This Morning's Musings

Jews blown up and incinerated by the busload in Bulgaria and Americans mowed down in a movie theatre, all in the same week. It sure does FEEL like the Three Weeks leading up to Tisha b'Av. Oh wait. It is the Three Weeks [July 8 - July 29].

 

I hung out with my friend Avigdor over at the Huffington Post for a while this morning, but all they're talking about is the "need" to disarm law-abiding citizens and do away with the Second Amendment, as if that would prevent someone from going crazy and shooting up a movie theatre full of innocents. It is not reassuring that seemingly half of our population is so thoroughly brainwashed by "progressivism" that they  have lost the natural impulse to defend themselves and moreover, are no longer able to even think for themselves.

Just call 911. Once the police arrive, whenever they do arrive, they'll surely stop the shooter. Which they can do because they have guns.

I'll just simply note two things here. One, this particular chain of movie theatres prohibits patrons from carrying firearms on their property, regardless of the fact that it may be legal to do so in some locations.  This rule, however well-intentioned, did not stop the shooter. But it did prevent any of the victims from stopping him.

Two, according to a report at the Huffington Post, the Batman-movie shooter was "one of six students at [his] school to get National Institutes of Health grant money." So it's entirely feasible that Government helped him build his arsenal. How could he have afforded it otherwise?

 

 

Speaking of Government, C. Edmund Wright has written an excellent commentary called Obama of Roanoke: We Saw You Coming. You can read it at American Thinker.

.... Ayn Rand saw Obama of Roanoke coming way back in the 1950's, before Barry Soetoro was even born.  Ronald Reagan saw him coming in the 60s and 70s -- and was especially prescient on how he would use the medical industry to advance his goals -- even though our current President was but a choom boy "doing some blow" back in the day.

Obama of Roanoke, understand, is not merely a specific person named Barack Hussein Obama.  He is Van Jones.  He is Elizabeth Warren. He is Valerie Jarrett.  He is Steven Chu and Cass Sunstein.  He is Jeremiah Wright and Frank Marshall Davis and Karl Marx and many others.  Obama of Roanoke is not some benign elegant speaker. Obama of Roanoke is a malignant mindset.  His fingerprints are all over the biggest disasters in world history.  For this reason, he was and is utterly predictable long before Friday last....

....  It mattered not at all that he waited until July of 2012 to give the Roanoke speech.  Obama of Roanoke is exactly who he has always been and he has done exactly as many of us expected him to do....

 

Likewise, it matters not at all that the professional Jew-haters of Hezbollah waited until July of 2012 to blow up a bus of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. Islamic Jew-haters are exactly who they have always been and have done exactly as many of us expect them to do -- as theirs too is a "malignant mindset." 

The lesson here is encapsulated in a worthy cliche: "Hope for the best, but plan for the worst."  Most of us do the former, but neglect to incorporate the latter. At our own risk.

 

In keeping with these times, I find myself reading about The Fall of Betar on Tisha b'Av, 135 CE -- as told in the Talmud.

.... Eighty thousand Romans entered Betar and slaughtered the men, women, and children until blood flowed from the doorways and sewers. Horses sank up until their nostrils and the rivers of blood lifted up rocks weighing forty se'ah and flowed into the sea where its stain was noticeable for a distance of four mil [about 6.5 miles].

Hadrian had a large vineyard, eighteen mil [approximately 11.5 miles] by eighteen mil - the distance between Tiberias and Tzippori and he surrounded it with a wall made from the bodies of those slain in Betar. He also ordered that they not be brought to burial.

The Sages taught: for seven years the gentiles harvested their vineyards without having to fertilize them because of the blood of Israel.

 

 

A mishmosh from various entries at Wikipedia serves as epilogue:

According to Cassius Dio, during the [Second Roman War Against Israel] 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed.

The final battle took place in Beitar, a fortified city 10 km. southwest of Jerusalem. The city only fell after a lengthy siege.

According to the Babylonian Talmud, after the war Hadrian continued the persecution of Jews. He attempted to root out Judaism, which he saw as the cause of continuous rebellions, prohibited Torah law, the Hebrew calendar and executed "Judaic scholars".

The sacred scroll was ceremonially burned on the Temple Mount.

In an attempt to erase the memory of Judaea, he renamed the province Syria Palaestina (after thePhilistines), and Jews were forbidden from entering its rededicated capital (except on Tisha b'Av). When Jewish sources mention Hadrian it is always with the epitaph, "may his bones be crushed" (שחיק עצמות -- or the Aramaic equivalent, שחיק טמיא

 

I have only this left to say. Be mindful of these Three Weeks. Do not allow present-day Hadrians or other Caesars to erase Betar or Judea from our memory. And consider - and remember - that the Romans killed over half a million Jews in this one war - of several against the Jews - without a single gun.

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Thank you, Yael, for what is truly a "think" piece -- and a very provocative one. When it comes to connecting widely-spaced dots -- Aurora, Bulgaria, Betar -- your acuity is nothing short of remarkable. In a post that is chilling enough, your reference to progressives who have "lost the natural impulse to defend themselves" is downright freezing. One would think, it seems to me, that losing the impulse to defend oneself -- which is, we are told, one of our oldest evolutionary inheritances -- would be impossible. But you are right. The "fight or flee" impulse that goes all the way back to the troglodytes has become, in the progressive world, just plain old "flee." After several centuries of Leftist brainwashing -- going all the way back at least to Rousseau -- the "fight" instinct seems to have vanished among American Leftists, and hordes of Americans are apparently convinced that the wisest course when confronted with evil is to flee. Witness the fact that there has been, so far as I can determine, not one Democratic objection -- not a single one -- to Obama's inviting the cutthroat Muhammed Morsi to the White House -- the same Muhammed Morsi who has vowed to get the murderous Blind Shiek, one of America's most dangerous sworn enemies, released from the American prison in which, we can all hope, he is now rotting. A generation ago, this kind of dereliction on the part of an American president would have created an instant firestorm of outrage. But no longer. Today -- certainly on the Left -- we hear only utter silence. America, whether we want to admit it or not, is not only in deep trouble, but pathological -- suicidal -- trouble.