Nor is theocracy or monarchy practical today. A Jewish monarch has to be recognized by rabbis, and has to be Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox. Such a king would channel national tax revenues to support an unlimited number of religious adult schools and their lifetime students. In a mixed religious-atheist society, theocracy or monarchy would translate into exploitation of economically productive atheists, which they would not accept.

The Rabbis’ reference to several commandments to justify their authority is dubious. Deut17:10: “Do as they tell you” refers to judges, including priestly ones, not to rabbinical legists. The preceding verses speak of civil and criminals cases with no implication whatsoever about the setting of religious laws. Oddly enough, v.11 speaks of “teaching and judgments,” though the context is unrelated to teaching. It is not impossible that this phrase is late similarly to v.15, which allows Jews to set up a king, even though centuries later the prophet Shmuel had no idea of this permission when he lambasted Jews for demanding a king. Allowing for the authenticity of v.11, it requires judges to speak from the Temple (v.8 ), obviously to unify the case law rather than to invent new laws.

Tens of thousands of halachic authorities dispersed throughout the world lack the power allotted to the Temple judges. Looking at the hair-splitting and often vengeful halachic disputes, it tests credulity to impute divine authority to the rabbis.

The biggest question is whether rabbis are the judges mentioned in Deut17. Why them, rather than the Sadduceans, the temple priests? Deut33:10 explicitly allocates the power of teaching to Levites, the priests. 2Chron31:4 relates of legal studies by Levites, and Mal2:7 confirms that they engaged in legal interpretation. In 2Chron19:8, judges are apparently equated with clan elders, and even much later Jer18:18 records for the “wise” only the power of counsel, rather than binding power of ruling.

The rabbinical legend of the Temple-based Sanhedrin defies common sense. The Temple was ruled by priests (Sadducees) who were nominal descendants of the High Priest Zadok. Sadducees rejected the Oral Law and persecuted Pharisaic rabbis now and then. Why would the priests allow the rabbis to sit in court in the Temple and apply the Oral Law which they, the priests, thought to be fake?

It is impossible that the rabbis were so popular that the priests could not refuse them a chamber. Priests blocked even Herod the Great’s reconstruction of the Temple until he reached a compromise with them by training Levites for the construction works, lest the Temple be polluted.

Why would the priests defy the Oral Law, had it been given on the Sinai? The rabbinical explanation of the priests’ malice cannot stand: there is no imaginable reason for them to reject a sound and profitable body of legislation. By embracing the Oral Law, the Sadducees would have displaced the competing Pharisees and re-assumed the power of religious legislation and civil jurisprudence. It cannot be that tens of thousands of Levites were all evil atheists who purposely rejected the divine word.
Rabbis were the layman’s priests, anti-establishment preachers not unlike the founder of Christianity and the later Franciscans. Indeed, in the synoptic gospels, Jesus’ teaching is a carbon copy of the rabbinical doctrine, with every one of his synoptic pronouncements directly paralleled in the Talmud. He praised rabbinical teaching: “Do as they teach, but not as they do, because they don’t do what they teach.”

Even if one accepts the purported powers of rabbis under Deut17, the two classes of rabbinical legislation are entirely without scriptural basis: the power to enact protective legislation (“a wall around the law”) and the power to abrogate commandments. Regarding the latter, Maimonides only accepted temporary suspension and only to avoid greater evil, including a threat to Judaism (Hilkot Mamrim 2:4). Almost none of the abrogations pass that test: rabbis rejected womens’ obligation to observe the commandments, the blue tzitzit, ad nauseam.

Rabbis advance another argument for the truth of their teaching: it has survived for two thousand years. That’s a bad benchmark because Christianity has survived for the very same length of time, and indeed has become more widespread. The earth-is-flat theory was also around for thousands of years. The triumph of Pharisaic rabbis over Sadducees is entirely due to the Temple’s destruction: the Levites could not adapt to the Temple-less world. Radical Sadducees joined or constituted Essenes, a monastic order, and lingered on for centuries after the Temple’s destruction. The rabbinical victory over Karaites was due to the rabbis’ better control over their flock, which was bounded in halacha; more flexible Karaites assimilated. This shows that rabbinism is not bad at all, it benefited the Jewish nation greatly. But regardless of its utility, rabbinism does not equal Torah Judaism.

We may lobby to change the rabbinical laws, but as long as those laws are efficient (they have preserved Jews for a long time), valid (somewhat rooted in the Torah), commonly accepted (by many doubtlessly Jewish people), and not massively opposed (by the people who honestly wish to live Jewish lives, rather than atheists) we must adhere to them. It’s similar to driving at 65 mph because the law says so, while lobbying to change the law in favor of increasing the speed limit.

The clearly oppressive laws might not be obeyed: someone who lives on the 50th floor can hardly be forced to observe the dubious rabbinical prohibition against using the elevator on Shabbat.

The existing rabbinical laws should be observed until changed—unless they are clearly oppressive.

Around 1993 the Soviet Jewish aliyah ended, and there remained no pockets of potential Jewish immigrants anywhere in the world. The large Jewish Diaspora in America, Canada, Australia, and France is not going to move to Israel. Even in the unlikely event of an emergency, they would move to other Western countries rather than to Israel. Besides, Israel can always adopt emergency legislation to allow the American and European Jews to move in.

Since the early 1990s, aliyah has mostly brought in what it is hard to refrain from calling Jewish garbage: perfectly good Slavs who discovered a Jewish great-grandparent, Ethiopian Christians told by Sohnut that their remote ancestors were Jewish converts, Hindu pagans proselytized into Judaism, and the like.

Aliyah has become dangerous on two counts: converts and Arabs. Now Israel is struggling to stop the illegal black migrants. What do we do if they start embracing Judaism in Kenya?  Would the blacks honestly go to a makeshift synagogue (probably financed by some American Jewish charity), honestly learn Judaism, honestly embrace it, honestly convert, and honestly practice it in their community for nine months as the current regulations stipulate? In three years, a potentially unlimited number of fresh Jews would knock at Israel’s door. The rabbinical conversion authorities can erect additional hurdles, but once the media saw the blacks practicing Judaism and stil being refused entrance to Israel, an outcry would force us to allow them into the country. Exactly this scenario took place with the black Falash Mura Christians, and is now unfolding with the “Bnei Menashe” Indian proselytes. Our country will be swarmed with true adherents to Judaism who, nonetheless, are fake Jews.

Judaism was never a matter of religion only. Jewish idolaters in Tanakhic times were Jews nonetheless. The Samaritans, who are perfect adherents to Judaism, were not considered Jewish and were rebuffed when they tried to join us in building the Second Temple. Several small kingdoms converted to Judaism, but as far as we know their residents did not assimilate into the Jewish nation.

This is the point: Jews are not only a religion, but also a nation. Anyone can join a religion, but a nation is defined by other traits: continuous traditions, common history and culture, and the appearance of its citizens. If this sounds racist, it’s not. Blacks and Indians are good in their own right, but I’m used to Jews being more or less white. There is no problem in assimilating a small number of black Jews—not the 2 percent of the population which the Israeli government has brought into our country—but I’m not prepared to see the Jewish nation suddenly become black. They lack our culture, our history, our look; they are not us.
Understand this: 90 percent of the world’s population is much poorer than the Israelis, and 80 percent are much poorer than Israel’s poorest. They would love to come here, and many of them have no problem with changing their religion or pagan beliefs to that end. If Jews decide to step onto the slippery path of welcoming proselytes, then at least welcome people who look like us: start proselytizing in Byelorussia, for example. At least, make Jews out of those who are accustomed to education and hard work, and who can join us in our developed economy.

The prophets predicted a day when all nations would recognize a Jewish God. We had lived to the end of times and that is happening now. Fine, but they don’t need to move to our Jerusalem. Let them feel themselves Jewish and live in the countries of their residence. After some centuries of persecution there, a history of survival and outsmarting their local detractors, today’s proselytes might indeed become like us—if not in their look, then in their behavioral patterns. But not today.

The Law of Return is also dangerous because of the Arabs. If Israel is an ethnically blind democracy, how come it welcomes Jews who have never lived here and refuses to re-admit the Arabs who lived here sixty years ago? Jewish refugees of 135 C.E. are allowed to return, but not the Arab refugees of 1948. Arabs and ultra-leftists have filed a number of such petitions with the Supreme Court, which so far refuses to hear them because there is no conceivable legal grounds for such blatant discrimination. The solution is to renounce Israel’s character as an ethnic-blind society—and even as a religion-blind or ancestry-blind society—but the lovers of Hellenistic democracy won’t allow that. So we have to close the loophole of the Law of Return before the Arabs rush through it.

A trickle of Jewish immigration can continue without the Law of Return, through nominal family reunion schemes. Israel practiced this kind of immigration with the USSR: Russian Jews received invitations from remote or non-existent Israeli aunts. Conducted under the close scrutiny of the Ministry of the Internal, such schemes would not allow Arabs into our country.

Repealing the Law of Return would make sense of the modern Jewish identity. The law certainly includes nihilist Jews, and thus dismisses the religious definition of Jewishness. By formally closing Israel to immigration, we will create an Israeli nation of Jews and semi-Jews, hopefully without Arabs. Israelis will be a polity, a political entity. They will prove their Jewishness by fighting for Israel and paying taxes here. In the Diaspora, political identification is not an option, and Jewishness will continue to be defined in purely religious terms.

Such a political and religious differentiation among Jews is nothing new. There were very different Jews of Israel and Judea, and later of Judea and Samaria. The communities of Jewish proselytes are welcome to strive in India or Ethiopia. But there is no room in Israel for a Tower of Babel.

One in 10 Americans still cannot find work.
The government must deport illegal labor migrants, cut down welfare benefits to force spongers to take jobs, and abandon the minimum wage to create many more unskilled jobs.

This recession has also compounded the burdens that America’s families have been dealing with for decades - the burden of working harder and longer for less; of being unable to save enough to retire or help kids with college.
Short of statistical tricks, no one can imagine that Americans today are less affluent than decades ago. Everything from cars and home appliances to health care and universities became better. Lower savings rate reflect high consumer confidence rather than hardships because people are certain they can find a job.

And if we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today.
Would not have been a bad deal. Say, 15 million more unemployed for three years instead of something like two trillion dollars which the Obama bailout would cost, including interest. That’s about $40,000 per worker per annum. Even with the most far-fetched assumptions about unemployment, the bailout was too expensive, let alone unjust.

More homes would have surely been lost.
True, but mortgages would have went down, and many young or poor families would be able to afford their houses.

To recover the rest [of bailout money], I’ve proposed a fee on the biggest banks.
Great. So the stable banks would subsidize speculative banks. An appropriate fee is already levied on banks through FDIC insurance. Now, as the government had effectively bailed out the FDIC, it seeks a parallel insurance scheme, which would go the same path.

We also took steps to get our economy growing again, save as many jobs as possible, and help Americans who had become unemployed.
Those are mutually exclusive objectives. Assistance to unemployed beyond a bare minimum reduces economic growth and reduces job market.

We extended or increased unemployment benefits for more than 18 million Americans.
Why increase unemployment benefits during a crisis when people must be glad they are receiving any support at all?

We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families.
Obama did not say that the cuts were minuscule.

Millions of Americans had more to spend on gas.
The administration had no guts to push its clients - Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia - to abandon the oil cartel which costs American hundreds of billions dollars.

Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed.
No one can calculate that number with any certainty.

Two hundred thousand work in construction and clean energy; 300,000 are teachers and other education workers. Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, first responders.
Obama contradicts himself: the alleged two million jobs are either saved in the private sector or, as he says here, were added in the public sector. Such policies are socialist rather than Keynesian. Keynes advocated temporary increase in public spending during crises, but increased hiring enlarges state sector in perpetuity. No one is going to lay off the police offers or teachers once the crisis is off.

Talk to the window manufacturer in Philadelphia who said he used to be skeptical about the Recovery Act, until he had to add two more work shifts just because of the business it created.
Can we get a phone number, please?

I’m proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat.
Community banks are generally more conservative than large banks. Why would they start financing small businesses when large banks see that as too risky? Obama will have to resort to government guarantees, thus effectively distribute $30 billion as grants to minority businesses.

I’m also proposing a new small business tax credit-– one that will go to over one million small businesses who hire new workers or raise wages.
The last thing you need to do during a crisis is to raise wages. The objectives of hiring more workers and increasing wages are contradictory.

Let’s also eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment.
The government is going to discriminate against businesses based on their size. That’s a trademark socialist policy of tolerating small manufacturers, but not “exploitative” big corporations.

I’ll visit Tampa, Florida, where workers will soon break ground on a new high-speed railroad funded by the Recovery Act.
If the railroad were feasible it would have no shortage of private investment. Revenues from high-speed railroads do not come from nowhere but are chipped away from airlines and car manufacturers.

We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities.
That means American goods will be more expensive than those manufactured in less eco-friendly countries.

And to encourage these and other businesses to stay within our borders, it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas.
If the administration pushes clean energy, the remaining business would flee en masse. In the corporate legal structure, it is impossible to ascertain whether the jobs were “shipped overseas” or outsourced. Tax breaks make too small difference for the companies to suffer Obama’s clean energy regulation and pay higher wages in America than in China.

These steps won’t make up for the seven million jobs that we’ve lost over the last two years.
So why the increased benefits to 18 million unemployed? Out of the 7 million, most have found new jobs, so the fallout from the crisis is perhaps two to three million jobs. A two-trillion-dollar bailout seems like too much to prevent doubling that figure.

We can’t afford another so-called economic “expansion” like the one from the last decade… where the income of the average American household declined… where prosperity was built on a housing bubble and financial speculation.
Why, then, Obama supports that housing bubble instead of allowing it to burst? If the bubble is that bad - as indeed it is - then by all means allow the irresponsible homeowners to default, and bring housing prices down. Looking at the number of new cars and houses in that decade, it is hard to believe that incomes have declined then.

Germany is not waiting [to revamp its economy].
Germany would be a very bad example for the United States. Its economy is crippled by trade unions, government regulation, welfare, - and is only supported by hordes of immigrant workers. German economy quickly loses its engineering age as younger generation opts for fashionable MBA specialities.

[China and India are] making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.
Not in my universe.

We can’t allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy.
Regulation won’t achieve that end. Financial institutions have long proved their ability to outsmart governments. The only solution is to set up separate currencies licensed for real markets and speculation, respectively. This way, real economy will be largely insulated from financial gambling.

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need… building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.
Offshore oil development is the opposite of clean energy.

It means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.
Clean energy, in Obama’s weasel words, can only become profitable if the government subsidizes it and institutes punitive taxation of traditional energy producers.

I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.
Like the evidence forged by East Anglia University.

Third, we need to export more of our goods. Because the more products we make and sell to other countries, the more jobs we support right here in America.
In contemporary technological economy, added value is concentrated in R&D. Manufacturing is outsourced to undeveloped countries precisely because it is not a feasible occupation for citizens of developed countries.

We will double our exports over the next five years.
That recalls the Soviet five-year economic plans.

We’re launching a National Export Initiative that will help farmers and small businesses increase their exports, and reform export controls consistent with national security.
American farmers are heavily subsidized, so increasing their exports means increasing subsidies and constitutes a net loss to the economy. The part on export controls is very suspicious: what kind of technology Obama seeks to export without restrictions?

We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are.
Obama the liberal embraced mercantilism and is willing to apply political pressure in the interests of American corporations.

We will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia.
Panama and Colombia are by no means America’s important trading partners.

And let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years.
Students, accordingly, will be given a free pass for taking many of the economically worthless courses in community colleges. They will be able to study just for the fun thereof without prospects of employment, on public account.

But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums [on healthcare], bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.
Easy: end the AMA monopoly on licensing doctors, set limits on malpractice suits, and allow insurance companies to sell coverage for less-than-ideal treatment. Regulation drives costs (premiums) up rather than down. It is completely implausible that government expenditures would become less while coverage increases.

Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. (Applause.) Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected.
Those are the largest part of the budget.

We’ve already identified $20 billion in savings for next year.
On the background of the expected $8 trillion deficit over the ten years.

That’s why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger sanctions –- sanctions that are being vigorously enforced. That’s why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated.
This is important. Obama uses North Korea as a model for Iran. His idea is that Iran gaining a nuclear bomb or two does not spell apocalypse. Ayatollahs won’t be able to use their nuclear weapons, and in the meanwhile will face increasing sanctions that would eventually force them to dismantle the weapons. That strategy so far did not work with North Korea, which keeps its nuclear stockpiles and exports nuclear technology. Iran’s case would be similar to India and Pakistan’s. International community cannot afford to isolate politically and economically important countries, and will come to terms with Iran’s nuclear weapons.

Obama’s Muslim roots might possibly work for us. He’s similar to the Jewish cosmopolites who turn against the Jewish values that taunt their identity. Obama easily abandons his relatives: he clearly didn’t know of his aunt was staying in the US illegally (for he could have easily adjusted her status) and did not bring his Kenyan brother to America. He doesn’t even care enough about his Kenyan fatherland to use his newly acquired power to help it.

The ultra-left anti-Semites Obama brought it on his team will probably go soon, evicted by the career bureaucrats he also brought along. Arabs will reject his overtures: Iran has already refused to put any brakes on its nuclear program, Syria continues its support for terrorists unabated, Turkey and Iraq are turning increasingly anti-American, and Pakistan is becoming overtly Islamist. Faced with real-world threats and non-conformism, Obama may become militant, as leftists usually do when their attempts at changing the world fail. When Roman democracy failed and became replaced with monarchy (like the Bushes and Clintons) and eventually accepted foreigners as emperors, hysterical aggression was the norm.

Israel should exploit Obama’s weakness of nicety by flatly refusing to make concessions. It took James Baker to tell an Israeli PM that a refusal to accept American terms would have consequences. With pro-Israeli democrats firmly in control of the Senate, Obama cannot scale down American support for Israel no matter what we do. Obama cannot push like Baker did; unable to push Israel, he might as well go along with us.

Netanyahu is well suited to convince Obama to strike Iran; they share the culture of top US universities and speak the same language. Barak’s overpowering personality is also an asset against weak Obama. Obama’s acquiescence to an Israeli strike on Iran might be coming, as the mullahs insult his Harvard classroom mentality by rejecting debates. Even if he disagrees, Israel can make do on her own.

IAF has some refueling aircraft, which should suffice to return the most expensive planes home. Other planes can be landed with some risk in Kurdistan and perhaps Azerbaijan and Turkey. Under onslaught from the Islamist government, the Turkish military might show defiance and allow IAF to use their landing strips. In the worst-case scenario, the planes can be abandoned: sacrificing a hundred jets at $3 billion is not a prohibitive cost to end Iran’s nuclear program. The Jew-dominated US senate would rush to replenish Israeli stocks as the world applauded the daring operation.

An attack by Tomahawk-type missiles is another option. Israel can launch her Popeye missiles with a 900-mile range from submarines, or longer-range missiles directly from the land bases. Given the necessary quantity of several hundred missiles, a mid-range air or submarine strike is a viable option. Israel has to retain a limited quantity of long-range missiles for a possible retaliatory strike on Iran in case of counter-attack, or at least to threaten such retaliation in order to prevent an Iranian counter-attack. A missile attack would make US approval for overflight of Iraq unnecessary.

Nor are the bunker-buster bombs essential for the operation. Though the United States refused to supply them, Israel can use a large number of conventional missiles or tactical nukes against Iranian targets. In any case, some radiological contamination will occur, as Israel has to bomb the plutonium-producing Bushehr reactor: its eighty-two tons of enriched uranium will be pulverized. Tactical nukes would produce comparable contamination. But why do we even care to discuss such irrelevant consequences?

Jewish law was meant to put an end to superfluous pagan religious laws, with their myriad deities and complicated rites. The Torah leaves a lot to the people’s discretion for a reason: that they keep thinking about the law, and have no trouble practicing it.

Rabbis began constructing a “fence around the law,” bringing up additional prohibitions to preclude inadvertent violations of major commandments when the Jews went into the Exile. Now that the Exile has ended, the concept of the fence has become irrelevant and highly counterproductive, as it drives Jews away from Judaism, whose rules are actually simple and straightforward.

Jacob bribed Esau with, among other things, milking camels. Jewish tradition asserts that the forefathers accepted the yoke of the commandments before Moses received them on the Sinai. That is, Jacob did not imagine that the prohibition of non-kosher meats precluded him from drinking camel’s milk (camels are a non-kosher animal). Non-kosher animals—just like the equally-unsuitable-for-food human beings—enjoy great protection in Judaism. We refrain from eating them out of respect for their lives rather than because of their uncleanness (humans are clean, but we’re not cannibals). Just as it is permissible to hire (but not eat) humans, it is also permissible to work, shear, milk or otherwise use non-kosher animals—anything short of killing them. Jewish children can play with pigs by the same logic which allowed Jacob’s household to drink camel milk.

By proclaiming some milk non-kosher, the rabbis created the problem of kosher milk. They require supervision to make sure that the cow’s milk is not mixed with horse or camel milk. If ever there were a far-fetched fear, this is truly the one.

Jewish children drink the milk of their non-kosher mothers for food, and can likewise consume the milk of other non-kosher animals. An obvious rejoinder is that children do not have to observe the commandments. But breast-feeding requires the participation of a Jewish adult; either all Jewish mothers grossly transgress by offering their non-kosher milk, or kosher laws don’t apply to milk. And indeed, Rashi says that kashrut is only applicable to meat, not to any other animal parts or products.

The meat-milk prohibition refers, according to Maimonides, to a pagan rite of boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk. He noted that the prohibition is in the section dealing with pagan practices rather than dietary laws. The meat-milk ban had nothing to do with food in the first place.

Rabbis expanded the meat-milk issue to avoid inadvertent violations. Boiling other meat in milk was originally prohibited because goat meat could theoretically be sold as beef. By such reasoning, all meat should be prohibited: what if someone is selling pork as beef? Inadvertent violations are not sinful, and the problem of fake beef is not urgent in our days of kosher supermarkets.

Chicken-milk combinations were banned lest someone see you eating chicken with cheese and think you were consuming a cheeseburger. By the same reasoning, you should not go out with your wife, lest someone think she’s your neighbor’s fiancée. Someone could see you eating a beef burger and think it is pork—that’s no reason to become a vegetarian. “They-might-think” reasoning is irrelevant at home: obviously, your wife knows she didn’t cook a goat in its milk. The absurdity is underscored by the fact that cheeseburger itself is not prohibited: it is beef rather than goat meat or veal, and it is not boiled in milk, as the Torah is careful to specify.

Rabbis advance yet another argument: self-imposed restrictions show our love to God, our willingness to go an extra mile. But do they read his mind? Why presume that he would like us to expand his prohibitions? The government limits driving speed to 65 miles per hour; would anyone show his patriotism by driving 20 mph?

I doubt your wife would interpret certain self-imposed restrictions as a sign of love. Why imagine that God wants more restrictions of us? He who created the animals and had the man name them to establish dominance would probably love us to eat meat in various forms. It is not even nice, let alone justified, to reject them. We’re explicitly commanded to enjoy the meat of our sacrifices. Judaism is not a monastic perversion but a religion of joy in that holiest place, the World Created.

The path of expanding prohibitions is arbitrary and precarious. There are prohibitions regarding various forms of incest. Should we expand them to the remote, even the seventh-degree kin out of love for God? Or take food: Through kosher laws, God banned all animals for food and only made a permissive exception for four animals. Here his intent to limit animal slaughter is manifestly clear. Should we all become vegetarians? Foreseeing our questions, the Torah enjoins us from subtracting from the laws—but also from adding to them.

“There are enough prohibitions in the Torah for you to invent new ones,” says the Talmud. The Torah’s laws are foremost practical. The laws are so easy that the nomadic Hebrews observed them in Sinai. Some commandments interpret the others: thus, the prohibition of homosexuality is consequential to “You shall not commit adultery.” It is sensible, therefore, to interpret commandments in the Oral Law—but not violate the commandments’ plain sense.

On one hand, the sages pronounced correctly that no word or letter in the Torah is superfluous. On the other hand, rabbis disregard the wording. The Torah says, “You shall not boil a kid in his mother’s milk.” “Boil”—not cook in any other fashion; a cheeseburger is okay. A specific prohibition of boiling makes perfect sense in the context of the pagan rite.

Another fixed point is “his mother’s.” That might be remotely interpreted as “someone of his kin,” just as “your fathers” refers to ancestors generally; but it cannot possibly be read as “any milk.” The Torah does not prohibit boiling a goat kid in cow’s milk.

There is some latitude in understanding the word gdi, kid. In the Tanakh, gdi never certainly means any other animal besides goats. In particular, a gdiah is a she-goat. Commentators assert ex nihilo that gdi can also mean lamb, but that’s unlikely, given that there are other words for she-lamb (rchl) and lamb (seh). Even if gdi means lamb, the two points are clear: gdi means only a young animal and never a calf. In many contexts, gdi is taken from herd; there were no herds of cows in the ancient Middle East. The most inclusive reading of the commandment prohibits boiling a young lamb or goat in, respectively, sheep or goat milk. The commandment is simple and unobtrusive; the balance is made by rabbis.

Consider the gap between Torah and halacha. Boiling a young goat in goat milk was extended to cows, then birds (chicken), then any mode of cooking, then any contact, then any food which includes chicken or milk, then dishes which were used to serve milk or meat, then storage, then sinks, then eateries—and now we have separate meat and dairy kosher restaurants.

It is a famous Talmudic dilemma: a hostile foreigner asks that a group of Jews deliver any one of them for execution—otherwise, all of them will be killed. The traditional answer belongs to Rabbi Resh Lakish. Formerly a bandit, he was sensitive to arbitrary—or perhaps any — persecution, and ruled that all Jews must die rather than deliver their brethren to be killed. Realizing the apparent absurdity of such an idealistic approach, Rabbi Yochanan ruled in the opposite way. Indeed, a Jew is going to die anyway, whether alone or among the group, so one death is preferable to the wanton death of the entire group. The random choice of an unfortunate scapegoat would relieve the group of responsibility for his murder.

In a further argument against Resh Lakish, the rabbis noted that his approach makes it impossible for Jews to fight. An enemy might take a few Jews for a human shield and march straight into our towns, being assured that Jews won’t kill their own. Without saying so explicitly, rabbis thus permitted the killing of some Jews to save many more of them. Indeed, this is the very logic of war, that some die to save many. But Judaism has a concept of obligatory war which is not related to saving Jews. According to the concept, Jews must go to war when an enemy wants land rather than our lives, or even if he merely demands a small ransom, such as “hay and straw.” Thus it is permitted to kill Jews for purely nationalist purposes.

Traitors seem to fall into this category. Indeed, some rabbis permitted the delivery of a scapegoat if the enemy singled him out, thus taking the murderous choice away from the Jews. The unfortunate person, they reasoned, becomes a rodef, a murderous stalker, because he endangers the community by his very presence there. If he is not surrendered, the entire community will suffer. Traitors, too, fall into the category of rodef.

Since it is permitted to kill Jews or have them killed for nationalistic reasons, it is all the more permissible to endanger them for the same reason. This disproves the nonsense that Jewish lives are so important that we must walk down the road of the peace process. In Judaism, Jewish lives have zero importance; the only important thing is furthering the divine will as it is laid down in the Torah. If Jewish lives are more important than Jewish land, then Israelis would prove righteous by moving to Toronto.

Rabbis, when they were real rabbis, did not even discuss the issue of enemy civilians in this context. If Jewish human shields can be killed, then of course Arab ones can be killed as well. Besides many commandments and rabbinical rulings on dealing extremely harshly with enemy populations, the rule that Jews may—indeed must—kill our own human shields when necessary implies that an enemy’s shields must be killed with no compunction.

And I’ve yet to see a single rabbi who would dispute the practice of taking Arab human shields to protect our soldiers.

It was almost impossible to fail with Syria. The country is led by a strong dictator who would have no trouble implementing any agreement. Syria’s Alawite regime is isolated from the population and needs foreign support. Assad is secular and cynical: he can pragmatically accept an alliance with America and disregard its anti-Islamic connotations. Syria is dirt poor, without any significant sponsor—it was up for grabs for peanuts.

In no place was the situation rosier for Obama than in Syria. Mubarak, a strong secular leader, is highly dependent on public opinion because Egypt is a democracy. Mubarak, accordingly, cannot push Hamas or the PA too hard. The Saudi royals, strong authoritarian leaders, have to uphold their Islamic credentials, especially in face of Shia expansion. The Iraqi government is too weak to implement anything.

Assad wants two small things: Lebanon and money. On Lebanon, he is both right and makes sense. Lebanon is not a viable state, but must be divided in among Israel, Syria, and the Christians. At any rate, America has no interest in Lebanon whatsoever. The United States was dragged into the conflict by France, a long-time imperial power in Lebanon. To imagine Lebanon free of Syrian influence is unrealistic, and such a state would not be better off. Long gone are the days when Lebanon was the Middle East’s Las Vegas and Switzerland together; now it is a Red-light district at most. Productive middle-class Christians have fled the country, which is now prone to sectarian clashes. Lebanon’s real choices are a Shiite state aligned with Iran, an Afghanistan-type area of perpetual tribal conflicts, or a secular state under Syrian control. Lebanon was historically a part of Syria. Syria controls it by controlling the flow of arms and commercial cargo through Lebanon’s northern border. There is not a chance that Syria would abandon Lebanon.

In terms of money, Assad can settle for very little. He is so poor he could only afford four MiG-31E’s, two of them dead, for spare parts. Poverty has made Syria very economical: instead of fighting its own war in Lebanon, it prefers to allow Iran to do the job, and claims its chunk of influence by periodically closing down the flow of Iranian arms to Hezbollah. Assad employed similar tactics with Iraq: he obtained influence there on the cheap merely by intermittently allowing Al Qaeda fighters free border access and then clamping down on them. A billion dollars a year in American aid, coupled with access to Western markets, would cause Assad to abandon Iran. As an Alawite, he despises those extroverted Shiite nuts.

The price of failure vis-à-vis Syria would be astronomical. Assad Sr was right saying that there can be no war in the Middle East without Egypt, but no peace without Syria. Syria can destabilize every country in the vicinity by simply opening its borders to terrorists. Young Assad lacks the political acumen of his artful father, but he is far smarter, a sort of Michael Corleone to his father’s Vito. He understands that he does not need many weapons: Jews have a low tolerance to losses and are afraid even of his chemical arsenals, which have long proved useless in offensive warfare. So Assad concentrates on what can be termed nominal arsenals: a large number of outdated missiles and some chemical and biological weapons. His nuclear program could not produce more than a few bombs, and it is not clear at all whether the program was Syria’s or whether Syria was just hosting a part of Iran’s nuclear development. Assad’s danger lies in his rationality: he is equally comfortable working with the Americans and the Iranians and spends frugally without involving himself in the arms race. He prefers an alliance with the Russians, which brings him very little aid, but no commitments and some weapons, to deep involvement with Americans.

Israel cannot make peace with Syria on her own: Assad is interested in the Western world rather than the Golan Heights. Any agreements with Syria will remain on paper and will not lead to normalization, as indeed there is no normalization with Egypt. The absence of normalization is not Assad’s fault: he has noted correctly that popular Arab hostility against Israel precludes normal relations.

Since Syria is a major enemy, and making peace with it is impossible, Israel must resort to retaliation, containment, and forced demilitarization by relentless bombing raids in response to Syrian aid to Hamas and Hezbollah. Assad does not value those terrorist outfits highly enough to risk his presidential palaces, and the world would remain relatively quiet while Israel bombed the rogue state.

Also, CNN and Al Jazeera are straightforward in their views: objectivism and pan-Arabism, respectively. A competing Jewish station would be indecisive. It would oscillate between pro-Israeli apologia of the left (sorry, we have to conduct those anti-terrorist operations, but we promise to do them more cleanly next time) and centrist bravado. The real right-wing position would be excluded. But audiences want extreme views; they are not interested in excuses and wavering half-truths. Israeli media lose by explaining our actions, rather than positioning them as self-evidently right. Note that Al Jazeera does not wring its hands over the reasons for Muslim terrorism—instead, it covers the terrorism in a way that generates approval.

There is a tremendous difference in journalist cadre between the proposed Israeli station and Al Jazeera. The Arabs employ highly motivated journalists who share values with terrorists and other Muslim nationalists. Israeli journalists are generally ultra-left, which is why Israeli TV channels look like Arab propaganda outlets. An effort to hire outside journalists for such a prominent channel would be met with an outcry from the ultra-left guild, and its members would eventually find their way onto the channel. Good Arab journalists believe in their values, and good Jewish journalists, too, believe in Arab values.

Arabs are perceived as less clannish than Jews. Al Jazeera, an Arab channel, would be inherently more credible than a Jewish channel. This could be changed by bringing in pro-Israeli Christian journalists, but they would be ostracized on a larger scale than the Fox journalists. Few people would risk their careers to take a job in a controversial Jewish channel constantly under attack for its pro-Israeli bias.

A news channel is valued according to its ability to reach into hot spots. Since most hot spots are manned by Arab terrorists, Al Jazeera has little trouble getting in there. An Israeli channel would be practically excluded from Muslim countries and battlefields, and 100 percent reliance on freelancers is not a valid business model. The Israeli channel would degenerate into a parochial TV station of limited interest to foreigners.

Human mentality has a curious feature: people like to hear good news about close friends, but bad news about everyone else. That explains why small-town media are often warm and well-wishing, while national media tends to be hostile and critical. Al Jazeera fully conforms to this mentality: it is anti rather than pro. Even on the rare occasions when Al Jazeera is pro-someone, that someone is anti-someone-else. Thus, Al Jazeera reports are highly critical of Israel and America, and supportive of the terrorists who fight them. Israel, a politically correct animal, and wouldn’t run an aggressively anti-Arab channel, even though such a channel would be a commercial and political success. A mere pro-Israeli stance would quickly deteriorate into apologia.

Face it, most of the world is anti-Jewish. Not in the sense of exterminatory anti-Semitism, but in the sense of a general dislike, or more subtly, as an absence of liking. When unlikable people took the Arabs’ land from them, refused to let their refugees back, and engaged in military campaigns against their angry neighbors, world opinion predictably turned against Israel. The only alternative is to break out of the Jewish mold: when Israel defeated her enemies in a lightning war in 1967, we did not act as typical Jews—and we were not judged as such. Despite rhetorical condemnations by governments, world opinion rallied strongly in favor of Israel. Al Jazeera, therefore, will always find a more sympathetic audience than an Israeli channel for the simple reason that most of the world dislikes Israel and America.

The solution is not establishing a new TV channel to swim against the tide in vain, but to change Israel’s image so that mainstream media speak about us with respect, if not admiration. To that end, Israel must stop perpetually wavering in the typical Jewish manner and act strongly out of firm values. Consider that Israel’s 2006 Lebanon war was judged much more favorably than the 2009 Gaza operation. The difference is that the world understands the rules of war, and once Israel is fighting a war, it’s all very fine. But in Gaza, we fought in the manner of a police operation, army against civilians, which did not look well on foreign TV screens. A respected country must clearly define its enemies and fight them mercilessly; speaking vaguely of an armed wing of Hamas and alternately bombing it and allowing in humanitarian cargo looked stupid.

As the battle for foreign minds can hardly be won, the more important battle is for the minds of Israelis. They are brainwashed daily by ultra-left media, and a right-wing media station is an urgent necessity. The government, however, will not license such an outlet, or would quickly ban it for incitement. By the time unlicensed Internet TV makes its way into every home, the government will have found a way to block Internet TV, too, especially since accessing broadband sites through narrowband proxies is not feasible. There is no way to make Israeli media friendly to Jews short of a revolution.

Change from newspapers and TV to blogs and YouTube gives Israel a chance to succeed in the high-tech propaganda war. The Arabs who won’t tune their satellite dishes to Israeli broadcasts might click on Israeli sites in relevant searches. Israel can enter the media war inexpensively by riding the wave of Internet information delivery. Hacking hostile Web sites, punishing them in search-engine rankings, while at the same time ensuring that Israeli sites occupy top positions in relevant search results, including Youtube, would cost a thousand times less than an Al Jazeera-type channel and would give Israel an edge over her enemies in the fastest-growing media segment.

Far removed from its glorious days of fighting Arab armies, IDF has deteriorated into anti-guerrilla police, and has now become a crack force to be used against Israel’s own citizens. The army conducts more operations daily against Jews than against Palestinian Arabs. Often the army is petty enough to demolish Jewish prefab houses on private Jewish land just because they are technically unauthorized—even though Arabs have built tens of thousands of unauthorized houses in the vicinity. Just as often, the army engages in very controversial demolitions of unauthorized houses designated as synagogues or kindergartens, or even grave-sites, such as Dr. Goldstein’s. Sometimes evictions take place in a manner aptly described by a leading rabbi as Nazi-like: at night, the army threw Jewish children from the windows and bulldozed the families’ shacks along with their meager possessions. The army’s third-largest operation in terms of budget and the largest in terms of the number of personnel involved in the last five years was not a war, but the eviction of 8,000 Jews from Gaza. The evictions left a deep scar on the Jewish national conscience. If soldiers are expected to act humanely toward their enemies, it is all the more important that they act humanely toward their own people. It is surprising that the same people who would rip soldiers apart for evicting an Arab family or destroying their illegal house demand that soldiers unflinchingly evict their fellow Jews.

Other civilized countries use their the armies against fellow citizens only in times of martial law, and even then only against rioting crowds that create an immediate danger to other citizens. A typical scenario in which an army is used against private communities is when a religious sect threatens mass suicide—which, importantly, involves non-consenting children.

Israeli soldiers are not the praetorian guard of the Judenrat. They cannot be expected to fall on their compatriots when ordered to do so. Those who suggest that military disobedience demoralizes an army must consider that acting against its own people demoralizes an army even more. Murder and oppression are highly immoral. They are only made tolerable by the higher aim of defending one’s people. When your family is in danger it is better to kill than be killed; the logic is simple. Evictions destroy this moral basis of a healthy army. Acting in a clearly immoral fashion against its own people alienates the army from society, and lays the ground for a putsch, or at least for gross immorality toward enemies. If it is permissible—indeed obligatory—to throw fellow Jews out of their homes, then much uglier things become permissible toward our Arab enemies. On other hand, dissident settlers are often kind to Jews and Arabs alike; recall Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who risked his life to evacuate wounded Palestinian terrorists for medical treatment.

The conflict is not really over the refusal. The refusals have gone on for years, handled quietly between soldiers and their commanders. As leftists dodge conscription or join home-front units, combat forces are composed largely of settlers. Naturally, they are not going to evict their neighbors or relatives. This is well understood in the army, and these soldiers are exempted from eviction operations. The problem arises when they disobey publicly, for political rather than personal reasons—especially for conservative political reasons; the leftists who disobey by dodging the draft are chastised in the most lenient manner.

Disobedience would be even more widespread in the kind of army we advocate, an army into which middle-aged men, rather than children, are conscripted. In the modern army, strength of character is more important than physical strength. Sending children to fight before sending their parents is shockingly immoral, especially since the children have not yet had the chance to vote for a change. A middle-aged army would have stronger opinions, which is exactly the reason why all governments conscript gullible youngsters.

Obedience is not always good; sometimes, it equals dangerous complacency. When the government and the commanders act against their country, it is a soldier’s duty to protect basic values rather than discipline. This debate raged quietly in the German army from 1933 to 1938; commanders, a traditionally aristocratic and independent bunch, wondered whether their loyalty to their country or to their führer came first. The doubters soon went down in a purge. Obedience creates a great danger in militarized countries, such as Israel. The Nazi leadership only needed to replace a few dozen top commanders in the army and several hundred in the police to gain unquestioned control over all security forces. In 1938, within a matter of days, the army was transformed, just as the police had been in 1932. Where once they had been society’s conservative pillars, highly skeptical of the Nazis, they now had become the regime’s enforcers. A similar process took place in Austria: months before annexation, just a few dozen top-level police commanders appointed by Austria’s Nazi Minister of the Interior ensured complete freedom for the Nazi riots. The police, who had once broken up Nazi riots with ease, now stood by. It is a blessing that Israeli soldiers are not automatons in their commanders’ hands, but thinking, responsible Jews.

The disobedience is not really an issue of military discipline. It is preposterous to assert that soldiers who refuse to evict Jews might also refuse battlefield orders. The soldiers who come from among the settlers, the ones who generally try to avoid eviction roles, are the best, most highly motivated combat personnel. If anything, their refusal to evict Jews shows devotion to the Zionist cause. Soldiers who endure jail and dishonor for their love of Jews will certainly endure battlefield dangers as well.

It might be actually good for the army for soldiers to think about their orders rather than executing them blindly. This is especially true on today’s fogless digital battlefield, where a regiment’s commander sees exactly the same picture as the Chief of Staff. Israeli history knows many instances when commanders essentially murdered their obedient soldiers: Rabin’s Jerusalem operations, Sharon’s break through Mitla, and Olmert’s surge in Lebanon, to name a few. Looking at the fact that none of Israel’s generals has a proper military education, and quite a few of them are glaringly unprofessional, soldiersmay indeed need the right to veto decisions which might prove suicidal for them. There is no reason to believe that honest, brave, highly motivated Jewish soldiers would use their veto power to excuse themselves from fighting. If the state is democratic, it would be reasonable for soldiers to be allowed to elect their commanders and control them. If the general staff believes that the appointed commanders are professional and authoritative, then they should have no trouble winning the troops’ support—and indeed, IDF commanders up to the mid-level are generally highly professional and popular among their troops.

Military jurists, including the Israeli Supreme Court, have upheld the right to disobedience. Specifically, after the Kfar Qassem massacre, the court ruled that soldiers have a duty to disobey orders that fly in the face of their consciences. It is a great fault of Zionist education that for some soldiers evicting other Jews does not raise the red banner, “Prohibited!” The army whose stated aim is defending Jews cannot repress them; Zionism means settling Zion rather than uprooting our settlements. Besides the nationalistic reasons, there are strong religious prohibitions against evicting other Jews, destroying our settlements, and abandoning our land. A society which expects its soldiers not to rebel against morality must not be surprised by their refusal to rebel against that morality’s source, God.

How would you react to a people who murdered priests and nuns? Arabs murdered the entirely religious populations of Jerusalem and Hebron, and the nuns of the Mount Scopus Hospital convoy and Hadassah hospital, respectively. The nuns in Hebron had treated them free.

What would you do if, when you were fleeing foreign persecution, the locals met you with knives and guns? Yes, you wanted your own state alongside them, but you were buying the lands, draining them, and developing them from desert. Your presence was an inconvenience, but also a major economic advantage to the locals—yet they continued murdering you. The world screams when Israel turns away some illegal economic migrants from Africa, but the Arab right to resist Jewish migration remains unquestioned. What would you do, people who live in the lands taken from Native Indians and ancient Britons?

When the UN gave you a sham of a state, three isolated cantons, the locals obtained foreign assistance to crush it. They murdered and maimed a percentage of your people which exceeded Russian losses in WWII. Wouldn’t you be happy that most of them ran away? Would you let their fourth-generation descendants back?

Since that war, the locals lived their own lives in their own country neighboring your state. There was no reason to upset peace. Yet, they conducted incessant terrorist raids into your territory, murdering and maiming your people in the most inhumane attacks.

When their foreign associates set out to exterminate you and publicly proclaimed the objective of drowning your families in the sea, you gathered suicidal courage and acted first, despite the world urging you to sit quietly and accept your fate. In order to put a stop to the terror, you took control over their lands. You did not dispossess them, but merely enforced an order which kept your families relatively safe—relatively, because more of your people continued to suffer in their terrorist attacks than during these open wars.

During that period of law enforcement the locals concentrated on fighting your “occupation,” which was itself a consequence of their terrorism. But their true plans were made public in their springboard doctrine: drive your law-enforcement troops from their towns first, then from your towns, too. Their deeds conformed to their declarations: their terrorists were killing your people in your towns. In political negotiations, they insisted on inundating you with a flow of returnees half the size of your own population. They developed a cunning political tactic: while one faction showed moderation and agreed with you on mutually acceptable concessions, another faction rebelled and used those concessions as a starting point to press more demands. From liberating their villages they came all the way to evicting you from your capital, your holiest place. Would you trust them to keep a peace?

From sporadic terror they escalated to suicide bombings which wreaked such havoc in your society that parents feared to let their children go to school. They brought the killing to an industrial scale and terrorized entire towns with thousands of rockets. Your town, rather than Dresden or Tokyo, became the most heavily shelled place on earth.

Then you fought back. You knew the world was prejudiced against you, and took every step to spare your enemy. You allowed them to receive aid during fighting—something that no army had ever done—and you warned them to flee so that you struck mainly empty installations. You held your firepower and sent your children to fight in booby-trapped houses. Still, the world came out against you, and the most thuggish regimes condemned you in the highest forums.

What would you do?