The purpose of me writing this is not to take him to task personally. He cares enough to respond to me and takes the time to put his feelings out there, which is already going way further than most people care to venture. Rather, my intention is to respond to three statements that he made to me in comments to my blog which can be found at:

http://kumah.org/2010/06/what-if-we-blew-the-iranian-aid-ships-out-of-the-water/#comments

The first quote goes like this “The real war is a spiritual one and Jews have the upper hand”. This was in response to my suggestion that in addition to the fact that war with our enemies is inevitable, we also need
to take the war to our enemies instead of waiting passively for them to kill us first. In a sense, I agree with “rd” that what we do spiritually effects greatly what happens in our physical reality. At the same time, I am not able to reconcile the fact that if most Jews don’t see Israel as a value not just somewhere down the line but right now, then through what magical merit will they earn it’s deliverance? We all know that across the globe, holy pious Jews throughout the ages have been killed and tormented, without it mattering that they were in the right and G-d fearing. They had all kinds of Emunah, and yet in the end many died and simply didn’t make it to Israel. However. we are right now in a position to change that. Alavay! We should be on the level where G-d will simply shower us with open miracles and all of Brooklyn will supernaturally find themselves at the peak of Mt Moriah. It’s sweet but that’s not how it works. We need to show G-d that we want it like we did back when we bellowed with unity, the words of “Naaseh Venishma!”

The second quote I am going to respond to is “(Remember 67,73,48?) You seem to demonstrate either a lack of Emunah or a lack of understanding, because our answer is not in our weapons as it is said of Yaakov Avinu that prayer was his weapon”.

How can you possibly use my proof of point against me?! Its precisely the outcome of those wars we fought that is G-d’s way of telling us that Israel is back and He fights with us! What else could possibly be the
message?! If we weren’t meant to be here then we wouldn’t be here! Why on earth have we been so successful? Why specifically now, after 2000 thousand years? Doesnt is just make sense that this is the crack of light being given to us by G-d in order to expand it and make it brighter?

As for Yaakov, if you go back to the posukim you will find that he simply did not pray to G-d but sent Eisav a bribe/tribute, and strategically prepared his camps for war by splitting them. Prayer alone has never been enough. When an enemy is at your door trying to kill you, you pick up your gun and shoot him first. Obviously.
Afterwards, you can pray and thank G-d that you had the presence of mind have purchased the gun earlier.

Lastly, you had theorized (which was the most interesting thing you said) that “Rabbis in Galut take on stringencies to strengthen their connection, whereas the Rabbis in Israel do it because they want Moshiach”
Last time I checked, wanting Moshiach was a universal value and not just for the Jews in Israel. Why would you look to add stringencies to your life in order to strengthen your connection when you could strengthen your connection simply by living a complete Jewish life here in Israel, which is what G-d expects and demands anyways? As far as hiding behind your Rabbis and the perception that they can do no wrong, well that’s just naive, and dishonest. If you just study our history a little bit, you will find that time and time again, great men made mistakes both in their actions and in dis-actions.

Here are a few examples that illustrate my point:

The Vilna Goan upon hearing about Hassidic movement, placed all of Hassidism into Cherem. Clearly, we know that today it has become quite the accepted path, and one that people associate with beauty and warmth.

David Hamelech sent out a man to die in battle because he had seen (via ruach hakodesh) that he was meant to be with his wife (Batsheva), and yet later he would be chastised and then go on to do teshuva and be forgiven.

Lastly, the greatest man ever to have lived – Moshe – “Ish HaElohim” – “The Man of God” sinned in this past week’s parsha of Chukat for hitting the rock and not speaking to it as G-d had commanded him to do.

Please don’t propose that you are going to try and convince me that your community or Yeshiva Rebbis, are on a greater level then those three men I just listed! Just open your eyes and see my brother! When Ezra and Nechemia rallied the Jews to come back to Israel, there were even greater Rabbis declaring that they didn’t have to go and they could happily remain in Bavel. Was the Second Temple not meant for everybody?

We are now in 2010, and we currently have a foothold on our ancestral Land that G-d promised us. This is by no means a coincidence, and it certainly behooves every Jew to work on making their lives here while the terms are favorable. Don’t wait till things get really drastically unfavorable. Think it can’t happen? Six million dead says it can. Choose the light that shines forth from the twenty percent and do not allow yourself to be blinded by the thick darkness of the eighty percent.

To Yechiel Stein on his engagement to Leah Barth

To Shulamis on her marriage to Naftali Tyberg

May you all be blessed with repeated and ever-increasing Aliyot, in familial love, clarity and closeness to your Creator, your people and your land.

Share your stories of oleh justice in the comments section.

* Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, who reportedly did not stop at telling his students they did not HAVE to refuse orders, but told them they HAVE to obey, says Avoda Ivrit is Nazism. Brought to you by Jpost and the racists at RamFM, the clueless, yet entertaining South African-run station broadcasting in English out of Ramallah.

* There is once again an Avoda Ivrit web site! The New Israel Fund, through its proxy, Mossawa closed down the old Israel-based Avoda Ivrit directory, with its webmaster replacing the site with an apology. The new site could use some reader participation.

* Hey, even professional settler-hater Jeffrey Goldberg says he once dabbled in Avoda Ivrit (not in ‘Nam, of course): “In the late nineteen-eighties, I worked for a time on a kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley, southeast of Haifa. I was a great believer in the philosophy known as avoda ivrit—the idea that Jews will redeem their land and themselves by hard physical labor.”

* AvodaIvrit.co.il – an art studio in Tel Aviv. Nice.

“worker required for centrally located jerusalem chocolatier – cafe.

twentyish, diligent, to operate coffee machine, make sandwiches, serve, wash
dishes. afternoons (4-10 p.m.) and fridays.

call etty 054-8081001″

Mmmmm. Chocolate in Jerusalem.

“The Kumah mascots and the Kumatrix disagree. “What Kumah won’t do to make their brand of fringe politics hip.”…”Got home?”

It’s just that some of you guys spew so much vitriol. And at the same time you do the things you criticize. I think it’s important for someone to show you your hypocrisy. And I don’t even get into the depths of it- the superficial is revealing enough.

There is good in these pages- the shmittah discussion, for example. And the basic aliyah message. But that’s gotten lost in your larger fringe ideology. To really get into this website you have to believe that Jews and only Jews belong in Israel and the territories. You demonize the “enemy”- be it Palestinians, Olmert, Livni, the US, conservative Judaism…. This polarization is isolating- you can’t have a real dialogue with anyone because we are all the enemy. So what do you accomplish? You become more and more convinced of your own agenda and more removed from the mainstream. And I don’t care what you do in a vacuum, but your words and work have impact. I think it’s important that someone point out your hypocrisies and let visitors to this site know that your views are far from universal.

My response after the jump

Dear Anon,

While I don’t really understand the repeated allegation of hypocrisy, the decision to widen the scope of Kumah’s Neo-Zionist message beyond promoting mass Aliyah was not taken lightly. I certainly understand the danger of all the strongly-held positions and sniping providing ear-plug fodder for anyone who is looking for it. But the point of the blog is to provide an honest, authentic voice of a real movement that can’t be made to disappear by repeating “fringe” as a mantra.

In this day of media saturation, the only blogs I find worth reading are those with passionate arguments based on strongly held values. There is a huge swamp of timid journalism and self-congratulatory moderate extremists (extreme in their belief in the merit of an idea purely based on its being devoid of ideological bone structure).

I truly believe that there a Neo-Zionists on the left and would be completely open to having them join the blog as readers, commenters and bloggers – but I do not regret widening the scope of the blog’s message to include politics though I myself am also sometimes annoyed by individual bloggers’ posts picking fights with entire denominations over little things dug up by the amateurs at Ynet (i.e. The Great Mezuza Controversy). Not because these aren’t discussions that should be had, but because the Ynet-based route to dialog is paved with ill intentions.

Lastly, your point about the lack of real dialog when opponents are considered the enemy is a blogosphere-wide issue. When someone who is but a bunch of pixels to you attacks your entire worldview, it takes a very secure an confident individual to respond in a loving, yet honest way. Sometimes a good thrashing is truly in order. Often it is not and reflects poorly on a blogger or the blog he/she writes for.

Post-lastly; you wrote: “I think it’s important that someone point out your hypocrisies and let visitors to this site know that your views are far from universal.”

I do not state or believe that our views are universal. I believe it rubs you the wrong way to see Jews, with and without kippot, unapologetically saying the things we say. That alone threatens your thought-stopping mechanism of being able to label something “fringe” and dismiss it without letting it roam free in your consciousness alongside other ideas, allowing for the survival of the fittest.

Thank you for reading. Please keep it up. You are welcome to choose a moniker that gives you just as much anonymity as “anonymous” but allows us to know it is you when you comment and respond. The Kumah community is universal in its openness to dialog – and I bless our bloggers on this eve of Rosh HaShanah to always type with love and think twice before ripping entire communities of Jews or gerei toshav.

Shana Tova,
Ezra HaLevi
Neo-Zionist Blogmaster

*This video probably deserves its own post. Rich kids from America and Europe play cops and robbers with an IDF they know is castrated in the middle of Shechem. You can hear shouts of Allahu Akbar and see martyr posters as the Canadian-sounding girl says: “You’re not gonna shoot us man!” and “Six internationals run over by an army jeep will look really bad in the papers!”

*Yuli Tamir, the Education Minister, responds to Sderot parents’ decision to protest government’s failure to crush Gazan terrorism by keeping their ids home from schools: “Homes are less safe than the schools.”

*Avoda Ivrit at the Knesset (Hebrew)

*British paper compares Marva program with Hamas day camps

*Mmmmm. Sacrelicious.