It is a great Mitsva to make the groom and the bride happy (לשמח חתן וכלה). This Mitsva is fulfilled by being present in their wedding, dance with them and praise them.

This Mitsva could be fulfilled during the day of the wedding and during the following seven days as well, known in Hebrew as shib’at yeme hamishte, the seven days of celebration.

These days are marked by specific Laws and customs. Some illustrations:

1. The bride and the groom should refrain from performing labor during the week following their wedding. This is not the same prohibition as Shabbat or festive days (Yom Tob). Rather, the couple should avoid activities that will distract them from rejoicing. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions where the couple or one of them would be allowed to perform certain works (a time-sensitive business, a public service, etc).

2. During these days the bride and the groom should wear festive clothing and hold festive meals. It is a very old custom for relatives and friends to prepare the meals for the couple and host them in different locations. In the times of the Talmud the families and friends of the bride and groom would come (with the food) to celebrate at the new couple’s home (bet hatanim).

3. During this week, the couple is not formally obligated to make from every meal a festive celebration, they are permitted to eat normal, quiet meals as well. However, when the couple attends a meal in their honor which satisfies certain conditions (as we will explain later on) then the Sheba’ Berakhot, the seven blessing for  the bride and the groom, should be recited at the end of Bircat haMazon (Grace after a meal).

4. The seven blessings are recited only when the follwoing conditions are met:

a.There must be ten adult males present (the hatan is considered one of them).

b.The meal has to take place in the residence of the bride and groom (bet hatanim).

c. There must be at least two new guest (panim hadashot), who did not participate in the wedding and previous sheba’ berakhot.

When one of these conditions is not met, then if at least three adult male are partaking of the formal meal, they recite just the last berakha, asher bara

In some Sephardic communities in the diaspora the sheba berakhot are recited, whether the meal is taking place in the house of the groom or in a different place (consult your local rabbi). The  other two conditions, panim hadashot and minyan, are identical for every Sephardic community.

The Ashkenazi custom also allows reciting the sheba berakhot even if the meal does not take place in the residence of the new couple, and even if just one new guest, not two, is present at the occasion (Rabbi Knohl).

5. When the Sheba Berakhot are recited, the custom is to have two cups of wine: with the first cup, one says Birkat haMazon and at the end of the Sheba Berakhot, he himself says “bore peri hagefen”. With the second cup, they say the other six berakhot. Once the last berakha is recited, the wine of the two cups is mixed and given to the bride and the groom.   When only the berakha Asher Bara is recited, the custom is to say first bore peri hagefen and then asher bara.

כָּל דֶּרְֶך אִישׁ יָשָׁר בְּעֵינָיו
An individual always feels that his way of acting is the normal one…
Mishle / Proverbs 21: 2

A few years ago I read an eye-opening book: “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman. The book presents a very simple but extremely important idea: we do not express our love for others in one unique and universal way. In fact, all of us convey our affection in different ways. I helped and counseled many couples experiencing Shalom Bayit (lit. “Peace at Home”) issues, and I must confess that since I learned about this idea I was able to identify and assess better the conflicts at hand and assist the couple in a more effective way. Moreover, now I wonder if it is possible for husband and wife to live in harmony when you ignore the concept of “love languages”. It is only when you realize that it is normal for your spouse NOT to express his or her affection in the same way you do that you can overcome the misleading and often unconscious expectations which reflect your particular way of conveying affection. And if you fail to identify —and value— your spouse’s love language and you standardize your unique way of expressing love instead, you might feel he doesn’t love you properly, or enough.

Here is a summary of the five ways people express love.

1. WORDS OF AFFIRMATION. Many express their love for others , husband-wife, parents-children, through words of affection, praise and admiration which convey our deepest feelings. Other people are less expressive with words. A loving husband may feel a great love for his wife and kids, but for some innate or acquired reason, he may not feel the need —or he might not even be capable— to verbalize his love and formulate it with words. And when your love language is “words”, and you don’t know that people express love in different languages, you would probably feel frustrated and even unloved by your spouse.
2. TIME SHARING. Some individuals channel their love —and feel loved— when they spend time together with the person they love. For them “to love is to share… time together”. It makes them happy to be with their spouse: walking, talking, visiting a park, playing or reading something, enjoying each other’s company, regardless of what specifically you are doing. If you express your love in this way, for you ”it is not about WHAT you do but WHO you are with”.
3. GIFTS. For some people “gifts” are the main way, or one of the main ways, of expressing love in marriage. They would also process love through gifts: when you love me, you give me something, and vice versa. If your love language is “gifts” it does not mean that you are necessarily materialistic. In all cultures of the world giving gifts is a traditional way of showing gratitude or recognition. In marriage gifts might be symbols of love for one another. In a normal relationship the point is not the material value of the gift, but the fact that my wife thought about me or I thought about her in our wedding-anniversary, birthdays and other special occasions (particularly Jewish Holidays: there is a Mitzva, a religious duty, to make your wife happy by giving her gifts in Pesach, Shabuot and Sukkot!).
4. ACTS OF SERVICE. This means doing something for your spouse when he or she is not expecting it. Something that makes your spouse happy and at the same time is not part of your usual job description. A random act of service or kindness (chesed) done without expecting anything in return, but just to express love. A wife might, for example, feel that her husband is conveying his affection for her if he does something unexpected that is not part of his agreed upon duties. If, for example, he helps her with some specific chores that she usually does for herself (cleaning her car, taking care of dinner, etc.) without being asked to do so. Now, if the wife does not share this love language, she may not regard her husband’s special performance as an act of love, and she might overlook his affection. You see the problem?
5. PHYSICAL CONTACT. Many people convey their love for each other mainly through physical contact: a soft touch, a spontaneous hug, holding hands, etc. For many this is the “natural” way to convey affection, not only to one’s spouse but also to one’s children. When you express your love through this language, you also expect your spouse to express herself in this way, because you process love through physical contact.
   But what happens, in this and other cases, when for example the husband expresses his love in one language, and his wife fails to identify this as love, and feels unwanted or even rejected? What to to in these cases to plead each other, understand each other, and improve our Shalom Bayit?

To be continued

The decision to select a wife or husband should be made based on two factors, which must be in agreement: our emotions and our mind. In other words, if we have feelings toward a certain person, i.e., attraction, but the mind says that “it is not a good idea”, or if the mind says “yes”, but there are negative feelings toward that person, the Shiddukh should be reconsidered.

If I worked for Associated Press, I would have written this article today:

”A young Frenchman, Damien T., just 28 years old, was brutally attacked by five security officers, then violently subdued by French police, handcuffed and humiliated in front of hundreds of impressionable witnesses. The 28-year-old freedom fighter was taken in a special military vehicle, against his will, and transferred to a maximum security prison, where he was forced to undress and wear a humiliating prison uniform. All his basic human rights were taken away from him. It is still early to know the destructive impact that all this abuse of power will have in the near future on Damien’s mental health. And the damaging psychological wounds that this violent arrest will bring to his parents, siblings and young nephews. This is a crime against humanity, for which the French government should be unanimously and unambiguously condemned”.

If my journalistic article ended here, it would be perfectly similar to the way that almost all the media reports to the world when Israel responds militarily to criminal attacks launched from Gaza. When it comes to Israel, journalists victimize the criminal and completely ignore the original crime that triggered the use of force. And if the Hamas crime should NOT be mentioned, why then would it be relevant to mention that Damien T. slapped the French President, Emmanuel Macron? Or why no one questions France’s justice that “disproportionately” sentence Damien T to 4 months in jail!   A simple slap from Macron to Damien should be enough to solve this.   That would be truly proportional….

When Hamas attacks Israel with missiles and rockets, with the explicit aim of killing as many Jews as possible, the leaders of the European Union do not even mention Hamas but are quick to condemn Israel for the “disproportionate use of force.” … Following this ridiculous reasoning, the next time Hamas “slaps” Israel, the Jewish state should respond in a more canonical and European way: turning the other cheek…. like President Macron did.

Material and sources for the class given June 1, 2021

BRIEF HISTORY OF JEWISH PALESTINE

The “Mandate for Palestine,” an historical League of Nations document, laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, a 10,000-square-miles3 area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The legally binding document was conferred on April 24, 1920 at the San Remo Conference, and its terms outlined in the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920. The Mandate’s terms were finalized and unanimously approved on July 24, 1922, by the Council of the League of Nations, which was comprised at that time of 51 countries,4 and became operational on September 29, 1923.5
Great Britain [i.e., the Mandatory or Trustee] did turn over its responsibility to the United Nations as of May 14, 1948. However, the legal force of the League of Nations’ “Mandate for Palestine” [i.e., The Trust] was not terminated with the end of the British Mandate. Rather, the Trust was transferred over to the United Nations.

Recognition of the Historical Connection to Palestine

Fifty-one member countries – the entire League of Nations – unanimously declared on July 24, 1922:
“Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”6
Unlike nation-states in Europe, modern Lebanese, Jordanian, Syrian, and Iraqi nationalities did not evolve. They were arbitrarily created by colonial powers.
In 1919, in the wake of World War I, England and France as Mandatory (e.g., official administrators and mentors) carved up the former Ottoman Empire, which had collapsed a year earlier, into geographic spheres of influence. This divided the Mideast into new political entities with new names and frontiers.7
Territory was divided along map meridians without regard for traditional frontiers (i.e., geographic logic and sustainability) or the ethnic composition of indigenous populations.8
The prevailing rationale behind these artificially created states was how they served the imperial and commercial needs of their colonial masters. Iraq and Jordan, for instance, were created as emirates to reward the noble Hashemite family from Saudi Arabia for its loyalty to the British against the Ottoman Turks during World War I, under the leadership of Lawrence of Arabia. Iraq was given to Faisal bin Hussein, son of the sheriff of Mecca, in 1918. To reward his younger brother Abdullah with an emirate, Britain cut away 77 percent of its mandate over Palestine earmarked for the Jews and gave it to Abdullah in 1922, creating the new country of Trans-Jordan or Jordan, as it was later named.

ISRAEL’S EXCEPTIONALISM
The manner in which European colonial powers carved out political entities with little regard to their ethnic composition not only led to this inter-ethnic violence, but it also encouraged dictatorial rule as the only force capable of holding such entities together.9
The exception was Palestine, or Eretz-Israel – the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, where:
“The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country [ Palestine] under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.”10

Appropriation of the Name “Palestine”

The Palestinian Talmud,  according to Oxford University

before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (when the name “Israel” was chosen for the newly-established Jewish State), the term “Palestine” applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before the state’s independence.

Some examples include:

The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called The Palestine Post until 1948.

Bank Leumi L’Israel, incorporated in 1902, was called the “Anglo-Palestine Company” until 1948.

The Jewish Agency – an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929 – was initially called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

Today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was originally called the “Palestine Symphony Orchestra,” composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.¹⁷

The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fund-raising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.

Encouraged by their success at historical revisionism and brainwashing the world with the “Big Lie” of a Palestinian people, Palestinian Arabs have more recently begun to claim they are the descendants of the Philistines and even the Stone Age Canaanites.¹⁸ Based on that myth, they can claim to have been “victimized” twice by the Jews: in the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites and again by the Israelis in modern times – a total fabrication.¹⁹ Archeologists explain that the Philistines were a Mediterranean people who settled along the coast of Canaan in 1100 BCE. They have no connection to the Arab nation, a desert people who emerged from the Arabian Peninsula.

As if that myth were not enough, former PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat also claimed, “Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the Jebusites,” who were displaced when King David conquered Jerusalem.

Arafat also argued that “Abraham was an Iraqi.” One Christmas Eve, Arafat declared that “Jesus was a Palestinian,” a preposterous claim that echoes the words of Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian Arab who, in an interview during the 1991 Madrid Conference, said: “Jesus Christ was born in my country, in my land,” and claimed that she was “the descendant of the first Christians,” disciples who spread the gospel around Bethlehem some 600 years before the Arab conquest. If her claims were true, it would be tantamount to confessing that she is a Jew!

“Palestine” is the name given at that time to the land of Israel and to the Jewish National Home under the British mandate. There never existed an Arab Palestinian State, a Palestinian nation or a Palestinian people, or anything like it. In any case, according to what we wrote today, “the designated land for Arabs in Palestine is ‘Jordan’”

VIDEOS: who are the Palestinians? A Nation ? Or an invented ethnicity to appropriate the name “Palestine” and eventually displace the Jewish people from Israel?

Palestinians come from many countries in the Middle East.

Dr Mordechai Kedar on Palestinians origins

BLM and PALESTINIANS

Los Angeles Real Estate Mogul Mohamed Hadid Apologizes for Post Linking Israel to Police Brutality in United States

Los Angeles Real Estate Mogul Mohamed Hadid Apologizes for Post Linking Israel to Police Brutality in United States

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/blm-leaders-get-rich-by-exploiting-black-community-attacking-israel/.

“We at the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel have been asking this question for years now, and still have not received an answer: If Black Lives Matter is supposed to be about police killings of unarmed Black people, why is part of its focus on Israel thousands of miles away–as opposed to, for example, the African slave trade in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania or Qatar? “

SIMILARITIES

1. Police brutality : Israel brutality. Selective victims.
2. Only those who killed by police. Only those killed by Israel.  In both case, the initial act of  violence is premeditated. The death of the victim is not.

3. Directing the blame to the wrong party: teach not to resist arrest!!! La Hage court: blames Israel for the Gaza conflict. And so does the United Nations Human Right committee.

4. Final goal: defund police.  Defund Israel. To increase chaos, anarchy and enabling criminals to do their job undisturbed.

5. RICH CORRUPT LEADERS:


RECOMMENDED: The Americanization of the Israeli Palestinian Debate
Israel’s Problems Are Not Like America’s
When many Westerners peer out at the world, what they’re really looking for is a mirror.
By Matti Friedman

PALESTINIAN REFUGEES

Palestinian exceptionalism is just a function of the world embracing systemic antisemitism. Palestinian  exceptionalism is not about Palestinians but about “treating exceptionally the enemies of the Jews”. If the Palestinians were fighting Turkey instead of Israel, no one would care about Palestinians. And if the Kurds will be fighting Israel, they will, be treated exceptionally well. 

Why are Palestinian refugees different from all other refugees?
Aug 30, 2018
The unique status afforded to Palestinians is the single biggest stumbling block to achieving peace

Recommended articles:  https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-are-palestinian-refugees-different-from-all-other-refugees/

Recommended books: Myths and Facts, a guide to the Arab Israeli Conflict 

DOWNLOAD FREE PDF HERE  : https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/mf2017.pdf

THE CASE FOR ISRAEL,

by Alan Dershowitz: 

DOWNLOAD FREE PDF HERE: https://veritas5777.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/alan-dershowitz-the-case-for-israel-2003.pdf

Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth   April 6, 2021 by Noa Tishby 

This is an extraordinary Psalm, because despite having been written 3,000 years ago, I believe that today it is not difficult to identify with it.

1-2 I cry out to God from my anguish, knowing that He will answer me. HaShem, free me from the lips of deceive, from the tongue of liars.

King David begins by praying to God, asking the Almighty to save him from these unusual enemies. Unlike other occasions in which the foe is characterized by his military power that endangers David’s life (for example, Tehilim 144), in our Psalm the threat does not come from the battlefield: this enemy is dangerous because he betrays and lies when he seems to be looking for peace, and his promises of non-aggression cannot be trusted

3 What [peace] will be achieved [with this enemy]? What [other lies] will these liar-tongued peoples add [to deceive]? 4 [His promises of peace] are [as deceptive] as the poisonous arrows of his warriors; or like the coals of broom [that do not seem to be burning] with which they simulate [a cold peace]

Their deadly arrows not only damage the wounded part of the body: they kill, because they have poison. The words of this enemy are not aimed at negotiating and gaining a little more territory: they are aimed to destroy us, not to reach a deal after which we will leave in peace and coexistence. In times of peace, the enemy’s strategy is compared to “coals of broom” : the burning embers of this wild bush are visibly off, they are not read but gray, and appear innocuous as ash to the naked eye. But when you touch this ash, it burns! This enemy portrays itself as a harmless victim, harmless as broom coals: but that’s deceiving. When you approach this foe extending your hand in peace, thinking that the burning hatred is gone, you get burned.

5 Woe to me that I have to live among the inhabitants of Meshekh [= the nations of the Levant], and that I have to reside next to the peoples of Kedar [the Ishmaelites]!

David expresses the difficult challenge of living surrounded by treacherous peoples. And he finally reveals the identity of these dishonorable foes . They are Israel’s own neighbors! Meshekh, to the north – in what today is Lebanon, Syria, Turkey – and Kedar to the south – Gaza, Egypt.
A little context will help us better understand this Psalm. In the time of King David and his son Shelomo, the Kingdom of Israel flourished and reached its economic peak. King David also signed peace treaties with other peoples, such as the Phoenicians, with whom he established commercial treaties that were beneficial to both nations. The entire region, the Middle East of that time, benefited greatly from Israel’s prosperity and stability. It was a “win / win” situation, where everyone could prosper. But for Meshekh and Kedar Israel’s “prosperity and stability” was insufferable. They just were not able to accept that Israel would be successful and in peace! Israel’s prosperity throws this enemy off balance. And this might sound absolutely crazy, but for the leaders of these peoples it was more important to destroy Israel than to benefit their own from the prosperity that Israel generously brought to the the entire region.

6 I  lived for  too long next to these peoples who hate peace [and only think about destroying me]. 7 I want peace, [and I seek peace]. But as I speak of peace, my enemies think about [how to destroy me with] war.

David knows these nations. He lived next to them for a long time. He knows that they do not really care about peace. For them, a peace treaty is not an objective in and by itself: it is only a temporary mean for their main goal: the destruction of Israel. They assume that Israel would naively trust their empty promises –  that David will lower his guard, and become vulnerable and easily to kill. But David knows better: after being repeatedly burned by the broom’s coals, David overcame his dangerous naivety and gave up on his wishes for a peaceful coexistence. In this verse he expresses his pain, realizing that his neighbors — especially the Ishmaelites, “our cousins” the Abrahamic ancestors of Arab nations — practice the kind of existential hatred and deadly envy (known today as anti-Semitism) that Amaleq has for the Jews.

David, with my own words, finally recognizes that this enemy is like a wild and hungry tiger, approaching David with only one goal in mind…    Imagine how incredibly dangerous and naive would be for David to extend his hand of peace to this tiger. And how suicidal would be to smile, and offering the tiger to go to dinner together at the best restaurant (dinner is on David!). There is nothing more dangerous than imagining that the tiger would “understands David’s language”. Or to project David’s wishful thinking, believing that the tiger shares his desires for a peaceful coexistence and will accept his suggestion of dinner for two. This tiger has appetite for me.. His killing instincts control him and my words do not affect him. And if I’m careless and if I don’t defend myself against the tiger with all what I have , I will become his dinner for one.

Do we Jews need a war in order to be united? Are we only friendly with each other in times of a crisis? Are we inviting trouble to bring us back together?

אך טוב לישראל (Akh tob leIsrael)
TEHILIM 73

THE POSITIVE SIDE OF A CRISIS
Rabbi Moshe Azancot, z”l (the grandfather of my colleague and friend, Rabbi Ari Azancot of Beth Torah, NY) taught me a very original meaning (a derasha?) of these three words from Tehillim: “Akh” the first word of this pasuq, should be understood as an onomatopoeia, that is, a word whose meaning is in its sound. In Hebrew –like in Spanish (Aj!), or in English (“argh”)– the onomatopoeia “akh” has a negative connotation. It expresses suffering, frustration and anguish. Having this in mind, these three words are saying something a bit ironic and sad. “Akh”, that is, suffering: a crisis that sometimes happens to us Jews, is “tob leIsrael”, might be the one thing that brings a positive outcome for us collectively. When we are well and in peace, it is difficult for us to agree: we fight with each other, each one pulls to his or her side. Sadly, as these three words indicate, the only thing that will surely unite us is an “Akh” situation: the enemy attacking us or waging war.

WHO NEEDS A WAR?
Israel already had four parliamentary elections in recent times. Israeli society is very divided, so no party reaches an automatic majority of 61 votes needed to form a government. The only way to have a government is through alliances between the different political parties. There are basically two major groups in the Keneset: the right and the left, with many variables in between. The Israeli right, among other things, believes that we need to have a heavy hand on terror, and in negotiations with our unfriendly neighbors would make the minimum possible concessions. This conservative position is more pragmatic than ideological: there is no one to talk on the Palestinian side. No Palestinian leader who openly declares (in Arabic!) that Palestinians want “to live in peace alongside a neighboring Jewish State, which they would recognize.” Israeli conservative parties could have more than 70 votes, which represents the will of the majority of Israel,  if they were together! But, particularly in the last election, there was another factor that prevented this natural coalition: these parties were divided because of “personal resentments” (שנאת חינם) among political leaders, rather than ideological differences. And literally, “a few hours” before the bombings from Gaza began, three of these conservative parties were negotiating a coalition with political parties that are explicitly opposed to national Jewish observance or that do not recognize the right of the Jewish people to their land! Then the bombings of Gaza began, the riots, and the Arab “progroms” in Lod, Aco, Haifa, etc. And only then, a representative of the conservative parties decided to put aside his personal resentments (or aspirations) and avoid an artificial coalition that, in my opinion, would have been tragic for Israel.
Now, today,  at this moment, Israel’s political leaders from the right and the center finally came together. And a natural conservative coalition is within reach again.  As those three words of Tehillim suggest, “Akh,” the crisis that we are suffering  ended up bringing some “positive” opportunities for unity. But it is very sad to realize that: rockets, extensive material damage and the irreparable loss of precious human lives is what can bring us together. Are we involuntarily inviting wars and crisis to befall upon us, in order to assure our “unity” ?

THE LESSON FROM MATAN TORA
Shabuot celebrates the giving of the Tora. And our Sages explain that there was a prerequisite that needed to be fulfilled before we would be worthy of a Pact with Bore Olam.  VAYICHAN SHAM ISRAEL NEGED HAHAR “the people of Israel camped [united as one] in front of Mount [Sinai].” The rabbis mentioned that the Jewish people were organically together as “one individual, with one single heart.” At that moment WITHOUT CONFRONTING AN ENEMY we put aside our differences, and we felt part of the same nation. We stood together not because we were facing a common enemy, but because we were pursuing a common purpose: receiving the Tora and becoming the People of God.

This is the way to go!

I have no doubt that B”H Israel will be victorious in this war “in every front”. And I have no doubt that we will emerge from this crisis stronger than we were before this conflict.

But I pray to HaShem, and I beg to each of us, that we should “be and to remain united” not because of the deadly missiles of the enemy, but because of the life-giving words of our Tora.

YOU SHALL NOT BE RESENTFUL

When we left Egypt God did NOT allow us to become a bitter, violent and resentful people. We had every reason to hold grudges: we were enslaved by the Egyptians for over a century, but HaShem had a different plan for us. He included among His commandments an absolutely FORMATIVE Mitzva in terms of our relationships with other peoples, which became part of our DNA. Debarim 23: 8 says: “לא תתעב מצרי כי גר היית בארצו” , ” You shall not abhor [hate] the Egyptians, for they received you as foreigners in their land. “ This revolutionary verse says that holding resentment, even when justified, would destroy a person –or a people– inside.  When what defines you as a society is “grievances” your identity will be founded not on positives qualities but on hatred for a common enemy: today the Egyptians and tomorrow the next foe. A culture of grievance would have transformed us into a people with an insatiable resentment that would not let us enjoy peace and prosperity, but would drive us to seek violence and destroy whoever does better than us.   This amazing verse also teaches us to practice an  extreme gratitude towards anyone who once did something for us: we should never forget that the Egyptians opened their doors for us and welcomed into their land in Yosef’s time. This and other similar commandments have forged very special qualities in our Jewish DNA: A “positive” selective memory. We should not live with resentment –which destroys mainly the person who lives with it– and never stop appreciating and being grateful to anyone that ever did anything good to you.  But not all the peoples of the earth hold these same values ​​… not even those civilizations that supposedly have the Bible as a reference for their religion.

SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

Israel is facing a new conflict with the Palestinians. I am not referring now to the terrible confrontation with Gaza (see the article below) . This new crisis is a little different from the previous ones. And it can become more serious. It has new protagonists: the Arab citizens of Israel. They are not “refugees” but Muslim legal Israeli citizens living in Yafo, Ramla, Acco, etc. Tens of thousands of these citizens have carried out violent demonstrations and attacked the Israeli civilian population, and there have been already several casualties. What happened in Lod, a city that should be the perfect model of Arab and Israeli coexistence, is inconceivable. Three synagogues (so far) have been burned down in the city by the Islamist Arab mob. THREE SYNAGOGUES! This is not happening in anti-Semitic Europe but in the ONLY JEWISH STATE of the world.  The “Times of Israel” described what happened as “The Kristallnacht of Lod.” And Lod was not an exception: similar things have happened in many other cities with Arab and Jewish population. This is how an Israeli journalist from Makor Rishon newspaper explains: “… the surprise of the surprises [in this war] has been that tens of thousands of terrorists have emerged overnight among the Israeli Arab population, ordinary citizens crying out for the destruction of the state and they are carrying out hundreds of pogroms throughout the country every day, terrorists-civilians who are going out every night looking for prey: Jewish blood … »

THE CULTURE OF RESENTMENT

These Israeli Arab citizens vote in Israeli elections, hold Israeli passports and are represented in the Keneset, the Israeli parliament. The irony is that in Israel they LIVE MUCH BETTER than they would live in any Arab Middle Eastern country like Syria, Lebanon, Egypt or Jordan AND THEY KNOW THIS VERY WELL. They enjoy a very high quality of life, have absolute religious freedom, access to the best universities in Israel and they benefit from Israel’s booming economy and its modern medical system. Why then this violence? Why do Arab extremists shout: “Death to Israel”, “Death to the Jews”? I believe with Guy Bechor, that the culture of resentment, the fact that it is the Jews and not the Arabs who have created one of the best countries on the planet, does not allow them mentally to enjoy the privilege of living there and being grateful for it. It is as if for their culture it is more important “that the Jews do not enjoy peace and prosperity” than that they enjoy these privileges.

THE CULTURE OF GRATEFULNESS

In this sense, something similar happens with the Arab extremists in Europe: they want to “destroy” the very country that offers them peace, prosperity and opportunities for growth. In France, for example, Islamic extremists have murdered hundreds of their benefactors, with bombs or firearms, or beheading French citizens with knives or throwing them off the balcony, as happened with Sara Halimi z ”l. These criminals are refugees who escaped from their Arab countries where they were starving or persecuted or tortured by corrupt regimes or by other Islamists more extreme than them. And instead of being eternally grateful to France, the country that gave them refuge, welcomed them and “gave them everything without asking anything in return,” they dedicate themselves to destroying the country and their religion: In medieval best fashion, these Islamic extremists set churches on fire whenever they could. See, for example, this article and this article,  which dares to mention that in recent years dozens of churches in France have been desecrated, and in many cases burned, by French Islamists.

CONCLUSION

I’m not sure what the final result of this new conflict will be. Israel will have to prepare itself for a new type of fight much more complicated than the war against Iran, Hezbollah or the terrorists in Gaza. It is a new conflict in which the enemy does not need rockets or missiles but simple “knives” (see video below) or cars to carry out their deadly attacks  … Israeli Arabs are “neighbors” who live in Haifa, Yerushalayim, Tel-Aviv: they drive taxis, work in hotels, restaurants and hospitals. How many of them have become or will extremists? If they begin to rise up, murder and commit acts of violence, we might expect a civil war, because Israeli Jews are not going to sit idly by: they will defend themselves, especially if the Israeli police is still paralyzed.

We might be witnessing a clash of civilizations in the heart of Israel between those who want to live in peace and those who want to die in the process of killing their neighbors.

May HASHEM protect us from our enemies and grant us the strength and intelligence to neutralize them!

Killing a Jew for 5 Sheqels