“One – two – three… eight feet long Two strides across, the rest is dark… Life is a fleeting question mark One – two – three… maybe another week. Or the next month may still find me here, But death, I feel is very near. I could have been 23 next July I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.”
On November 7th 1944 a valiant young Jewsess stared down her Nazi executioners and returned to Heaven. Hannah Senesh was born in Hungary, and despite being raised in an assimilated household, felt compelled to ‘make aliya’ to the Land of Israel in 1939. She worked in an agricultural settlement, rebuilding the dream of two-thousand years.
“My God, my God May there be no end To the sea, to the sand, The splash of the water, The glow of the sky, The prayer of man”
When the extent of the Shoah of the Jews of Europe became evident, she volunteered to fight with the British Army, against the Axis. Soon, she volunteered again, to join other commandos and parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe, in order to aid the underground in Hungary.
She fought for three months with Tito’s partisans, and then made her way to Hungary, only to be caught by the enemy.
Hannah was brutally, and repeatedly, tortured. Despite their best efforts, the Nazis failed to get any information from her.
“Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart’s secret places. Blessed is the heart that knows, for honors sake, to stop its beating. Blessed is the match, consumed in kindling flame.”
When they put her before a firing squad, she refused a blindfold. A gifted poet, diarist, and writer… a brave and determined warrior against evil, lived, and resisted them, to the end.
“There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world even though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind.”
On the 30th & 31’s of October, 1950, Tibor “Ted” Rubin was having a particularly crappy couple of days at work.
Having recently become a “GI Joe” for his new country, Tibor found out that Jew Hatred was not merely a European phenomenon. Sent as a rifleman to Korea, his sergeant simply delighted in “volunteering” “that Jew” repeatedly for the most dangerous of missions.
Now, Tibor was tasked with single-handedly covering the other soldiers’ retreat in the face of a massive enemy advance.
But, armed with not a small helping internal strength, remarkable bravery, and the help of Heaven, Tibor prevailed again and again. On those two days, and on many other occasions both before and since, he not only survived, but heroically aided his fellow soldiers, with resolve, ingenuity, and good humor.
Tibor Rubin was born to a middle-class family in Paszto, Hungary, in 1929. When the Nazi’s came, his parents tried to smuggle him to the relative safety of Switzerland. He was caught in Italy and sent to Mauthausen. His sister and stepmother were murdered in Auschwicz, and his father in Buchenwald.
When American troops liberated the prisoners at Mauthausen, Tibor sought a new live in America. He was determined to repay this “debt”, by joining the U.S. Army. Due to his difficulty with English, it took three tries to be accepted.
In 2005, he receive the Medal of Honor from President George W. Bush.
“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty: Corporal Tibor Rubin distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism during the period from July 23, 1950, to April 20, 1953, while serving as a rifleman with Company I, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division in the Republic of Korea. While his unit was retreating to the Pusan Perimeter, Corporal Rubin was assigned to stay behind to keep open the vital Taegu-Pusan Road link used by his withdrawing unit. During the ensuing battle, overwhelming numbers of North Korean troops assaulted a hill defended solely by Corporal Rubin. He inflicted a staggering number of casualties on the attacking force during his personal 24-hour battle, single-handedly slowing the enemy advance and allowing the 8th Cavalry Regiment to complete its withdrawal successfully. Following the breakout from the Pusan Perimeter, the 8th Cavalry Regiment proceeded northward and advanced into North Korea. During the advance, he helped capture several hundred North Korean soldiers. On October 30, 1950, Chinese forces attacked his unit at Unsan, North Korea, during a massive nighttime assault. That night and throughout the next day, he manned a .30 caliber machine gun at the south end of the unit’s line after three previous gunners became casualties. He continued to man his machine gun until his ammunition was exhausted. His determined stand slowed the pace of the enemy advance in his sector, permitting the remnants of his unit to retreat southward. As the battle raged, Corporal Rubin was severely wounded and captured by the Chinese. Choosing to remain in the prison camp despite offers from the Chinese to return him to his native Hungary, Corporal Rubin disregarded his own personal safety and immediately began sneaking out of the camp at night in search of food for his comrades. Breaking into enemy food storehouses and gardens, he risked certain torture or death if caught. Corporal Rubin provided not only food to the starving Soldiers, but also desperately needed medical care and moral support for the sick and wounded of the POW camp. His brave, selfless efforts were directly attributed to saving the lives of as many as forty of his fellow prisoners. Corporal Rubin’s gallant actions in close contact with the enemy and unyielding courage and bravery while a prisoner of war are in the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Army.”
(AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson, File)
A new book on his story; Single Handed, by Daniel M. Cohen, came out this past summer
Here, also, is a brief oral history from the late Mr. Rubin himself, who passed away this past December. May his memory be a blessing.
I see a lot of stories daily about how carrying a concealed weapon has saved someone’s life, or the life of someone they love. These stories usually take place in a urban setting. It might be a fairly empty parking lot at 2200 or someone’s home, but most of the stories are more urban. I suppose that makes sense, more people.
But when many people think of the rural areas, they tend to think more of the tough, self-reliant type of folks, like Roy Rogers, the Cartwrights or Little House on the Prairie.
What set me down this thought path was a story I saw the other day and it reminded me of when I first moved to my current home, many, many years ago. I considered living places and found the pet deposit for two horses, a flock of chickens, four cats and three dogs was very spendy. I also am temperamentally unsuited to living in a city, so farm it was and I moved from a smaller farm to this one. When I would go to the barn to do chores I took all the dogs with me, family outing as it were. Not long after I had lived here I was coming back to the house from the barn and a man I had never seen was standing near the stock gate. Not a dog had barked, the wind must have been blowing the other direction. Nothing happened, he had heard from someone that I might be someone to talk to about training a horse. But it made me very aware of my vulnerability. No matter what else was going on in my life, this was something I needed to address. I didn’t really know any of my neighbors yet, so most people that stopped by would have been “strangers”. It was long before concealed carry laws or castle doctrine laws were in effect. It’s not that I didn’t have tools, I did. I needed to have them where they could be used. A .357 is dandy, unless it’s in the house, so I started doing things differently. But while laws weren’t in place to protect me, I could get access to the tools that would allow me to protect myself. Some states have laws protecting you only in your home or car, some, anyplace you legally have a right to be including any place on your property, not just your home.
So how did I get to thinking back all those years ago? I saw a story about yet another Jewish farmer in Israel who might be facing charges for shooting an Arab. I will never say farmers in America have it easy. I’ve known better since I was two. But farmers in Israel have a whole different set of dangers. The arabs and bedouins there cut fence, steal livestock, kill livestock, ruin orchards, poison guard dogs, attack the farmers and their families and sometimes kill them. Sadly, sometimes the government forces that are tasked with protecting the farmers seem to favor protecting the arab farmers. Whether it is yet another example of trying not to offend the world, or the police just don’t want to bother with it, I don’t know. Some farmers have been driven off their land, some have had to give up raising livestock, but it is most certain that many farmers in Israel face challenges and dangers that we over here do not face on a daily basis. The case that had been going on was of a farmer that had three arabs show up to steal his truck. He heard a noise and went outside, there they were with a metal bar and three to one odds. He fired in the air and was unaware that he had even hit one. When security forces finally showed up they found the body in a nearby field.
“Sunday’s shooting in Beit Elazri was justified,” Naim concludes. “It was an act of self-defense, and prevented innocent people from getting hurt. Every thief must know that he might die. It must be anchored in law, just as in the cradle of democracy, the United States, where every citizen has the right to self-defense of his body and his property, including the shooting of trespassers.”
I don’t know that we shoot trespassers all that much, but his point that we should have the right to defend ourselves, and criminals know we have the right and ability to defend ourselves, and that should slow them down some. Unless you live in a state with a lot of liberals where ever criminal life is sacred, yours not so much. This is made possible by electing liberal politicians because they think rights come from them, not G-d.
Farmers have gone to jail for defending themselves against four to one odds, for example Shai Dromi. While he was acquitted on manslaughter charges he was convicted of having an illegal weapon. It was his father’s. The good thing that came of the mess was it did start to make people aware of what the farmers face on a daily basis.
Now happily the farmer accused this time, has been cleared by the police of any wrong doing, so he won’t be spending time in jail.
Another good thing that came out of this is MKs Amir Ohana and Eitan Broshi submitted a petition that called for a emergency meeting to discuss the issue of self-defense in rural areas. Hopefully more than discussion will come of it. Since MK Ohana is involved, I am kind of thinking something more will.
Another thing I found very interesting was comments by Dr. Jodi Broder, Head of the Clinical Social Law program. I’m the one that put some of this in bold, not Dr. Broder.
Dr. Broder explained why, in his view, proactive self-defense is justified: “We, as citizens, gave the State all the rights over our defense and our property, under the assumption that it would uphold those values, but what happens when the State doesn’t defend its citizens?” he asked. In such a reality, he asserts, the right of a citizen to defend himself and his property returns to him.
Broder qualifies this assertion, however, noting, “not under every circumstance, but within the parameters of self-defense. You are allowed to defend yourself when there is an immediate danger to your life or property. In such a reality, when nobody else is around to defend you and you react in a proportional manner, not in order to punish but only to defend; when the burglar is endangering me or another or our property, I am allowed to defend as long as immediate action is required and the State is not present to supply this defense.”
In response to the question of whether there is an ethical problem with the fact that the same State that does not supply defense for citizens also limits citizens’ ability to defend themselves, Broder replied, “It is impossible to live in a situation in which there are no rules and each man is his own lawmaker. A burglar also has rights which we, as a state, choose to uphold. You may defend, but not punish.
“One of the problems in the State is that the government does not supply adequate defense of property in certain communities, and people feel existential danger and danger to their property; we may see reactions that seem disproportionate at first glance, but when you consider that the Police are probably not coming, and there’s nobody who’s going to help, and it’s my property and my life, the picture changes.”
First, I don’t think we should ever give over our rights to protect ourselves, I’m not suggesting we do so. I also find it interesting that the Israelis are allowed to use force when the criminal is stealing things. In America it’s usually only to defend life. Of course what they are stealing may well affect your livelihood, but I find this variance interesting as well. Second and I think this applies to any of us, the prosecutor in their nice warm, well lit office, reading over the police report as they thoughtfully sip their fresh cup of coffee is going decide someone’s future, or lack of one. They will decide if your response was proportional or not. Consider having someone like Kathleen Kane as the prosecutor. Kane was a Bloomberg backed anti-gun candidate. YESH! But I also see how his comments could apply to gun free zones, they chose to forbid us the ability to defend ourselves, then they have chosen that responsibility. An old discussion, I know. I’m not talking burger joints, I’m thinking more like hospitals, government buildings. Places of worship are targets as well, but I think their response to how they wish to handle these things has more autonomy, but I could be wrong. But back to the prosecutor, you have a person in their nice office, possibly who has never been in a rural area deciding what is going to happen to you based on what has already happened to you, when you were all alone at 0300 in the middle of a field.
And realistically? Whether a field in the middle of the night or supermarket parking lot during the day, it doesn’t matter much. If something bad happens, and you “need” someone else to come help you there is a good chance that may not happen in time.
Just some things to think about as election day looms and you might have a chance to ask your state candidates some questions.
Another thing that popped up as I was poking around to see how this particular farmer came out was that some of the farmers in 2008 began to band together forming modern versions of HaShomer. It was founded by Yoel Zilberman when his father told him he was going bankrupt and going to have to leave the farm. HaShomer HaChadash, The New Guardians, was formed to help protect the farmers and allow them to continue farming in a financially sound manner. It is now a big active program.
Founder Yoel Zilberman, can tell you about it. It’s a very interesting story. Subtitled, luckily.
So thinking back on when I first moved here, and looking at the dangers these farmers in Israel face daily I’ve had some thoughts. Urban or rural, we all face dangers. The dangers these Israeli farmers face are more like the things someone living in the gun free zone utopia of Chicago would face, with just about as much help from the system at times. But then any raw milk or organic farmer may have faced the same dangers in America. Only instead of from Bedouins, from a alphabet soup of state and federal agencies. The big difference is, when it’s the farmer rather than the Chicago resident that faces the danger it can affect a lot of people. The farmers produce food, and when that doesn’t happen it causes problems for a lot of people. The Israeli farmers are getting help now, not from the government so much, as regular people all pitching in to help. It’s sort of like a program we had in America for a while called “Ranch Rescue”. But the foundation of all these programs was the same as the old days of the Cartwrights and Roy Rogers. It was people pitching in to help each other to over come challenges and threats. People that weren’t relying on the system, but each other. As the weather changes and we prepare for storms knowing our neighbors and having plans and ways we could help each other might be a very good idea. We’ve had hurricanes in one part of the country, we will have snow and ice coming for other parts of the country, and then we move into tornado and rain and flood season. Sometimes you know there’s bad weather headed your way, and sometimes, it’s just there.
And because I like to end with something a little nice, here’s a short little scene from Eish Kodesh. It really is beautiful isn’t it?
Two wondrous news stories this week got me thinking about our upcoming — and disastrously non-wondrous — presidential election.
Neither of the stories had the slightest thing to do with electoral politics. Quite the opposite. They are rather amazing “feelgood” stories. Neither has anything to do with the U.S. or politics at all. But both are about the triumph of individuals or small groups over decades, or even millennia, of adversity.
First is the tale of Ysrael Kristal. He just celebrated his bar mitzvah.
He also just got named as the world’s oldest man by Guinness. Yes, he finally celebrated his bar mitzvah at the age of 113.
As a young boy, Polish-born Yisrael Kristal looked forward to turning 13 when he could celebrate his bar mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ritual. But that was 1916 and World War I crushed that hope. Little did he know that he would wait a century for that ceremony.
Kristal barely survived the next world war as a prisoner in Auschwitz. After WWII, he rebuilt his life in Israel, raising a family and opening a business. Earlier this year, he was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest man.
Some accomplishment, eh? And after so much tragedy and loss.
They are black Africans. Physically, they resemble other sub-Saharan tribespeople. But their own legends and traditions have told them they are Jews. Part of the Diaspora. From Israel. And what do you know? A few years ago, DNA analysis backed up those legends.
Lemba men carry the Cohen Modal Haplotype, a set of Y chromosome characteristics typical of the Jewish priesthood, at about the same rate as that of major Jewish populations. For many, the genetic findings validated the Lemba’s connection to Judaism, further inspiring their quest to reconnect with the faith. Their relationship with the larger Jewish community is now helping them preserve their culture and look out for vulnerable community members just as Lemba traditions once did.
And now they’re building their first synagogue with help from a U.S.-based group that serves isolated, emerging, or returning Jewish communities. This and other help come at a perfect time, when the tribe has been struggling to take care of itself and its members.
So after 100 years Ysrael Kristal celebrates his coming of age and after thousands of years, the Lemba discover their true identity and begin to build a spiritual base to match their cultural and genetic one.
—–
But why would their heartwarming stories bring me to think of the no-good-news election lying less than a month ahead of us?
I’ll get to that in a second, but first I have to say I’m speaking only for myself when I talk politics. The Zelman Partisans as an organization takes no position on the presidential race (or any other). A couple of our board members are Trump supporters. A few more of us here on the blog consider Trump to be, shall we say slightly untrustworthy on Second Amendment issues and all other issues of life, liberty, and the universe. No one hereabouts is insane enough to v*te for Hillary Clinton because even though she lies about everything else, we believe her 100% when she says she wants the “Australian option” on our guns and gun rights.
But I think it’s clear to most everybody that this election is a rolling catastrophe, and that — whoever wins, whatever happens — the catastrophe will continue to roll long beyond the inauguration of the next president of the U.S. We are in angry, desperate, perilous times — and may only be at the beginning of them.
Maybe these perils will pass and we’ll emerge safe and prosperous in a few years. But maybe we’ll end up in WWIII. Or a deeper-than-ever depression. Maybe we’ll end up with either “left-wing” or “right-wing” brownshirts in the streets. Curbs on free speech. Border walls that fence us in but fail to fence others out. Increasing surveillance, with increasing “security” breaches that leave us far less secure. No matter who wins, we’ll almost certainly end up with further restrictions on our gun rights (perhaps mild, perhaps draconian). We are already so polarized that it’s certain that the losing side will nurse grudges while the winning side gloats and tries to wield power by executive diktat. Faction will continue all-out-war with faction and any illusion of the rule of law or respect for the poor old battered Constitution will be shattered. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the indomitable bureaucracy will march on, controlling life more and more — as it always does, no matter what party imagines it’s in power.
You can argue all you want about which side is less bad. But you can’t credibly argue that our immediate political future looks good.
We are in for hard times. And our freedoms — any of them, probably all of them — are going to suffer.
Quite possibly in the next few years and beyond, we’ll have moments, and more than moments, years, maybe decades, in which we lose both freedom and hope. We’ll despair. Some of us will be tempted to surrender. Friends will betray friends. Causes will implode. Losses will pile up. Injustices will pierce us to the heart. Good people will be punished for harmless deeds. Innocent people will be forced to turn outlaw. Many will suffer. Many will break down in grief.
So for those moments, I point you back to Ysrael Kristal and the Lemba Jews of Zimbabwe. They were lost but now are found. They suffered but ultimately triumphed.
And so bloody damn well will the keepers of freedom and the defenders of individual life.
We all think we would. But the reality of WWII tells us that defying deadly power, especially for the sake of those we’ve been taught to think of as “other,” is an act of rare and admirable courage.
The linked article has an agenda. That agenda is not about helping Jews. That agenda is, in fact, a bait-and-switch. The article tells the tales of brave, principled individuals who saved hunted Jews from death. Then it shames us over the issue of what today’s governments should do about Islamic refugees.
My main reason for linking that article is the stories of individual courage and an upcoming Ken Burns documentary you may want to watch: Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War. Who were the Sharps?
Unto the breach stepped a 33-year-old woman from Massachusetts named Martha Sharp.
With steely nerve, she led one anti-Nazi journalist through police checkpoints in Nazi-occupied Prague to safety by pretending that he was her husband.
Another time, she smuggled prominent Jewish opponents of Naziism, including a leading surgeon and two journalists, by train through Germany, by pretending that they were her household workers.
“If the Gestapo should charge us with assisting the refugees to escape, prison would be a light sentence,” she later wrote in an unpublished memoir. “Torture and death were the usual punishments.”
Sharp was in Europe because the Unitarian Church had asked her and her husband, Waitstill Sharp, a Unitarian minister, if they would assist Jewish refugees. Seventeen others had refused the mission, but the Sharps agreed — and left their two small children behind in Wellesley, Mass.
The documentary about the Sharps comes out this Tuesday.
I’ve decided to try to be creative. I made ya’ll a movie. The reading was part of a radio program and then I spent time collecting pictures I thought would go well with each part and tried to make the timing on the photo and the reading come out right. Yeah, I love ya’ll that much. So this is my first, and possibly only, multimedia video column.
Not long after I heard this recitation as part of Walter Bingham’s radio show I heard about some Jewish leaders in Rhode Island who are lobbying some of the pro-self defense legislators in the state to make it easier for criminals to attack defenseless people. They felt that if good, law-abiding citizens did not have the means to defend themselves and criminals were aware of that, then crime rates would surely drop. That children would be safer as they watched their parents attacked, unable to have the means to mount an effective defense of themselves and their children. Well, perhaps I’m paraphrasing a bit, a little.
But I was sad to hear this. Like I said, after having heard the recitation, and hearing the cries for more defenseless victims I can only shake my head. There are those that think they can find logic in why some are attacked. Dafna Meir was attacked because she lived in Otniel. No, she was attacked because she was Jew living in Israel. The horrible photos are from the Har Nof Synagogue massacre. Not to mention Hevron. There have been attacks on Churches, Synagogues and Jewish Community Centers in the U.S. And law enforcement have managed to stop some before they happen. I read a column that says ISIS now has a hit list of 15,000 people in the U.S. One entire church is on it. Some of the people have been notified by the FIB FBI that they are targets, many have not and the list is not publicly available. I guess what with covering for Hillary and all, it takes away from the time available to let people know they are targeted by ISIS. In the article it talks about an attack that was recently thwarted at a large church in Detroit.
But as I listened to the speaker, and thought about the images I could put with the reading I can’t help but wonder if those community leaders calling for defenseless victims shouldn’t do a brief review of history, at the least a brief review of Israeli history. Seems like there is an old saying. Something about “Those who ignore the past….”
Ted Nugent shows protested over singer’s controversial remarks
“The fair reflects the values of the entire county, and having Ted Nugent perform at the fair would reflect tolerance of racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, xenophobia, ableism, and incivility toward people who protest his remarks or cancel his shows,” former social studies teacher Jennifer Vogt-Erickson wrote.
Sadly, I let this anniversary slip my mind. Happily, a friend reminded me of this, and that this was always popular with Aaron Zelman and his original crew.
When the Israelites were at Kadesh-Barnea, Moses selected leaders of the Twelve Tribes as scouts, to go in advance into the Promised Land, and report back what they found. The people remained behind to await their return.
Upon returning, ten of twelve scouts gave grave reports of terrifying foes. Despite the people having been witness to unparalleled miracles wrought on their behalf, again-and-again… they lost their nerve, and recoiled from entering the Land, preferring to stay in the Wilderness.
G-d responded by declaring that with two exceptions, the entire generation would be accommodated in their insistent lack of Emuna. They would live out their lives wandering the Wilderness; their people’s destiny held in abeyance until they were gone.
The Sages tell us that The People had been refined to the point where their destiny was at hand. Still, at the very moment when they were to enter the Land, to follow the Torah, and make their home a beacon for the Nations, they succumbed to fear. So, G-d provided them, during their wanderings, even more support and instruction, such that their children would persevere. The first lesson was at the hands of Amalek.
Elie Wiesel has passed away. A survivor of the Holocaust. Prolific author. Compelling witness to mindless atrocity. A giant in our time. Gone. But his legacy lives on. Many words have and will be written about this man and the values he fought for. Raised in the traditions of the Vizhnitzer Rebbe, and learned in both religious and secular worlds, he dedicated his life to the good of mankind.
Sadly, there was one shortcoming. He allied himself often (undoubtedly to spread his message as wide and as deep as possible) with some less than savory people, including many of the so-called “Leaders” of major “Jewish” organizations. Many of these “Leaders” supported policies that were little more than western liberal political, social, and cultural mores, slicked up with Jewish trappings.
Hekshered treif, one might say.
Perhaps the worst, most Anti-Semitic, policy these “Leaders” embraced, was Victim Disarmament. They are always at the forefront of this suicidal movement. You would think that in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust, there would be some second thoughts on this, since the actors were the victims very own governments…
You would be wrong. Dead wrong.
Research established that the Gun Control Act of 1968 was directly modeled after the Nuremburg Laws, and that true-to form, every genocide in recent history had as a necessary precursor, the systematic disarming of the intended victims.
These “Leaders”, presented with the evidence, clamped their eyes shut, clamped their hands over their ears, and refused to examine it. Aaron Zelman offered it to Mr. Wiesel. He likewise would not look at it.
So, while recognizing the heroic stature, and magnificent legacy, of Elie Wiesel, and (confident that his time before the heavenly tribunal is very brief) we pray for his soul.
But, we must leave it to those who follow in this World, to open their eyes to this truth, and thereby stand better armed against evil. Join us, won’t you?
I guess I’ve had a couple trips down memory lane lately. Well, other people’s memory as well as my own.
I saw this iconic picture yesterday hanging on a wall and it started a conversation between me and another lady sitting there. So I looked up the history on it. Far from being faked as has been supposed by some,
Lunch atop a skyscraper
On September 20, 1932, high above 41st Street in Manhattan, 11 ironworkers took part in a daring publicity stunt. The men were accustomed to walking along the girders of the RCA building (now called the GE building) they were constructing in Rockefeller Center. On this particular day, though, they humored a photographer, who was drumming up excitement about the project’s near completion. Some of the tradesmen tossed a football; a few pretended to nap. But, most famously, all 11 ate lunch on a steel beam, their feet dangling 850 feet above the city’s streets.
For these dudes, eating lunch, having a smoke, reading a paper 850 feet above the ground was not a big deal. Another place, another time. It’s like Sheila, can we take a picture of you feeding your animals? Business as usual.
Then I got a email from a friend of mine with pictures of tinker toys, drive in movies, Dippity Do, Howdy Doody, saddle oxfords, and many more. All things I certainly remember. Another place, another time.
Then I had a conversation with my Mom today, and we talked about the picture in the course of the conversation. How we were as a people then. Tough, strong, brave, and we wanted to make our own way in the world. We wanted our children to have more and better chances than we did. We wanted to leave the world a better place for them. And often that was in the form of hard work, dangerous work, creative work, and sometimes war. Another place, another time.
And now, our children are “children”. In college they seek counseling from the trauma of seeing a name written in chalk. They need “safe spaces” in college, and college communications professors (fired now at University of Missouri at Columbia) trying to shut down, well, communications. They need the segregated “safe spaces” that the civil rights movement fought against a mere 50 years ago. Those struggles forgotten and dishonored. Another place, another time.
Instead of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington we have the dimocratic toddler time as they enjoy their catered in meals, bathroom breaks and publicity photo ops, rather than working to do right until they collapse. They are pitchin’ a hissy fit as they try to take rights, self-defense, endowed by our creator, not them. Another place, another time.
Dimocrat toddler time
Recently a holocaust survivor publicly confronted former London Mayor Ken Livingstone about several statements, one of which was hitler was a Zionist. He made several other erroneous statements and the radio host corrected him. He knew so much that wasn’t true.
“It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.” ~~Ronald Reagan
But it was the statement of Mala Tribich, survivor of Bergen-Belsen that hit me hard.
“I find them very offensive and hurtful when people belittle the Holocaust. When they use the Holocaust to score a political point,” she said.
“I really can’t see it. They are usually people in high places. I take them as being intelligent and educated. Yet they can stoop so low to use the Holocaust to better their positions. What really bothers me is that they do it whilst there are some survivors still around. What will they do when we’re all gone?”
As anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise world wide, entire political parties are openly anti-Semitic, anti-Israel or both, and it’s accepted or excused. They say things that would have gotten them shunned, kicked out of the political arena or the papers would have been chewing them up with the facts of their lies. Another place, another time.
Our wonderful Nicki and I exchanged some e-mails today talking about Moshe Feiglin, and she nailed it.
I just think it’s a sad state of our world that we actually hold men such as this as heroes. They should be the NORM. They should be the rule, not the exception, ya know?
And they did used to be, in another place, another time.
And so, someday the survivors will be gone, and then what will they (the liberals, the anti-Semites, the anti-Israel people) do? They will be confronted by me. And they will be confronted by Zelman’s Partisans, and they will be confronted by good, strong and brave people everywhere. People that seem to come from another place, another time.
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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