Jewish culture has for millennia held the role of a rabbi as a spiritual and practical guide to every aspect of life in high esteem. Even a treif-munching, leftie defeatist atheist Jew like I could respect this phenomenon. I have even come across some truly wise rabbis, that are a pleasure to listen to (from time to time), and no, you do not have to be religious to see the value of carrying some of the accumulated wisdom of a nation forward. Of course, one could easily see the danger of carrying forward some accumulated prejudice and stupidity, but let’s be positive, for a bit…
Of course, we should not obfuscate the sad fact that any randomly selected prominent rabbi rarely agrees with another and that there is quite a lot of rivalry, and that some deeply rooted differences of opinion between religious and other kinds of Jews can cause some friction, which frequently spills into minor calamities. And then you have the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta of course, with their ingenious use of babies’ doodoo, all of which set me up in a mood for some major caca-throwing this morning.
It started upon reading the article Israeli force can stop the rockets, but for how long? by Rabbi Dr David J Goldberg, who’s the emeritus rabbi for the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London. Of course, due to my ingrained respect and stuff (see above), I was eager to absorb some age old wisdom, and a few golden nuggets.
Indeed, the relatively short article contains several pearls of wisdom on a variety of subjects:
- Talmud
- Geneva convention and its applicability to the current Lebanon situation
- History of Zionism
- Asymmetric warfare between regular armies and guerrilla forces
- Legal issues behind the said conflict
- Definition of a “total war”
- Ideas on proper strategic thinking
The above list is incomplete, but enough for now. Suffice to say that my initial feeling of coming revelation before that fountain of wisdom, slowly (nah, I am joking here) but surely transformed into a realization that somebody is trying to feed me a lot of crapola.
He starts with a clever but irrelevant quote from Talmud, the applicability of which to the Lebanon crisis is nil. It is all of us that are protecting all of us now, and the emeritus rabbi is kindly and humbly asked to keep this in mind.
The indiscriminate and slogan-like use “doctrine of proportionality” is as inapplicable as it is incomprehensible. Every (minor or major) war started with a minor calamity. We are in a war now. For a good analysis of the situation in the regard see here.
On asymmetric warfare: the lack of symmetry in this case is not expressed in the available armory. Hezbollah accumulated enough arms to exceed some regional armies’ capacity. The lack of symmetry is in the fact that Israel is fighting an army that, when it suits, switches to guerrilla tactics, mainly by doffing civilian clothes and hiding between the innocent population. This of course serves a dual purpose of when the aforementioned guerilla is killed he is counted as an innocent civilian murdered by a brutal Army. Lack of symmetry also means that Hezbollah can conceal its armory in civilian homes, and then whine about home and destruction of infrastructure. Why don’t you take a close look at what the Geneva convention has to say about this, dear Rabbi.
And re this statement:
Asymmetric warfare, as it is currently fashionable to call the contest between regular armies and guerrilla forces, inevitably results in asymmetric casualties, at least 10 times higher in Lebanon than in Israel.
We are all tired of MSM repeating this as if it were a gospel (Talmud for you) truth. When a sane person looks at the Lebanese (and Palestinian, by the way) body counting method, whereby every person killed by IDF is automatically a “civilian”, the use of that “10 times higher” cliche becomes somewhat doubtful. So let’s go easy with the number two, please.
However, it should be borne in mind that – intolerable though it is for a large section of the population to be forced into bomb shelters and some of them killed – Hizbullah’s arsenal of Katyushas, rifles, machine guns, grenades and mortars represents a negligible military threat to the survival of Israel.
It’s a sign of stupidity, when a statement like the one above comes from a brainless journalist. It is a crime when it is uttered by a leader of Jewish community. Listen carefully, Rabbi: if our life is to be spent in bomb shelters, there will be no Israel. It shouldn’t take a lot of honorifics to one’s name to understand it – so ask yourself why it’s a problem for you?
This is not a total war between two countries that involves both armed forces and civilians, making Israel’s response to Hizbullah rockets analogous to the American response against Japan after Pearl Harbor or Britain’s against Germany, as some of Israel’s defenders have grotesquely tried to claim.
And how, pray, is the current situation different from a total war? Doesn’t it involve armed forces on both sides? Doesn’t it involve civilians on both sides? And re “grotesque claims” and mention of WWII – was leveling Dresden (a purely civilian target) anything but an act of “disproportional” revenge, without going into the rights or wrongs of this case?
Dear rabbi: in slaughterhouses there is a practice to keep a “pilot” animal that welcomes the newly arrived herds, calming them down and leading them to be “processed”. It is not an appetizing image for sure, but it is not a very appetizing job you do, being a trained pet Guardian rabbi. You see, even from the comments to your pitiful opus it is clear that Jew-haters do not accept you, no matter how good and faithful you have been to your Guardian sponsors:
littleroy
August 9, 2006 02:15 AM
Being a Rabbi and a man of God, it is shokcing to see that Goldberg has failed to condemn Israeli tactics of killing civilians and targetting Lebanese infrustructure. Is it fair that Israel is carrying out collective punishment for the crimes of a few? And our Rabbi cannot see the injustice in this. Shame on the religious garb. No wonder Israel is such a mess. If these are the teachers, we weep for the congregation.
Shokcing, ain’t it? Take it and weep. Or just try harder. Whatever floats your pitiful boat.
Cross-posted on SimplyJews
Well, Meryl, the good rabbi is right that this is not a situation like Great Britain and Germany during World War II. The difference is that Germany wanted to reduce Britain or subjugate it but didn’t intend to destroy the British polity or the British people. Killing the population of Israel and destroying it as a nation is precisely what Hezbollah wants to do…they could hardly make their intentions clearer.
Unfortunately many people use the term “rabbi” who are not really worthy of the original meaning or connotation of the term. One has to learn to recognize subtle signs as to who such a person is. In this case, the term Liberal in the UK is basically what is meant by Reform in the United States. As such, I would not regard someone in that organization as someone on the level of Rabbi Twerski, or Rabbi Weinreb (head of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations) in the United States, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (chief Rabbi of Great Britain), or Rabbi Elyashiv and Rabbi Ovadiah Yoseph (two of the greatest and most respected Rabbis in the world today) in Israel.
Of course, that could be because of my own prejudice (which has always been obvious to those who have read my comments). Perhaps it is only because of this prejudice that I agree with your assessment of him, so I googled him.
His bio and some of the speeches that were referenced on google showed that he is definitely not of the caliber of the great ones. Of course, he is not near the caliber of my shul rabbi either.
One has to realize that there are many people whose religion is the current liberal political “thinking” of the day and have never matured beyond that. Unfortunately we do not have prophets today that we can follow. All we can do is try to understand the truly great ones of our generation.
We cannot even ask ourselves what the great ones of the past (like Rabbi Moshe Feinstein) would say because we cannot reach their understanding of current events and applying what they said to the current situation requires someone on that level.
10 years ago, and beyond, I used to play games of war strategy.
Nothing really like the real thing, nor did reflect the realty of what war really is.
Still, it sopped up all the extra testosterone and sated the warlike, dark-side that we all have.
Its ironic that I hate guns…
Anyhoo… there was a saying that I came across way back when, which would be a good addition to what Snoopy is saying today.
When I played one of them silly board games, I played for blood. So did other guys who played (whether it was Squad Leader, Axis & Allies, or even chess).
But one thing I learned is this: Some people play those games in real life. It never occurred to me for many years that there were people out there that did not value Life. That a persons soul was no more important to them as … a pawn on a chess board.
Yep, those little games have served me well. Because when I finally made the crossing, I understood that there are people out there who are my enemy because I … merely exist.
Here is the quote I referred to above:
“The meaning of victory is not to defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavors, to crush utterly his every achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of true victory.”
On the chessboard, that is easy to understand, but in real life…
Hard to believe that a human being could even think that. Yet this is a quote as there are many others similiar in nature…
It sounds almost like one of them rants from some … political leaders out there… whipping up his people into a frenzy.
It is this, that many Liberals do not understand. They are trapped in their own little world, unable to comprehend people who do not value life. It is that which will (if they don;t wake up) destroy them.
“The meaning of victory is not to defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavors, to crush utterly his every achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of true victory.â€
Heh. If Israel ever sought that sort of victory, they could have it in short order. They’ve had nukes for 20 years, and even today, on the eve of them no longer being a deterrent, they have never used them.
Every organization, even Hezbollah, has the ability to pursue the merciless victory you describe. If you are to choose your allies wisely, you will not choose those who try to prove they have no ability to carry it out, but rather those who have proven they have the forebearance not to carry it out when they could have.
The idea that the threat from terrorists is not really serious, in a way comparable to WWII, is one that appears quite often in the writings of leftists and even mainstream liberals. It represents a kind of concrete-bound stupidity that can’t look beyond surfaces–the enemy doesn’t have Panzer divisions, so it couldn’t be a comparable threat.
This kind of thinking appeared in the behavior of the French high command in 1940. They were convinced that a breakthrough assault was dependent on heavy artillery, and were complacent about the speed at which the enemy could bring their big guns forward…not grasping that, in the German model, the role once played by heavy artillery was now played by dive bombers.
(* Every organization, even Hezbollah, has the ability to pursue the merciless victory you describe. *)
Tatterdemalian, I think that if Hezbollah had the opportunity to pursue merciless victory (ie have nukes and/or large amounts of military firepower)we would see actions and rhetoric similiar to the Nazi party of WWII with the eventuality of the ‘merciless victory’ that was descibed above for all us Kufirs later.
They won’t stop with merely Israel.
Unfortunately there are a lot of peole in the West who don’t understand that Hizbollah is just the sock puppet of Iran, and will not stop with just Israel. Many Euros seem to believe that if we threw Israel to the wolves everyting would be OK again. Some Americans are dumb enough to believe it too. It’s not true.
A lot of people have been saying that it feels like the thirties now, with pogromos and appeasement and a lunatic in power obsessed with conquest and killing the Jews. Marx and Engels, writing about Napoleon III’s coup and comparing it to his uncle’s, wrote that things happen twice in history, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Unfortunately the repeat of the thirties now seems no farce, but set to become an even bigger tragedy than the first time.
The Chamberlains and Rab Butlers had this excuse: they thought they were avoiding another Great War and did not know how it would come out. We know what happened the first time, we have no excuse.
“Tatterdemalian, I think that if Hezbollah had the opportunity to pursue merciless victory (ie have nukes and/or large amounts of military firepower)we would see actions and rhetoric similiar to the Nazi party of WWII with the eventuality of the ‘merciless victory’ that was descibed above for all us Kufirs later.”
Hezbollah doesn’t need nukes or large amounts of military firepower to destroy Israel, just unlimited second chances. Which the UN seems determined to give them.
Oh, and as for Nazi-style rhetoric? MEMRI has a huge archive of translated videos from Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV. If you don’t think TV shows based on “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” are Nazi-style rhetoric, then there’s no point in even speaking to you any more.