Category Archives: Inspiration

defense of others, genocide, Inspiration, Jewish history, resistance, self defense

Whispers from the Nabiloka

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Guest commentary
Exclusive to The Zelman Partisans
by Historian

During the Second World War, a variety of partisan groups arose in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany. In the East, Poland, the Ukraine and Byelorussia, and into Russia itself, some of these partisan organizations were partially or primarily composed of Jews who had fled German attempts to concentrate them into ghettos or who had fled the ghettos themselves. One of these was made famous by the movie Defiance, starring Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski, the leader of this partisan group. This fictionalized account of the Bielski Otryad, which hid in the Nabiloka forest in what is now western Byelorussia I found compelling, and it awoke an ongoing interest in the history of the partisan groups that arose from the German invasion.

These groups varied considerably, as one might expect. Some were comprised of mainly young more or less healthy males, and geared towards military action against the Germans. Other groups, such as the Bielski Otryad, were more inclusive, taking in any Jew that wished to join, regardless of their fitness or prior employment. I was impressed at the survival of Bielski’s group in the face of both anti-semitism from the Soviets and ongoing attacks from the Germans, but I found it surprising to learn that partisan groups composed almost exclusively of young strong males, dedicated to fighting the Germans and resisting the invaders, fared much worse than groups like the Bielski Otryad whose members had widely varied backgrounds, and whose primary goal was survival.

Most of those young fit men died and their groups were wiped out, while the Bielski Otryad survived the war, growing even as the Nazis chased them through the Nabiloka forest. Some of the Bielski Otryad members died during the war, but when they were met by advancing Russian troops, they numbered 1200 Jews, the largest number of Jews saved by Jews during the war. Two of the three Bielski brothers (Tuvia and Zus; Asael was killed in 1944 fighting for the Soviets) survived also, traveling to Israel and ultimately emigrating to these presently united States in 1956.

It appears that there were two key factors at play; one was that the primary goal of the Bielski Otryad was not to kill Germans, but to help Jews survive. The other was that even deep in the taiga, there was survival value in having a wide range of skills available to the group. A wide range of outlook, experience and opinion allowed the group to better cope when conditions or circumstances changed.

There is a lesson in this for the Liberty Movement.

Today, I see a wide range of opinion about the path forward for individual freedom. Many of those espousing these various opinions bitterly attack others in the Liberty movement for their ‘impure’ or ‘imperfect’ ideas, or slather acid criticism on those who disagree in one particular or another. Topics ranging from the ideal caliber for pistols or rifles to whether or not we need or should have a Constitution and everything in between are viciously debated, and barbed words fly back and forth growing more heated with each exchange.

To what end? Cui Bono?

What is the goal of the Liberty Movement? More personally, what is YOUR goal, in the pursuit of freedom? Each one of you will have to answer that question for yourself, but my goal is: to create a system that allows each person to do as they wish, to speak as they wish, to do with their bodies, their lives and the fruits of their labors as they choose, as long as they grant others the right to do the same. As Enlightenment philosophers put it- Life, liberty and property. If someone who shares this goal with you disagrees with you as to how best to accomplish that, so what? Isn’t the whole point to allow others their otherness? Aren’t we trying to help individual Liberty survive?

Or are we?

Tuvia Bielski made his goal the survival of Jews. He did not cast out the old, the infirm or those whose politics differed from his, and as a result, a community of 1200 Jews, anarchists, socialists, communists and individualists survived the Holocaust. He made a place for a wide range of opinion, and the Jewish community he built in the Nabiloka forest was stronger and more resilient as a result.

There is much to be said for earnest discussions about the paths forward for individual Liberty. This is, after all, a war of ideas. There is no doubt that the American experiment is in trouble and we need to carefully consider how we went wrong, and what must be done to make things better. But are the paths leading to the restoration of American Liberty to be found in the stifling of dissent, or in bitter vituperation among those who agree on the big issues? This country was founded on dissent and disagreement; rather than weakness, it may be our greatest strength.

Put it another way. If this is a war of ideas, and ideas are weapons, don’t we want the forces of tyranny to have to face as many different threats as possible? Don’t we want to see statism attacked on as many fronts as we can manage? Do we want to let the perfect become the enemy of the good?

Tuvia Bielski welcomed Jews of all social classes, ideologies, ages or abilities. They followed different paths through the Nabiloka forest to reach their refuge with other Jews, and this was again, part of their protection. Imagine how easy it would have been for the Nazis to exterminate them all if they had all followed one path. Regardless of how they got there, where they came from, or what baggage they carried, they were all welcomed. As far as I can tell from my reading, Tuvia Bielski only asked that each person work as they could to support the goal of the group, which was to ensure that the Jews survive. And they did. He won.

What is your goal, gentle reader?

Will you be like Tuvia Bielski, and make your goal the survival of Liberty, welcoming and protecting all those who love individual freedom, benefiting from each person’s unique outlook?

Or will you conduct intellectual auto-da-fé against all who disagree with you, seeking to crush disagreement and to force all to goosestep to the truth as you see it?

Do you view differing opinions within the Liberty movement as a threat, or as an opportunity?

I wonder what Tuvia Bielski’s Jewish partisans would say to the enraged ideologues among us?

Can you hear the whispers from the Nabiloka forest?

With regard to all who serve the Light,

Historian

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Ed. note: This commentary appeared first on TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

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defense of others, duty, Inspiration, spirit of rebellion

Take care of one who’s taken such good care of our rights

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As you go about your Monday (and your Tuesday through Sunday), please send your best thoughts toward Mike Vanderboegh, who got the worst possible word from his doctor last week.

And not only your thoughts, but whatever you can spare to make his last months and his wife Rosey’s future less dire. Mike has given his all — including his health and his financial well-being — for freedom. Without Mike (and David Codrea) the Fast & Furious scandal might have remained buried. Without Mike, the III Percent wouldn’t recognize themselves as such a powerful potential force.

I hope all freedomistas will give back to Mike in full measure.

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Inspiration, Israel, Jewish philosophy

Cleaning the Menorah for Next Year

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chanukah-michoel-muchnik

As the last cold latke gets tossed into the microwave oven, and the candle wax is scraped off the menorah, this year’s Hanukkah winds down. We look out into the world and see hope and fear, success and failure, as always.  Hmmm.

What is the “point” of celebrating Hanukkah, anyway?

A Jewish response to Christmas? An excuse to eat fried foods? A historical series of battles, defeating a military giant? Clinging stubbornly to one’s own culture, in the face of foreign challengers?

Yes, all of that…sort of. But that’s only the surface.

Columnist Daniel Greenfield declares it a “Dangerous Holiday”, and that it surely is.

In the end the answer is hinted at by the declaration “Am Yisrael Chai”; “The People of Israel Live”.  As the Jews survive, against all odds… indeed, contrary to all reason, then the world has hope.

Hanukkah, it’s successes, and it’s failures, shows us once again that everything exists because G-d wills it to be so.

Ein Od Milvado

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defense of others, genocide, hatred of Jews, Inspiration, Israel, resistance

Weekend links

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I’ve been saving these up, hoping to write something or somethings from them. But life has kept me from it. So here you go for your weekend reading …

  • “The Banality of Good.” A surprisingly decent piece from Slate on how people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust found it so hard to talk about what they did.
  • We tend to think of the Poles as being willing, eager collaborators with the Nazis in the extermination of Jews. As usual, the real picture was more varied.
  • Sometime-TZP-contributor Ilana Mercer says “cut the ‘cycle of violence’ crap and recognize what’s really going on with the latest round of attacks on Jews.
  • And the great Paul Rosenberg asks to look honestly on the anti-Jewish cancer in the liberty movement. (H/T ML)
  • Finally, on a more cheerful note, an Israeli hummus cafe gives substantial discounts to Jews and Arabs dining together.

(H/T to colleague Y.B. ben Avraham for several of these stories.)

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hatred of Jews, Inspiration, resistance

Vehi She’amda

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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.

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

Four of the best comments on the Oregon campus shooting

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

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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Inspiration

Rosh Hashanah 5776

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.

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guns, Inspiration, mindset, Political philosophy

The Post-Pessimist Era In Gun Rights Advocacy

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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.

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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!

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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.
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