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First Covenant
Foundation

Covenant Connection
Volume 2, Issue 9

May 2007.......Sivan 5767

Jihad E. Coyote

Headlines

• Jihad E. Coyote

• Bad Mouse

• Islam or Israel?

• Seven Candles, by Andrea Chester: Prayer, A Heart-Shapped Mirror

• The Bible's "Statutes" and Kosher Birds

• Moral Breakdown

• First Covenant Radio

• Prayer
  

His favorite Islamic suicide bombers, says comedian Jerry Seinfeld, only blow up themselves. They are their sole victims. They remind him of Wilie E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, he says. Coyote buys his Acme Co. rocket skates or flying belt or other preposterous equipment to try to capture the constantly infuriating roadrunner, "beep-beep." Roadrunner always gets away unscathed. Coyote always fails, spectacularly.

Israel has almost seven thousand suicide bombers in custody who didn't even manage to blow up themselves. Documentary filmmaker "Pierre Rehov" (his pseudonym - he lives in France, where he must keep his true identity a secret) set out to try to make sense of this phenomenon.

After 9/11, people recognized that the bombers' only target isn't Israel. They go after anyone. Osama bin Laden issued a "religious decree" or fatwa declaring that "killing Americans and Jews everywhere is the highest act of worship." But most victims of these America-hating, Jew-despising, Islam-loving Muslims are actually other Muslims. Sunnis blow up Shi'ites and Shi'ites blow up Sunnis every day now.

In Europe, a major car company found humor in Islamic terrorism. They made a commerical which conveys that enemy-of-all-humanity aspect of it. A man wearing an Arab scarf, a kaffiyeh, represents Jihad E. Coyote. He has a bomb in his car. We see a pleasant sidewalk cafe, filled with people pursuing their own lives. The murderous fanatic drives up alongside. He commends his soul to Allah, and. . . see for yourself.

http://thetravisty.com/Cool_Commercials/wmv/
German_Engineering_vs_Arab_Technology.htm

What motivates the bombers? Mostly sex, Pierre Rehov says. Living in hidebound, horribly oppressive cultures, their religion tells them that the best way to get good sex is through suicide bombing, according to Rehov. His documentary, Suicide Killers, and his comments on his findings are fascinating. See below.

Rehov interviewed a lot of would-be martyrs. The girls who want to blow themselves to bits to kill and mutiliate "the enemies of Islam" do it "for the sake of Allah," they say. They expect Allah to reward them by turning them into beautiful houris, one of the 72 gorgeous "dark-eyed" virgins assigned to each shaheed - each male "martyr." As for the males, they also say that they want to "die for Allah." They expect Allah to promptly pay up, too - by "giving" them their 72 virgins.

They expect to own these women.  A peculiar concept. . . Beyond that, Islam simply happens to be religion which promises its followers a reward in the afterlife consisting mostly of wildly promiscuous sex, drinking and feasting. That was Muhammed's idea of paradise, apparently, and he passed it on through his teachings.

You can read about Rehov's findings here: http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16694
and here: http://www.pierrerehov.com/index.shtml

You can see and hear a trailer for the documentary, a video, here: http://www.pierrerehov.com/sk_trailer.htm

This sort of stuff gives religion a bad name. What kind of god would make the afterlife a super bordello, a sex palace? What kind of religion urges its youth to kill themselves by maiming and murdering "enemies" - enemies who are mostly just ordinary people, and very often children? What kind of god promises believers a future of never-ending sensuality in return for committing such extraordinarily evil deeds?


 

Bad Mouse

Culture is everything. Conditioning the believers starts early. Incredibly wealthy petro-sheiks, mostly, sponsor Hamas in Gaza, in the Holy Land. Take a look at Hamas's children's television programming, below:

[According to the May 10th New York Times, Hamas in Gaza just pulled the following program, including this clip, from their regularly scheduled children's television programming. It shows a Mickey Mouse knock-off, Farfour, or "Butterfly," teaching children violent jihad and hate. The so-called Palestinian Authority's minister of information insisted that they remove it -after Comedy Central's Daily Show with John Stewart lampooned it on May 9th.]

Memri TV:

Hamas Al-Aqsa TV: A Mickey Mouse Character Teaches Children About the Islamic Rule of the World And to 'Annihilate the Jews'

The following are excerpts from a children's TV show, which aired on Hamas Al-Aqsa TV on April 6-13, 2007. To view this clip, go to: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1442.

Stewart joked after running the clip, "In all fairness, it should be noted that the producers of this show are laboring under a terrible handicap: they don't have any Jewish writers."

[On May 11th, the New York Times reported that, despite Hamas' prior promises to the contrary to the minister of information (or perhaps the minister of information was simply lying), Hamas reinstated the program.]

Note that Hamas named its station Al-Aqsa. Al-Aqsa means "the pure" in Arabic. You can judge its purity for yourself. The station's name and call sign - its equivalent to NBC's peacock or the CBS eye - comes from the structure that Islam planted atop Solomon's ancient Temple in Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa shrine.

[Israel captured the Temple Mount in the Six Day War in 1967. Then its irreligious defense minister, Moshe Dayan, delivered it to the very enemy that Israel had miraculously just crushed. That single act revivified them. We spoke about this phenomenon, complete with the usual iconic photo of Al-Aqsa, in Now Comes Amalek, our July 2006 issue. http://1stcovenant.com/pages/news/archives/July_061.html]

Correction: in a previous issue, we spoke of Hamas as "chamas," with a guttural 'h' - which means violence, bloodlust, rapine, and going berserk, in both Arabic and Hebrew. But Arabs say Hamas, with a plain 'h', when they refer to the (violent, bloody, berserk) Hamas movement. Hamas, in Arabic, simply means force, strength, or power.

 

Islam or Israel?

Oddly, many people still believe that most Muslims and Arabs hate Israel solely for the sake of the so-called Palestinians. Don't believe it. They hate their brethren and their treatment of them proves it. Really, it's all about the Al-Aqsa shrine and what it stands for - Islamic supersessionism, Islam's claims of superiority over both Christianity and Judaism, the "gutter religion" of the accursed Jews.

Solomon's "house of prayer" for all peoples isn't likely to pop into being until Muslims recognize that Israel is still Israel. That is, until they understand that the Divine Plan as set out in the Bible is still the Divine Plan: that Israel plays a role in the world that's necessary to the world, and that Israel - and therefore the world - can't survive for long unless Judaism also survives.

Will the people of Israel survive? "Yes," the Bible assures us. But, just looking at the numbers, that proposition seems pretty chancy. The numbers don't look all that good:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism
/jewpop.html#region

 

Seven Candles, by Andrea M. Chester

 
Prayer, A Heart-Shaped Mirror
 

Last month, I told you about my new perspective on “charity” when I discovered that the Hebrew word was tzedakah, meaning “justice or righteousness.” Now, to be absolutely fair, the Christian notions I grew up with included a flavor of justice, but the word “charity” usually conjured up a very different image. In fact, I found that many of the familiar words I’d heard in church took on new energy when I explored the original Hebrew.

Another one of those words I’d heard all my life was “prayer.” People of faith, no matter what their creed, have some kind of contact with God. They all pray, in some form or other. Like most religious people, I talked with God regularly, even though I hadn’t noticed that it made much difference in the course of my life. (I also grew up seeing huge billboards announcing “Prayer changes things!”)

Then, I read that the Hebrew word for prayer, tefilla, comes from the root palel, which means 'judge." Like most Hebrew words, tefilla means several things, including “filling one’s own heart, examining/judging oneself.”

The English word, “pray,” means to ask, to plead one’s case, to make supplication. It’s almost a helpless action. It implies that I’m begging God to fulfill my needs, but that I have little power in the matter.

Although I had always talked with God, I never saw much change. So much for the adage on the billboards! Tefilla, however, was more active. I was supposed to look inside myself, to judge myself and learn what was really in my heart. Although I was talking to God, I was also talking to MYSELF. It suddenly made sense why the best way to pray is aloud, at least loud enough for you to hear your own whispered pleas. Praying aloud, I HEAR MYSELF!

Although the Christian understanding of prayer includes introspection, the difference is that the English “pray” seems more or less inactive. I pour my heart out and hope God is in the mood to listen to me. But the Hebrew “tefilla” is a reflexive action, where I examine what I’m asking God to hear or act upon. I’m searching my own heart, trying to figure out what I REALLY want from God.

In words our kids would use, it’s more "interactive.” Praying is another aspect of “tikkun olam,” in which God invites me to work with Him to perfect or restore the world. In prayer, I’m inviting God to explore my motives and desires with me….I’m asking Him to help me discover my hidden agendas, and my hidden strengths. I am considering, weighing, re-working myself.

In other words, the “thing” prayer changes is… ME! Now, that’s really a revolutionary idea!

AC

 

The Bible's "Statutes": Kosher Birds

The Bible's "statutes" are the more mysterious parts of the Torah. In the last two issues, we mentioned that the Torah's food laws, particularly, exemplified the class of Divine legislation known as statutes. These are the Torah laws which, unlike Noah's Laws, aren't necessarily logical. Even so, God promises, a time will come when mankind somehow comes to recognize their greatness, their wisdom and their righteousness (Deuteronomy 4:6-8).

When it comes to fowl, or what birds are kosher - literally, fit - for "a holy people," "a people of priests" to eat, a pattern emerges from the Torah's details.

None of the livelier birds, the birds of prey or the carrion-eaters, the singing birds, or the birds that build complex or artistic nests, are kosher. Chickens and geese and most ducks are kosher. Crows and ostriches and swans are not.

Doves and pigeons, grouse and partridge are all "clean" birds. Pheasant, which originated in Southeast Asia, and its North American cousin, the turkey, are a little different. Israel has an unbroken tradition of thousands of years regarding the first set of birds as kosher. The pheasant and turkey are relative newcomers. But most Torah scholars regard them both as kosher.

Birds from all the "clean" or kosher species can be tamed to live peacefully alongside human beings, even though we eat them.

Most of the clean birds have a tri-partitioned disgestive system, or three "stomachs": a crop, a fore-stomach, and the main stomach. While some of these birds will eat fish, or will supplement a vegetable diet with insects, they thrive as vegetarians.

None of the clean birds, even including those that eat fish or insects, have what one might call cruel habits. None of them use their feet or claws for tearing their food or putting food into the mouths. Rather, they all pick up their food directly with their beaks.

Many farmers have been trying to cultivate different varieties of ostrich- a family of birds known as ratites. But wild bird species are very difficult to farm. As many a ruined ratite-grower has discovered, it's almost impossible to farm them - to grow them and harvest them as food - without causing them excessive suffering. They take fright too easily and whole flocks can die in a night.

Eggs from all the clean or kosher birds are kosher. That is, unless blood has gotten into the yolk (which happens now and then). As for eggs from other birds, the products of the unclean are unclean. (Except, as we noted in the last issue, honey from bees and the milk that an infant takes from a nursing mother.) So the eggs of ostriches and songbirds are not kosher.

Most Americans who give this any thought at all believe, as we noted in the last issue, that all the kosher food laws are obsolete. Supposedly, the Torah prohibits the Jews from eating certain things only because of the poor conditions in which people used to live - no electric freezers, problems with clean water, no screens or insecticides, etc. This is the politically correct, "progressive" view - that the technological and economic revolutions that owe so much to Sinai's Hebrew Revolution made Sinai's laws, particularly the kosher food laws, irrelevant.

That is simply ignorance. If anything, it's proudly ignorant - it doesn't "stoop down" to really think about the Torah. It recognizes the Torah's great antiquity. But it equates antiquity with barbaric ignorance. In fact, it's a terrible slur against the Torah. All the laws of Torah, and particularly these kosher food laws, go 'way beyond the merely physical.

 

 

Moral Breakdown

 

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center this year showed that many Americans regard society's "moral breakdown" as very frightening.

They should join the First Covenant Foundation. Every spiritual institution everywhere, whether they be churches, temples, synagogues or mosques, should teach the Seven Universal Laws. People need to know right from wrong. That knowledge doesn't come from instinct.

Why support the Foundation? Because we make sense of the Seven Universal Laws.

We show that the Seven Laws are not just for a few people with a special interest in the ways of Israel. (We could have made this clearer earlier - we resolve to make it clearer from now on.) Rather, they are for everyone of every creed. They are not "Judaizing," as some people think: every American who finds society's "moral breakdown" frightening needs to discover the Seven Laws. The Seven Laws transcend religion.They are for Christians and for Hindus. The world's Muslims certainly should learn them. And so, certainly, should the world's Jews.

We show how the Laws can be kept practically, right now. We also put them into context, as part of the Bible and a larger Master Plan.

If you think that this effort has merit, please support it.

Moderate Muslims

In another study just released on May 22d, the Pew Research Center also found, after conducting more than 55,000 interviews, that most Muslims who live in the United States are "moderates." According to the headlines: "Most Muslims are moderate, but. . . " That is, the Pew Center reported, they oppose suicide bombing for Allah and reject Al-Qaida and Osama in much greater numbers than Muslims polled in the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia. 

"Only" 15% of Muslims aged 18-29 agree that suicide bombings are "often or sometimes" justified, according to the Pew study. (Asked, "Are suicide bombings ever justified?" 26% expressed agreement.) "Only" 7% of the same age group said that it had a "favorable" view of Al-Qaeda (although another 19% said that it just didn't know).

When questioned about the 9/11 attacks, 40% of all Muslims responding said that they believe that Arabs were responsible for the attacks.  The rest either "didn't respond, said that they weren't sure, or said that Arabs were not responsible."

Incidentally, only 36% of African-American Muslims said that they viewed Al-Qaida "very unfavorably," compared to 58% of all American Muslims.

Again, if you think that Muslims need to learn to more about the Seven Universal Laws, 1) we agree, and 2) how about supporting the teaching of the Seven?

First Covenant Radio

 

Hear us speak - check us out on radio.We're on Zelda Young's Global Jewish Connection show on CHIN FM - 100.7 on the FM dial in Toronto, Canada. Unusually for us, we just did a Monday show. Jack Saunders took Zelda's questions. On May 17, we did an open-phone-line show for about an hour. Jack Saunders, Michael Dallen, and Rabbi Michael Katz took questions from Zelda and callers.

Otherwise, we're on every other Wednesday, starting around 9:30 (Eastern Daylight Time). You can hear us on Internet radio live - http://www.zeldayoung.com . You can also listen to most of the shows that we've already done there.

On the First Covenant website, go to http://1stcovenant.com/pages/voiceandvideo.htm for all the shows, plus photos.

Steven Savitsky, president of the Orthodox Union, interviews Michael Dallen and Jack Saunders on the Orthodox Union's online radio show. The approximately half-hour interview is scheduled for broadcast on Tuesday, May 29 (the show usually airs on Monday, but with Memorial Day, there will be a slight delay). It will be available on this channel http://ouradio.org/ouradio/channel/C271/, as well as featured in Shabbat Shalom (www.ouradio.org/shabbat) and on OU.org, http://www.ou.org/

Mishpacha Jewish Family Magazine recently ran a story about Noahides and the Noahide movement - read it, including part of their interview with Michael Dallen, in their Pesach 5767/Passover 2007 issue. You can go to their website or to our site, and articles: http://1stcovenant.com/pages/articles.htm

Based partly on that article, we will be doing a symposium, soon, on what it means to be a Noahide. We expect to publish very good papers from very good writers.

 

We call on God for help. As the prayer that Israel says every morning just before reciting the Hebrew statement of faith known as the shema asks (please understand that this is much richer in Hebrew than in English): Our Father, the merciful Father, Who acts mercifully, have mercy on us, instill in our hearts to understand and elucidate, to listen, learn, teach, safeguard, perform and fulfill all the words of Your Torah's teachings with love. Enlighten our eyes in Your Torah, attach our hearts to Your commandments, and unify our hearts to love and fear Your Name.

Amen.Questions? Comments?

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