Comment: A year after the massacre at the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a new edition was published depicting God on its cover with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and hands soiled with blood. The Vatican immediately protested.

Answer: Why was the Vatican indignant? Didn’t God to this?! Who creates all the problems in the world?

After all, God said: “I created the evil inclination” (Kiddushin 30b). What is the origin of all the terrible crimes and everything else? Our evil inclination that the Creator created in us: so turn to Him.

He gave us the evil inclination so that we would correct and reeducate ourselves, but we are not doing this. The second half of the phrase “I created the evil inclination…” is “I created the Torah as a spice.” Therefore, it is necessary to take the Torah and use it correctly.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains how to change our nature from an evil and egoistic nature to a good and altruistic nature. That is how God will be revealed before us correctly. Then we, the evil inclination, and the good inclination will be aimed correctly and will rise to the level of the Creator. That is what the Creator created the evil inclination for.

When we use only one characteristic without the other, we don’t have anyone to blame except ourselves, and anyway the Creator created even this in us.

Therefore one must turn to the Creator, but through the second half of His statement.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/7/16

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In the News (The Star): “Marseille Jews are being asked to go without the kippa ‘until better days’ amid a rise in anti-Semitic violence – a recommendation that’s being met with ire. …

“Religious Jews in Marseille are facing a wrenching choice: Whether to wear the skullcap that proclaims their religion or tuck it away in hopes of staying safe. …

“An attack this week was the last straw for the Marseille Jewish community’s religious leadership: A machete-wielding 15-year-old slashed a Jewish teacher in the street. Under police questioning, the boy invoked Islamic State.

Answer: About 70-80 years ago there were calls that Jews should remain Jews and continue to wear kippas along with all the other typical Jewish features, which led to the extermination of the people. After all, there were those who tried to convince the Jews not to flee from Eastern Europe before WWII and to remain Jewish. And 6 million were killed.

Who kept them there until the end and called them to stay? The leaders of the nation. If the leaders has risen and said “we have to leave immediately,” everyone could have been saved. After all, Hitler wanted to transfer the Jews to Palestine and they were allowed to come to the US at first, but they refused. Why? Because the religious leaders held them back.

I believe that all European Jews should first take off their kippas. The Torah says that if you are being threatened you have to do everything in your power to remove the threat. This is called protecting the soul.

Second, no one will protect them if they start killing Jews and it will not even be reported on the media.

Question: So what should they do?

Answer: Leave on time. If the past doesn’t teach them, there is nothing I can say. The Jews are called a stiff-necked people.

Question: Where should they go to?

Answer: The safest place for them is Israel, or at least another country where they can live in, like America for example.

Europe is no place for Jews anymore after WWII. People tolerated them for a while as a way of paying for their earlier sins, but the Jews have no future there.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/13/16

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Comment: It has been 30 years since the explosion at the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl. Recently scientists decided to check what is going on in the surrounding area around and installed 42 cameras.

They discovered that over the past 30 years the number of animals in the area increased many times over.  There are animals that had disappeared from that area a hundred years ago and even animals that were completely extinct, like wild rats, the brown bear, Przewalski horses, buffalo, and foxes.

One of the international group of scientists that conducted the research, Professor Jim Smith from Portsmouth University, was quoted in New Scientist‘s article “Wildlife is thriving around Chernobyl since the people left“: “Whatever negative effects there are from radiation, they are not as large as the negative effects of having people there, …”.

Answer: Man is the most harmful force in nature and is even worse than a nuclear bomb. Without man’s interference the ecological balance is restored; even if it seems that certain species have totally disappeared, nothing in nature actually disappears forever.

It seems that certain animals devour others and that they seemingly become extinct, but if the ecological system needs certain species, they will be restored. If animals become extinct, it is the mark of man on nature by his attitude. When man is absent nature flourishes.

Question: What should we do so that nature should flourish with us and that we will exist in it?

Answer: We have to correct ourselves in order to achieve that because we have destroyed the human being in us, and as a result we destroy the future and make the earth an unlivable place.

All of nature was created for man’s sake, so that by living in this world, like an animal, he will ascend to the next level of his evolution, expand his senses and their boundaries, and feel the upper world through this world. Our world will simply withdraw to the sides before man and like in a movie and he will see that there is another dimension behind it. It is indeed so.

I advise you to come closer and to enter this new reality that exists and is ready for every individual and for all of us together.
[174248]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/8/16

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Question: If we unite, will we be able to defeat terrorism?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah we have to unite against our internal evil, our egoism. This evil is not in a person himself but between people. If we unite, both terrorism and all the other problems in the world will disappear.

Question: How long will it take for all the people in the world to start establishing friendly relations? Will they will keep shooting each another until then?

Answer: Nature has its own rules. We have to reach an integral society, reach the new level of our evolution and to discover the next world, which is higher than our world. Today we live on the level of animals, not on the human level. The word “human,” Adam in Hebrew, stems from the word “Domeh,” to resemble, general nature. We have to ascend above ourselves.

When we begin to sense the world in two opposite forces that are balanced between good and evil, then we will see a totally different picture above the one we see now, a perfect eternal world of forces and mutual actions. This is the world that we should discover now while living in our body, and this is what the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us.

Question: So should we stop bombing ISIS and engage only in our own personal growth?

Answer: No, we should continue our struggle against ISIS and other terrorists. If you are attacked or threatened, you should precede your enemies and kill them first.

But through physical actions alone, we will not achieve anything. We have to establish good relations between us, the right mutual relations through which the good force that is concealed in nature will be revealed in the world. Then it will begin to balance the evil force and organizations like ISIS and everything that is in the form of evil in this world today will disappear.

In the meantime we simply restrain them by bombing and fighting against them, but they will not disappear unless the good force of nature affects them.

This is what is happening in Europe, and we are helpless. Terrorism will grab more and more parts of the world until it fills the whole world. This is how we will be forced to accept the method of correction.
[174002]
From “The Echo of Moscow” Radio Program 11/25/15

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Comment: The “Islamic State” has declared that it is allowed trafficking in human organs. The worst thing is that the order allows harvesting organs from living people without considering that it could lead to death, claiming the life of a traitor should not be taken into account.

Answer: ISIS members are convinced that this action will raise man’s honor, from the level of a traitor to a person who acts for the sake of the just cause.

Comment: But that is utter lawlessness and they announce such outrageous statements openly.

Answer: This is the most important thing in their agitation and propaganda, the hard and horrible approach to life. Surprisingly this cruelty attracts people since it gives them a purpose in life and a goal that justifies their actions. For the sake of the goal, they are ready to kill others and even die themselves.

Since when a person connects himself to a higher goal, his ideology and goal stand out as most important, above our world, and he feels that he is in connection with the Creator! Subconsciously people feel strength in that which promises them permanent fulfillment.

Comment: But the degrading attitude of the ISIS to their surroundings shocks everyone.

Answer: To the contrary! It is precisely through these statements that they exhibit how little they spare themselves or others for the sake of the higher goal. The cruelty attracts people, the simplest person, and causes him to understand that this is a supreme goal.

According to several ancient Eastern sources, if a king did not execute 1,000 people a year, he was not considered to be the king. To be respected was to fear him, to feel his power. It was the same with the Russian nation that treated Stalin with respect because he ruled them with a strong hand.

Question: So how are we to relate to ISIS?

Answer: We need only to learn from them how an organization manages propaganda, propaganda that shows people how to reach connection with the Creator. Actually this connection is displayed through a war with the ego.

We need to unite people with the goal of raising them as one to a level higher than the one they exist on. In spite that this is against human nature and the ego objects to this, we will give the system of the wisdom of Kabbalah to humanity, and to the extent that we disseminate it, to that extent the new emerging “Islamic State” will begin to starve.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 12/25/15

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Opinion (Ian Bremmer, Time): “During the annual Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in Manila in November, President Obama sought out two people for a pressing conversation. Not Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose forces were busy changing facts on the ground in Syria, nor Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose global economic strategy is paying off for China. Instead, he turned to a pair of entrepreneurs: Jack Ma, the CEO of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, and Aisa Mijeno, an ecological innovator from the Philippines. Obama gave a short speech and then spent nearly half an hour moderating a panel discussion with two businesspeople.

“Obama’s explicit message was that government and business must work together to solve energy and environmental problems. The unspoken message was louder: in a hotel filled with leaders, the President of the United States felt he had more to gain chatting with private citizens than engaging his counterparts. …

“In a world of emergencies, leadership matters—and in 2016 it will become unavoidably obvious that the world lacks leadership. The days when heads of the G-7 industrial powers like the U.S. and Germany controlled geopolitics and the global economy are gone for good. The international group of today is the expanded G-20, which is much larger—including important emerging powers like China and India—yet agrees on much less. The result might be called a G-zero world, a global caucus whose members don’t share political and economic values or priorities. They don’t have a common vision for the future. Many years in the making, a G-zero world is now fully upon us.

“For all the rhetoric from U.S. presidential candidates, Washington can no longer even pretend to play global police officer, because public support isn’t there for any action that might require long-term commitments of U.S. troops and taxpayer dollars. …

“Yet abroad, America’s once predominant influence is fading fast. In the Middle East, the most powerful terrorist organization in history occupies large sections of Iraq and Syria. Russia has paralyzed Ukraine and is bombing unchecked in Syria. China is challenging U.S. military power in East Asia and Washington’s institutional power everywhere else. Obama now relies on sanctions, drones and cybercapabilities to advance U.S. interests—blunt tools that do little to build the consensus needed to solve the world’s most complex problems. Few U.S. officials, even the most hawkish, are able to make a clear case for the role they think the U.S. can and should play in a new world.

“Europe can’t help—its leaders are too busy coping with migrants, maneuvering around populist political rivals, working to keep the U.K. in the E.U. and helping Greece find long-term financial footing. China won’t fill the G-zero vacuum—it’s more active on the international stage, but only in pursuit of narrow national interests. Beijing is fully occupied with an anticorruption drive of historic ambition, a bid to revitalize Communist Party rule and a high-stakes economic reform process.

“Who will take the lead in destroying ISIS, stabilizing the Middle East, containing the flow of dangerous weapons, mitigating climate change and managing international risks to public health? No one. The world’s many wildfires will burn hotter in 2016, because no one believes he can afford the costs and risks that come with putting them out.”

My Comment: This is the general outline of the direction toward which the world is advancing, but the main thing is that the world will begin to take on the form of a united society, mutually interconnected more tangibly. It is impossible to manage society in a situation like this unless people will learn to be united and interconnected.
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Comment: The drug baron Joaquin Guzman, known as “El Chapo” (meaning “the short”), who tops the list of the most dangerous criminals, was arrested in Mexico. The interview he gave the actor and director Sean Penn probably led to his arrest.

The guy was “burnt,” as they say, for his ideal. He wanted to discuss the possibility of making an autobiographical movie, and he proudly related in the interview that he has a fleet of ships, submarines, airplanes, trucks, and boats. He admitted that he was probably engaged in a business that wasn’t the cleanest one, but that where he was born there is no other business. He provides the world with more heroin, cocaine, and marijuana than anyone else in the world.

Answer: I believe that the world today needs heroin and these “short guys” to serve it. The drug baron felt that he was an ideologist who was saving, healing, and tranquilizing people to some extent. It isn’t about money or control but actually about the idea that the world needs it.

In fact, the world does need drugs, and the way we live today a person who uses drugs actually protects himself from a crazy world. Therefore, we cannot accuse people of selling and using drugs. No matter what we say, both the state and the public gradually accept it. Humanity has reached a stage of helplessness, and the only option is either to lose consciousness of this world or to heal.

If we want to heal, we need to change the world because it cannot exist in its current state. We are witnessing its gradual decline in the breakup of families, in children drawing away from their parents, in people’s resistance and reluctance regarding everything, and in their total indifference. Fields like art, science, and television, which used to satisfy humanity and by which man differed from animals, no longer satisfy us. Today the difference between man and animals is the mobile phone, which is also the embodiment of the same emptiness we see on computer and TV screens.

For ages there was religion, philosophy, and art, which filled humanity and served as a kind of a social platform that helped us develop. There was a desire to develop mankind, to raise children and have a family. People felt secure and expected a wonderful future. But today we don’t expect anything.

Now people like “Shorty” show us the futility of our lives, and thus we want to get rid of them and put them in prison, when, in fact, Mexico itself is starting to give out marijuana in order to control it.

We have reached a state in which humanity needs to choose between putting itself to sleep or changing the world.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/11/16

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Comment: Every year in Israel two million tons of food, costing billions of shekels, is thrown away. Consequently more than 35% of the food products are discarded. In 2015 the losses due to food waste was about 18 billion shekels.

Answer: How can we balance that? Should we post a policeman next to every Israeli who will check their garbage cans or to persuade them not to buy or throw away what is left over? Should we set it aside for the hungry and the poor?

Should we found an organization that will collect the surpluses of food products and give it to the needy? It will not work.

There is no method that can prevent this except for the re-education of people. Each of us should be hurt by the thought that I have and others don’t, that I eat and another is hungry, that I throw away what other people have worked so hard for and that could be useful.

We have to bring people to make the most optimal use everything in the world. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah tells us, that you should only use what you need in order to exist. It is necessary to properly relate to the world that was created just so for you to exist in physically, while your heart and mind would be in the upper world, yearn for it, and you will get there!

An animal in our world never eats more than it needs and doesn’t store anything if its instincts don’t require that. On the other hand, man constantly stuffs himself with more and more, and is thus killing himself. He kills all that is spiritual in him. His brain ceases to work on something else. It is said: “a righteous eats to revive his soul.”

The right education gives a person a feeling that he doesn’t need all that; it is too much; I can give what I don’t need to others; everything should equal.

Comment: Does this means that what a person needs is food, good health, and a roof over his head?

Answer: Yes, but at the same time I also have to make sure that others should have the same.
[174188]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/7/16

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Question: On a live broadcast, the President of the United States Barack Obama spoke about the need to introduce stringent regulations on arms sales, to tighten controls, to ban the purchase of weapons through the Internet, etc.

Answer: What will change if they ban the sale of weapons. Already there are a large number of weapons in people’s hands? Is it difficult to get a gun?

After all, it is possible for anyone to buy one. Once, I went into a cellar in New York where it turned out that they sold weapons, including small cannons. Please, buy. There is no need for permission or anything: just bring money.

Question: Is this to say that the ban on weapons is not the solution to the problem of mass murder in the United States?

Answer: It certainly isn’t. There is no connection between the one and the other.

Mass murder is the result of the lack of the right education of the populace. If there is no education, then no laws will help, and if you assign a policeman to every citizen, then he too will be involved in this.

We need to form people from a young age and truly make it so that these young people will grow up and become human beings, and will understand how to communicate correctly with each other. It is necessary to teach lessons about patience to them. Suppose that they are yelling at me now while I listen in a relaxed manner, smiling in response, and carefully disagree about things. Training like this is imperative.

It is necessary to teach them about psychology, to discover human nature, the system of mutual relationships between us, to learn how to cooperate mutually with each other, and how to turn every situation so that it will be good both for the other and for me because, from his side, the same response will follow.

Question: Are you saying that the starting point is education?

Answer: It is solely and only education. The situation comes from the evil latent in a person that isn’t balanced.

Education is the most important thing. It is not listening to boring school lectures, but obtaining the proper education through practical training, especially through enacting games from situations in life. That is how a person gets used to playing with one’s egoism in all kinds of situations. And all will be well.
[174016]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/6/16

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Question: The Russian Federation published a new military doctrine for the year 2016 and for the subsequent six years. The new national security strategy determined Russia’s political rivals, which include the United States and its allies.

Likewise, the expansion of NATO, approaching the borders of Russia, and instigating “colorful” revolutions is seen as a national security threat. If we look at this from above, how is the world evolving?

Answer: The world is evolving toward a situation in which everyone will begin to lose and will come to a simple conclustion: We have to unite, eliminating all borders. After all, war is pointless. Today it’s impossible to fight using ordinary weapons.

We still don’t have the vision of the future as far as how the so-called takeover will take place. Ideologically? What kind of ideology can there be if by all accounts, it doesn’t exist. Economically? Go ahead, conquer me….

Today, we are approaching a completely different world. Even though Russia, the United States, and Europe have planned their strategies for the upcoming years, the world will draw completely different conclusions from them.

We should seriously consider how we can create a society that is capitalist in its form and socialist in its content. How can we get a person to work wholeheartedly? It is only through capitalism. How can we get a person to relate well to people? It is only through socialism.

How do we integrate these approaches?

The wisdom of Kabbalah recommends combining these two forms of relationship: a desire to work honestly—basically without receiving a reward—and a desire to treat people as yourself.

After all, the egoism works correctly, compelling you to do your best so that you build a healthy society based upon the principles of bestowal: “received—gave away” or “gave away—received.” This is exactly what is neccessary in production, in commerce, and in fact, in everything.

The relationships between people have to be socialistic, equal concern for all: for children, for the environment, for everything else, but this has to be done from the bottom of one’s heart. And how is it possible to wholeheartedly compete with each other at work and to relate to each other like loved ones in all other circumstances? It is only with a capitalist approach to work relationships and a socialist approach to everything else.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 1/5/16

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