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Monday 30 October 2023

The Lion of Judah

The Lion of Judah is known to us. His people of Israel still do not know Him. We know that they will come to Him. Given the news, it may be sooner rather than later.

The events of October 7 are a disgrace. The Hamas and the Palestinians who support them have no sense of humanity. As someone whose blood is that of Mount Lebanon, I know a little history of what that curse did to the Lebanese since that desert bedouin walked. I know where I stand.

I deplore all the suffering, all the deaths. The suffering in Gaza is the fault of the Gazans. Period. I am cognizant of the gravity of October 7 and that there is no such thing as a proportional response, not when the other guys want you all dead. I am also well aware of history and whose land this is. And before any of my nasty Trads opine and rail that the Jews killed Christ, I say, you killed him, I killed him, we all killed him by our sins. So, leave your tropes for somewhere else because comments are off. 

For true peace, these cousins, children of Isaac and Ismael must seek the real Lion of Judah. 

The article below from Hillel Fuld on Facebook deserves to be read.


If you care even slightly how Jews around the world are feeling today, I’d love to tell you.

“How can I speak on behalf of all Jews?”

Because I can.

That offends you? That’s fine. Keep scrolling.

So this is how we feel. These are only some of the many things that are making us scratch our Jewish heads, some of the things that simply don’t add up.

The biggest one is this.

Israel and the Jewish people, on October 7th experienced the most inhumane, barbaric, heart wrenching, and savage attack on our people we have ever known. I say ever because even the Nazis were ashamed and hid what they were doing. Hamas-ISIS live streamed it.

That means that not only did they act like actual real life monsters but they took pride in murdering babies and decapitating them, raping kids and mothers, murdering holocaust survivors, and taking almost 250 innocent people hostage.

That, in my book, makes them worse than Nazis.

Yes, the Nazis killed more Jews. They had years. There was no IDF. The world sat that one out. Thanks for that, world.

So we experienced this unparalleled national tragedy and it could not possibly be clearer who

 the moral side is and who the monstrous side is.

Someone said “You know how you know which side is right and which side is wrong? Look for the side that rapes women and then drives them around in the back of a pickup truck to show off what they’ve done.”

That should be a good indication.

I’m going to make a confession. After October 7th, somewhere deep down, very deep, I felt a sort of relief. I told myself “Finally, FINALLY, the world will see the truth. Finally they will see what we’ve been seeing and saying for decades. There is no scenario in which the world doesn’t side with Israel now.

And now, here we are just a few weeks later. Lynches being carried out publicly on Jews, Jewish homes being marked (again), signs declaring no Jews allowed, and universities giving students extra credit for attending anti Israel activities.

THIS DOESN’T ADD UP!

This isn’t the world I knew one month ago.

How can this be? Where is the logic?!!

Just when we expected the world, the media, the academic world, the liberal world to see the true nature of the Palestinian agenda, just when I had some optimism that the world would come to its senses, they’ve completely lost their collective mind.

It makes no sense!!

Secondly, I never thought that in my lifetime, in the western world, I’d ever see an open call for genocide of Jews. Never in my wildest dreams.

But we’re seeing it and we need to stop looking away.

Calling for a global intifada, declaring From the River to the Sea, proclaiming that Hiter was right, these are literal calls for the murder of Jews.

On what planet, in what universe, do you think I, or Jews imagined they’d see otherwise intellectual, moral, ethical people side with rape,  pedophilia, murder, and kidnapping?

This just doesn’t add up!!!!

Proportionate response? Give them water? Give them internet? Give them electricity?

HAVE YOU ALL LOST YOUR MIND?????

Where is the logic here?? In what war ever did anyone demand that one side provide infrastructure to the other side, especially when there is hard evidence that that water and electricity is going to terrorists and not the people themselves?

You can’t make this stuff up.

Israel agreed to let in food and water with one condition, that the trucks be checked for weapons.

They let in the trucks and they “forgot” to check? Are you actually kidding me?!

How is this logical in any way?!! These are not natural occurrences.

We are all watching these protests, that are more like pogroms at this point and we’ve all just shrugged our shoulders. “Oh look, another Jew hating fest in the streets of London and NY. Oh man that stinks.”

Are we actually insane?? How did we accept this! How did those governments accept this? Are there actually no red lines? What has to happen for those governments and for regular people on the streets to stand up to this hate and put an end to it by any means necessary?

Where is the UN?? The head of the UN literally publicly justifying what Hamas did by saying it didn’t happen in a vacuum?

How are you not seeing how ludicrous this is?

UN and UNWRA whose schools are literally being used by Hamas as terror bases are just sitting there with their fingers in their ears yelling “Lalalalalala I can’t hear you.”

The tunnels. We know what they are. We’ve all seen them. We know how much they cost to build. The lighting. The plumbing. The cement.

Billions! Where did that money come from? We know where. From the world. From the UN. “Humanitarian foreign aid.”

On what planet does it make sense that you give someone billions of dollars for one cause, they use it for another cause, in this case terror, and you’re like “Oh yea, oh well. Let’s just send them more.”

Where on earth is the logic?! How is this a thing that’s happening in real life? You couldn’t even make up this script if you wanted to.

If someone pitched a movie studio the story of Israel and this war, the script would be immediately rejected with the response, “Sorry. This needs to be a little more realistic for people to watch this movie. Go rewrite it.”

In what universe does it make any sense that the west is trying to forcefully apply their western values to radical Islamic terrorists who say, proudly, every chance they get, that they want one thing? Dead Jews.

Someone said this to me yesterday.

In our western mind, we have some basic fundamental beliefs. Treat people well and they’ll treat you well. Everyone wants to live in dignity. People are intrinsically good.

Stop it!!

This isn’t the way they think.

You can treat them as well as you want! They want every non Muslim to either become Muslim or die! Read their damn charters for God’s sake! Listen to their leaders! Why won’t you listen?!!

No, not all humans want to live in dignity. Some people have other goals and those goals are what drive them. Stop thinking if you treat Hamas well or even send them money, that they won’t come after you next. Stop lying to yourself.

People are intrinsically good? Yes, most people are. Except those people who have been indoctrinated to be evil from age zero.

Do you understand that the west looking at Hamas or ISIS through a western lens is the equivalent of looking at a spider and wondering how it it that he’s not acting like a snake!

They are not the same! They don’t have the same anything. They are not the same!

The west and radical Islam have one thing in common. They both breathe oxygen. That’s basically where our similarities end. Stop expecting them to act like you and I act! They won’t. They never will.

Listen, the inconsistencies here are endless.

Genocide? Their population has grown 6x!!!

Apartheid? A country that has literal anti Israel Arabs in its parliament and Arab supreme court judges?

Occupation? What occupation? We dug up our dead in Gaza before we left. There was not one Jew there, dead or alive! Yes, we DUG up our dead. You read that right.

Why? Because we knew deep down what they’d do if we didn’t. And today we see how right we were.

They want a state? Give them a state. Are you flippin kidding me?

They. Don’t. Want. A. State!!!

Stop it. How can you keep repeating something when they hear you saying it and think to themselves “Why do they keep repeating this whole ‘We want a state’ thing? Who wants a state? We had a state. Many times.

We don’t want a state. We want no Israel. I mean it’s not like we hide our goals so I’m not sure why the world keeps putting words in my mouth, but ok, whatever floats their boat. 🤷

I can go on and on. This whole conflict and especially this war is like a movie with tons of holes in the plot. You finish the movie and start to think about it and you say to yourself “Wait a second. That actually makes zero sense. Am I the only who noticed that? This whole movie makes no sense.”

So are we doomed? Do we now live in a world in which hatred of Jews is so powerful that facts don’t matter?

“We occupied a Palestinian state.” 😂

What Palestinian state??? Palestine was Israel! We have coins that say Palestine on them alongside a Star of David!

What Arab Palestinian state ever existed??? What was the national anthem? Who was the president?

It doesn’t matter if it happened or not, does it? The world says it happened so it happened.

So are we indeed doomed?

No, we are not.

And I’ll tell you why.

The fact that the world we live in is a world of lies, has no bearing on us, the Jewish people, and our millions of supporters around the world.

We still have our moral clarity, our lenses are still clean, and we are able to see the truth, even if others are not.

But on a deeper level, the logical inconsistencies and the moral relativism that the world so loves to apply to this war, to me, those things tell me one thing.

If I am going to look at current events through a human lens, I will, indeed lose my mind, and start believing that I am actually clinically insane.

But if I shift focus, and I realize I cannot understand what is happening, because God is in control, and I can’t understand God, to me, this answers all the questions.

I am a human being, and I therefore have at least a basic understanding of the human mind.

If I understand the human mind, and I am seeing what is unfolding around the world, then I have to throw my hands up in despair and quit.

But if I realize that, while I understand the human mind, I lack complete understanding of God and His plans, then I am comforted by the thought that, of course, it makes no sense to me, because I don’t understand God‘s ways, and to Him, this is all part of a bigger plan.

There is a famous story of a rabbi who was on his deathbed. His students came to say goodbye, and gave him a list of questions to ask God when he went up and met Him.

After he died, he appeared to his student in a dream, and told him that he unfortunately would not be able to answer the questions that they asked, because up in heaven, the questions weren’t even questions. It’s not that they had answers, the questions themselves made no sense.

I know that it is hard to understand with our finite human brains, but that is exactly the point, we are human, and we can only understand other humans.

Looking at the world today, it is clear that this is not being run by humans, because no human mind can come up with the twisted reality in which we find ourselves.

Why God does what He does? Again, I have no clue, we have no clue, we do not have the tools to decipher why God does what He does.

Some people view that as a cop out, I view that as the only possible way to look at the world.

The only tool that I have in order to try to understand God‘s ways, and perhaps what is coming next, is history, is the Torah.

I look at the different miracles and stories we have learned our entire lives, and I know how this ends.

God watched over us in the desert with the clouds of glory. He accompanied us and held our hand until we reached our destination. He watched over Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, and all the rest of our forefathers and mothers.

He chose us, He gave us the Torah, He loves us, He is our father, and that I know beyond any shadow of a doubt.

How could a father allow this to happen to His kids?

I don’t know. I struggle with this question every day.

I don’t know.

But I do know, that throughout our history, we were the victims of endless persecution, and we always, always came out on top. Why we needed persecution in order to come out victorious? I have no clue.

Anyway, I started off by letting you know how Jews feel around the world, and out of all of the things I said above, to me, what I am seeing is, that Jews are strengthening their faith around the world, coming back to their tradition, remembering their heritage, and so many are understanding that God is in our corner.

You, the world, the anti-Israel world, you will go down in history, along with the Nazi sympathizers, and the people who sided with the Jew haters throughout our history, and were wiped off the map and forgotten forever.

How are Jews feeling today?

Devastated. Broken. Depressed. Hopeless.

And at the same time?

Unified. Strong. Optimistic. Confident.

“Israelis will never forget October 7th.

Jews will never forget what came after.”

I know Hashem is here with His clouds of glory again. I know He is marching alongside us into Gaza to do the impossible work we need to do there. I know that God’s version of today’s clouds of glory is the Iron Dome.

I am endlessly grateful and proud of the IDF. The IDF is God’s vehicle by which we will win this.

God has our back. We are marching into a man made hell on earth but right behind us is God, and if history teaches us anything, God does NOT look favorably on people or nations that mess with His children.

I promise you, this has a good ending.

The sadness won’t disappear.

The loss won’t ever be forgotten, but we will win this and this will all end with the Jewish people victorious!

Am Yisrael Chai. Now and forever!

Sunday 22 October 2023

Haman was hanged

Father John Zushlsdorf has a post this morning writing about the Introit and Offertory. The Introit is from the Book of Esther and the Offertory Antiphon (there is also one in the Novus Ordo) is from Job.

From Father Z:

You know the story of Esther during the Babylonian Exile. Wicked Haman plotted to get the King to kill all the Jews. Esther foiled his plan and instead, the Jews were able to slay their enemies.

You know the story of Job. He was a righteous man whom Satan tormented with God’s permission to test and strengthen him. He remained faithful in extreme misery and loss. Eventually, Job was rewarded by God with an even better condition than he had before. 

The figures of Esther and Job invest our Sunday Mass with their presence. The Introit Antiphon is from Esther and the Offertory Antiphon is from Job. There is a message embedded in the chants: things can go sideways very fast and mortal peril can arise. The agents of Satan and even Satan himself are at work. We must persevere, for only God is our salvation. Only He can save us, but we, like Ester and especially Job, must do our part both to defend ourselves from the Enemy and then also go on the offensive with prayer: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

I admit to not having read this scripture. I read it this morning about Esther and Haman.

Esther 7

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition

7 1 So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. 2 On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, ‘What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.’ 3 Then Queen Esther answered, ‘If I have won your favour, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me—that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request. 4 For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king.’[a] 5 Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, ‘Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?’ 6 Esther said, ‘A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!’ Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen. 7 The king rose from the feast in wrath and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that the king had determined to destroy him. 8 When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman had thrown himself on the couch where Esther was reclining; and the king said, ‘Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?’ As the words left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face. 9 Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, ‘Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.’ And the king said, ‘Hang him on that.’ 10 So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.

Hamas, I mean, Haman, was hanged.


Sunday 15 October 2023

Super flumina Babylonis


The Offertory Antiphon for today, the 20th Sunday after Pentecost is, "Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept: when we remembered Sion." It is also the Offertory for the 26th Sunday in Ordered Time according to the modernist Missal. Oh, you didn't know there was one?

Think about the text. "Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept: when we remembered Sion." Why did they need to "remember Sion?" Because they were taken from their land against their will. 

Where was their land? 

Israel.

The last two lines of this imprecatory psalm, "O daughter of Babylon, miserable: blessed shall he be who shall repay thee thy payment which thou hast paid us. Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock" speaks of the prayer of Israel against those who would destroy her.

When did you expect that we would tolerate signs and protests, "gas the Jews," or "death to Israel" on our western streets and the Star of David painted on the homes of Jews?

We've been here before.

As a son of Mount Lebanon, I know where I stand. 

Never again!

Never!


Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept: when we remembered Sion:
On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments.
For there they that led us into captivity required of us the words of songs. And they that carried us away, said: Sing ye to us a hymn of the songs of Sion.
How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten.
Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember thee: If I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy.
Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom, in the day of Jerusalem: Who say: Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, miserable: blessed shall he be who shall repay thee thy payment which thou hast paid us.
Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.

Thursday 12 October 2023

Oseh Shalom

He who makes peace in His high places
May He bring peace upon us
And upon all Israel
And say ye Amen.

May He bring peace, may He bring peace
Peace upon us and on all of Israel
May He bring peace, may He bring peace
Peace upon us and on all of Israel.

To which, I say.

Through Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen! 

Vox

Tuesday 3 October 2023

To Toronto Priests

 Are you going to bless sin?

Cardinals issue Dubia, again

Blogging has been slow even though the news is coming a mile a minute. Honestly, I just don't have the energy, brain power, or inclination to write about the antics of Bergoglio or his meetings on meetings filled with deviants, perverts, heretics, and malcontents. Now, we find that five Cardinals have issued a dubia. I have neither the time nor inclination to read it or write or rant on it. 

Father Z has covered it well.

New “DUBIA” Submitted to Francis about the Synodality (“walking togetherity”), same-sex blessings, ordination of women, shifting doctrine | Fr. Z's Blog (wdtprs.com)

I note that at all blogs, Father Z included, comments are down significantly. I don't write this to enlist comments but it does tell me something. People are exhausted by it all.

Do not lose your peace in all of this.

Stay close to Jesus.