from terrorists is not because we don't fight back hard enough (though I'm not against that).
The real reason and its remedy can be found in the Torah itself, along with millennia of Torah scholarship.
Outbursts of Jew-hatred are ALWAYS a wake-up call from Hashem.
We need to open our hearts to Torah more and cultivate a deeper love of Hashem and His Torah, and His Nation Israel.
It's a terrible shame that the secular Communists who took over the leadership of the modern State steamrolled over the influence of the Torah Sages and their followers.
If the influence of the Torah Sages had been maintained, a tremendous amount of suffering and bloodshed would have been avoided.
See here for more: a-review-of-guardian-of-jerusalem-the-life-times-of-rabbi-yosef-chaim-sonnenfeld-why-it-challenged-everything-i-thought-i-knew-about-the-modern-history-of-eretz-yisrael.html
- IDF Publishes Evidence of Weapons found inside Gaza's Shifa Hospital’s MRI Center - YouTube
- EXCLUSIVE: Inside Hamas Terrorist Tunnel Under Rantisi Hospital in Gaza - YouTube
Revealing the Truth behind the Lies:
- Lies about Israel's War with Hamas
- Hamas Also Slaughters Muslims
- Behind the Human Rights Watch Curtain: Hate and Corruption
The classic Torah view of what's really behind the hatred of the Jews gushing out here and around the world:
the-kli-yakar-parshat-devarim.html