Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What is ‘Modeh Ani’ in Hebrew?”
Modeh Ani is a short prayer, which is recited daily upon waking up in the morning. In this prayer, one thanks the Creator just as he opens his eyes by saying, “I offer thanks to You, living and eternal King, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great!” A person thanks the Creator, who fills and controls the whole world, for restoring his soul and letting him wake up to get to know Him. This prayer marks the beginning of a new day.

What is the meaning of the Modeh Ani prayer? Here it is, piece by piece.

“Modeh ani lefanecha”—I thank You. For what does one thank the Creator? “Melech chai ve kayam”—eternal living King, meaning that He fills the whole world, He controls the whole world, and no one else. “Living” means that He exists in everything that exists. Without His presence in something, it would not exist. “Melech chai ve kayam, she he chezarta bi nishmati”—”for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great!”

The Creator takes one’s soul in the evening and returns it in the morning, upon one waking up. A person enters a dream, where he no longer controls himself, and therefore his obvious connection with the Creator is cut off. Only the Creator is the master over him during sleep, at night. And in the morning a person gets his soul back and thanks the Creator for it. “For You have mercifully restored my soul within me,” means that the Creator has decided to return the soul to the body. Meanwhile, others might not wake up at all.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, “God,” or “the Creator,” is the quality of complete, unconditional love and bestowal. It is a spiritual force devoid of any corporeal depiction, a force that guides and sustains reality, also called the “upper force,” and its purpose is one: to do good. To that end, the Creator created us, who are destined to reach ultimate goodness by acquiring the godly, eternal quality of absolute love and bestowal.

Prayer is an appeal to the upper force to correct one’s egoism, the desire to enjoy for self-benefit alone. The transformation from our inborn egoistic perception and sensation to a new altruistic one is performed via an act called “prayer.”

This prayer, however, has nothing to do with day and night. In Kabbalah, a day is when we are enlightened, i.e., that we can see and feel, holding a connection with the Creator. Night is when a state descends like twilight on the soul and the heart. And when the dawn comes next, and we have some connection to the Creator, we say this prayer.

We do not have to recite the exact words of this prayer. It is more important to feel them in the heart. We can tell the Creator from the heart how good it is to be connected to Him, and this is a day for me; and how bad and sad it is for me to be alone without the Creator, and that is like night. I am thankful to the Creator for waking me up and giving me the conditions to approach Him.
[315543]

Filed under: New Publications - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Why Are People Influenced by Ads”
We are influenced by ads because companies study what we would like and create ads that pinpoint our desires, whetting our appetites with the use of various deception and concealment techniques.

For instance, if we have an initial desire for an iPhone, then advertisers show us that it is exactly what we need and want, and that we should think about it and look into it.

They then feed us with advertisements that show successful men and beautiful women holding iPhones, triggering our desires for social acceptance and respect, and we then start feeling as if we want one too.

In other words, advertising influences us by psychologically manipulating us to not just want the advertised product, but to want the enhanced feelings and perceptions of ourselves that the advertising implants into us. In the case of the iPhone, we then not only want the iPhone, we want to view ourselves as successful, beautiful, lucky and well-dressed, and that we are among others who are also like that.

We are made of desires. Our individual desires that we all have, regardless of our participation in society, are those for food, sex and family. Beyond our individual desires, we have social desires that come from our participation with others: desires for money, respect, fame, control and knowledge. And beyond our social desires, we have a spiritual desire that makes us question the meaning and purpose of our lives.

We have the natural capability to fulfill ourselves at the levels of our individual and social desires without the need for advertising. Yet advertisers create certain forms and images of how to fulfill such desires for various segments of society. They research us and sell us products that we do not need.

If the products were essential, they would require no advertising. For instance, do we need to advertise bread to people enduring a famine?

There was no advertising where I grew up in the Soviet Union because there was nothing on the store shelves. Nobody was struggling to buy anything there at those times. However, at the same time, there was plenty of advertising in America because it was a place that hosted an overproduction of goods, and the goal of the ads was to make people buy.

In our times, however, the spiritual desire is surfacing in more and more people, demanding answers to life’s most fundamental existential questions: What is the meaning of life? Who are we? Where are we from? Where are we now? Where are we headed? What is reality? Also, why is there so much suffering in the world?

The answers to these questions cannot be packaged to us as products that we can buy on impulse, and which require advertisers to deceive us in order for us to want to buy them. Instead, these questions’ answers require educational wisdom and a method that can guide us with principles and advice on how to apply ourselves at the level of thought, desire and action, and in connection with other people, in order to advance us to a higher level of consciousness.

Therefore, as our needs shift to requiring deeper fulfillment of our spiritual desire, people’s demands also gradually move away from the levels that advertising acts on. Today, we increasingly need wisdom, a method, principles and advice in order to navigate ourselves in an era where the new spiritual desire will continue emerging in more and more people.
[315376]

Filed under: New Publications - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What Is the Basis of Antisemitism?”
The basis of antisemitism is the Jewish people having yet to realize their true identity and role in humanity: that by uniting above their differences, they become a conduit for unity to spread throughout the world.

The Jewish people received their name from attaining a state of spiritual unity (the Hebrew word for “Jew” [Yehudi] comes from the word for “united” [yihudi] [Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2]). They share no biological connection as Jews, since they are a people that came from all parts of ancient Babylon, gathered into Abraham’s tent, and became united when they, using Abraham’s method of unification, set their sights on attaining the spiritual state of unity, purified from any self-centered motives.

Why is this non-biological, spiritual form of unity so important today?

It is because precisely today, the human ego has grown to overblown proportions, and humanity experiences increasing social division and other problems on personal, social and global scales, stemming from increasing disengagement among people.

Moreover, the increasing social diversity and mingling of cultures, economies and technologies into a globally-intertwined blend demands a method that can glue together the thickening tangle by making sense of it.

As people suffer more from increasing social division, they instinctively feel that the Jews are to blame for their problems. That is because, since the Jewish people had once achieved a unified state “as one man with one heart,” the nations of the world have a gut feeling that the Jews are holding back something positive from them. And both the nations of the world and the Jews are unconscious as to what that positive thing actually is: a harmoniously unified society, the key to everyone’s happiness.

The more the nations of the world feel their lives fill up with problems, the more they will unconsciously blame the Jews, pointing out any dirt on Jews that they can get their hands on—or fabricate—without knowing that there is a deeper hatred within them preceding its many corporeal manifestations. As social division and its byproducts of anxiety, stress, xenophobia and extremism increase, and as the suffering in the world rises, the Jews will be circled out more and more, and we can expect an intensification of attacks and threats on Jews.

Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) describes this phenomenon at length in his article, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”:

“In such a generation, all the destructors among the nations of the world raise their heads and wish primarily to destroy and to kill the children of Israel, as it is written (Yevamot 63), ‘No calamity comes to the world but for Israel.’ This means, as it is written in the above corrections, that they cause poverty, ruin, robbery, killing, and destruction in the whole world.”

Today, the nations of the world unconsciously sense that the Jewish people, or Israel, are failing to implement and exemplify a unity worthy of replication in human society. The natural reaction is for them to apply pressure on the Jews, which boosts antisemitism. On the other hand, as soon as Jews unite, it will also bring about the unity of humanity and they will feel a wealth of goodness and well-being streaming from the Jewish people.

Therefore, combating antisemitism at its basis means implementing a single comprehensive solution: the education and promotion of unity above division. Such education needs to focus on uniting the Jewish people under the law, “love your neighbor as yourself,” which made them the people of Israel to begin with, in order for them to become a conduit for unity to spread worldwide, i.e., to become “a light unto the nations.”
[315018]

Filed under: New Publications - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The Inevitable Clash between Democratic Institutions and Democracy”
In light of the growing social and political tensions in Israel, Gadi Taub, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Policy and the Department of Communications at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a political commentator and author, published an op-ed article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv. Prof. Taub argues that the phenomenon of powerful elite groups attempting to impose their governance on the people, often against the people’s democratic choice, is not unique to Israel. Taub writes that judges, public officials, NGOs, central and federal banks, as well as international forums are leading the effort to impose their governance. At the end of the day, Taub concludes, this struggle comes at the expense of democracy, even when it is fought purportedly in the name of democracy and for its sake.

Among the most conspicuous institutions that Prof. Taub describes as denying power from the people is the European Union (EU). At face value, the EU is a democratic entity where every citizen of Europe is represented through the European Parliament. In practice, however, the institutions that make the decisions are the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and the European Central Bank (ECB), whose representatives are not elected by the citizens of Europe themselves but by governments. The European Parliament is not entitled to make rules, but only to confirm or reject the laws presented to it by the European Commission.

If this description gives the impression that the European Union is not really a democracy, that impression is correct. However, it is not only the EU that serves as a facade for democracy. Every institution is like that. Democracy, as such, does not exist, and never really existed. Some form of it existed in ancient Greece, where multiple city-states lived in what became known as “direct democracies.”

Today’s democracies, however, are “representative democracies,” and the representatives serve only those to whom they owe their seats. Their goal is to maintain and, if possible, increase their power. They tout slogans such as “democracy,” “justice,” “freedom,” and “equality,” but their only ambition is to dig their nails deeper into the state’s institutions and federal budgets. They couldn’t care less if, in the process, they will deny everyone else the justice, freedom, equality, and all the other lofty values they proclaim to cherish.

The parties to the power struggle are all aware of their quackery, but the general public is not, and people naively participate in the “democratic” process thinking that their votes matter. Every so often, parties switch chairs between opposition and coalition, but it is all part of the game, and, as we can see, nothing really changes.

Since there is no real democracy, and even when there was one, such as in ancient Greece, it did not benefit the majority of people, but only the elite, I think we should focus not on the type of regime we have, but on the people who constitute it, namely ourselves. In my opinion, what matters is not how the government treats the people, but how we treat each other.

Our current societies are built on the premise that we are aliens toward each other. It assumes that we do not trust each other, that we want to hurt each other if we can, exploit each other, and deceive each other. As a result, we build police forces, courthouses, and restraining regulations meant to prevent us from destroying our society. But because at the end of the day, the police, judges, and regulators are all made of the same self-centered material that all of us are made of, the “democratic” societies with their lofty aspirations are collapsing just as every regime has in the past.

Therefore, to build a sustainable governance that benefits the people, we must first change the people, and only then the government and mode of governance will change for the better. If we establish our relationships on mutual responsibility and concern for one another, we will not exploit, deceive, or steal from one another.

In short, everything depends on education. We need to teach ourselves about our mutual dependence, and that if we hurt others, it hurts us. In fact, we need to learn it in such depth that we will not only know it, but feel it in our bones. If we begin an educational process where we learn about that, our rulers will act according to these values, and we will not need to worry about corruption or exploitation.

Perhaps brotherly love sounds far-fetched and credulous today, but everyone intellectually understands that we are all dependent on each other. Now we need to bring it to our awareness to the point that we will feel compelled to act on it. This will start us off in the right direction.
[314030]

Filed under: Israel, New Publications - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Is the US Government Seeking to Delegitimize Israel?”
About a week ago, it became known that the “Biden administration’s outgoing ambassador to Israel personally signed off on a controversial $1 million grant to a program critics said was meant to delegitimize Israel, according to internal State Department communications.” According to a trove of emails released following a request by the America First Legal Foundation under the Freedom of Information Act, outgoing “U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides … personally cleared the State Department to offer $987,654 for groups to investigate alleged human rights abuses in Israel, Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip.”

When the initiative became known, twelve Republican lawmakers pressured the State Department to cancel the program, saying that it would embolden the global BDS movement. “As a policy matter,” they wrote, “it is wholly unacceptable for the State Department to fund NGOs to delegitimize and isolate Israel.”

As painful as it may be, I think that Israel should wake up from the illusion that America is its best friend, and realize that the US treats Israel just as it treats any other country: according to what is best for America, and only for America. Today, it is easier for America to cater to the Palestinians and to the Arab world than to look after Israel’s interests.

Moreover, I feel that the administration in DC believes that it will be able to work things out with Israel if there are misunderstandings, whereas with the Arab world, it needs to work harder in order to gain its trust. As a result, the Biden administration makes greater efforts to appease Israel’s enemies than to please Israel. As long as Israel continues to ignore this reality, America will have no reason to change this policy.

It is not that there is a deliberate attempt to weaken Israel or hamper its efforts to protect itself. It is only a matter of priorities, and at the moment, keeping warm relations with Israel is low priority for the US.

It is not only the US that is giving Israel a cold shoulder. There are even Israeli representatives around the world who are working against Israel in the countries where they serve. Some of them even encourage political leaders and Jewish community leaders abroad not to meet with Israeli ministers on official visits to their country. Their motivation for doing this may not only be that they oppose the current government in Israel, but also that in today’s international arena, you are treated better if you treat Israel worse. To many people and countries, the temptation to win easy compliments is more than they can resist.

For its part, Israel can reverse the trend, but not by denouncing such behaviors. Criticizing others for hating you will not make them like you.

The only way to make the world like us is by starting to like each other. The internal division in Israeli society is exuding toxic attitudes and pugnacious thoughts. It is causing the world to reject us from its midst, and makes us pariahs among the nations.

More than any country in the world, Israel is always on people’s minds, and the atmosphere that it projects permeates people’s hearts. When people in Israel are contentious, so is the world; when Israelis are at peace with one another, so is the world with them.

Our sages have always told us that if we change, the world will change with us. We have no other way to change the world’s attitude toward us except through our internal unity, yet we have always refused to use it. Nevertheless, until we give peace among ourselves a chance, the world will not be peaceful toward us.
[314110]

Filed under: New Publications - No Comments →

Medium published my new article “How to Make Sense of a Chaotic World”

Almost every person in the western world is connected to sources of information that tell us what is happening in the world and help us make sense of it. Previously, the sources were primarily TV, radio, and newspapers. However, in the age of the internet and dominant social media platforms, things look very different. A new Gallup/Knight Foundation study has found that 90 percent of Americans follow at least one public figure on social media such as Twitter or Instagram. They might be celebrities, journalists, academic experts, show hosts, online influencers, or business leaders, but these public figures express their own views, rather than those of an established news outlet.

Objective reporting, or even simply ethical reporting, is a thing of the past; it no longer exists.

According to the report, the reason for the change is not only that information is more accessible today than before the internet. Rather, it is that people have lost trust in the traditional media outlets. Accordingly, more than 70 percent of the respondents in the study said that they were following influencers online in order to get a perspective they cannot get from the legacy media, and nearly 80 percent said that they do it because they trust the ones they follow more than they trust legacy media.

Indeed, people no longer believe traditional media outlets because these channels no longer serve their purpose. Instead of providing credible information and commentary, even if leaning toward one political side more than the other, media sources now serve the moguls that own them or the party they are instructed to support. Everything is divided into camps, and the media echoes the messages that its camp wants to send out. Objective reporting, or even simply ethical reporting, is a thing of the past; it no longer exists.

Another aspect of the phenomenon is that people are looking for more personal contact. People need not only to absorb information, but also communicate with the commentator, to be able to respond and get feedback. Since they cannot get this from traditional channels, they turn to social media influencers’ personal social media accounts.

However, at the end of the day, I think it is all about ratings, including the connection with social media influencers. I do not think it can really help people make sense of the world we live in.

There was a time when I was much younger, that I spent the bulk of my time with my Kabbalah teacher, RABASH. He would always listen to the news very attentively. However, as soon as the news ended and commentators began to express their views on what was happening, he would switch off the radio (he never watched television).

As for me, I do have a TV and I am connected to the internet, but I hardly follow the news. I know what is going on in the world in broad strokes, and I have a couple of analysts whose commentary I have been following sporadically for many years, but nothing beyond that.

Today, I understand that our world depends not on the words of this or that politician, but on the quality of the connections between people. By turning toward empathy or toward alienation, we determine our fate far more than any decision maker determines anything.

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that following the news, or this or that commentator, will not change anything, and will not improve my understanding of things. Today, I understand that our world depends not on the words of this or that politician, but on the quality of the connections between people. By turning toward empathy or toward alienation, we determine our fate far more than any decision maker determines anything.

Rather than trying to make sense of a chaotic world, I think we should work on our connections, since it is precisely our disconnection from each other that causes all the chaos in today’s world. We need to understand that the world will not make sense until we reorganize the relationships among all people, and build societies where people care about each other and help each other out. In such a world, we will not try to make sense of life; we will simply enjoy it.
[313690]

Filed under: New Publications - No Comments →

My article in Newsmax: “Cold War in Mideast Means Israel Must Be Cautious, Strong”

As the tension between Israel and Iran intensifies, and while Iran has just unveiled its first hypersonic missile, rumors about advancement in the Iranian nuclear program are growing even more distressing. While Israel threatens Iran not to try to attack it, Iran threatens back that it will demolish Israel if it attacks Iran.

What is worse in this round of the conflict, Israel seems more isolated than ever, as even the U.S. seems reluctant to act against the Ayatollah regime.

When it comes to America, I never had much confidence in its support of Israel. While the U.S. did supply Israel with weapons and ammunition during wartime, its position and actions on other occasions concerning Israel’s security have been less supportive.

America, we must remember, also has its own interests to look after, which do not always coincide with Israeli interests. Therefore, at the end of the day, we should not hang our hopes on America.

Concerning Iran, I do not think that the threat of a nuclear Iran is as serious as the Iranians would like us to think. More than it is a weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear weapon is a tactical weapon. It is a political tool intended to improve Iran’s position in the Arab world.

The Arab world has been engaged for centuries in power struggles between Sunnis, represented today by Saudi Arabia, and Shiites, whose representative is Iran. The majority of Muslims in the world is Sunni, and Iran has been on the defense in its struggle to dominate the Arab world.

Clearly, an atomic bomb that can threaten Israel, as well as the rest of the world, will place Iran in a completely different position, especially since no other country in the Persian Gulf has nuclear weapons.

The Iranians are not a mob of hooligans. Their leaders are calculated and do not act rashly. In the pursuit of prestige, the ability to threaten Israel with nuclear warheads is a great card that should be used wisely and not wasted away by a reckless mistake, and Iran knows this very well.

Moreover, Iran knows that Israel has its own nuclear arsenal and can retaliate against any attack on its people with horrible consequences. Therefore, it may be instrumental for Iran to threaten, to try to frighten Israel, but I find it hard to believe that it would take any action to realize its threats.

In many ways, the situation between a nuclear Iran and a nuclear Israel would be similar to the situation that existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In those days, both countries developed more and more nuclear weapons, but both countries were equally careful not to use it; they knew that if they did, there would be no way back and the world would be destroyed.

In this writer’s opinion, the presence of nuclear weapons decreases the chance of active hostilities between the countries rather than increases it. Both countries know that starting a war against a country with nuclear weapons makes no sense whatsoever. Therefore, Israel must stay vigilant, prepare to retaliate quickly and forcefully, but avoid reckless actions.

In other words, nuclear weapons could actually calm Iran and lead it to a more pragmatic policy than currently.

Where I would be careful, though, when it comes to Iran, is in its use of proxy paramilitary and military terror groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Here, we must be active, initiating, and decisive.
[313681]

Filed under: Israel, New Publications - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Where will history lead us?“

First, what is history? History is the evolution of desires.

It starts from the smallest and simplest desires, which every individual has—for food, sex and family—and our desires increase to bigger ones that play out in society, for money, honor, control and knowledge, where we develop socially through communal, urban, state and finally global relations.

We see people’s struggles according to the degree of our desires’ development. First, we fought each other in our various settlements, and later, as small disparate states. We ended up unifying in various alliances so that we could continue sizing up against each other, and this process brought us to what we have today.

And what do we have today?

Today’s level of our desires’ development brings us to the increasing awareness of our global interconnection and interdependence, which shows us the futility of fighting each other.

Let’s say that one country shuts itself off from the world. What would happen then?

We fail to realize the full extent of what such a phenomenon would result in. The world would come to a standstill. It would affect us on multiple levels, from our most basic ability to operate simple tools and appliances, through to the unavailability of certain foods, through to economic difficulties and several other phenomena. In short, the world would shut down.

We are clueless as to how interdependent we truly are and our lives’ fragility. We cannot have a world war today because no country provides solely for itself. There is mutual dependence between countries at the level of mere essentials that we need for our very survival.

Think of human evolution like a building we started constructing many thousands of years ago. On the ground floor, we had our own garden, cellar, and we planted our own produce, i.e., we had the ability to provide ourselves with our daily needs. Today, we live on the twentieth floor of that building, and we cannot live like we once did on that ground floor.

I remember my childhood in the small town of Vitebsk with a population of a quarter of a million people. We had a small plot and a large cellar where we kept potatoes, cabbages, garlic and onions, like everybody else did at that time. We prepared this produce a year in advance so that the family would not starve, and it was the same for most of the population.

Today’s world is completely different. Today, we have major residential areas and cities with populations of over a million people. If the systems that provide for their essentials break down, then we would experience global-scale crises. We do not realize what would happen if a couple of large countries suddenly become dysfunctional.

Therefore, if we are to impact a positive shift to a more harmonious and peaceful world, we need to raise the awareness of our tightening global interdependence, that the billions of us on this small planet are all on the same boat, and accordingly we should start relating to others as to ourselves, or at least, as to members of one global family.

History is leading us to increasingly connect. If we are to realize our increasing connection positively, then we need to learn how our nature works in this process: that we were born into an egoistic nature that wishes to benefit itself at the expense of others and nature, that we can never be truly satisfied while living in such a nature, and moreover, that we increasingly suffer at its helm.

With growing awareness of our nature, we also need to learn how to invert it into a new nature: to realize our increasing interconnection and interdependence harmoniously by changing our nature from egoistic to altruistic. If we adjust our educational, media and social influences to direct us at this change—from egoism to altruism—then we will experience our tightening connection as an immense new form of satisfaction, happiness and confidence that would fill our lives. If not, then we will continue developing through increasing suffering.

Based on KabTV’s “I Got a Call. What Is History?” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on March 13, 2011. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
[313369]

Filed under: New Publications, Q&A, Quora - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Will Chips in Our Brain Make Us Healthier or Zombier?”
Last Thursday, Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink announced that it has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct in-human clinical trials. The company is developing a chip that should be implanted in the brain with the intent to help patients with severe paralysis to control external technologies and communicate with their environment by moving cursors and typing with their minds using only brain signals. In addition to helping patients with paralysis, experts believe such implants can help treat blindness and mental illness. Musk even expressed his intent for Neuralink to explore potential applications for healthy people.

Just as Artificial Intelligence has become an integral part of our lives, computer chips implanted in our brains will become increasingly commonplace. We cannot stop scientific development; if something can be done, it will be done. The question is not whether or not to permit the development of brain-chips, but how to avoid their countless harmful uses.

As with every new technology, the first use for brain-implanted chips will be for military purposes: as weapons. The destructive potential of turning such technologies into weapons is enormous. The only way to avoid employing them against humanity is by rising to a higher level of humanism than our current reality of relentless power struggles.

Translating thoughts into cursor movements may seem benign, but there is much more to it. The aspiration to apply the technology on healthy people can potentially give its operators control over people’s minds, turn them into zombies, and activate them according to the operator’s will. This may not seem as devastating as a nuclear weapon, for example, but in the wrong hands, it can be even more injurious.

Worse yet, the harm of nuclear weapons is evident, which deters nations from using it, even as they continue to develop them. Brain implants that control people’s actions, however, are a new kind of weapon, and there is nothing to stop power-hungry rulers and magnates from using it, since there is no fear of the consequences. By the time we know what harm this new menace can inflict, humanity could be in total devastation.

Perhaps the only way to restrain abuse of this new power is to have an open discussion about its potential harms. Awareness may be our only counter measure, our only defense against weaponizing mind-control technologies.

In the end, however, I am a firm believer in the good fate of humanity. Whether we realize in time the detrimental potential of computers that control the mind and avoid more tragedies, or realize that we must restrain ourselves only after we inflict disaster on ourselves, as we did with atom bombs, we will ultimately muster the strength to use technology wisely and in our favor.

Human nature is evil at the core and relentlessly pushes us toward the precipice. However, human beings are also able to draw conclusions and choose their course in life. Today we know that destruction of one is the destruction of the other, that harming others harms the harm-doer. Therefore, I believe that we will finally draw the inevitable conclusion that we cannot work in favor of only one part or faction of humanity, that no one benefits unless everyone benefits.

Once we accept this, as unappealing as it may be to our ego, we will begin to conduct ourselves in ways that benefit humanity. Prosperity is possible only when exploitation and oppression become unacceptable, when we feel, not simply think, but truly feel that technology can be used positively only when it is used for everyone’s sake, and not only for the sake of a powerful few.
[313468]

Filed under: New Publications - No Comments →

Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “US Lawmakers Highlight Discord between America and Israel”

Several events that have taken place over the past week highlight where the United States and Israel do not see eye to eye. One such event is the White House’s first-ever national strategy to combat antisemitism. To Israel’s surprise, the Biden administration avoided a clear endorsement of the mainstream, widely accepted definition of antisemitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), after progressive entities (including several Jewish organizations) argued that the IHRA definition does not allow for what they describe as “legitimate criticism of Israel and its policies.” Progressive groups also urged the Biden administration to leave out a definition of antisemitism entirely or consider alternative definitions.

Moreover, among the creators of the document, titled “The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” the White House included the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a partner in building “cross-community solidarity” to combat antisemitism. This is disconcerting since the FBI has concluded long ago that leaders of CAIR are linked to the designated anti-Israel terrorist organization Hamas.

Another issue that has been on the table between Washington and Jerusalem for quite some time is the inclusion of Israel in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). The program enables most citizens or nationals of participating countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for stays of up to 90 days without obtaining a visa. Recently, 16 senators, led by Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas urging the Administration not to include Israel in the VMP until Israel meets certain conditions of reciprocity that they believe are necessary for inclusion in the program.

The letter completely ignores Israel’s complex security issues with the Palestinians and demands that all American citizens of Palestinian origin will be given a free pass into Israel and will be free to travel within Israel with no questions asked. Even though one of the initiators of the letter, Brian Schatz, and one of the signatories, Bernie Sanders, are Jewish, they show no sympathy for Israel’s position. On the contrary, they are leading the demand for Israel to act against its own security interests.

I am bringing up these two issues not in order to criticize the US for its policy or to rebuke this or that senator for advocating an anti-Israel policy. I am doing this in order to stress the obvious truth that US-Israel interests are becoming increasingly discordant, and that Israel should not expect the US to take Israel’s best interest into consideration.

Also, the fact that one of the initiators of the VMP letter is Jewish, and that one of the signatories is a known Israel-basher Jewish senator, proves that a significant portion of American Jewry has no regard for Israel’s security. The conclusion Israel must therefore draw is that it can no longer rely on American Jewry to support it and work in its favor in the US government. The alliance that Israel has had with the US for decades is clearly weakening, including with American Jewry, and I am not sure how long it will last.

It is time for us, Israelis, to stand up for ourselves. It may be painful, but we must realize that US interests are often different from ours, and often contradictory; we cannot rely on them, and we should not expect America to cater to Israel’s needs. We need to do this for ourselves, and we could not begin too soon.
[313366]

Filed under: Israel, New Publications - No Comments →