Jewish State

Why IDF Deserters Deserve Mad Respect, And Redefining Zionism

rafifarber Jewish State, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Bored IDF Soldier

Excuse typos on this one please. I’m typing really fast before Shabbos and I still have to clean my house. 

A follow up on my niece Eden Farber’s article on serving in the Israel Defense Forces.

She took down her article after being pressured by the bureaucrats to do so. It is still up on the Wayback Machine and will be as long as the Archive.org server remains online.

A short word on the IDF policy to not allow soldiers to publish negative commentary on Tzahal. At first glance it seems a rational policy. Employees of private companies would be fired for badmouthing the company that employs them. This is the old adage “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” The policy itself is not the problem. A company should have the right to fire its employee for any reason at all, even if they don’t like his nose. Everything should go by contract, and if the contract says you can be fired for having an ugly nose, then that should be enforceable. Practically, this clause is actually in most contracts in the form of “any party can terminate said agreement on X notice for any reason etc.”

The problem with the policy is first, IDF service is not a voluntary contract for young people. Eden would have been forced into it anyway in some form. So to prevent soldiers from saying anything they want about the machine that forces them in is unjust, but really the problem is that a private company would fire you and demand its money back. If the IDF stopped there that would be fine. Kick anyone who badmouths the army out of the army and demand back their stipends of what, 300NIS a month? Fine.

But the IDF does not do that. If she didn’t take it down she’d go to prison eventually, be blackballed against future employment etc.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post. The point is rather the comments that I’ve seen in response to her article as well as in response to my reposting of it on Facebook. Most of them miss the point and display a clear bias towards army service and against market activity, which is not surprising.

Here are some 3 examples:

…Just remember that Israel needs you, both as a soldier and as a citizen, but I think you already understand that as well.

…Nice to read about a spoiled American idealist kid faced reality, grew up, and became a contributing citizen of the most important country in the world. The IDF isn’t there to help you feel good about yourself, that’s YOUR job, no matter what the task. The IDF is there so that every Jew can have the opportunity to do so in that country.

…She deserves respect from the community for volunteering to serve. But, she shouldn’t be so depressed, not everyone can be Moshe Dayan, and even he was not as much as he’s made out to be.

Here’s the problem with these comments. At the base, they build off the assumption that merely wearing a uniform and twiddling your thumbs is a holy endeavor. Because there’s this metaphysical “entity” called Tzahal, sort of like כל ישראל יש להם חלק לעולם הבא, every Israelite has a share in the world to come, and just being part of it is like joining up with some spiritual core. I’ve said this before, but it is a form of worship of something other than God.

Therefore, no matter how useless one is, how abused, or even how destructive (take the case of Gilad Shalit who contributed nothing and lamely went into captivity in one of the most pathetic army stories I’ve ever heard – not blaming Shalit he was forced into it like everyone else) one is to Tzahal, it is still considered holy to wear that uniform.

Now, one of my על חטא’s that I klopped for this year is being too reactionary and caustic. I’m trying to soften my tone a bit here, so I’ll say I understand these sentiments. I grew up with them. They are not foreign to me. They are part of my past, and I get it. Defending the Jewish people (any people really, in the true sense of defensive protection) indeed is a holy endeavor because we are God’s people, and those motivated to join the IDF for this should not be faulted.

But here’s where the bias comes in. If defending the Jewish people is holy, then why aren’t army deserters who would rather work and make money in Israel praised for doing the same exact thing? Take Bar Refaeli for example. She is extremely productive. I like her a lot. (I’m a guy and she’s Bar Refaeli, OK?) The taxes she pays support how many IDF soldiers? And yet she is reviled for being a deserter. Many business leaders and successful Israeli Jews are also army deserters. Good for them. We should respect the heck out of them for being brave enough to say no. That they won’t simply “do their time” to be part of the “big picture”. I’d have less of a problem with respecting army service for the sake of army service if deserters who go into the private sector to make money were also given the respect they deserve.

Zionism connotes service to the State of Israel. The State of Israel is not some metaphysical spiritual yeshus that exists in heaven. It’s just a group of people who pass laws coupled with enforcers. Zionism should not be defined as service to the State of Israel. It should be defined as service to God, or service to one’s conception of some Jewish higher purpose as centered on the Land of Israel if you’re an atheist or don’t believe in religion. I’m religious, so I pick the first one.

I am anti Zionist because I do not serve the State of Israel. But according to my definition of Zionism, I am a Zionist because God has given me a personal religious obligation to live in Israel and to create value in Israel. I am fulfilling that obligation by living in biblical Israel and creating value here for myself and for others.

Are soldiers who twiddle their thumbs in the army fulfilling their religious obligation according to this? I would say no. Market value is very had to measure with a monopoly army, but it’s pretty obvious that a soldier doing nothing is simply consuming resources in Israel.

The Mitzva of יישוב ארץ ישראל, settling the Land of Israel, requires creating more value that one consumes, either measurable economic value in terms of a monetary amount or spiritual value in terms of enriching people’s lives (which in the end could be valued monetarily aggregating the salaries of Rabbis and other spiritual workers in the private sector), both are necessary. If you just have people leeching of the work of others that is not settling. Settling requires work. If everyone leeched, everybody starves and יישוב cannot be done.

Army deserters who are not on welfare fulfill this role more than soldiers who do nothing, or next to nothing.

Now imagine this the other way around. Private companies in Israel, everywhere really, are often reviled for whatever they do, sometimes justifiably but often for simply doing business legitimately. It’s always דן לכף חוב, guilty until proven innocent with the private sector. If someone from a private company like Teva or something were to write an article reviling Teva’s abusive practices against its employees, oh boy would there be hell to pay.

Nobody would come to Teva’s defense commenting on an Eden type article documenting the emotional abuse of Teva that:

…Just remember that Teva needs you as an employee and Israel needs Teva, but I think you already understand that as well.

…Nice to read about a spoiled American idealist kid faced reality, grew up, and became a contributing citizen of the most important country in the world. Teva isn’t there to help you feel good about yourself, that’s YOUR job, no matter what the task. Teva is there so that every Jew can have the opportunity to have cheap medicine.

…She deserves respect from the community for working at Teva. But, she shouldn’t be so depressed, not everyone can be Mark Thatcher (founder of Teva), and even he was not as much as he’s made out to be.

Etc. That would all be ludicrous. In fact, just the opposite. Jews left and right would be manhandling Teva and urging a bunch of people to be fired and big fines to be levied and compensation to be paid to the abused.

But with the IDF, no matter what the heck you’re doing, whether it’s damaging or nothing or barely anything, it’s always good because the IDF is holy.

Well what about Teva? Yes, they do bad things when they partner with the State. Not a perfect example. But how many lives has Teva saved? Wow, a lot. Who cares? Very few. Who considers Teva holy for fulfilling יישוב ארץ ישראל? Virtually nobody.

Statists like to quip, “Israel can’t survive without the IDF,” by which they mean a monopoly State-controlled IDF. Well, maybe, maybe not. It’s an empirical question. Several IDF’s privatized into different competing security companies sounds scary to many, but it is at least conceivable that it would operate much better than what we have now, which is a drain on everyone’s standard of living and death to many who commit suicide in the army.

(In fact, parenthetically, statists also quip that if Private Company X, say Teva again, would cease to exist, the market need would be filled by some other company to meet the need so there is no need for Teva specifically and it is not holy. But when libertarians say that if State Institution Y (say the IDF) would cease to exist, statists claim that everyone would die so therefore the IDF is holy, whereas libertarians say that the market need would be filled by private companies and therefore the IDF is not holy.)

But can the IDF survive without people working in the private sector? No, it cannot. That is not an empirical question. In order to survive in this planet and consume its resources, you first need to produce those resources. That is an a priori logical proposition. The IDF cannot surive  without a private Israeli economy.

So, being that the IDF is absolutely dependent on the private sector, whereas Israel is only dubiously dependent on a public monopoly state controlled IDF, then by transitive property, Israeli companies are much holier than the IDF.

Therefore, army deserters who work in the private sector in the Biblical Land of Israel, deserve equal, if not MORE respect than IDF soldier with no obvious purpose in the army.

 

On the IDF Draft and Battered Woman Syndrome (Politically Correctly Stated as Battered Person Syndrome)

rafifarber Jewish State, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

My niece Eden Farber is an IDF soldier. I was also one shortly after I made aliyah. I do not generally advertise this because I am not particularly proud of it.

Anyway, Eden just wrote this piece at Times of Israel. The IDF forced Eden to take down the piece. I found it on the Wayback Machine though, and they can’t take that down. Ha.

But anyway, call me biased, but it’s very well written. And to me it’s agonizing. It’s about her disillusionment with the Israeli army, how she went into it idealistic and wanting to serve, use her talents, be useful. Driven by Zionism, love of Israel, all the stuff we are taught in Jewish day school or Hebrew school or youth groups or home school all our lives.

But then she realized that the army is not that great. In fact it was the worst experience of her life. She’s still in it. Here are some relevant passages to the very sad point I’m going to try to make here. Eden writes (my bold):

I became depressed. I cried, more than I ever have. I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours in a row. I stopped eating. Food nauseated me. I could go a week eating just one box of cookies. I fought with my family, I canceled plans with my friends. I kept fighting to advance, putting in appeals, meeting with high ranking officers to show them who I am, but in the back of my head I began to ask myself, who am I? Why would I deserve this?

And then one sentence later (my bold):

I know that Israel needs the IDF, and I know that being a part of it is important in the big picture. But I wasn’t ready for this.

And then this (bold and italics mine):

I was able to get out of my depressive state. I was able to find myself outside of just being a cog in the machine. I’m a relatively happy soldier now, who hates her job, just like every other soldier, but does it anyways, just like every other soldier, and goes to the pool and the gym with her friends on breaks. I have had my share of important shifts, where I’ve done a great deal, as well as shifts so boring I started counting speckles on the ceiling tiles. I have set my naïveté aside and learned that the biggest challenge – the one nobody prepares you for – of being in the army is staying out of it, mentally and emotionally.

…the process of separating yourself, the you that thinks and cares and wants, from the you that obeys and does and works, can be heartbreaking.

For this article she is being praised, and rightly so (partially) for being courageous enough to write an article that is not entirely flattering about an institution that most American Jews are trained to revere. The draft is like a חפצא של קדושה, a holy object. To say anything bad about it or unflattering is being courageous, and it is.

But Eden stops just short of the real conclusion, because to her the draft itself is holy. She would not object to that assertion.

I just googled battered woman syndrome. Political correctness has infected Google which brought me to Battered Person Syndrome. Here are some key symptoms:

Repeated cycles of violence and reconciliation can result in the following beliefs and attitudes:

  • The abused thinks that the violence was his or her fault.
  • The abused has an inability to place the responsibility for the violence elsewhere.
  • The abused has an irrational belief that the abuser is omnipresent and omniscient.

There are elements of all these symptoms in her article.

Repeated cycles of emotional violence and reconciliation with the IDF (being a part of it is important in her words) results in her thinking the violence is her fault: “I began to ask myself, who am I? Why would I deserve this (a promotion from a high ranking officer)?”

The responsibility is elsewhere, never with the abuser, the IDF draft, who the battered person always returns to: “I know that Israel needs the IDF, and I know that being a part of it is important in the big picture.“ 

The belief that the abuser is omnipresent and omniscient (in this case holy or godly), is in that same sentence.

Her solution? You can’t ever fault the draft itself. You can’t repudiate years of education meant to make you believe the word of a politician that you must be drafted is a holy word. So you disconnect from yourself. Stay in the marriage, become emotionally detached…a ghost of yourself…

…the biggest challenge – the one nobody prepares you for – of being in the army is staying out of it, mentally and emotionally.

Mentally and emotionally. Notice what she did not say. Physically.

In order to refrain from lashing out at the draft itself, which is what I have done, you have to disconnect from everything. Turn yourself off. Become a robot rather than a human. Learn to turn off your humanity.

But there’s a bigger challenge than staying out of the army mentally and emotionally. The biggest challenge – the one that causes you to fundamentally change the way you see the world – is to stay out of it physically. To put your foot down and say NO MORE.

You can get a divorce.

And here I’m not talking to Eden alone. I’m talking to everyone drafted against their will and miserable, you don’t have to do this to yourselves. You don’t have to stay married. You don’t have to return to your abusive spouse convinced that being part of an abusive marriage is important or idealistic. You don’t have to believe that it’s holy to serve in the army for the sake of serving in the army because it happens to be that a group of at least 61 out of 120 politicians who all lie, cheat, and steal from you for a living say that you have to do it. We all dislike politicians to some extent at least, yet we believe following their word is holy?

Let’s assume the IDF is holy. I believe it is, but not any more intrinsically holy than any other industry in Israel. IDF is just the defense industry. Israel needs all of its industry to survive, high tech and grocery stores included. But let’s accept that it is. That doesn’t mean, however that serving in the IDF is holier than serving anywhere else in the country. If everyone served in the IDF, everyone would starve because there would be no profit-driven division of labor. We’d turn into Mao’s Great Leap Forward where everyone was a soldier and simply die of starvation, just like the Chinese did, 45 million of them from 1958-62, when the whole country was drafted into a Chinese army all at once with Mao directing it.

If the IDF is holy, it needs support. It needs people outside of it in the economy to feed it. I’m one of those. Other people in Israel need people in the private sector to supply them with goods and services. When you get a job and make money, you are doing something holy because you are supporting the IDF that way. You are supporting the army, but you are also supporting everyone.

When you sit in the army and do nothing, you are not supporting the army. You are not supporting anyone. You are obeying politicians. That’s it. You are burdening the army. So the most courageous thing to do would be to simply leave and accept the consequences. If you are worried about prison, you need not be. You’re already in one.

Yes, if there was a war I’d fight in the IDF, and I’d be grudgingly OK with forced basic training only so we are prepared in case of an emergency. But serving just because it happens to be the artificial law agreed on by 61 out of 120 loathsome people is not a holy endeavor.

But let me close out by putting this into perspective. Eden is complaining, and rightly so, about being wasted in a vast bureaucratic system that doesn’t know its right from its left. But it gets much, much worse than that. Eden’s case is a mild one. Consider the families – the wives and children and parents – of soldiers who have died capturing murderers, who are then released by Netanyahu in a “good will gesture” to Abbas, and they go out and murder again.

Imagine how broken, beaten, downtrodden they are if they have any will to live at all. Eden has the luxury of reconnecting with her humanity on weekends or breaks or when she happens to maybe be doing something useful in the IDF in rare instances. Those people, they do not. They are broken for good. There is no way out of their eternal hell. They will die miserable, because of the IDF and the politicians who run it.

Some soldiers are not as strong as Eden. Many commit suicide. Suicide, in fact, is the leading cause of death of IDF soldiers.

You can break away. You can separate. You can love Israel – the people, the nation, the land, and the God of Israel – and hate the draft. Once I achieved that break, I became a happier person.

If you don’t think you’re doing anything useful, just leave. Don’t go back. If you are fighting and you don’t believe what you’re doing is helpful or morally acceptable, don’t risk your life. Leave. Don’t go back. Take the prison sentence and move on.

And if you’ve already been destroyed by the draft, or you have a loved one who was drafted who has already committed suicide, the only thing I can say to you is that Moshe Rabeinu placed the broken tablets in the same Aron (ark) as the full, unbroken set of tablets. You may be broken, but you’re still with us, והמקום ינחם אתכם בתוך שאר אבילי ציון וירושלים.

עד מתי, as they say in the army. It’s an inside army joke to some as I learned when I was a soldier, but a serious life-threatening question to others, some who cannot survive it.

Yidlach Shirai…Ad Mussai!

When will this hellish draft end? When the Jews realize it is not holy, and as we say in Avinu Malkeinu –

אבינו מלכנו, אין לנו מלך אלא אתה.

Our Father our King, we have no King but You.

When I say it, I mean it.

Chag Sameach.

 

Is There a Statute of Limitations in Libertarianism, Part II

rafifarber Jewish State, Libertarian Halacha, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

You know when Hillary Clinton says something so stupid and inane that literally everyone, even her fans, knows she’s either seriously mentally handicapped or deliberately lying? Yeah, well, she’s not the only one.

Back in our debate on the legitimacy of Israel from a libertarian perspective, which was challenging as Hammond gave me decent arguments that at least had the pretense of some sort of logic, Hammond insisted that there does exist a statute of limitations in libertarianism as far as claims to previously homesteaded land goes.

Our argument is that there is no statute of limitations in libertarianism in terms of a hard specific quantitative amount of time that must pass before a claim from the past becomes null and void. Such a statute cannot be in libertarianism because any specific quantitative time limit would be a posteriori and would null claims that could, in theory, be proven based on actual hard physical evidence of previous homesteading.

Now, Hammond is challenging me to “make an argument”. Obviously, what follows below will not qualify as “an argument” according to him, because according to him, I have never “made an argument”. I’ll just let you all judge for yourselves if I’m raving nonsense or presenting a very simple logical progression here.

Hammond, in his debate with me, quoted a footnote from our paper, in which we said the following:

But are there no statutes of limitation? Surely, two millennia and counting would more than qualify for any statute of limitations. There is such a thing, for the libertarian, as a “natural” statute of limitations: the further back ones goes into the past, the more difficult it is to encounter any relevant evidence. Since the burden of proof always rests with he who wishes to overturn extant property rights, mere passage of time can serve as a natural limitation.

Now, woe is me, I was not fully versed in every single footnote of our paper on the fly verbatim, so I thought he caught us in a contradiction. This sure sounds like we are accepting the notion of statutes of limitations in libertarianism based on time limits. During the debate, I knew this could not be, but I had no time to skim through the whole paper to look for the footnote as I was writing notes at the time to rebut his opening statement.

Let me be very clear, for Hammond’s sake. He is accusing us of contradicting ourselves with regard to statutes of limitations. On the one hand, we supposedly say that there is such a thing as statutes of limitation, and on the other hand, we supposedly accept the claim of Jews to land obviously and demonstrably previously homesteaded by Jews in Judea. How can we accept these claims and say they are legitimate if we accept a statute of limitations according to this footnote in the paper itself?

In Hammond’s words, this argument “fails even on its own terms” because we both accept and reject a statute of limitations.

OK, follow me so far? I’m going very very slowly here, deliberately, so even someone with zero background in logic can understand. I’m presenting “an argument” to expose Hammond’s dishonesty. He will no doubt say that he has no idea what I’m talking about and that this is not “an argument”. I can’t go any slower than I’m going now. So stay with me. (Obviously I don’t think Hammond is an idiot. He’s just playing one because he knows we caught him on this and he can’t get out of it.)

Now, what is the meaning of this footnote he has cited? As a co-author of the paper, I will give it you. Let’s go sentence by sentence.

Surely, two millennia and counting would more than qualify for any statute of limitations.

Meaning, yes, in general, 2,000 years does qualify as a statute of limitations. How so? הכא במאי עסקינן? במה דברים אמורים? (In what case does 2,000 years qualify as a statute of limitations? תניא (The text states)

There is such a thing, for the libertarian, as a “natural” statute of limitations: the further back one goes into the past, the more difficult it is to encounter any relevant evidenceץ

תיובתא דרפי פרבר? (Is this a refutation of Farber et al?)

אדרבא. Just the opposite.

2,000 years is a “natural” statute of limitations only because in general, the further back one goes into the past, the more difficult it is to encounter relevant evidence of past claims. This is only an observation of general natural trends. The “naturalness” of the statute of limitations for the libertarian is הכי השתא (one and the same as, intertwined with) the lack of hard, relevant, physical evidence of a claim in the first place. The limitation is not inherent in the amount of time passed, which would be a posteriori, but intrinsic only in the lack of evidence generally due to the passage of time.

גופא (going back to the quote) תני תוהא (we already know)

Since the burden of proof always rests with he who wishes to overturn extant property rights, mere passage of time can serve as a natural limitation.

“Can” כתיב, “Must” לא כתיב. It says “can”. It does not say “must”. When “can” 2,000 years serve as a natural statute of limitations? Only when there is no longer any hard physical evidence of past claims due to the “natural” passage of time. This would apply to all land in Israel for which there is no hard physical evidence of previous Jewish homesteading. The Right of Return for non-Jewish Palestinians who do not descend from Jews applies only to that land.

Meaning, if and where there is hard physical evidence of previous claims, the mere passage of time does not constitute a statute of limitations for the libertarian.

Now, what did Hammond leave out of his selective quotation of this footnote? Only this:

However, there can be no man-made statute in this regard, at least not for the libertarian. If there were, injustice would prevail when the plaintiff can marshal proof that a property title is illicit, and yet the court would not uphold it. This would also spell almost the death knell for reparations, surely a basic element of the libertarian philosophy. See on this note 75.

Now, I have challenged Hammond to quote the footnote in full on this dishonest incomplete lazy excuse for a rebuttal on his site here. And suprise suprise, he thinks the rest of the footnote is irrelevant.

Anyone forming pictures of Hillary Clinton in their heads right now? I certainly am!

I actually feel stupid, as if I’m talking to a 10 year old in an introductory course to symbolic logic and Aristotle’s basic premise that contradictions don’t exist. How could this not be relevant? I don’t know. I don’t know what to say anymore other than Hammond is being deliberately stupid so as not to get himself caught in the contradiction he has placed himself in.

What contradiction specifically? He says that our argument “fails on its own terms”. What “terms” are those? The terms that Jews’ claim on land previously homesteaded by Jews in Judea, with hard physical and indisputable evidence of previous homesteading by Jews (Har Habayit, Ma’aarat Hamachpela, most of East Jerusalem in Ir David), is valid because there is no man-made statute of limitations in libertarianism, when supposedly in this footnote that he quotes, without quoting the end of it, we supposedly admit that we believe in a statute of limitations for the libertarian when we do not and we never did.

So let me make this very clear to you Jeremy Hammond and fans, even though I am absolutely positive you all already understand perfectly and are just feigning idiocy in order to stem yourselves from admitting your contradiction:

There is no man-made statute of limitations in libertarianism, nor can there possibly be one, by the very a priori nature of libertarianism itself. The only natural statute of limitations in libertarianism is when there is no longer any hard evidence of previous claims, whether due to mere passage of time or anything else that erases evidence. OR there is an explicit relinquishment of all claims, as in the case of ייאוש.

But in cases where there is hard evidence of previous homesteading and no ייאוש, plus hard evidence that the nearest of kin to those original legitimate homesteaders still exist and claim this land and never ever relinquished their claims…

Well then, all land with hard physical evidence of previous homesteading by Jews, must go to the nearest of kin, which are Jews, by shares of stock in that land, regardless of any subsequent homesteader on that land.

Practically speaking then, because there is no man-made statute of limitations in libertarianism, all land with hard physical evidence of previous Jewish homesteading from the Roman period, must go to the descendants of those original homesteaders, given that no one Jew can prove descent from any specific homesteader. Therefore, all of it must go to all verifiable genetic Jews with certain Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers by shares, to be determined by impartial third-party judges with zero connection to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim line.

Is this “an argument”?

Will Hammond quote the entire footnote at that dishonest article of his? No, because he thinks it’s “irrelevant”.

Why will he not actually quote the entire thing in reality, when he knows full well that it’s VERY relevant? Because he knows if he does, the stupidity he is currently feigning will become obvious even to the densest of his own readers.

When your only defense is to play dumb (I don’t know what “C” means on these classified emails! I never knew you couldn’t have a private email server! What’s the definition of “is”?) then I may as well be arguing with Hillary Clinton, which really, is not worth anyone’s time.

If Hammond wants to continue acting like Hillary Clinton, he is welcome to it. But if that’s really the best that the anti-Israel libertarian crowd has to offer, it’s really sub par.

Give me and every other genetic Jew on the planet (including Palestinian non Jews with Jewish genes!) Har Habayit by shares of stock. Give us Ma’arat Hamachpela, give us every single piece of land in Israel with verifiable physical hard evidence of previous Jewish homesteading, and the “Palestinians” can have the right of return to the rest. (See? I accept the right of return by Palestinians, but only to land where there is no hard and obvious physical evidence of previous Jewish homesteading. There is no hard obvious physical evidence of previous Jewish homesteading in most of Israel, so practically, we actually agree on much even though he insists I reject the right of return, which  I DO NOT.)

So does our argument “fail on its own terms”? NO. It fails on his terms, which are that libertarianism necessitates a time-bound man-made a posteriori statute of limitations. These terms are wrong.

Dramatic effect follows for rhetorical emphasis only, no violence implied against any government official (skip to 1:21, and FYI Mandy Patinkin is a Jew):

Offer me money. (Not really, not interested.) Power too. Promise me that. (Not interested either.) Offer me everything I ask for. (Har Habayit, Ma’arat HaMachpela, and every parcel of land with hard evidence of previous Jewish homesteading. That I actually DO demand. Not of Hammond. He is irrelevant. Of the Israeli government yemach shemam. They are my real enemy.)

I want my Beis HaMikdash back Binyamin Netanyahu you son of a bitch. The Feiglinites are coming.

The Jews are back. The exiles are gathered. Our only stumbling block left is the Israeli government itself. After this post I will get back to only that, because these Hammondeers only dig in by deliberately acting progressively more ignorant of basic English and logic.

Put the whole quote on the post. Yeah, no chance of that. Because it’s irrelevant obviously. Whatever Hillary. C is for Clinton, that’s good enough for you.

 

At Long Last, A Defense of Israel Against Rothbard

rafifarber Jewish State, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

Back in 1967, in response to the outbreak of the Six Day War, Dr. Murray Rothbard penned an article entitled “War Guilt in the Middle East“. In the article, Rothbard denies Israel’s right to exist and accuses it of starting an unjust war. We, obviously, disagree.

Now, 50 years later, we his students have written a rebuttal, just published in The Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law. It is coauthored by Alan Futerman, Dr. Walter Block, and me.

Here it is. Click the link below and it will download the PDF.

The Legal Status of the State of Israel, A Libertarian Approach

Shelli Yechimovich Caught Between The State and a Hard Place

rafifarber Jewish State, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

I love it when the State goes after its own. I see on my homepage, which is MSN in Hebrew because I’m too lazy to change it, that Bozhi Herzog (I forget the menuval’s real name) head of the Labor Party, is being investigated for receiving “illegal donations” to his campaign for head of the labor party back in 2013.

Shelli Yechimovich, the other menuvelet who was running against him, had this gem to say about the affair:

חברת הכנסת שלי יחימוביץ’ (המחנה הציוני) התייחסה היום (שבת) לראשונה לבדיקה המשטרתית נגד יו”ר מפלגתה ויו”ר האופוזיציה יצחק הרצוג, ואמרה כי היא “סומכת, כמו תמיד, על המשטרה, הפרקליטות ועל כל מוסדות השלטון ומייחלת שהמפלגה שלנו לא תשלם מחיר כבד מדי

Knesset Member Shelli Yechimovich commented this morning on the police investigation against the chairman of her party and the head of the opposition Yitzchak (ah, that’s it) Herzog, and said that she “relies, as always, on the police, the prosecution, and all the institutions of state and hopes that her party will not pay to heavy a price.”

Whenever the state goes after itself, politicians have to still praise the state so as not to incite rebellion against it. She relies on the police, the prosecution and all the institutions of state because those are the weapons she is always fighting to control with her political aspirations. She is caught between the State and a hard place. It’s the same reason politicians always profusely thank the “first responders” in any disaster situation because the first responders are always police and firemen, services monopolized by the state.

I, for one, do not rely on the police, the prosecution, or any institution of state to do anything except what is in their best interest. I say the same thing about all private businesses as well, which always only do what is in their best interest. However, the difference between a private business and the state is that people voluntarily pay private business for their services, whatever they are, which means it is always in the best interest of businesses to comply with the wishes of their customers and clients. The State, however, doesn’t have to comply with the wishes of anyone because they get their money at the barrel of a gun.

If a private business screws you over, they will lose business. If the state screws you over, there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it, except go to the state itself to complain and scream at the wall. Or in the best case scenario, to the “Judges” of the “Supreme Court” who are wonderful and fair. And are paid by the State.

Also interesting to note, the crimes that state officials get punished for, almost always, are crimes against the State, which in this case would be accepting money not according to state laws. This isn’t actually a real crime, since accepting money is perfectly fine. They are never charged with actual crimes against people, even though they commit these every second of their lives. They only get in trouble for breaking the artificial laws the state makes up for itself.

Bar Refaeli on trial for keeping her own lunch money

rafifarber Jewish State, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

I like Bar Refaeli. She’s not exactly a principled libertarian as far as I can tell, but she doesn’t let the State push her around. A few years ago she got in trouble for draft dodging, AKA refusing to be a hired gun for politicians. Not even that really. A hired gun at least makes money.

She has a sour reputation in Israel because she’s a משתמטת, which is a bad word that means you don’t serve in the army. I went to the army but I can’t say I ever served. All I did was read books and pretend to push hummus around a giant fridge. I’m not proud of it. I’m proud of draft dodgers.

Now Bar is being harassed for not paying her taxes. She reportedly cried during a several hours long investigation at her house that lasted until midnight, poor girl. If I were her, unattached, and the State of Israel was harassing me, I’d get out of the country. She should get out for her own safety.

Bar Refaeli produces things, unlike politicians. She sells bathing suits and clothes and whatever else she looks good in, to people who want to buy this stuff. While she may not be a Jewish role model in terms of modesty and showing up in tabloids every now and then (she’s married to a nice Jewish boy now, so that’s good) , she deserves respect as a draft dodger and tax evader. Those are badges of honor in my book.

I ask that Netanyahu do NOTHING to protect us; just let us protect ourselves

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2 people killed today. More stabbing attacks in Ra’anana and Jerusalem. I am not joining in on calling for the Israeli government to “do something”. I do not want the government to “do something”. I do not want to impose closures, or bomb Gaza, or invade Arab cities or homes or anything. I want the government to do NOTHING. Not just any nothing, a very particular kind of nothing. Here is a list of six things of NOTHING that I want the government to do in response to this wave of murder:

  1. I want the Israeli government to do NOTHING when they see me carrying a knife. I want them to leave me alone and let me protect myself. In Israel it is illegal to carry a knife under threat of 5 years in a government cage. People are lining up at Ricochet (a camping chain) to buy knives but since they are illegal to carry, Ricochet cannot sell them.
  2. I want the government to do NOTHING when the see someone carrying a gun without a license. People should be able to buy a handgun immediately, today, right now, without a waiting period, without registering with the government (registering with the store is fine if they require it privately), and without a government issued license (private license is fine).
  3. I want the government to do NOTHING when they see a group of Jews pummeling and knifing an attacker to death.
  4. I want the government to do NOTHING to return the body to where it came from.
  5. I want Netanyahu to get on TV and tell everyone he will do NOTHING. Not a thing, except allow all of us to protect ourselves however we see fit.
  6. I want all Knesset Members and Ministers to take a permanent vacation to the Caribbean to do NOTHING which I would personally fund raise for just to get them out of here so they don’t start another war for fun.

 

Why Despair is Appropriate when Jews are Murdered in Israel

rafifarber Jewish State, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Two Jews were murdered on a government road by Itamar last night. There are two basic responses. One is anger and hope. Anger against Arabs and hope that the government will punish them and “deal justice” to the murderers. The other is despair.

Anger and hope are misplaced. Well, not so much the anger. Mostly the hope and trust that the government will somehow remedy the situation for the future. Politicians love this hope and trust. Every time Jews are murdered, they grow stronger. They give their mindless idiotic soundbites about how we must not stop in the face of terror, or the dead will not have died in vain, or the State of Israel will do everything in its power to blah blah blah, and all the angry and hopeful people cheer and fall in love with Netanyahu once again. And the beaten wife that is the people of Israel go running back to their abuser politician leaders to be smashed in the face for the umpteenth time.

They love their Netanyahu for saying angry sounding things and shaking his fists to the point that his combover gets slightly shifted in the hot air of his own self-righteous breath.

The government will not do anything about this that matters. They will find the gunman and stick him in free housing until the next prisoner exchange, where you and I will pay to have him clothed and fed and watch TV.

The truth is I’d rather he not get caught. It’s a waste of resources. The two Jews died in vain and their kids are orphans for nothing. We should all accept that and move on.

From there, we need to join those, including myself, who respond the second way. With despair and hatred, not against Arabs, but against the State of Israel. It is their road that this happened on, on which they have monopolized security but have not provided it. They will not lose money from this, or control of the road.

They have a monopoly on justice in the whole country but will not provide it by killing this murderer, so therefore we cannot expect justice to be done.

I don’t know how this will ever happen, but if eventually enough people become disgusted with the government who is responsible for this, they can be overthrown nonviolently.

For now, it is important to understand that nothing will change, because the government grows stronger when Jews die. People support it more. It becomes “unpatriotic” to yell at Netanyahu when his slaves are murdered. People say “it’s not the time.”

It’s exactly the time. This is the State’s fault. And they should lose their monopoly on security, justice, and roads, because they cannot deal out justice and they cannot secure their roads. The road should be privatized and the job of finding, trying, and killing the murderer should be in the hands of the private insurance company of the road.

But since that will not happen, the more people realize that these people died for nothing, the better. The more people that realize it, the more that can direct their wrath against those responsible. Not Arabs. The State.

The Fascism of Rabbi Yehudah Leib HaLevi Ashlag, “ZaTzaL”

rafifarber Jewish State, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

A commenter pointed me to this recently. Kabbalah is possibly my area of least interest because I don’t understand a word of it and I don’t take much meaning from mysticism. Ashlag is some sort of Kabbalist (I don’t even know what that technically means) who wrote a book called the Ladder. I assume it refers to Jacob’s ladder in VaYetzeh.

The only thing I know about Ashlag (does his name mean Rabbi Potassium?) is that he is the father of the teacher of Yehuda Berg of the Kabbalah Center. Kabbalah Center is like the Scientology wing of Judaism. Really creepy and whacked out. I’ve got no problem with it and won’t raise a din about it, but wouldn’t go near it my self, and would warn others to stay away lest they become persuaded to hand over large amounts of money to Berg.

But anyway, I went through this article of Ashlag’s, and the best pasuk I can find to paraphrase it is “אפס, כי עז העם” – that pivot the 10 spies made to freak everyone out of settling Israel. They began with the good news about the land, and then turned. A little bit of truth, and then a pumped-up story to pull the fear strings.

Ashlag’s economic vision, which is really a totalitarian vision, begins the same way. The first paragraph talks about the division of labor, how everyone tries to make profits, and how an economy works through exchange. Fine. True.

And then he starts to turn, just like all power hungry fearmongers do. He sticks with truth, but slowly adds bad words into it. Turns you off to it. Makes it sound bad. Competition can lead to theft. If everyone is looking out for himself, people can fight. It can get very bad.

Well, yes, this is true. Some people steal. OK. Therefore what? Then he gets into the plain lies and falsehoods, interspersing the lies between true sentences. (Lies in bold.)

מכיון שהבסיס הוא סיפוק עצמי, נמצא שהאדם היחיד נתון בתוך חברה שלימה, של מליוני אנשים, שכל אחד משקיע במסלול כלכלי מסוים, עמ”נ לצבור רווחים. הדבר דומה לאדם שנמצא בתוך ג’ונגל של חיות רעות, שכל אחת מעונינת לטרוף למען סיפוק עצמי, כך גם במישור הכלכלי, האדם נמצא בלחץ חברתי גדול, מטעם הנ”ל, ובדאגה מתמדת לשלום עסקיו, מטעם האיום החברתי הסובב, המאיים לבלעו, באשר אין רחמים וסנטימנטים בג’ונגל החיים האכזר, אשר בו כל אחד נאבק למען השרדות, ובצורה הטובה ביותר.

ד) מכיון שכל המניע הוא צבירת רכוש וסיפוק עצמי, לכן היותר מוכשרים בחברה, היותר פעילים ואקטיביים, היותר מהמרים, הם אשר מקימים מפעלים גדולים וכדומה, ומעסיקים פועלים רבים בשכר מינימום, מנצלים את כוחותיהם מעל ומעבר לסביר, עמ”נ לצבור רוחי ענק, בעוד שהפועל הקטן, מחמת חוסר כשרון ומעוף, אינו מסוגל להתמודד מול החיים עם משכורת המינימום שלו. נמצא אשר המוכשרים מנצלים בכל יכולתם את החלשים.

The basis of economics, he says, is self satisfaction. Therefore, the individual finds himself amongst an entire society of millions of people where everyone invests in a different path in order to earn profits. It’s similar to a man in a jungle of wild animals, where everyone wants to tear apart the other for personal gain. So too in the economic realm…the surrounding social threat of everyone that threatens to swallow him, there is no mercy, with everyone fighting for survival in the best way possible.

Because the only motive is building wealth and self satisfaction, the more talented people, the more active ones, the risktakers will build factories and the like and hire lots of people at minimum wage, take advantage of them to make profits to the point where the average worker dies of exhaustion. We see that the powerful take advantage of the weak as much as possible.

This is right out of the damn Communist Manifesto. It’s so unoriginal it’s practically plagiarism.

The first outright lie is his comparison of a human economy with a jungle of wild animals. ארץ אוכלת יושביה היא. An economy is based on trade. Trade is mutually beneficial for both parties. Two people agree, and they trade. Both win. Both want what the other has. They trade, and the economy grows through cooperation.

In a jungle, there is no trade. There is only conquering. The strongest animal kills challengers and threatens the rest, and takes the females. This is not an economy. This is totalitarianism by brute strength. In an economy, people don’t threaten one another as a rule of thumb. When that happens, we’re talking about crime. In an economy, they try to trade with one another, see who can benefit from what they have in exchange. It requires communication and working together. It is constructive rather than destructive.

An animal society in the jungle is destructive inherently. Nature keeps things in balance by killing off numbers if they become too big, meaning if the herd consumes too much. Since they cannot grow more food than is there and construct things, they will die when resources run out, allowing the resources to regrow on their own and the cycle begins again. Nothing but bare subsistence.

Humans can build things, and grow things, and develop nature. It happens through trade, not through taking advantage. And that takes us to his second paragraph full of lies. The talented people in society will be the entrepreneurs. They will take the most risks to build. But they will not hire a bunch of people at minimum wage until they all die of exhaustion.

He will offer money to workers who want it. He will have to compete with other entrepreneurs who also want these workers. The workers will go to whoever offers them the best conditions, not the worst ones. Or, they don’t have to take jobs at all. It’s entirely their choice. Before the entrepreneurs came, they did not have salaried jobs. Now they can take them if they want them, or they can go back to do whatever it was they were doing before. Picking fruit or whatever. Who knows.

The workers will get the market rate for whatever it is they do. The more capital equipment the entrepreneurs build, the higher their real wages will be, meaning regardless of the number of money units they get, they will be able to buy more stuff with it, because capital increase productivity.

So what’s Ashlag’s solution to his make believe problem? Well, he doesn’t like the idea of people stealing, so he’s just going to head all of society and tell everyone what to do on pain of punishment. He just Judaizes the idea of Stalinist totalitarian evil with a few psukim:

והנה רבינו בעה”ס החל לרקום תכנית להקמת סוג חדש של כלכלה, והיא כלכלה אשר תהיה מיוסדת בחברה, שאנשיה מקבלים על עצמם את העקרון של צורת חיים המבוססת על “ואהבת לרעך כמוך”. המוטיוציה והכח המניע של הכלכלה הזו, אינה צבירת רכוש, והגדלת האגו של האדם הפרטי, גם לא בניית חברה מוצלחת, אלא המוטיוציה היא – החיבור עם בורא העולם. כי ע”י חיים בדרך “ואהבת לרעך כמוך” מתחבר האדם עם בורא העולם, באשר זוהי תכונת האופי של הבורא – אהבת זולתו.

Our Rabbi then puts together a program for a new kind of economy, one that will be founded in a society where people accept the principle of “Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself”. The motivation behind this economy will not be personal gain and growing the ego, and not even building a successful civilization, but only connecting with the creator (his bold) because through “Love Thy Neighbor” man connects with his Creator, since this is the characteristic of the Creator.

WOW! You want to see something cool? Watch this:

Our Comrade then puts together a program for a new kind of economy, one that will be founded in a society where people accept the principle of “From Each According to His Ability, To Each According To His Need”. The motivation behind this economy will not be personal gain and growing the ego, and not even building a successful civilization, but only connecting with the love of his State and Country because through “From Each According to His Ability” man connects with his Country, since this is the characteristic of his Sublime Government.

This sounds like it was written by a 5 year old.

Ashlag then goes into how all goods would be given away, no money would exist, “society” would educate everyone, and blah blah blah.

If Ashlag had his way, the division of labor would break down, there would be mass death and starvation in the streets, purges, and “Love They Neighbor” police patrolling down your neighborhood block.

He’s worse than Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, and that says a lot.

So according to Ashlag some people steal. Therefore, his ultimate solution is “Put me in charge, and I’ll tell everyone what to do, and if they disobey my commands I’ll kill them and take their stuff and give it to someone else.”

Do I really think that if Ashlag or people that think like him were in charge they would engage in mass murder? Yes, I really do think that. Because mass murder is the only way to keep a society going where mutually beneficial exchange is illegal.

The guy who forwarded this to me says it is “crypto communism”. I don’t see anything crypto about it.