Medium published my new article “The American People Deserve Praise, but the Future Is Bleak”

I must confess: For many years, I thought that Americans cared only about money. I was wrong. In the years after the Obama administration, I have learned to appreciate Americans. I have learned that they truly care about ideals, and not only about material gain. But perhaps precisely because of it, the future of America is very bleak. Unless Americans somehow find unity above their deep divisions, the US will soon become a third world country, leaving the international arena to Russia and China.

As things stand now, the future of America is bleak. Biden cannot run the country, and Obama will run the show behind the scenes. If this happens, America will decline to a level of a third world country. In that case, Russia, with its military power, and China, with its wealth, will dominate the world.
Come January, great changes will happen in American society, regardless of the identity of the president. Whoever is declared triumphant, the other side will not accept it, and this will stir up the country.

Both sides, including the Democrats, to whom I do not belong, must understand that this division leads to unity, one way or the other. There can be no winners here, since winning isn’t the point of the division, but unity above the division. You can’t walk on only one leg; you need both the right leg and the left leg to move forward, and the same goes for society. Opposite views don’t mean that one is right and the other is wrong, but that both are required in order to make the right decisions regarding society.

There are merits to the Democratic and the liberal perspectives, as there are merits to the Republican and conservative perspectives. Both sides advocate worthy values. But when one side denies the other side’s legitimacy, demonizes it, and presents it as “the enemy of the nation,” it obviates the legitimacy of the critic. The realization that only unity above the differences is the solution will come, but the question is how soon and at what cost. Both sides must keep the future of the country in mind.

In my view, if Biden becomes president, it will give Americans a chance to see (those who still haven’t realized it) what it was like in Soviet Russia. It is the same approach that destroyed Russia, and we will see what it will do in America. If this happens, people might understand that Trump was not as bad for America as he was portrayed by media and political adversaries.

The bottom line is that you cannot go after people’s whims; you have to follow the natural law of unity, which leans neither toward Democrats nor toward Republicans, as both are required in order for the country to prosper. The current talk about revenge and other divisive discourse will yield nothing but trouble. Cessation is unrealistic, and revenge is a call for civil war.

But all is not lost. If the American people decide to rise to the challenge and realize that their personal future depends on the future of their country, they might be willing to unite above the chasm. It requires courage, sincerity, and resolve, and Americans are known to have all three. The question is whether they realize that they must employ these traits now, before it’s too late.

The First Amendment, which enshrines freedom of expression, is valuable. However, there can be freedom of expression only when it lies on the basis of common values such as mutual consideration and the integrity of society. This does not mean that one cannot express even the most extreme views, including even an aspiration to dismantle society. However, even one who expresses such views must accept that expressing them is possible precisely because it is part of a collection of views that make up a complete whole, and that he or she would not be able to express such views were it not for the existence of their complete opposite.

For example, think of the human body. Within our body, there are organs that perform opposite actions, yet their performance is made possible only because of the existence of their counterparts. Think of opposite muscles that enable our movement, think of organs that use oxygen, emit CO2, and stimulate our breathing mechanism. Without organs that emit CO2, we would die of suffocation. Our body is filled with contradictions that enable our healthy existence. How conceited are we to think that in society, only our view merits existence? If the American people can learn to work together for their country, above their opposite ideals, they will discover that the contradictions between them are precisely what the country needs in order to be healthy, prosperous, and strong.
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My new article on Linkedin “When You Fight the Symptom, the Cause Keeps Hitting”

Nature has a great sense of humor: Just as humanity started rolling out the vaccines, it churned up two new strains of the coronavirus, one probably in the UK and one in South Africa. Both strains are fast spreaders, and doctors are as yet unsure if the vaccines are effective against them. But what can we expect? From the very beginning of this pandemic, I warned that Covid-19 isn’t the problem; it’s a symptom of a much deeper problem that stems from ill human relations. When you fight the symptom, it’s no surprise that the pathogen keeps hitting you. The current strategy is about as smart as having a burst pipe and trying to seal the water instead of shutting the faucet.

Time after time, nature will keep hitting us until we realize that viruses, volcanic eruptions, wars, bloodshed, or forest fires aren’t the real problem, but we, humanity, are the world’s only problem. When we ask how to correct ourselves instead of everything else besides ourselves, we’ll start seeing some positive results to our efforts.

The root cause that’s behind all of our disasters, traumas, and any other conceivable affliction, is our own egoism. This is what’s destroying the world we live in, including ourselves. Whenever we’re told that our ego is the problem, we furiously deny it, but this doesn’t make it any less true. We deny it because our egos don’t want to face the truth that they are the problem. But until we do, the troubles will only worsen.

And here comes another problem: The world will not know how to rise above egoism until the people of Israel show the way.

Currently, we Jews are showing the exact opposite; we squabble among ourselves and show nothing but division. When antisemites blame us for causing all the problems, I can’t help but agree with them. We who became a nation when we agreed to unite “as one man with one heart,” and who were promptly after assigned to be “a light unto nations,” shine nothing but the darkness of division and separation instead of the opposite, as we were meant to do.

They may not realize it, but antisemites don’t hate us because of how we treat them; they hate us because of how we treat each other. When we project the odium we feel for one another, that odium spreads the world over and makes people hate each other and jump at each other’s throats. When the rivals finally turn against the Jews, it’s not because they’re looking for a scapegoat, though scapegoating may have something to do with it; it’s mainly because they really feel that they are at war because of us, though they cannot say how we instigated it. Nevertheless, their intuition is correct: Had we been united instead of divided, we would have projected unity instead of division, and the rest of the world would be at peace, as well.

When humanity is not at peace, when nations fight for superiority, they use every means at their disposal to achieve it. In the process, they exploit people, natural resources, pollute the Earth and deplete it like there is no tomorrow. But in the end, they are destroying our future. Now we have reached the future; we have come to a time when humanity’s exploitation has become so burdensome that nature can no longer take it. Now it pushes back on us, and it will not stop until we change. The more we pressure nature, the harder it will push back, and regular people will suffer the consequences.

However, if the people of Israel realize their role and change course from derision to cohesion, the entire world will change its course along with Israel. When that happens, we won’t need vaccines; our own relationships will protect us from harm, and not just from viruses, but from all the other misfortunes that are caused by our disunity. We’ve come to a point where we can vividly see how the level of disunity in Israel, and subsequently in humanity, is impacting the intensity and frequency of disasters throughout the world. Now all that’s left is to keep pointing it out until the world becomes convinced and we are ready to fight against our egos, which separate us and thereby kill us.
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My new article on Linkedin “Cultured Meat Will Not Save Us”

A week ago, Food & Wine magazine broke the story that lab-grown chicken meat will make its restaurant debut. According to the story, “Good Meat Cultured Chicken was approved for sale in Singapore. Now, it’s heading to its first commercial restaurant.”

I’m all for it. Anything that helps people is good, and what’s more helpful than securing food and water supply? In fact, in recent years, there has been an influx of inventions that can help people cope with food and water deficiencies. We can produce water out of the moisture in the air, grow vegetables without soil, desalinate seawater into fresh drinking water, and now we can even produce meat without animals.

It seems as though we have defeated nature. But in truth, we haven’t. It is our own nature that’s developing these wonderful inventions, and it is our own nature that will prevent us from using them for people’s benefit. As long as we do not change who we are, life on Earth will not improve. In fact, they will go from bad to worse.

These inventions enable us not to worry about anything and focus our attention on improving our societies, strengthening our bonds with one another, and solidifying our communities. But will we choose to use them in this way or will we choose to profit off of them, just as we are doing with the coronavirus vaccine? We all know the answer.

Life on Earth can be as good as it should be only when we change how we relate to one another; nothing else needs to change. People will be happy only when they live in solidarity with the people in their community, and the countries they live in are at peace with the rest of the countries. Our ill-will toward each other is the only cause of misery, and the only cure to our woes is changing our intentions from wanting to exploit or destroy each other to wanting to help and support one another. Until we change our bad thoughts about each other, water and food from (almost) thin air will be just two more disappointments on the pain-filled road humanity has been treading since the dawn of time.

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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “On Jewish Unity and Antisemitism – Emerging from Exile and Starting Anew”

(Article No. 5 in a series) In the previous article, we discussed the rise and fall of the First Temple due to bloodshed and sins among the kings of Israel. When Israel were exiled, they were sent to Babylon, from which Abraham had previously come. There, in Babylon, they dispersed and assimilated until once again, a great hater of Jews arose and sought to destroy them: the arch-antisemite known as Wicked Haman.

Haman said to King Ahasuerus that the Jews were separated: “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom” (Esther 3:8). However, their physical dispersion was not what instigated Haman’s hatred; it was their disunity. The 17th century commentary on the Torah, Kli Yakar, states it very clearly: “‘a certain people scattered and dispersed’ means that they were scattered and dispersed from one another.” Likewise, the prominent interpretation of Jewish law, Yalkut Yosef, takes “separated” to mean that “there was separation of hearts among them.” So, as it happened with Pharaoh, and as it happened with Nebuchadnezzar, separation among the people of Israel leads to emergence of enemies who wish to destroy them. Haman was just another link in the chain, albeit quite a vicious one.

To get what he wanted, Haman told King Ahasuerus that the Jews “do not observe the king’s laws” (Esther 3:8). Yet, even though the king permitted him to eliminate the Jews, each year on Purim, we celebrate the miracle of our survival because at the very last minute, Mordechai united all the Jews. “‘Go gather all the Jews,’ meaning tell them words of blandishment,” writes Haim Yosef David Azulai (the CHIDA) in the book Pnei David, “so they will all be in one unity. Go gather as one, the hearts of all the Jews.” This telling 18th century description demonstrates the desperation of Esther and Mordechai at the prospect of seeing their entire fold obliterated, as was Haman’s intent. Their last resort was unity. When the Jews united, they saved themselves and facilitated the beginning of the return from Babylon.

But unlike Egypt, when the Jews had to flee in the dead of night, this time, they left not only with the king’s blessing, but with his full moral, financial, and spiritual support: As soon as Cyrus came to power, he felt that God had ordered him to send the Jews back to their land and rebuild the Temple. He sensed he had been commanded to help them in their task. He gave the famous Cyrus Declaration which stated, “Every [Jewish] survivor, at whatever place he may live, let the men of that place support him with silver and gold, with goods and cattle, together with a freewill offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:4). After his order was carried out, “King Cyrus brought out the utensils of the house of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away [plundered] from Jerusalem and put in the house of his gods” (Ezra 1:7).

The Cyrus Declaration marked the official end of the exile in Babylon and the beginning of the era of the Second Temple, though the Temple itself had not yet been built. During that period, the Jews achieved great heights, but eventually declined to two civil wars, the last of which was so bloody and brutal that its wounds have yet to heal.

The next article in the series will tell the story of the “golden era” in the history of the Jews in the land of Israel, when the nations of the world wanted to learn from them how to conduct their social lives.

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For much more on this topic, please see my latest publication, The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism: Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “The EU Court of Justice Spelled It Out for Jews: Leave Europe!”

Last week, the European Union Court of Justice upheld a ban on kosher and hallal slaughter in Belgium, The Jerusalem Post reported. While Brooke Goldstein, who helped with the legal challenge, called it a “shameful ruling,” and warned that “the religious freedom of millions of Europeans has been put in jeopardy,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry seems to have “read the lips” of the EU court more clearly, stating that the decision “signals to Jewish communities that they are not wanted in Europe.”

This would not be the first time that European countries have used kosher slaughter bans as a means to deter Jews from immigrating to them or as a way to push them out. According to The Jerusalem Post, President of the Conference of European Rabbis, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, said bans on religious slaughter have been an attempt to control a country’s population and can be traced back to the 1800s, when Switzerland attempted to stop Jews fleeing pogroms from entering their country, and can also be traced to Nazi Germany. According to Goldschmidt, “Europe needs to reflect on the type of continent it wants to be.”

In my view, Europe has already reflected on this question and decided that it wants to be Jew-free. Several countries, such as Denmark, Iceland, and Finland, are already mulling a ban on circumcision, and the recent EU Court of Justice ruling on kosher food is certain to encourage other countries to follow in Belgium’s footsteps.

Antisemitism in Europe is deeply rooted. Jews have been beaten, banished, and burned all over the continent for as long as they have lived there. The fact that technology has made life easier has not changed people’s hearts. If we need proof, we need only look to the events of the 1940s, when the most civilized country in Europe, and possibly the world, and the second most technologically advanced (after the United States), resolved to eliminate the Jews.

If anything surprises me about this decision, it is the reaction of Jewish leaders. If they are genuinely surprised by this decision, it is very discouraging.

In my view, within a year or two, many other countries will join Belgium’s decision and will take action to deter Jews from living in them. It will happen all over Europe. Another possible scenario, which is even more radical than bans in specific countries, is that the EU court will resolve to ban Jewish laws all over Europe.

There is a Russian antisemitic joke that every Jew who leaves Moscow gets a “Liberator of Moscow” medal. I think Europeans, too, will be happy to award Jews medals for moving out of their cities and countries. It is not unlike what Hitler did when he sent out 900 Jews from Germany on the luxurious ocean-liner SS St. Louis en route to Cuba and from there to the US, but neither Cuba nor the US would have them so they were forced back to Europe, where many of them perished in the Holocaust.

I truly wish we Jews were smarter. It’s as if our nation is stupefied by complacency, and an opaque cloud of folly comes over us in good times and doesn’t let us see how perilous matters have become. We think that as long as we can do business in Europe, and as long as we have some friends who aren’t Jewish, we’re safe. This is not the case and it is no longer safe. In Europe, the good times are over, and in the US, they’re quickly ending, too.

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My new article on Linkedin “Life After the Pandemic”

Since the wave of vaccinations has begun in the US, UK, and many other countries, people have received the news with a sense of relief accompanied by safety concerns and questions, according to recent polls conducted by public health institutions. One thing humanity can be sure of: The world will not return to the way it was before the virus. Even though the time is still too early to determine the nature and configuration of the world after the pandemic—the systems that will be rebuilt and how they will impact our lives—there is no doubt that a new line of thinking and behavior will dominate from now on.

A year has passed since the coronavirus appeared on the scene. Like teenagers who suddenly mature and look at their childish toys with disdain, or like young people who seek to stabilize and settle down after waking up with a hangover after a late night of overindulgence, so, too, is humanity destined to go through a similar process of maturation and sobering up.

Reality has changed, and people have undergone a psychological change. What was, will no longer be. What has happened is so much bigger than us, it is hard to digest before the fact. But I predict that when the population is healthy again and feels everything is ready to open up again, to travel from place to place, to hug and to get closer without masks and distance separating us, we will discover that we have grown up.

We have moved to a new stage in our human development. Therefore, our inner world will not be as it was yesterday. We will understand that we are not who we were before the outbreak of the coronavirus, that we lost our taste for meaningless stuff, for acquiring things only for the sake of having them, for working as slaves, earning and spending compulsively. We will feel that we are no longer attracted to the same pastimes and they will appear frivolous and unfulfilling.

Our frenzied consumerism is one of the areas in which we have changed the most. We have realized that we do not need countless shopping malls, restaurants, or stadiums filled with players and fans. Our desires have changed drastically. There are those who will return to the routine and find that it no longer suits them, and there are those who will not want to leave their house at all and feel that it is better for them to work from home—not only for women, for whom this is usually a comfortable life setting, but for men alike.

Why is it so? Because living in the home, in the arms of the family, is a comfortable and good life, efficient and peaceful, free of traffic jams, waiting in lines and unnecessary pressures. So why dress up, spend hours in the car, and spend half a day in superficial posturing? It is better and cheaper to sit in your pajamas at home and make calls from the garden, or to work calmly on your laptop while sitting on the balcony. Working from home pays off in many unexpected ways.

It is a win-win situation for both employees and their employers. Business can be very efficiently run remotely, in addition to affording huge savings in office expenses. People also become more efficient when working from home, since with fewer distractions than in their traditional workplace it’s easier to focus on finishing their tasks instead of wasting time.

Once this benefit permeates all stratas of society, the relationship that the pandemic has established between us, the same social distance that has kept us from getting infected, will be better for us in the end. The habit of moving away from each other will become second nature, and it will also form the basis for the new future relationships that we have yet to forge between us.

It is currently too early to talk about advanced stages in the social relationships between us. The slowdown and cooling that come from nature are still growing on us and becoming comfortable for us. They dictate the spirit of the new period. If we peek further ahead, this situation will not satisfy us in the long run. A kind of lethargy and helplessness, darkness before light, must set in to open up a new space for spiritual connection with others to be revealed, a push for a new kind of human relationship. Only then will we be able to feel cured of the pandemic of divisiveness and will we attain a fulfilling life and healthy society.
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My new article on Linkedin “Brothers? Friends? Or Co-Sufferers? Who Are Israelis to Each Other?”

A student told me that even though Israel is headed toward its fourth general election in just two years, the government has determined that the topic of Israel’s next Independence Day, which takes place April 14, 2021, will be Israeli Brotherhood. How ironic. The student asked me about the significance of choosing specifically this topic at a time when we are so divided.

Well, regrettably, choosing this topic in itself is meaningless. We are not brothers, and there is no brotherhood among Israelis. At best, we are co-sufferers when some crisis, such as war, comes over us. But today, even in crisis, our unity is shrinking.

Regrettably, unity as a means of protection against blows does not last, nor is it real unity. We are forced to stand together by circumstances, so as soon as circumstances allow, we become belligerent and divided once again, and more so than before.

Real unity must come from within, out of our own volition. When our forefathers joined Abraham’s group, which eventually became the Israeli nation, they chose unity because they believed that this was the right way to live. They weren’t brothers; they weren’t even friends. In fact, they often came from enemy tribes and clans, yet they decided that unity is more valuable than hatred, and so they chose the higher value and established a nation whose foundation was brotherly love, or as King Solomon wrote, “Hate stirs strife, and love will cover all crimes” (Prov. 10:12).

Centuries later, their descendants had abandoned the forefathers’ unity and became so divided that they lost their sovereignty over the land of Israel. Since then, the only unity that Israel had known was the ephemeral and opportunist cooperation of fellow-sufferers.

The people of Israel are like no other nation. Therefore, our country cannot be like any other country. The only way that we can reestablish our nationhood and merit being sovereign in this land is if we live up to our task, to be role model nation, a light of unity to the nations. In other words, if we unite above all our enmities and differences just as our ancient forefathers did, and for which they merited being regarded as a nation, we, too, will earn our sovereignty here.

Currently, the outside pressure of our enemies keeps us together. Were it not for their pressure, we would have dispersed long ago and went wherever we felt more comfortable. Nothing holds us here but the fear of those who hate us. Regrettably, soon, our hatred for each other will grow stronger than even the hatred of our enemies for us, and then we will disperse regardless of the outside dangers. If we come to this, it will truly be a threat to the existence of the State of Israel.

In order to succeed in reestablishing our nationhood and forming brotherly love, we need to understand the unique unity that our forefathers achieved. Although they came from tribes and clans from all over the Fertile Crescent, they all subscribed to Abraham’s message, who championed mercy, compassion, and love as the top-most values. Since Abraham’s followers had no such feelings for each other, they had to cultivate them despite their initial antipathy toward each other.

However, hatred kept raising its ugly head once in a while, forcing Abraham’s group to reinforce its unity despite emerging hatred. The surprising result was such solid union that Abraham’s followers managed to triumph even the most deep-seated loathing within them, to the point that they became a nation despite their initial disconnect and ill feelings for each other. Such union, which is built on the idea of unity itself and not on some material, biological, or some other opportunistic impetus, is unheard of to this day. Indeed, no other group of people has achieved this; no other group of people has even attempted it.

Today, when the loathing among Israelis is skyrocketing, when numerous countries are in possession of both weapons of mass destruction, and the means to deploy them, it is imperative that we find a way to overcome the growing hatred. And no one has any experience but the ancient forefathers of the people of Israel. And the nations, subconsciously aware that Israel has the key to resolving the world’s conflicts, blame Israel for causing all the wars.

If Israel does not revive the method for uniting, despite, and above enmity in the near future, it will find itself at odds with the entire world, which will blame it for its woes. It will revoke UN resolution 181, to establish a Jewish state, and we will find ourselves alone in the world, without any support from any country.

However, this scenario is not set in stone; it is up to us, Israelis. If we revive the kind of unity our forefathers established, above differences and hatred, we will become the world’s role model and everyone will praise us for trailblazing the world out of a third, nuclear world war. If we eschew our mission, the world will plunge into another war and will take its anger out on us.
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My new article on Linkedin “In the Days of Post-Covid”

Now that mass vaccination is around the corner, it seems as though everyone will return to the 2019 way of life, before the coronavirus took over human civilization. But I think we’re in for a surprise. Once everyone is healthy and we can all travel and do what we were used to doing, I think we will discover we have moved on from our previous lives. We have begun a new stage in our development. I don’t think people will run back to working in offices, though some will do. I don’t think people will fall back into the “travelmania” that engulfed the world like a pandemic prior to Covid-19, and I don’t think we will go out as much as we did, even though it will be safe.

I think we have grown a little, become more settled. It is said that humans are social beings and need people around them, but are we really so? We need jobs because we need an income, so we socialize with colleagues, but are we social beings? We also need confirmation, which we can only get from other people, so we have to communicate with others, try to dominate them, get their approval or make them subordinate to us. But these are not social needs; they are selfish needs that require satisfaction.

It seems to me that the coronavirus has given us new joys in being with ourselves or with our families and enjoying this more than competing with the world for power and prestige the way we did before, often for lack of choice. Clearly, not everyone has changed in this way, but I’m sure that enough people have changed to make the shift felt, lasting, and growing.

When we’re young, we look at others and imitate what they do. As we grow up, we develop a more individual personality and our instinctive tendency to follow the herd diminishes. I think that humanity is going through a similar phase. We will begin to ask ourselves more often, “What for? Is it worth it? Will I get any real benefit out of doing what everyone is doing?”

I still don’t know what will replace our old pleasures, what will come instead of traveling, for example. To a great extent, this depends on opinion leaders and people at the top, who want to entice us into spending money on things that don’t give us any lasting satisfaction since it’s lucrative for them. But either way, it seems to me that we have come down from our pre-Covid frenzy and will now be more settled, composed, or in other words, mature.

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Medium published my new article “Legal Drugs — The Convenient Way to Cull People”

On November 3, Oregonians decided on something more than their choice for the president of the United States; they chose to decriminalize personal use of heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, oxycodone and other hard drugs. “Today’s victory is a landmark declaration that the time has come to stop criminalizing people for drug use,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which led the initiative. According AP News, “The Oregon Academy of Family Physicians,” who support the measure, said that “One in 11 Oregonians is addicted to drugs.” We’re not talking about recreational, occasional use of marijuana; we are talking about addiction to hard drugs, the kinds that make you commit crimes just in order to get another dose, and to do it every day. One out of eleven people in Oregon are in that state.

As I see it, the authorities don’t want these people clean; they want them dead. And until they die, they want to keep them from harming other people, so they will allow them to get their daily dose until they stone themselves away. Sooner, rather than later, the state will realize that it’s best to open distribution centers just like today’s soup kitchens, dispense each one their daily dose, and send them back happy and off the streets, away from the (dwindling) regular population.

The Oregon decision also states that “Instead of going to trial and facing possible jail time, a person would have the option of paying a $100 fine or attending new ‘addiction recovery centers’ funded by millions of dollars of tax revenue from Oregon’s legalized, regulated marijuana industry.” However, I don’t think anyone is taking this part of the decision seriously, for two reasons: 1. If drug addicts had $100 they would buy drugs with them, not pay fines. 2. No one truly recovers from drug addiction. And because of it, the authorities are trying to keep them quiet until they wither away.

I can understand why the state would want to put out drug addicts. From the perspective of the authorities, the world is already grossly overpopulated, so tacit culling is the most reasonable solution. If we don’t see a reason for having that many people in the world, then we should find a (preferably) humane way of shrinking the population.

But there is a reason why we are here. Humanity is becoming more crowded precisely because we are meant to connect, not to stay apart in our own little slots. Our unwillingness to connect is why we suffer, since reality is forcing us to be in constant contact with people, while our antagonism toward people grows relentlessly. When the chasm between our growing narcissism and compulsory connection to people becomes unbearable, we seek refuge. Some find it in violence, others in various forms of escapism, including substance abuse, and most everyone finds it in depression.

There is only one solution to this mess: education toward connection. There is a reason why so many people, with such different views and attitudes to life, exist in the world. If we look at the world from a bird’s eye view, we will find that what we experience as dissonance is actually diversity. From a higher perspective, the contradictions on the ground create a beautiful, rich embroidery of colors and streams that weave together to become the fabric of life. Imagine oceans without land, mountains without valleys, forests without deserts, males without females, life without death, summer without winter or fall without spring. Everything we know about life comes from distinguishing one thing from its opposite. Life is not one state; it is the flow between them, from one extreme to the other.

If we were aware of it, and if we knew that this diversity is here for us to enjoy, we would be grateful for the things that irritate us because they are different from us. In fact, we wouldn’t feel them as irritation but as life’s pulse, telling us when it’s time to stream on to the next phase. Our struggle with life would be over and we would not need to run away from it. We would realize what is our purpose in being here — to grasp life in all its depth and richness — and we would never want to get away.

There is no solution to substance abuse except to show people that they are here in order to connect with one another in gratitude, and especially toward those who are different from us since we and they together make the stream of life flow. Alone, each of us is nothing. Together, we are life.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “What It Takes to Make Peace with Iran”

With the flurry of normalization agreements that Israel has reached over the last few months, you’d think that we are nearing the end of the Middle-East conflict. I wish it were that easy. These agreements, as great as they are, are mainly business arrangements that appear lucrative to both sides. As long as they yield profit, “peace” will remain. But if they stop doing so, the relations will cool off again. Either way, no real gain (other than economic) has been made by the recent agreements, and no real loss will occur if they are gone. What really counts is our relationships with those who have declared war on us. However, they count not because of what peace with them means for the region, but because of what it means about us, the Israeli people living in Israel.

It is clear that the normalization agreements with Arab countries that have no active conflict with Israel focus on the economic benefits that both sides gain from them. In that sense, I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s dealing with these countries is brilliant. However, things get complicated when concerning peace with countries such as Iran, where the motivation is religious.

First, Iranians are very clever people. From our perspective, we are not in conflict with Iran more than we are with any other country. I understand that they need to show their power and want to position themselves as the spearhead of the resistance to the existence of the State of Israel, but in the end, this struggle only drains their strength and doesn’t help them.

However, although we do not consider them enemies, peace with them depends on us and not on them. Wherever there is a conflict, with Israel or not with Israel, resolving it depends on Israel, and for one and only reason: Nations are fighting against us, and against each other, because we are fighting among ourselves. Israel is the barometer of the world. When we fight among each other, it incites and intensifies wars all over the world, and the nations hate us for it, even when those wars look as if they are unrelated to us.

We may not see the connection, and the whole notion may seem bizarre to us, but if you look at the history of the world, you’ll notice that Israel and the Jews are always blamed for wars. Many historians have already noticed it and decry the nations’ relentless tendency to make Israel the perpetual scapegoat. However, you cannot refute the scapegoat argument when people’s anger with Israel is genuine and comes from their gut feeling. Many people who hate Israel have never been to Israel, don’t know where it is, never spoke to an Israeli person, never met a Jew, and can’t even explain why they think their troubles are Israel’s fault. But what can you do if they feel this way? You can’t reason with hatred; reason and feelings work on two parallel planes and the feeling always prevails.

When Israel unite among themselves, it projects calm throughout the world and conflicts the world over subside. This is why The Book of Zohar writes (Toldot, 171), “When the good inclination [people’s kindness] prevails, his enemies, too, make peace with him.” Even more explicitly, in the portion Aharei Mot, The Zohar writes, “‘How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to also sit together.’ These are the friends as they sit together and are not separated from each other. At first, they seem like people at war, wishing to kill one another … then they return to being in brotherly love. …And you, the friends who are here, as you were in fondness and love before, henceforth you will also not part from one another … and by your merit, there will be peace in the world.”

In other words, we cannot complain that Iran hates us. All we need to do is watch the news and acknowledge that Iranians don’t hate us as much as we hate each other. Everyone is looking at us, and we are projecting intense internal odium. If we projected unity and solidarity, it would instantly reflect in the world. Once again, we should sink into our hearts that Iran, and any other enemy for that matter, doesn’t hate us for any other reason than our hatred for each other.

Internal peace is therefore the only peace we need to make. If we achieve it, all other agreements will come naturally and effortlessly. If we radiate internal unity, we will unite the world.
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