Category Posts by Others

Mar 13 2015

Toward a New Chapter in Human History, Part 2


By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

First, I want to reiterate the enlightened thoughts of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who had the courage to call for a “religious revolution” in Islam, by urging Muslim leaders to help in the fight against extremism.

In a speech celebrating the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad, President el-Sisi warned that they had no time to lose. “I say and repeat, again, that we are in need of a religious revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting on you. The entire world is waiting for your word … because the Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands.”

“We need a revolution of the self,” said this pious and unusual Egyptian President, “a revolution of consciousness and ethics to rebuild the Egyptian person – a person that our country will need in the near future.”

He went on to say: “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible that this thinking – and I am not saying the religion – I am saying this thinking is antagonizing the entire world! Does this mean that 1.6 billion people (Muslims) should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible!”

Most significant is el-Sisi’s reference to the “Egyptian”.  By emphasizing the word “Egyptian,” el-Sisi was focusing not the religion of the Egyptian – Islam – but on the Egyptian’s NATIONALITY, which antedates Islam!

It thus appears that el-Sisi wants the Egyptian people to remember that Egypt was once the leading civilized nation in the region, indeed, that it was a center of learning, of astronomy, technology, and biology – as the great pyramids and sarcophaguses of Egypt amply testify.

And what is most politically relevant, Maimonides, Israel’s greatest philosopher, was the Court physician in Cairo, attended on its monarch, aided the sick, and wrote texts on medicine relevant to this very day!

Let us therefore connect these salutary facts of Egypt’s past with the present, specifically with Israel’s present ability to provide medical, desalination, and other scientific technology to alleviate the suffering of Egypt’s impoverished people, who need no longer be so dependent on American largesse.

With the cooperation of President el-Sisi and Prime Minister Netanyahu, Egypt and Israel, with some help from other nations, can inaugurate a new Middle East, a Middle East of peace and prosperity.

Mar 13 2015

Toward a New Chapter in Human History


By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

President Barack Obama has made the U.S. virtually irrelevant in world affairs. That was his purpose, but this means that Obama himself is now irrelevant.

The Muslim world not only despises him, but may be approaching a moment in history when serious Muslims may turn friendly eyes toward hated Israel. Indeed, if Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi wants to start a revolution in Islam, he should arrange for a visit to Jerusalem and outdo Sadat by means of a “treaty of friendship” with Israel understood primarily as a diplomatic alliance against the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS!

Before continuing, allow me to quote from an interview of President el-Sisi conducted by Fox News’ Bret Baier in Cairo, Egypt, in March, 2015.

The Egyptian President called for the creation of an “Arab ready force” or regional coalition backed by the U.S. to defeat ISIS. He stressed a need for the U.S. to play a greater role in helping his country fight terrorism, a cancer spreading from the Middle East while Obama plays golf.

When asked to define the Middle East’s perceptions of the Obama administration’s leadership, President el-Sisi said in English, after a long pause, it was a “difficult question.” He said he was worried that “The suspending of equipment, weapons and arms was a negative indication to the public opinion that the United States is not standing by the Egyptians.”

He addressed the need for what he called a religious “revolution,” urging moderate Muslims in Egypt and around the world to “stand up” against terrorists hijacking their religion. According to the Egyptian President, there is a real fear among Muslims that fanatical religious leadership and oppression can become the norm in the region.

“We have to admit,” he said, “that terrorism is now a major threat not only to Egypt or even the immediate region, but it is a threat to the stability and security of the whole world.” He warned can also see that “the map of terrorism and extremism is expanding, it is not recessing.”

He said that “current U.S. policy toward Egypt … for example, the 13 June 2013 the suspending of equipment, weapons and arms was a negative indication to the public opinion that the U.S. is not standing by the Egyptians.”

El-Sisi took power after former Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi was overthrown in 2013. While el-Sisi acknowledged that Morsi came to power as a result of “free and fair elections,” he said that millions of Egyptians took to the streets to remove this extremist leadership, which was leading Egypt into a “vicious cycle of civil war.”  “We thought that the United States would take time to understand what really happened in Egypt … that [the overthrow of Morsi] was and has been the will of the Egyptians.”

Though the U.S. still gives roughly $1.5 billion a year to Egypt, second only to Israel in U.S. in foreign aid, mostly military shipments have ceased since the military leadership overthrew Morsi [and] cracked down on radical Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood. The U.S. held back deliveries of F-16 fighter jets, M1A1 tanks and Harpoon missiles.

President El-Sisi spoke out against what he described as “political Islam.” He said the people of Egypt have a “real fear of this kind” of system, adding they feel “these people have turned their lives into a living hell.”

He made these remarks in the course of defending the ouster of Morsi, who, as indicated, had been aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Responding to characterizations of Morsi’s removal as a “coup,” el-Sisi acknowledged that “free and fair elections” resulted in Morsi’s election, but that millions of Egyptians took to the streets to remove that leadership. He claimed the country was headed into a “vicious cycle of civil war,” at the time and that he and other military leaders intervened. Now let’s start a new page.

If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel el-Sisi were to conclude a treaty of friendship that would include, in addition to the blessings of Israeli technology of which the impoverished Egyptian people are so much in need, this might facilitate a constructive solution to the conflict between Israel and the self-styled or fictitious Palestinians.

That fiction, which the American professor New Gingrich mentioned a few years ago when he was an aspiring presidential candidate, would be acknowledged today by Senator Marco Rubio and other Republican presidential candidates.

Of course, I am thinking in grandiose terms, but no other terms are appropriate to the dilemmas of the Middle East, as was indicated by President el-Sisi’s courageous urging imams to reform Islam itself!  It may not be inappropriate, therefore, to quote Isaiah 19:25, where the Eternal says, “Blessed [be] Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.”

The inclusion of Assyria no longer seems to have any obvious application since it now includes areas where ISIS is operating, specifically in northern Iraq and further north bordering Syria. Note, too, that bordering Iraq to the east is northwestern Iran. A very large and strategic area is thus exposed to ISIS, an area that includes Lebanon and Jordan, which of course border Israel.  We need to think in grandiose terms, for which we have been given – let us dare speculate – a statesman in Israel and a statesman in Egypt to take the first step to ushering in a new and promising chapter in human history.

Mar 8 2015

Rescuing America from Nihilism: A Word about The Zohar*


By Paul Eidelberg

The Zohar was not written for its author’s (or authors’) contemporaries, but for a generation two millennia hence. This suggests that the author of The Zohar peered into the flux of history with new insights about man and the universe.

The Zohar – which means “radiance” – was written especially for our time because we live in an age of darkness, of intellectual and moral confusion, and the confusion is magnified by what we are most proud of, Science.

On the one hand, the great and successful scientific theory of General Relativity purveys a doctrine of strict Determinism, which seems to contradict Free Will, without which moral behavior is meaningless.

On the other hand, the great and no less successful theory of Quantum Mechanics purveys the doctrine of Indeterminism, suggesting that our world is merely the chance combination of subatomic particles devoid of meaning or purpose.

Determinism and indeterminism correspond, respectively, to the macro and micro domains of existence. Here I am reminded of the renowned eighteen-century Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (known by the acronym RAMCHAL), an Italian rabbi. Well-versed in science, the Ramchal (1707-1746) held that “The world contains two opposite general influences. The first is that of natural determinism, while the second is indeterminism.”[1] Perhaps we should also mention that the Ramchal was a master of Kabbalah, which would account for his recognition of the dualism of determinism and indeterminism, more generally, of the Unity of Opposites that governs the universe. We have come a long way from Luzzatto.

Richard Feynman, regarded by some as the greatest theoretical physicist since Einstein, writes: “Everything is made of atoms… there is nothing living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.”[2] Here one may wonder whether this Nobel Laureate ever correlated his knowledge of atoms with a well-known fact of biology, that the “Atoms of our body get recycled many, many times before death, so we don’t have the same bodies our whole lives. Nevertheless, we feel like the same person. Why? Because unlike a [rotting] ship, each human being has an uninterrupted store of thoughts and remembrances. If the human soul exists, that mental cache is it.”[3]

Fenyman’s materialistic reduction of man to a mere ensemble of atoms acting according to the laws of physics reminds me of Jean-Paul Sartre. His novel Nausea, describes our present age in terms of the nausea of a man who lives in a world without meaning.

Feynman’s materialistic reductionism is the default position of the social sciences, which calls to mind William James’ witticism, “A Beethoven string-quartet is truly [nothing more than] a scraping of horses’ tails on cats’ bowels”[4] Imagine educating one generation of youth after another on this academic diet of nihilism, while Muslim youth, including some Americans, are joining ISIS!

Yes, The Zohar was written for our time, which is thoroughly confused about the nature of man and of his place in the universe. How can it be otherwise when theoretical physics is itself confused about reality?

Although The Zohar is not meant for casual readers, it should not be identified with mysticism else it would not have attracted the attention of great minds and rationalists like Newton and Leibniz, who knew there is a deeper reality underlying space and time.

The Zohar contains a body of information which many people need and needed to know about themselves, about the universe around them, about the Creator of this universe, and about how people should relate to each other and toward their Creator.

The Zohar was written especially for our time, a time that would witness the parallelism of Torah and Science. Only the recognition of this parallelism can save us from self-destruction; for as most people now know and fear, we are lost in a world of increasing violence and anarchy, world without precedent to help or guide us. We are like a babe newly born into a world of buzzing confusion. There is no philosophy or psychology or sociology that can help us.

We are learning that all our learning is vanity. We have been cast into churning sea. We see no beacon or sight of a distant shore on which to plant our feet. Turbulent winds are driving are driving us hither and yon filling our hearts with fear. We are adults that feel like a child that has lost his mother. Our grown-up knowledge only renders us more confused.

It no longer provides us with a moral compass. That compass was buried in the deluge of the materialistic reductionism of modern science, which knew only about matter in motion, and reduced us to nothing more than matter in motion.

This was foreseen by the author(s) of The Zohar who thus anticipated the need of a convergence of science and Torah to provide the moral compass we lost in the stark light of modern science.

Extracted from my book Rescuing America from Nihilism:  A Judeo-Scientific Approach (Lightcatcher)

[1] Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, The Path of the Just (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1989), 81.

[2] Richard Feynman, Six Easy Pieces: The Foundations of Physics Explained (London: Penguin, 2011), 20. In a more modest mood, Feynman also says, “nobody understands quantum mechanics,” as cited in Brian Green, The Elegant Universe (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 103.

[3] Sam Kean, The Violinist’s Thumb (New York: Little Brown & Co., 2012), 341-342.

[4] See www.goodreads.com/…/1010693-a-beethoven-string-quartet-iii. No less than Darwin once sighed, “What thought has to do with digesting roast beef, I cannot say.”

Mar 8 2015

Netanyahu Is the Epitome of what a real World Leader should be!


By Jeff Longo
In a defining moment of our time the prime minister of Israel stood on the floor of America’s house and delivered a historic speech to Congress, the American people and the world audience. As radical Islam grows in strength and Iran continues its pursuit of a nuclear bomb, a new leader of the free world has emerged and his name is Benjamin Netanyahu.
With force and clarity Mr.R spoke as the leader of a nation fighting for its very survival. Israelis watch in horror as their strongest ally is on the verge of signing a terrible deal that all but assures Iran will have a nuclear bomb within a decade. “This deal,” he said, “doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb, it paves the path to the bomb.”  Dozens of times this electrifying speech was interrupted by thunderous applause and standing ovations from both sides of the aisle.
It’s easy to see why Mr. Obama has his operatives working so hard to defeat Netanyahu in the upcoming Israeli elections. It’s not surprising he was so defiantly against the prime minister’s speech to Congress. With great passion Mr. Netanyahu laid out the chilling effects of what the world would look like with Iran in possession of a nuclear bomb. This is a message that our president has been unable, or unwilling to deliver to the American people. It appears the president has accepted, as fact, that Iran will achieve nuclear capabilities and  has abandoned his pledge to prevent that from happening. His focus now is to make sure the “deal” prolongs this from happening until after he leaves office. Protecting his legacy always trumps the security of the American people and our friends.
The Nazis incinerated 6 million Jews and Netanyahu vowed “never again.” He explains that the future of free people rests in our ability to have the moral clarity to fight radical Islam wherever and whenever we see it. Americans need to understand that while Iran sees Israel as the little Satan they see the United States as “The Great Satan.” The United States and Israel are connected as one in their burning hunger for freedom and their need to destroy radical Islam before it destroys us. America must stand behind Israel.
 
Mar 5 2015

Three Cheers for Bibi


By Paul Eidelberg

I’m not in the habit of cheering Bibi, but he’s to be congratulated for infuriating President Barack Obama, the worst president in American history.

Obama, the “empty suit” in the White House, exasperates just about everyone, even the Arabs. The Sunni Muslims despise him. He behaves as a toady of Shiite Iran, whose development of nuclear weapons threatens not only Israel, but any Arab state that doesn’t genuflect to the Mullahs in Tehran. Nor is this all.

Obama has also alienated Europe, especially Czechoslovakia and Poland. He was supposed to have provided them with a missile defense system against Russia, but his attention was diverted to a more challenging game of golf.

That’s not the pastime of Vladimir Putin, more interested in the Ukraine.

Russia’s imperialist ambitions did not end with the gutting of the Berlin Wall. Russian tanks are in the Ukraine in the Crimea. Control of the Black Sea ports of Crimea provide the Russians with quick access to the Eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Middle East – a threat to NATO’s entire southern flank. Some experts say we witnessing a low-keyed renewal of the Cold War.

That’s something the floundering Chicago community organizer is intellectually incapable of giving serious thought.

Let’s face it: we didn’t need Professor Newt Gingrich in the Senate gallery to realize that POTUS is an embarrassment to the Congress of the United States, with the exception of the lachrymose Nancy Pelosi. Bibi’s speech made the poor lady cry.

His only mistake he made in addressing the joint session of Congress concerning Iran is that he spoke the truth.

Not that Bibi’s incapable of indirection. That’s the modus operandi of Israeli leaders who speak in public about peace with the Palestinian Authority, whose Qur’an is the same as that of the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Nevertheless, one must give credit when it’s due, in the hope that the exceptional will become the rule. So three cheers for Bibi, and may truth become his banner!

Mar 5 2015

A Purim Spiel


Dear Mordechai:

As you know, from time to time an American diplomat is dispatched to the Middle East to solve the so-called “Israel-Palestinian conflict.”  Today this conflict is linked to Iran; an emerging nuclear power rightly deemed the Islamic successor of Nazi Germany.

These America diplomats harbor the craven and mindless doctrine political scientists call “conflict resolution.” But as you know, Mordechai, the root of the conflict between Jews and Muslims is religious or theological.  So if this conflict could be solved peacefully by human agency, it would require a theologian possessing enormous power and intellectual integrity. No such theologian exists. America produces only John Kerry’s.

Meanwhile, an outstanding statesman like Egyptian President Abdul al-Sisi, who knows something is askew in present-day Islam, doesn’t even get a favorable press in Kerryland, where Muslim critics might be beheaded, one way or another.

Truth was beheaded in America a day after 9/11, when President George Bush called Islam a “religion of peace.”  No one dares question that lethal religion.

Muslims the world over would be enraged if an American statesman, quoting Winston Churchill, told them that Islam is a distorted religion whose principles violate ethical and intellectual monotheism. How can anyone have an honest discussion with Muslim despots whose prestige and power are based on 1,400-years of falsehood?  No religious leader in the world preaching love and brotherhood will diminish the hatred and misanthropy of Islam, a programmed for a world-historical purpose beyond the cognition of mere politicians.

You are not going to dislodge Islam’s hold over 1.6 believers whose leaders have corrupted their minds; who have taught them that the Jewish concept in Genesis, that man is created in the image of God, is the blasphemy of “infidels”; that Muslim warriors have slaughtered some 200 million of these infidels since the time of Muhammad – ostensibly to glorify Allah.  Imagine how the combination of this teaching and historical experience, has not only inflated the egos of Muslims everywhere, but has also made non-Muslims everywhere appear all the more despicable!

It’s all too late.  Even if Muslims around the world thought they heard the heavenly voice of Gabriel saying, “Muslims, Muslims, your prophet Muhammad deceived you,” they’d think the voice was dubbed in from an orbiting satellite designed by Israeli engineers to avoid the necessity of another Netanyahu speech to the U.S. Congress – as if oratory alone can preclude the inevitable, the bombing of Iran.

Every Tom, Dick, and Shlomo on Internet is talking End Times without knowing that that’s what End Times is all about.

 

Happy Purim Mordechai, and give my regards to Esther.

Mar 5 2015

Netanyahu’s speech to Congress


By Paul Eidelberg

Clearly, the invitation for Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was unprecedented. It was also indicative of great American patriotism.

The invitation was far more than a political insult to President Obama. It conveyed utter contempt for Obama’s Lilliputian mind and un-American character.

Mr. Netanyahu showed extraordinary merit, for he displayed the qualities that were lacking in Obama. Hi speech conveyed the kind of intelligence, national pride, and moral and political leadership which America today is so much lacking and so much in need confronted by the unprecedented challenge which Islam poses to America’s beneficent leadership in world affairs.

Congress’s invitation to Israel’s Prime Minister and his excellent speech should be regarded in Biblical terms, as it will be regarded by Christians and Jews who take the Old Testament seriously.

Mar 2 2015

Diplomacy: Bibi vs. Obama


By Paul Eidelberg

One very profound and personal reason for Obama’s hostility toward Benjamin Netanyahu is the latter’s all too obvious intellectual superiority. As every envoy knows, a wise and experienced diplomat will never display intellectual superiority vis-à-vis another country’s representative. Like a good teacher, he must not overawe a student intellectually if he wants to obtain the student’s candor and insights.

The wise diplomat will therefore suppress his ego to facilitate amenable and frank dialogue with his vis-à-vis. The trouble is that Obama is so much an ignoramus that it’s almost impossible for Bibi to talk intelligently and candidly in Obama’s presence without offending that narcissist.  Therefore, whenever possible, Bibi must use an intermediary who knows how to play mediocre. This may be one reason why Henry Kissinger was not a very successful negotiator in Egypt and in Syria.

Mar 2 2015

Needed: A Passionate, Articulate, and Patriotic President: Part II


 By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

The paramount issue in 2016 is not ideas. Any person whose mind has not been corrupted by the university-bred doctrine of moral relativism, a doctrine that permeates the mentality of many of the highly educated officials of the State Department, would say NO to the entry into America of the late Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Muslim despot would who not only used Iranian children to walk over land mines, in Iran’s war against Iraq, but who also chanted “Death to America.”

Therefore, the paramount issue is not a nuclear Islam. This is only the external paramount issue confronting America, now confused by “political correctness.
More significant, we need a PASSIONATE presidential candidate capable of arousing the patriotic emotions of the American People.

The people have been jaded by excessive emphasis on jobs. Of course jobs are important; but that by itself will not arouse America’s fighting and patriotic passions.

The voters need to see and have a well-modulated PASSIONATE Presidential candidate who is also a caring man, caring not only for the jobless, but also for the revival of American pride and international leadership, which that have been undermined by the lifeless and apologetic presidency of Barack Obama.

Our Presidential candidate must show, with controlled emotion, a fighting spirit.  He must focus on two related enemies: (1) the evil of ISLAM exemplified by the ISIS beheadings of innocent people; and (2)  Obama’s fatuous denial of the Islamic threat; his saying America is not at war with Islam, while suggesting that ISLAM is not at war with America – as if 9/11 never happened.

(3) We need a presidential candidate who will expose Obama’s ineptitude and moral cloddishness. Suffice to mention his golf-escapades while, the country was being invaded in the south by illegal immigrants.

(4) Our Presidential candidate must show that Obama is increasing the crime rate among blacks; and that to win votes for Democrats, he is making Hispanic criminals U.S. citizens and supported them with the earnings of hard-working Americans. This has  be exposed with passion to arouse righteous indignation.

The 2016 election campaign must not be a milk-and-toast affair. The hard-working ethics and self-reliance of the American people must be emphasized. So should the brilliant and much emulatedd Constitutional structure and  political principles of our Founding Fathers.

All this and our very existence as a Republic are at stake in the 2016 election. Obama’s Islamic sympathies and his having been tainted by the multicultural moral relativism propagated by academia can have only one end: the demise of America.

We need a President that can articulate and defend America’s glorious heritage

Mar 2 2015

Remaking America into Obama’s World


By Paul Eidelberg

1) Obama said at the outset of his first term that he would come to Islam’s (read Iran’s) defense.

2) As I warned in 2004, Obama’s campaign slogan of CHANGE meant REGIME CHANGE. That implied  America’s retreat as a world power, which in turn implied the ascendancy of ISLAM. This is why I urged a US attack on Iran before the 2008 election, as did John Bolton.

3) As Ralph Peters warned, the US hasn’t the faintest sense of the hatred stored in the Muslim heart, and this hatred animates Obama.

4) Thanks to “higher” education in America, the word “EVIL” has been removed from the language of public discourse. Hence Americans elected Satan to the White House (Christians would say the “anti-Christ”).

5) The “Rules of Engagement” no longer apply in politics. if you are able and want to preserve your family, you need to know that conventional politics is OVER.

6) Fools elected a Third World Scoundrel tutored by Jeremiah Wright as their President. Fergusen will be the model of politics in Ombamaland. Is any 2016 presidential candidate equal to a modern version of Rome? Rubio has the passion, but the votes will matter even more