Been a while

As I hadn't been out of the house in two months, I forgot what it's like out there. Beit Shemesh often appears in lists of the 10 or so Charedi cities in Israel. In reality, most of the city isn't Charedi. There are Charedi neighborhoods, some quite large. But so are the Chiloni and Modern Orthodox/Dati Leumi ones. There are huge swaths of town that are utterly non-religious: the malls by the train station for example. I went there today. 

It could be Tel Aviv. The typical man wears a t-shirt or polo-shirt, no yarmulke, a shaved head, and no tzitzis. The typical woman is in pants, head uncovered, bare arms. Everyone taps obsessively into their smart phones and many of them smoke. They don't smile. They shout at each other. Most of the men strut around like army captains. There is nary a trace of religion, just a few scattered people who look and carry themselves the same way as the others but with tiny yarmulkas on top of shaved heads, or, in the case of the handful of women, utterly immodest clothing along with a brightly colored head scarf that covers half the head. But even they are few and far between.

There are 5 large apartment buildings across from the mall. The patios are built one on top of each other so that putting a sukkah there is impossible. They clearly were not built for religious people.
It is incredible to think that this is Eretz Yisroel, the place from which we were booted for a few short-comings in mitzvah observance. Those short-comings did not include violations by the masses in Sabbath observance, kashrus, the laws of family purity, and basic belief in God. The people who got booted from the land two thousand years ago would look with incomparably more astonishment at the non-religious people in Israeli society than I do.

And this is Beit Shemesh, a city that regularly appears on the list of Charedi cities.

There are a few other Charedi enclaves in Israel. Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Modi'in Illit, Beitar Illit, Kiryat Ye'arim (Telz-Stone), Ashdod, Rekhasim, Safed, and El'ad.

Telz-Stone has just 6,000 people. Ashdod, a large city of 220,000 has a religious neighborhood, but the bulk of the city is utterly non-religious. It takes a lot of driving to find the religious part. Rekhasim, near Haifa, has 12,000 people and a Charedi majority. Elad has 50,000, the majority Charedi. Modi'in Illit has 70,000, the great majority Charedi, almost it seems often that few of the store workers are. Bene Brak has 200,000, the great majority but not all Charedi despite what you have heard. Beitar Illit has 50,000, basically Charedi. Safed has just 35,000 people but only a portion are Charedi. Jerusalem has huge Charedi neighborhoods but most of the city is not Charedi.

That's it, in a country of 5-6 million Jews. Drive from one of these cities to the other and you pass non-religious town after town, moshav after moshav, city after city. Kilometers and kilometers of sin. 85% of the Jews in the land are not Charedi. I dare say they and the Arabs occupy well more than 90% of the land as the Charedi areas are more densely populated.

It's not like in America where you have Orthodox Jewish enclaves and thousands of churches between them. Here it's non-religious people for the most part and if some observe some traditions they ignore far more than they keep. It's a land of sin.

This is Zionism. It amazes me that any person who calls himself Torah observant can be excited about the State of Israel. If you have any love of God, Torah, people, or land, you have to be pretty close to breaking down into tears if you venture out of the house. The State is such an abomination. I dare say it is the worst thing to ever happen to the Jewish people, except maybe for the dispersal of the Ten Tribes and the destruction of the First Temple. It is far worse than the Chet HaEgel.

You can't go by the small group of bonafide scholars who were excited about the state early on. And it is only a handful of men. They had high hopes. What would they say now as 4.5 million Jews violate Shabbos every week in the Holy Land?

And it's not as if some are religious and some not but we are all brothers. The hostility the leaps off the faces of the non-religious to the religious is very hard to take. The myth is that it's the other way around. Look, I don't care for the mitzvah violation but I don't glare at people. If anything I smile and want to encourage them. But that's not how they look at me. They hate us. They are fed so much propaganda about the Charedim, so many lies. If you want to know more about that, just open up the Times of Israel any day of the week. I think actually the blood libels of old Europe don't even compare to this. The quantity and intensity of propaganda and hatred is immense. One feels it. It is unmistakable. This is Zionism. It is the opposite of Judaism. 

More abuse by the Israeli police - Yeshiva World News

https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/1851401/police-officers-jump-on-recovered-toldos-aharon-covid-19-patient.html

R’ Eliezer Samet, a Toldos Aharon chassid, who recovered from the coronavirus and tested negative twice for the virus, was suddenly pounced on by two police officers and arrested on Rechov Malchei Yisrael in Geulah on Tuesday morning on the mistaken assumption that he was an active coronavirus patient who was supposed to be in quarantine.

Samet was one of the first people in Jerusalem who was diagnosed with the virus and has fully recovered. He was walking on Malchei Yisrael on Tuesday with his wife on his way to visit his father.

According to a report by B’Chadrei Chareidim, the police ignored R’ Samet when he explained that he had already recovered. R’ Samet then said: “If you’re going to arrest me, at least do it quietly. Don’t humiliate me on the street. Let’s go to the side.” But the policemen insisted on arresting him in the middle of the street. Only after much effort and the intervention of askanaim were he and his wife released.

His family members are furious, telling B’Chadrei: “They were even already called this week to donate blood at Hadassah Ein Kerem [for the antibodies in the plasma to be used to treat coronavirus patients.] What’s happening here is that the right hand isn’t aware of what the left hand is doing – an outrageous lack of coordination.”

“What’s happening here is that people don’t want to be tested due to this.” [Because if they test positive for the virus they will be tracked by the police and can be fined NIS 5,000 if found outside before they receive two negative tests for the virus. The tests are often delayed and the process can take weeks. R’ Samat was unfortunately not the first person that the police mistakenly believed was violating quarantine].

“And even when he was detained at the police station, they called him to ask when he’s coming to donate blood for the antibodies. It’s absolutely crazy what’s going on here.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

Do we really know that Coronavirus is serious?

From Oct 1, 2019 to Feb 1, 2020, 12,000 - 30,000 people died from the flu in the US. The flu is a respiratory disease. The CDC estimates that 31 million Americans had the flu and 210,000 to 370,000 flu sufferers were hospitalized because of the virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the flu kills 290,000 to 650,000 people per year around the world. The mortality rate of the flu is around .1%, meaning 1 in 1000 people who get it die.

As German pulmonologist Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg explains, there are around 100 types of viruses that virologists track and they are changing every year. Virologists test for the ones they have tests for. Normally, 7-15% of viruses are coronavirus, which is also an acute respiratory disease. Coronavirus is not a new disease. People die from it every year.

So in China in the city of Wuhan, which is a huge city with millions of people, they have resperatory illness sufferers. Doctors ran a few tests on a small group of less than 50 people and found a new variant of coronavirus. All the test shows is that it's a different variant. Normally, you have to be very careful with these kinds of findings, look at them very thoroughly to see what you have, see how severe it is, how damaging, how many recover from it. But Chinese virologists 

The test for this virus is new and its reliability not confirmed. Also, when people die, you have to try to figure out if they died from the virus. Many were in intensive care for other things and died while having the virus but that doesn't mean they died from the virus. All of this takes time to sort out. But in this case, there has been a rush to action and all the proper research has not been done. 

Watch

goal of the First Lebanon War was to bring down the Hashemite Kingdom

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200504-terrorism-was-israels-pretext-to-turn-jordan-into-palestine-says-ehud-barack/

The goal of the First Lebanon War was to bring down the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and turn the country into Palestine, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has said in a shocking admission about the true intention of the Zionist state.

Israelis were told that the objective of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon was to remove forces belonging to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and end the threat posed by the resistance group to its northern communities. Barack admitted that this was untrue, explaining that the real goal was to use the “pretext of Palestinian terror” to force the PLO back to Jordan where they would take over government from the Hashemite Kingdom.

epidemiologist suicided

The CDC researcher who mysteriously vanished in February has been found dead

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/04/05/timothy-cunningham-the-cdc-researcher-who-mysteriously-vanished-in-february-has-been-found-dead/


A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher has been found dead, seven weeks after he …..

https://www.yahoo.com/news/researcher-verge-making-very-significant-030320409.html

Researcher 'on verge of making very significant' coronavirus findings shot to death

Tim Stelloh

TODAYMay 6, 2020, 6:03 AM GMT+3

A medical researcher said to be on the “verge of making very significant” coronavirus findings was found shot to death over the weekend in Pennsylvania, officials said.

Bing Liu, 37, a researcher for the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, was found dead Saturday inside a home in Ross Township, north of Pittsburgh, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner said.

He had been shot in the head and neck, the agency said.

An hour after Liu's body was discovered, a second person, Hao Gu, 46, was found dead inside a car less than a mile away, the agency said.

Velt News BIG STEP: A million Israeli children head back to school, Kids less likely to contract or pass on virus

Velt News  BIG STEP: A million Israeli children head back to school, Kids less likely to contract or pass on virus

Excerpts:

"After a long 7 week ‘lockdown,’ millions if Israeli’s will head back to school Today."

"The decision was made last minute by the health ministry, Times of Israel reports, adding  ‘An Israeli study underpinning the decision found that though younger children were less likely than adults to contract the virus or pass it along, there was still a possibility they could infect others.’"

------------------

Here’s the key phrase, “decision was made last minute”. So one minute we can’t be near each other less the sky fall and the next there’s no problem. Just hop when we order you to, just like in the military.

For seven weeks the kids learn how to not be in school and then suddenly without warning, without a period to adjust mentally, we are off to school, even as the rules of engagement there are still uncommunicated.  And kids are scared. Didn't we tell them that there is
horrible danger lurking out there. Didn't we tell them that anybody who goes to a minyan is a rodef? Didn’t the government and press tell us over and over again how horrible the Charedim are for not following the rules? Weren’t there raids on Charedi classrooms in Beit Shemesh at the end of last week! Didn't we tell the kids they can't walk 100 meters from the house. Two days ago I watched a bar mitzvah online because it is far too dangerous for the family to gather 20 people in a huge room or even outdoors. But it's off to the classroom kids. Don't be scared now.

This entire culture is built on militarism. The military trains each young person in the prime of youth to be a military commander when dealing with other human beings. Just order them around. Don't worry about the effects of that.