Category Archives: Inspiration

hatred of Jews, Inspiration, resistance

Vehi She’amda

2 Comments

It has been a difficult few of weeks for my people.  Stabbings, Shootings, Beatings.  Babies in car-seats hammered  by stone and sliced by glass and steel.  It is far from over.

The perpetrators name their children after murderers of innocents.  They spit on, and laugh at  the wounded. They wheedle their excuses to the English-speaking world, and roar in prideful blood-lust to their own.

The government response is schizophrenic at best.  Often, it emboldens the savages and bares the innocent to them.  More worried about how they are perceived by that smug imbecile in the White House, the pompous EU, or their leftist domestic press, than the mounting toll of maiming and death borne by their own people, they vacillate.

The powerful and influential abroad declare moral-equivalence between attacker and victim.  Mostly, the world looks away.

Yishmael and Edom, working in tandem.

Jewish blood, as always, is cheap.

Well, Hashem makes difficult lessons for us, but nothing we cannot withstand, learn from, or surmount.  Nothing.   Nothing.

Am Yisrael Chai.

וְהִיא שֶׁעָמְדָה לַאֲבוֹתֵיֽנוּ וְלָנֽוּ. שֶׁלֹא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד, עָמַד עָלֵיֽנוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנֽוּ. אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹרוָדוֹר, עוֹמְדִים עָלֵיֽנוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנֽוּ. וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם

Vehi She’amda, La’avotainu Velanu Shelo Echad Bilvad, Amad Aleinu Lechaloteinu Ela Sheb’chol Dor VaDor Omdim Aleinu Lechaloteinu V’HaKadosh Baruch Hu Matzilenu Miyadam.

And this (Hashem’s blessings and the Torah) is what kept our fathers and what keeps us surviving. For, not only one arose and tried to destroy us, rather in every generation they try to destroy us, and Hashem saves us from their hands.

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail
authoritarian swine, duty, Inspiration, resistance, Schools and campuses, self defense

Four of the best comments on the Oregon campus shooting

2 Comments

Forget the pathetic little mama’s-boy murderer and remember Chris Mintz, the man who charged straight at him.

—–

Stop pretending that your “commonsense” anti-gunnery will end mass shootings. Although this piece by Trevor Burrus advocates paying more attention to mental illness — a dubious proposition when applied to gun owners in this age when 25% of the population is considered “mentally ill” — it also contains some questions we should ask everybody who wants more gun laws:

Perhaps you think all guns should be confiscated. Okay, tell us how you will do that without stormtroopers roaming the country systematically violating our Fourth Amendment rights in a way that makes Donald Trump’s call for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants look like taking a census. …

Perhaps you think that all guns should be registered and licensed. Again, explain how you will do that without a battalion of stormtroopers kicking down doors. Sure, some people will voluntarily register their guns, but they are unlikely to be criminals or would-be mass shooters.

—–

Time to talk about gun-free zones.

As details emerge, it’s clear some that Umpqua Community College students did, in fact, carry firearms despite the school’s weasel-worded anti-weapons policies. But too few — and none of them in that classroom where the little creep chose his victims.

—–

If there were no guns by Joe Huffman. Huffman doesn’t directly address the Oregon killings (though clearly his post was inspired by them).

He says, “Because of this change from a society of force to a society of reason one could, and should, go so far as to say the gun is civilization. Those who claim ‘civilized countries’ are disarmed have it exactly backward.”

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail
Inspiration

Rosh Hashanah 5776

Leave a comment

shofar

Beginning tonight, at Rosh Hashanah (literally, the “Head” of the Year), all around the World, Jews celebrate the birthday of humankind and renew the coronation of G-d as our King.

The Gates of Heaven are opened.  The Court is convened. We are judged for our successes and our failures, not against some arbitrary standard , but against our true potential.

We ask that we be judged with an eye towards mercy and a sincere resolve to do better if given the chance.

Best wishes to all of our friends, sponsors, fellow writers, and loyal readers here at The Zelman Partisans.  May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life, and enjoy a year filled with blessings.

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail
guns, Inspiration, mindset, Political philosophy

The Post-Pessimist Era In Gun Rights Advocacy

2 Comments

For many years, gun rights advocacy groups in the US – and, to some extent, elsewhere – built their fundraising and outreach efforts, and their entire public stance, on combatting threats to gun rights. On a regular basis, money would be requested, and activists roused from their slumber, on the idea that the anti-gun lobby had contrived a new threat to rights and liberties – a handgun ban, an “assault weapons” ban, a gun registration scheme or a gun buyback. For many years the tone of gun rights advocacy was the tone of alarm.

But, even as the rhetoric of fear has still been used effectively time and time again, gun rights in America (and to some extent, in Canada and some other nations) have gradually started taking back lost ground, and even capturing ground that had never before been held by the freedom movement. By now there are seven states within the Union that do not require a permit of any kind to carry a concealed weapon (and many more states allow one to carry a weapons without a permit if one does so openly). Public attitudes in America have swung wildly towards the pro-gun worldview, and gun rights groups have sprung up around the world – in Russia, Australia, the Czech Republic, Israel, and so on – places that have ten years ago not even had a gun rights movement at all.

As I type those words, bills and lawsuits are winding their way through the legislatures and courts of the United States to expand gun rights in the United States in ways in which our movement could not have been considered possible only ten years ago. In Australia, a recent attempt at panic-induced gun control has just gotten derailed by a small group of liberty-minded legislators. Canada’s legislature is moving another bill to protect gun owners from its overreaching bureaucracy and take back some fraction of the freedoms that have been lost in the moral panics of the 90s.

At least in America – and arguably in several other countries – the gun rights movement no longer inhabits that era where the slightest lapse could lead to an extinction of liberty. Instead, an era has come where a serious and well-planned effort can lead to an expansion of liberty. It is time for us to come for a recognition that it is not gun rights that are under threat by now – it is gun control that is under threat.

And with this recognition, we should move to have a more truthful discussion with the freedom-loving public. Our message should now be a post-pessimist one – one when we rouse our friends and supporters not to fight a last-ditch, defensive fight against a collapse into the dark ages, but rather to fight an advance. We are winning, and we should act like it. We are now in a position of strength, and we should talk like it. Our tone should be now not one of fear – it should now, both in the legislatures, the gun periodicals, and the fundraising mailers, be one of optimism and strength.

Should we do so, we would be able to talk less and less about stopping anti-gun measures, and talk more – and take more haste in – implementing pro-gun ones. To speak from a position strength will reflect reality – and help us progress faster towards liberty.

We’re the winning team.

Let’s act like it.

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail
gun grabbers, hatred of Jews, Inspiration, Jewish history, resistance, self defense, The Zelman Partisans

Pant, pant, pant … posting as fast as I can to catch up!

20 Comments

First thing: Thank you BIG TIME to Sheila and Y.B. for carrying the blogging load the last week or so. I’ve been trying to get here for at least a small post but … life.

So I’d just like to give a couple of quick updates:

  • Thanks to everybody who submitted dumb anti-gun quotes for TZP targets. We’ve verified those that can be verified (and thank you so very much to you who submitted quotes with original-source links!) and are now passing the entries around among the TZP leadership group. We’re not sure exactly when we’ll announce the winners, and it may be that after we’ve chosen our “favorites” a designer will have the final say as he fits everything together. But we’ll keep you posted. We definitely got some grins and groans out of your submissions.
  • The same day our quote contest closed, Lucky Gunner announced the final results in its poll to give away the money owed to it by the Brady Center. Your votes kept TZP solidly in the middle of the pack all the way to the end. Our numbers were modest but we still came out in the vicinity of several larger, better-known groups. And the main thing is that we had an unprecedented chance to get noticed. Kudos to you.

Now, that said, here are some links I’ve been collecting for you:

  • A couple of my recent posts were about resistance within Germany to the Nazis. Y.B. sent these links to information on Christians who resisted on principle.
  • “They Hate You Because You’re Jewish, You Idiot!” No comment.
  • Man, this is (almost) enough to make a body like Chuck Schumer. And note how quickly the Obama White House stabbed him in the back.
  • This spring, I stumbled across a weird story about officials in a Greek town demanding — of all things! — that a star of David be removed from a Holocaust museum. Um … srsly? But the actions of a couple of politicians halfway around the world didn’t seem all that newsworthy, so I just sat on the link at the time.
  • Then more recently, Y.B. sent me these poll results — which put the actions of Greek officials into much more chilling perspective. No wonder the Jews of Europe are either getting out or beginning to agitate for the right to bear arms.
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail
Inspiration, Israel, mindset, resistance, The Zelman Partisans

What we do for love

5 Comments

Co-blogger Sheila has been telling you about the highlights of her recent trip to Israel. One thing she hasn’t told you is this:

TZPWesternWallPhoto_Sheila

That’s a closeup of one of the niches in the Western Wall or Kotel — what Americans not-so-respectfully refer to as the Wailing Wall. The slip of paper on the upper right contains the names of each TZP founding member and blogger, the names of our families, and TZP’s name.

I was so moved when Sheila told us she did that. A famous quote connected with the Western Wall is: “There are hearts and there are hearts. There are human hearts, and there are hearts of stone. There are stones and there are stones. There are silent stones, and there are stones which are hearts.” And I must say that what Sheila did melted my sometimes-stony heart.

—–

Life has taught me to be cynical and unsentimental. Aside from having a soft spot for dogs, I tend to be one who avoids or questions things I find to be vague, “soft,” or emotional. I’ve become a “just the facts, Ma’am” sort of person when it comes to claims that can’t be well-defined or proven through a rigorous examination.

Reading novels, I skip the mushy scenes. I’m baffled when people make religious arguments based on their feelings and quotes from scriptures (just as they’re baffled by my expectation of hard evidence). When a salesman or a preacher wants me to “experience” something before I gather the data about it, I’m instantly on guard. When Dumbledore tells Harry Potter that “love” made his baby self invincible against the evil power of Voldemort, I cringe and hit the fast-forward button. In fact, the dreadfully overused word “love” is in general enough to set my BS alarm clanging. Give me the facts, Ma’am. Just the facts.

I’m not really that cold — I hope! I’ve merely learned through a lifetime of experience that feelings sans facts are often a trap, nothing more than a form of manipulation and deception.

Our gun-hating opponents are excruciating examples of this. Their wild emotional rantings, their claims of sentiment toward the victims of shootings (victims in whose blood they gleefully dance), their stubborn choice to remain ignorant about firearms, their complete refusal to sit down and think about how the laws they demand would actually work in the real world, their bizarre lack of reasoning … all are perfect examples of why feeeeeelings should aways be suspect. Especially when someone uses their emotions (or tries to manipulate the emotions of others) as an excuse to get something they want.

—–

Of course, feelings can be plenty useful. That hinky sense you get when you see a suspicious stranger or enter a dangerous place. That inner voice that screams, “NO!” even when a course of action seems otherwise perfectly reasonable. That warmth that floods you when you realize you’ve met someone you can truly trust. That rush of satisfaction when you know you’ve gone the extra mile and done good. All great, all needed.

But when it comes to discovering truths that lie beyond our immediate realm, feelings are no substitute for accurate, checkable data. Give me the facts, Ma’am. Just the facts. I’ll decide for myself what to feel about them, thank you.

So when I saw Sheila’s photo and heard her describe what’s on that piece of paper — a prayer placed in an ancient wall for the people of TZP — at first I didn’t know why I felt so moved. I don’t believe there’s a god standing behind that wall, seeing, hearing, and above all caring about us (fellow blogger Y.B. will differ, of course). I don’t believe that the stones of the wall or the words on those slips of paper have any mystical power. Yet I felt a power just knowing what Sheila had done. I felt the power of the stones and the words and Sheila’s action in placing TZP in such an ancient holy place.

But why?

Many reasons, I think. But here’s the core thing: We who hold fast for gun rights and the human rights to life, liberty, and individual sovereignty ultimately do what we do out of love. Yes, that mushy, highly suspect word. There it is: love.

Oh yes, we have facts and data and knowledge on our side. Unlike the overwrought, screeching enemies of freedom, we analyze the data, we look at the facts on the table, we project the consequences of proposed laws into the future. We ask, “How does this work? Or would it work?” Some of us know the physics (that is, the facts) of the making of steel or the ballistics of a shot. Some of us have studied the history of firearms or firearms laws. Some of us can cite firearm statistics or crime statistics off the tops of our heads. Some track and analyze upcoming laws or regulatory actions. We have different areas of expertise when it comes to guns and gun rights. But generally, we tend to be people of the fact. We’re passionate about our commitment, but many of us got here by looking at the data or studying the history and knowing why we’re here.

Yet of course we don’t do what we do — we don’t join and stay in this endless struggle for freedom — because of facts alone. That wouldn’t be enough.

We stand here against all manner of hate and all attempts to smash our freedom. We stand like the stones of that ancient wall not only because we know we’re right. Being “right” is never enough; any moron can think he’s “right” about anything and still run for the hills the moment things get tough. We stand because we love life and liberty so much that surrender is inconceivable. What we do, we do for love.

It has been said of the Western Wall:

Secure and invincible with its Divine strength, the Kotel holds its own — throughout the generations of change, transformations and vicissitudes, the horrors and the shocks, which visited the land and its inhabitants. The Kotel is in them and with them.

…. [L]ike a stone fortress, it stands guard, without moving and without allowing its inner dignity to be sullied. It remains pure and exalted in the strength of its very essence…

There are hearts of stone and stones with hearts. Those who stand for gun rights are a wall, a fortress. It was right that Sheila placed TZP names in that niche in the Kotel. The words on that slip of paper aren’t just our names, individually. Our names stand for everyone who cares unyieldingly about self defense, the defense of others, and the undying principles of liberty. Our names in that wall stand for the love that holds so many great hearts so strong in this crucial cause.

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail
defense of others, duty, genocide, Inspiration, Jewish history, resistance

Defiance in the face of deadly evil

4 Comments

Yesterday, Y.B. wrote a remembrance of Lothar Kreyssig, a German judge who defied the Nazis. Kreyssig didn’t succeed in halting their genocidal plans, but he lived — and lived a good, meaningful life.

Unconsciously, it seems to have become part of modern myth that nobody, but nobody, in Germany openly defied the Nazis. Sure, people all over Europe covertly defied them in ways large and small. And partisans outside of Germany took up arms against them, attacking and fading into the woods. Finally, even the most downtrodden captives in Sobibor and Warsaw openly defended themselves against their monstrous tormentors.

But ordinary “Aryan” Germans? We’re so unaccustomed to thinking of them defying their rulers that “good German” remains a term of contempt 70 years after the fact.

But defy they did, even if it was rare and dangerous. Another example, besides Kreyssig’s refusal to give an official stamp to deadly eugenics, was the Rosenstrasse protest, in which “Aryan” wives laid their lives on the line to save their Jewish husbands.

The wives won. Some 1800 Jewish men were saved. Today, there’s a monument at the site of the protest that carries this inscription: “The strength of civil disobedience, the vigor of love overcomes the violence of dictatorship; Give us our men back; Women were standing here, defeating death; Jewish men were free.”

The wives not only saved their husbands. They revealed a weakness in the Nazi regime (that also applies to many tyrants in our day): even the worst brutes on earth squirm and cringe when the light of bad publicity shines on them.

—–

Germans also committed more acts of covert defiance than we give them credit for. A great example is a story that got quite a bit of coverage last year (two good versions here and here).

A German photographer, asked to submit entries for a Nazi-sponsored “perfect Aryan baby” contest, submitted the photo of a child he knew to be Jewish. Her adorable picture beat the rest of the competition and was printed on magazine covers and postcards.

The photographer didn’t ask the family’s permission and his act potentially put both them and himself in danger. At the time, the child’s parents were horrified. But today that baby (now known as Hessy Taft and a professor of chemistry in New York) says she’s quite proud to have been part of the deception.

The photographer wanted to prove that the Nazis were fools — and he succeeded wildly, even though he had to keep his victory and his laughter to himself.

—–

Just think how different, and how much less deadly, 20th century history might have been had even more “good Germans” showed their courage, anger, contempt, and love of decency and refused to be so “good.”

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail
defense of others, duty, genocide, Inspiration, resistance

Remembering Lothar Kreyssig

2 Comments

On July 6th 1986, Lothar Ernst Paul Kreyssig, passed away after living a life of honor and principle.  This was especially so during times when it seemed these virtues were rapidly leaving the world forever.

A member of the Confessing Church, he spent his later years working vigorously to atone for the wrong his countrymen had wrought, believing that even those who resisted should have, and could have, done far more to stop the evil in their midst.

Trained in the law, in Leipzig, he became a district court judge. Soon he was transferred to Brandenburg an der Havel and his new duties were as a guardianship judge for the mentally ill.

Many people think of Nazi Germany as pioneers in the field of eugenics, but that is not really so. That distinction belongs to the United States and Great Britain, and included such names as Margaret Sanger and Sir Francis Galton. Still, the eager understudy, Germany made up time with persistence and passion.

By the summer of 1940 a program known as Aktion T4
was quietly in full swing. The flip-side to nationwide programs encouraging childbearing among Aryans, this program worked to create “Racial Hygene” by removing the ill, the infirm, the defective… the üntermenschen, from the gene-pool of the Master Race. A race for the New World Order.

But, being Germans, everything about this quiet program had to be nice and tidy, with all the documents organized and everything correct. And legal.

Judge Kreyssig kept seeing reams of odd paperwork, often nearly identical, except for the names, cross his desk for approval. Dozens, then hundreds of people were dying under his watch. He soon concluded that this was in fact a forced euthanasia program on a huge scale, and he was placing his own imprimatur on the horrible act.

He refused to do so.

Moreover, he wrote Minister of Justice Franz Gurtner, protesting in very strong terms the treatment of people under his charge, including now, prisoners and residents of a concentration camp, writing:

“What is right is what benefits the people. In the name of this frightful doctrine — as yet, uncontradicted by any guardian of rights in Germany — entire sectors of communal living are excluded from [having] rights, for example, all the concentration camps, and now, all hospitals and sanatoriums.”

Trusting in German Jurisprudence, Judge Kreyssig then filed criminal charges against the program administrator, and issued an injunction against the operation.

Judge Kreyssig was in for a rude awakening. He was called to a meeting by the Justice Minister, and shown a letter authorizing the Aktion T4 signed by Adolph Hitler himself.

This was the Führerprinzip (Leader Principle) in ‘action”. The Law must serve the State. The Leader embodies the State. Thus, the letter of the Law bends to the will of the Leader.

Horrified, but not stupid, Judge Kreyssig, this very powerful and respected jurist, narrowly avoided being sent by the Gestapo to a concentration camp himself. Marginalized over the next two years, he was finally forced to retire from the bench.

Most of us know of the trials of major political and military leaders of the Nazi regime at Nuremburg. There were also trials of morally corrupt Doctors, and of willing (or worse) Prosecutors and Judges.

It is said that when the Nazi Judges were tried by the Allies at Nuremburg, they looked everywhere for a  Judge who under the Regime steadfastly refused to do evil. They found just one:

Lothar Kreyssig.

But, after refusing the seduction of the National Socialist German Workers Party, since the Judge lived in Saxony, he had a new problem. He was now in the “East Zone”… soon to become the new Deutsche Demokratishe Republik. Communist, East Germany.

And, THEY wanted him to be a Judge. Having seen this show before, he refused.

A life-long Evangelical (Protestant) Christian, instead he returned to a prior focus on his faith and community, becoming President of his church for the province of Saxony, and on to many other positions of community leadership.

Most noteworthy, in 1958 Mr. Kreyssig founded the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP), an international organization that continues to this day.

This organization’s view, as an outgrowth of the ideology of Confessing Church roots, calls for “repentance and reversal” on the part of those who do harm to others. Thus, in the context of postwar Germany, not just individual or communal guilt, but an earnest and direct request to aid those who were harmed.

The ARSP sends nearly two hundred volunteers annually to engage in long- and short-term social work for survivors in Belgium, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Ukraine, Israel and the U.S.   Over the years thousands have served.

When faced with a society filled with mindless evil, Judge Kreyssig refused to bend. When lured by a sister-evil, he refused. Instead, Mr. Kreyssig worked the rest of his life for true reconciliation and encouraged others to follow his lead.

A model for us all.

Kreyssig

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail
genocide, hatred of Jews, Inspiration, Israel, Jewish history, mindset, resistance, Sellouts and traitors

Profiles in Courage-updated

Leave a comment

One of the museums we visited was the Etzel museum in Tel Aviv. That monthly pass really is a good deal. I still have a couple days left on it, I keep contemplating popping back over there to just add a bit to my story, but I guess I won’t. There is more than one Etzel museum in Tel Aviv and this one was named for Amichai (Gidi) Paiglin.

This is one of those things that at the time seemed like a good idea, and seemed like it would be simple. I’d just make a few notes on the people and topics that really struck me and I wanted to share with our readers and then supplement with info from the net and put in a few links. That’s not how this turned out. What seemed to me, like something that would certainly have a page on Wikipedia, or I could find information “somewhere” on the web, there is nothing but a barren wasteland of info. At least for my first part, which is going to have to be done only from my notes and memory. Which at times is a barren wasteland in and of itself.

Ten days before the State of Israel was declared by David Ben-Gurion (whom I like less all the time) was the last day of a truce. The British were going to be pulling out, and The Irgun had decided to capture Jaffa. The battle had been pretty fierce and there were a many lives lost. In the area of of town where our story takes place the Irgun thought that they had an area where it would be safe for the women to bed down for the night, and that by the next morning they would finish the operation. That probably seemed like a good idea at the time as well. It didn’t work out the way it was planned either. The Arabs managed to sneak past the Etzal during the night and were in the parts of the town where most of the women were.

Marion Aharoni was one of the two women in the minaret who woke up to the sound of Arabic voices the next morning and realized that there were enough of them that the forces in that part of the town wouldn’t be able to hold it. Apparently communications had already been disrupted, and so Marion told the other gal to try to get to headquarters and advise them of the situation. In the meantime headquarters had become aware of what was happening and was trying to sort out their resources and their people to figure out how to best deal with the situation at hand. One of the people in charge of a unit was Ruth Moritz, I believe I have her code name down as Dvora. Ruth was amazing, she was a beautiful woman, I think, and had shown a lot of command skill. Her boyfriend Avaham Canaaite had been killed at the battle of Yafo (Jaffa). Ruth was near headquarters when the other lady finally arrived and informed them of the situation. Headquarters informed Ruth they had talked to their people in that area and no one was left in the minaret. Ruth said she was going to head over there anyway to make sure Marion got out. Headquarters told her no. Ruth said she was going and for everyone else who had legs to get out of there now. Headquarters advised Ruth she should go see to her unit and make sure they were all ready to roll, either evacuate or fight. Ruth told them she would just go check the minaret herself and make sure no one was left behind to face the Arab mob alone. And so she went. If she met fighters along the way, she advised them to get out. She made it to the minaret where Marion was still holed up waiting for orders. Not that there was a thing she could have done. By the time Ruth made it there the Arab mobs were very close. And there were a lot of them. And so to avoid falling into the hands of the Arab mobs they chose to jump from the minaret. Many Arabs at that time, as now, have the same unfortunate goal and tendency to slaughter Jews when possible. No one really knew what happened to the women. After two years a mass grave was found with the bones of two women and three men. I believe it was four years later that they finally found out what had happened.

Another update: We knew Ruth had incredible courage to go back and try to get out Marion who was in her company because she felt she was responsible for Marion. But something that is in the video that I had forgotten is Marion’s incredible courage. Marion was still in that tower because she had not heard the command to retreat. She heard the Arab mobs, she knew they were close. But she stayed and held her position because she had not heard the retreat command. What kind of incredible courage would that take? These were two amazing, smart, strong, courageous women. They deserve to have their names known and remembered outside of Israel.

The view of the minaret I think they jumped from was visible from my “office”.

View from my "office"
View from my “office”

And the evening we walked home from Yafo to Tel Aviv we walked by what I believe is the tower they jumped from.

The minaret
The minaret

The other thing that was striking to me was the Altalena. Yes, of course I knew about the Altalena, the ship. I did not know that was the name Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote under in Russian newspapers though. The other thing was the date. I was at this Etzel museum on 1 June. 1 June 1948 was the day the Irgun, Hagana, and Lehi were all to have been disbanded and incorporated into the newly formed IDF. The cliff notes version of this is the Altalena was a ship bound for Israel carrying fighters and much needed weapons to the Irgun. Timing was an issue, and David Ben-Gurion, was aware the ship was coming in and basically sold the Irgun and Menachem Begin out. The IDF was ordered to attack the Altalena if they wouldn’t turn over all the weapons to the new IDF. That did not happen, and a firefight broke out between the IDF and the Irgun. Menachem Begin headed for the Altalena in a rowboat under fire from the IDF. He made it to the ship and they sailed for Tel Aviv where there were more IDF forces. Ben-Gurion ordered the ship sunk on the high seas by the new Israeli air force before it reached Tel Aviv.

Heiman Shamir Deputy Commander of the Air Force, tried to convince non-Jewish pilot volunteers to attack the ship. However, three pilots refused to participate in the mission, one of them saying, “You can kiss my foot. I did not lose four friends and fly 10,000 miles in order to bomb Jews.”

I told a Rabbi once, not everything that wasn’t born Jewish is an enemy of Jews. These three pilots would nicely prove this point.

In the end, Jews fired on Jews, and the Altalena was sunk despite having raised a white flag on Begin’s orders as he attempted to prevent a civil war.

Take-a-way thoughts of mine. We know the name of the shooter in the church in South Carolina, we know the name of several famous gangsters in America’s history, and possibly some names of famous Israelis. Certainly Ben-Gurion and Begin. While I was at the museum some groups of young soldiers were coming through. They were to study at the museum as part of the class apparently. In fact one room we were unable to access. It was a room where perhaps there was a movie you could view, but it was being used for a party of some sort. But these student soldiers study the people, the events and the history. And it matters to some of them, and perhaps to some, not so much. I was actually very surprised there was nothing on the net about Ruth Moritz and Marion Aharoni, but there isn’t, and so perhaps this telling, as imperfect as it is, will keep a memory of valor, courage and leadership alive.

Ruth Moritz and Marion Aharoni
Ruth Moritz and Marion Aharoni

And make no mistake, Ruth was a leader. When we have people like Shannon Watts, Dianne Feinstine, Nancy Pelosi and every other anti-gun harpie out there telling women that they won’t be safer if they can defend themselves, you know what crap it is. When you have the screeching harpies telling women that if they have a gun someone will take it away from them and use it on them, that’s crap. When you have the faux feminists telling women that a gun is too complicated, that they should get mace and a whistle, you know it’s crap. When the faux feminists tell women to just call the big strong policeman and wait, that’s crap. Ruth and Marion were true feminists, they were strong, beautiful women that fought in defense of themselves, their families and their country.

Right now part of America is busy throwing away the heritage that they have been sold by a liberal educational system and biased media. They throw it away with both hands because they don’t know true history, and don’t understand what they are throwing away. I was very glad to see those young Israelis going through that museum.

When in a dire situation, more people on your side is a very good thing.

The Altalena take-a-way? Politicians do what’s best for politicians. Betrayal sadly, apparently, should be expected. It’s about the power baby, it’s about the power.

Etzel Museum
Etzel Museum

 

I have never been so happy to need to update something as I am to add this. If you whine to the right people, sometimes, just sometimes, really great things happen. The whining was about the lack of information on Ruth online. The victim listener of my whining suggested that some problems are solved by going back to the language in which the incident occurred. That would be Hebrew. JACKPOT!!!

I had forgotten that Marion was in Ruth’s unit. A bit more than friends, I believe Ruth was her leader.

These sites are all in Hebrew, but with evil google’s translate you can read a rough version in English. Enough to get more information. AND, a movie. I’ve written the museum to see if they would consider posting the English version I saw while I was there.

Wikipedia

Etzel Museum remembrance page

Irgun Fighters of Independence

תודה לך דב עוד פעם

Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmail