OG, KING OF BASHAN - PART ONE

History, like art, should provide an understanding which makes it possible to explore the world.

 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’ And Semjâzâ who was their leader, said unto them: ‘I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.’ And they all answered him and said: ‘Let us swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.’ Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecation upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.

The Book of Enoch

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives, whomsoever they chose. And the Lord said: 'My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for that he also is flesh; therefore shall his days be a hundred and twenty years.' The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

Genesis 6: 1 - 4

King Og, ben-Hiya, ben-Semjâzâ was the ruler of Mt. Hermon long, long ago when it was part of the Kingdom of Bashan. (The Land of Rephaim). Og was one of the “giants” or Nephilim. He was the son of Hiya, who was one of the sons Semjâzâ (the Angel) and was begat with one of the comely daughters of man.   

For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants.

Deuteronomy 3: 11

Og survived the flood because Noah was a kind man. The flood came so suddenly that Noah forgot to pull up the ladder hanging over the side of the ark. When the worst of the storm was over the portholes were opened to get fresh air and Noah found Og hanging onto the ladder outside a porthole. Noah took pity on Og, and after getting him to agree not be bad anymore (Og wasn’t in any position to refuse) he fed him through the porthole. Og survived the trip hanging onto the ladder and in all the excitement after the beaching on Ararat he ran away and went to live on Mt. Hermon. Being what he was, he promptly went back to being a bad giant. 

Many bulls have surrounded me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.

Psalm 22:12 

The Bashan, later known as Gaulanitis/Jaulan/Golan) is the plateau east of the Jordan River, north of the Yarmuk River to Mount Hermon. It is an agriculturally important area as the western part gets Mediterranean winter rains with mist in summer and it has fertile red-brown loam volcanic soil with a good drainage bed of ash. Being just far enough from the ocean to dry out properly, cattle do well in this area making it suitable for permanent settlement. Because nutrients are easily leached from the soil and there is no replenishing from flooding rivers, the soil has to be managed correctly. This has never been the case. Populations come and go depending on the vitality of the soil.

The depletion is made worse by erosion due to overgrazing by sheep and goats and deforestation. The forests of the Golan have been cut down since Roman times but they survived until the Turks came with their railway line. They had no coal and burned wood in their trains - and the ancient forest of the Golan disappeared. As did the farmers - who early in the 20th century, became displaced persons and moved to Jaffa. This was long, long ago - and definitely before 1967, so nobody can blame Israel.

Even before this happened, the Hebrews took possession of the land:

• And they took possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, two kings of the Amorites, who were on this side of the Jordan, towards the rising of the sun. (Deuteronomy 4:47)
• And they turned and went up by the way of Bashan. So Og king of Bashan went out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. (Numbers 21: 11)
• The rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to half the tribe of Manasseh. (All the region of Argob, with all Bashan, was called the land of the giants. Jair the son of Manasseh took all the region of Argob, as far as the border of the Geshurites and the Maachathites, and called Bashan after his own name, Havoth Jair, to this day.) (Deuteronomy 3: 13 - 14)

The Assyrians took many of the Hebrews into exile, as did the Babylonians, and the beef of the Bashan became part of the myths in exile:

Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old. (Micah 7:14)

And it wasn't long before the Hebrews did go back to the Golan.

After the conquests by Alexander the Great (332 BCE), Greek immigrants flooded the Philistine and Phoenician cities along the coast and as these cities were overwhelmingly Greek they quickly assimilated. East of the Jordan they established themselves along the major trade routes in large numbers. Here they lived amongst the Hebrews without mixing - sometimes in the same cities, sometimes in their own but always in positions of control.

During his 84 - 81 BCE campaign Alexander Janneus took the Golan from the Greeks and brought it under Hebrew control. It was soon lost to the Romans under Pompey in 64 BCE who restored the Greek cities to their former owners but abandoned the bulk of the country to Arabs who once a year drove massive flocks of goats and camels across any greenery on the land. The rest of the year, they robbed all who moved. The land emptied. Herod the Great conquered it, and with soldiers and a Babylonian Jew in charge, restored law and order (and freedom from taxes). The Arabs were driven out and the population exploded as farming became possible.     

After the 132 CE Roman-Hebrew War when Hadrian forbade Jews to live in Judea, many of them moved to the Golan establishing over 170 communities. During the original settlement of the Golan, settlements were concentrated at the northeastern corner of the Kinneret and then thinned out towards the east, north and south. Over time, these communities split into distinctly Jewish or Christian towns with the Jewish towns concentrated near the Sea of Galilee and the Christian towns in an arch around them. The communities experienced a period of great prosperity based on the export of olive oil under the rule of the Byzantines. After the defeat of the Byzantines by the Arabs, both the Jewish and Christian communities vanished from the Golan almost overnight. It is tempting to say that this was due to persecution but that would not be true. It was the change of political masters that caused the collapse of the olive oil industry. This was the wealth of the Golan and as it was dependent on export trade to the west, it stopped when the harbors had been destroyed. From then on, the Golan had remained virtually unpopulated until the Ottomans started forcefully relocating people like the Druze and Circassians to the area.

The Golan was given to the French after WWI, and so landed in the hands of the Syrians and it emptied of people. After 1967, it became a part of Israel - people came back and today it is again famous for its beef. And lately, its Californian style wines.

NEVER AGAIN - PART TWO

LIKE LAMBS TO SLAUGHTER

But I was like a docile lamb that is led to slaughter.

Jeremiah 11:19

The Final Solution was preceded by the murder of 90 000 mentally ill patients (like homosexuals) in a program called T-4. In August 1941, it was stopped after the churches protested. The mass murder of Jews started soon after but the churches did not protest - and the murders carried on until the end of WWII when the Nazis had been defeated.

The initial plan was for Jews to be destroyed through work. Most of the deaths during the initial phases were due to extremely harsh working conditions and severe deprivation with active murder being the exception. The large-scale organized murders, especially through the use of gas chambers, came after the Americans entered the war at the end of 1941.

The tendency is for historians to portray the Jews as powerless and unable to resist but this is not quite the case. Uprisings like the massive effort in the Warsaw Ghetto shows what could have been done. After 300 000 Jews had been murdered, the people of Warsaw no longer believed the lies their leaders had been telling. (The leaders prohibited armed resistance, insisting everything will turn out okay.) In January 1943 the Warsaw Jews, with a little outside help, took up arms against the Germans.

The resistance held for more than five months - they were at war with the Nazis for longer than France was. This demands respect and should have taken place everywhere. In the camps, there were acceptably successful uprisings. The Russian Jews gave the Germans a hiding at Sorbibor - October 1943, and then at Treblinka (October 1944) and Auschwitz (October 1944) there were escapes.

The most significant Jewish resistance was the partisans - especially in France and the Soviet Union. These Jews fought with great efficiency right from the beginning. There were tales of great heroism and it inspired future generations of Israelis.

There were therefore opportunities to fight back but far too many Jews went to their deaths like 'lambs to slaughter' - this is an unpleasant fact. The important question is, "Why?"

In Warsaw, Emanuel Ringelblum put together an archive of people in the ghetto's observations. He also made notes of his own and famously wrote, this must never happen again and was involved in and part of the resistance. He escaped the ghetto and died while in hiding. Much of his writing was speculation, an attempt to understand and provide answers. He noticed and could not understand the passivity of the Jewish masses - it is not an illusion, it is a reality noticed at the time. Jews he said died without a whimper. Why, he asks, are fathers, mothers and all the children murdered without protesting?

It is true the Zionist Jews, the secular better-informed leaders and the financially able, left Europe and left the rest without militant capable leadership. If the Jews had been left completely leaderless, there would have been chaos, as among civilians in any war, but it would have been impossible for the Germans to murder as many as they did. But there were leaders and the majority was guided by them. These leaders had too much authority, were obeyed too readily and worse of all they based their decision-making on religion as they understood or wished it to be. This obscured the reality from their religious followers. Their power came from their being rabbis - and rabbis were appointed on the authority of God, as 'Lord of the Place'. They were not easily questioned.

The rabbis refused to take advice from anyone they did not regard as Jewish, not Reform Jews or Zionists or Gentiles, as they had no respect for them. During the initial phases of the Final Solution, they made a deliberately calculated move based on the shoal principle which since the Maccabees had been their survival mechanism. They, like a school of fish, relied on the predator eating its full and leaving a remnant. This is sacrifice at its most basic. Caveman 'sacrificed' to the saber-tooth tiger living at the back of the cave. They thought the Nazis would get 'satiated' like the tiger. They were unable to conceive of the reality of the potential for absolute evil in humanity. Those who were selected to die were glad because they were the elect, the chosen who was to be the 'holocaust' - the whole burnt offering who would bring forward the coming of the Messiach. Their sacrifice would herald a world of great bliss for all humanity, so they were happy; singing to the gas chambers.

The rabbis claimed the Jews are bound by oath not to rebel against the nations of the world. This was based on a deliberate misinterpretation of passages from Songs (2: 7, 3: 5, 8:4). The passages are a warning for women not to tease until they can please. This extremely good and sensible advice is not very holy, so the rabbis put a more spiritual spin on it. They said it meant Jews had sworn not to fight to defend themselves until the Messiach came. They also saw an oath not to return to Israel and they saw something else - something completely disastrous. Something which turned Judaism, a religion for life, into a death cult. They saw a promise of the coming of the Messiach if the Nazis (or anyone else) abused them to an extensive degree. They have waited for this event for a long time and now they could make it a reality by not resisting. By going to their deaths, literally 'like lambs to slaughter' - except they were singing.

When the Messiach did not turn up, they took their followers to their deaths because death was preferable to admitting they were wrong.

Note: The concept of the Messiach and the expectation of him is based on Alexander the Great - the all conquering hero and savior who brings justice. Before Alexander, there was no thought of such a Messiach in Judaism - nor in Christianity. 

80% of European Haredi were murdered - two-thirds of the six million Jews who died.

WHERE WAS GOD?

The Final Solution is one of the salient points in the history of the world.

As history unfolds, we learn more and more about the world, God and ourselves. This learning should change our perspective. (We learnt the earth moved around the sun. The earth was still the same. The sun was unchanged. But we had to deal with a brand new universe - even if it was unchanged - created by a fresh perspective.) Not to be prepared to alter perspective when faced with historical progress is dogmatism and dogmatism comes from arrogance in our own infallibility.

The Final Solution changed our perspective both of God and of humanity. The question, "Where was God?" is an expression of dogmatism - an attempt to keep our understanding of God the same as before the horrors which took place. It is at the same time an attempt to keep the same opinion of humanity.

Some people believe the Jews were murdered in sanctification of God's name. Others believe they were sin-offerings. Others still, believe it was the work of Satan. This is simply not the truth.

They were murdered because the world knowingly allowed Hitler and the Nazis to come to power without fighting back. They were murdered because anti-Semitism was allowed to be spread by overly liberal governments who allowed freedom of speech. They were murdered because of the false beliefs of the Haredim.

In the words of Rabbi Ishmael the High Priest (~ 130 CE), one of the ten martyrs who died with Rabbi Akiva: When a field is covered by weeds, shall a farmer complain to God? No; let him blame himself for his carelessness and neglect. Hitler should have been weeded and those who are actually prepared to read the Bible would see God is unchanged and he is where he has always been. God is not a pacifist and He does not love humanity, and He will not turn up to save them in the nick of time by sending a Messiach. This is the new perspective which has to be embraced.  

Before WWII, humanism and respect for humans became quite a big thing - the Final Solution changed the perspective. Humans are despicable and act horrifically. Since the Final Solution, this has been proved repeatedly. When the Nazis said they were going to murder all the Jews, they meant it. As the Arabs and Persians mean it today.

NEVER AGAIN

Haredim have to be taken care of by a government which allows them no freedom outside their own communities because they are like children. Extremely dangerous children - but incapable of protecting themselves. They cannot be allowed the leeway and authority they get in Israel because they are simply too irresponsible - they will provoke a catastrophe. They need a strong government who will keep them in their place while at the same time allowing them to practice their religion as they see fit in their 'shtetls'. This they had while they were under Islamic rule, be it under the Ottomans or in Yemen, Iraq, Iran etc. Under such a government, they will be safe - Israel cannot protect them and they will destroy Israel. They will sing while the nuclear bombs rain down on Tel Aviv - they are a death cult. (Reform and secular Jews might not be real Jews in the eyes of the Haredim but they are good enough for a sacrifice.)

A close look at anti-Semitism shows it to be based on personality flaws which already exist in the individual before they encounter their first propaganda. The word 'Jew' can as easily be replaced with the word 'tree' and would still hold true in the concepts. It can be fought because people with personality flaws flock together to get power. Constant, constant, constant attack to prevent the flocking and then individual can twitter and make no difference. Not one anti-Semitic sentence must go unchallenged - even to a ridiculous degree.

Anti-Semitism morphed into mass murder only when the Germans felt their lives were threatened. Arab propaganda has learnt from this and constantly portrays Israelis/Jews as mass murderers. (The 2014 Gaza War is a case in point.) The Arabs want the hatred to turn into horror and to a large degree, this is happening in Islamic circles but not so amongst secular Palestinians. They are no longer eager to provoke another Intifada. A withdrawal from the Zionist 'conquest settlements' and an incorporation of the Haredi settlements into a future Palestinian state will prevent the morphing from hate to horror.

The most important way to prevent another 'Solution' is for the majority of the international community to be fair. This can be done by being skeptical of the flood of anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist/anti-Israel propaganda. Jews are humans and Israel is not perfect but neither are any other people or country in the world. All Jews and Israel ask for is to be judged by the same measure as other people and countries. Before condemnation:

• Establish the facts from a variety of sources - make sure the story does not have the same origin
• Make sure the facts make some sort of sense - there is little point in killing one child in a war
• There has to be an external precedent - the same type of event with the same response
• Do not react based on emotion or prejudice - stay calm and be even handed
• Place yourself in the shoes of the Jews or Israelis - how you would have responded

This is not asking too much.