Senior RCA Rabbi Calls To Expel Arabs From Israel - FailedMessiah.com

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky – the senior rabbi of Teaneck, New Jersey’s largest Modern Orthodox synagogue, Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, and senior member of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) – has called for Israel to use collective punishment against Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians until these non-Jews realize “they have no future in the land of Israel.”

In a blog post titled “Dealing with Savages,” Pruzansky call for the destruction of Palestinian villages and towns and the destruction of the Dome of the Rock Muslim shrine on the Temple Mount.

Pruzansky couched the conflict between Jews and Arabs as a religious war being fought for the Land of Israel. Arabs living within the borders of the Land of Israel are all therefore Israel’s enemies, Pruzansky insisted.

“There is a war for the land of Israel that is being waged, and the Arabs who dwell in the land of Israel are the enemy in that war and must be vanquished,” Pruzansky wrote,later adding “that enemy rides our buses, shops in our malls, drives on our roads and lives just two miles from us.”

“The Arab-Muslim animals that span the globe chopping, hacking and merrily decapitating…At a certain point, the unrestrained behavior of unruly animals becomes the fault of the zookeeper [i.e., Israel], not the animals,” Pruzansky added.

Pruzansky went on to argue that Israel should destroy entire Arab villages if more than one terrorist lives there, and every resident of those villages should be expelled.

He argued that Arab – but not Jewish – rioters  should be shot with live ammunition.

To avoid international condemnation, Pruzansky insisted that reporters should be barred from covering these riots or the destruction of Arab villages and the expulsion of their residents. Those reporters who are on scene anyway should have their cameras confiscated.

Pruzansky also argues that all Arabs should be barred from the Temple Mount for a minimum of six months.

…Israel should make clear that a Palestinian state will never be created between the river and the sea. There will be no non-Jewish national entity tolerated. The Muqata in Ramallah should be destroyed and “President” Abbas should be incarcerated as a war criminal.

Terrorists will be killed, not captured (no great loss, as their fondest wish is for martyrdom). Their bodies will not be returned to their families but will be cremated, and perhaps the ashes buried with deceased pigs. The homes of the extended family (up to and including first cousins) of the terrorist will be destroyed, and they will all be deported to the Muslim country of their choice. A second terrorist in a village results in the destruction of that village and the deportation of its residents to a friendlier country. (If the homes in that village would be useful to Jews, then they should be retained and given to Jews after the evil residents are deported. Or, as they used to say in Israel, disengaged.)

Anyone who riots or throws a stone at a Jew should be shot – with real bullets. Rubber bullets and tear gas should be sold to the Amish. Those who wish to be martyred and who celebrate death should be accommodated as often as possible. The media should be barred from scenes of violence, cell service canceled and cameras confiscated, like in most war zones.

In the meantime, Arab access to the Temple Mount will be denied for at least six months, and Jewish prayer will be allowed thenceforth at permissible locations, such as they might be. It is unconscionable crime to deny Jews the right to move their lips on the Temple Mount! And those who refrain from ascending the Mount for halachic reasons will surely agree that if Jews cannot be there, certainly Muslims cannot be there. And perhaps the day will come in the near future when the mosque and the dome can be uplifted intact and reset in Saudi Arabia, Syria or wherever it is wanted. (The Arab countries can fight over it if they want.) That itself will preclude any Arab claim to Jerusalem.

The same restrictions and limitations would pertain to the Cave of Machpelah in Hevron. Any terror emanating from Hevron results in closure of the facility to Muslims. In fact, we should apply to Muslim holy places the exact same respect and deference they have shown to Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu holy sites across the world. That seems only fair.…

Pruzansky deleted his post, but over the weekend a reader sent a link to a Google cache of it to various media organizations, including FailedMessiah.com.

Pruzansky has previously blamed Orthodox Jewish feminists for the Orthodox community’s alleged overreaction to his friend’s, Rabbi Barry Freundel’s, alleged peeping and secret video-recording of naked women in the mikvah (ritual bath) Freundel controlled.

Pruzansky also previous equated the New York-based Jewish Week newspaper with he Nazi propaganda organ Der Sturmer and the Jewish Week’s editor-publisher Gary Rosenblatt with Der Sturmer’s editor Julius Streicher, and has made many other equally offensive statements in his writings and talks over many years.

Even so, neither the RCA, its effective parent the Orthodox Union (OU), or Pruzansky’s Bnai Yeshurun synagogue have ever disciplined him.

Will food manufacturers whose products carry an OU seal allow that seal to continue to appear if Pruzansky is still a member of the RCA and his synagogue a member of the OU? Many would now argue they should not – unless Bnai Yeshurun fires Pruzansky and the RCA strips him of membership.

Here is Pruzansky’s now-deleted post in full:

Dealing with Savages
Posted on November 21, 2014 | 2 Comments

How does a human being (or two) walk into a synagogue and begin hacking at worshippers who are immersed in prayer, leaving behind a trail of blood, victims, grief and horror?

The question is misplaced because no “human being” could do such a thing. It would have to be a beast in human form, a relic from primitive times before true humans became civilized. The Arab-Muslim animals that span the globe chopping, hacking and merrily decapitating – from Iraq to Jerusalem to New York to Oklahoma, and places in between and beyond – are a discredit even to the term “animal.” Most animals are not that brutal.

The real issue confronting Israel for decades and the civilized world today is what to do about the proliferation of savages who lust for blood and derive inspiration from their religious texts? One example not to follow is that of President Obama’s. In one of his more ludicrous statements in the last few months – amid a healthy competition – he decried the attack, the loss of life “on both sides (!),” and then added this gem: that the “overwhelming majority of Palestinians…want to live in peace.” Really? And based on what data was that determination made? That only tens of thousands of “Palestinians” rejoiced after the massacre, singing and dancing in the streets, distributing candies and sweets, praising the vicious slaughter and the slaughterers – and not hundreds of thousands? Polls in the PA reveal widespread support for the murder of Jews so what exactly is he talking about??

Obama seems to be as much an expert on “Palestinian” society as he is about Islam generally. His incessant protestation that ISIS distorts Islam is based on…what exactly? ISIS and sundry other radical groups seem to feel that they are fulfilling the dictates of Islam – and the few Muslims who disagree meet their fate at the business end of a machete. Actions speak louder than words. Obama’s expertise in Islam has led him to cede the Middle East to the most ruthless forces, embrace the radical Muslim Turk Erdogan as an American ally, and facilitate Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Perhaps with a nuclear weapon, Iran will be civilized, or so the thinking goes.

Little can or should be expected from Obama or from the Europeans, mired as they are in cultural deterioration, moral relativism, population decline and Muslim-inspired Jew hatred. Sweden just became the latest country to recognize “Palestine.” Sweden (!), which willfully encourages those who favor the shechita of Jews even as they themselves ban the shechita (ritual slaughter) of animals. How is that for misplaced priorities and corrupt values? And we should be clear, as the wave of recognition sweeps Europe in the coming year: any country that recognizes a “Palestine” is endorsing the mass slaughter of Jews.

But Israel has to act, especially as the violence has spiraled out of control. The dynamic needs to change, dramatically. At a certain point, the unrestrained behavior of unruly animals becomes the fault of the zookeeper, not the animals. What can be done?

Clearly, many things can be done that should not be in print, but the general approach needs to be the abandonment of defensive, reactive moves and an embrace of offensive, anticipatory, and proactive moves. The Arabs need to feel that they are paying a heavy price for murdering Jews. Right now, not only do they not pay a heavy price but the murderers and their families benefit. Here are some suggestions to change the dynamic, and they are all based on a single premise: that there is a war  for the land of Israel that is being waged, and the Arabs who dwell in the land of Israel are the enemy in that war and must be vanquished.

Israel should make clear that a Palestinian state will never be created between the river and the sea. There will be no non-Jewish national entity tolerated. The Muqata in Ramallah should be destroyed and “President” Abbas should be incarcerated as a war criminal.

Terrorists will be killed, not captured (no great loss, as their fondest wish is for martyrdom). Their bodies will not be returned to their families but will be cremated, and perhaps the ashes buried with deceased pigs. The homes of the extended family (up to and including first cousins) of the terrorist will be destroyed, and they will all be deported to the Muslim country of their choice. A second terrorist in a village results in the destruction of that village and the deportation of its residents to a friendlier country. (If the homes in that village would be useful to Jews, then they should be retained and given to Jews after the evil residents are deported. Or, as they used to say in Israel, disengaged.)

Anyone who riots or throws a stone at a Jew should be shot – with real bullets. Rubber bullets and tear gas should be sold to the Amish. Those who wish to be martyred and who celebrate death should be accommodated as often as possible. The media should be barred from scenes of violence, cell service canceled and cameras confiscated, like in most war zones.

In the meantime, Arab access to the Temple Mount will be denied for at least six months, and Jewish prayer will be allowed thenceforth at permissible locations, such as they might be. It is unconscionable crime to deny Jews the right to move their lips on the Temple Mount! And those who refrain from ascending the Mount for halachic reasons will surely agree that if Jews cannot be there, certainly Muslims cannot be there. And perhaps the day will come in the near future when the mosque and the dome can be uplifted intact and reset in Saudi Arabia, Syria or wherever it is wanted. (The Arab countries can fight over it if they want.) That itself will preclude any Arab claim to Jerusalem.

The same restrictions and limitations would pertain to the Cave of Machpelah in Hevron. Any terror emanating from Hevron results in closure of the facility to Muslims. In fact, we should apply to Muslim holy places the exact same respect and deference they have shown to Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu holy sites across the world. That seems only fair.

As noted here in the past, measures need to be implemented that encourage Arab emigration – the payment of stipends, compensation for property, etc. Thy must be made to feel that that they have no future in the land of Israel – no national future and no individual future. Start with the Arabs of Judea and Samaria who are stateless; they deserve to find a country in which they can be full citizens and make their contribution to society. Let them demonstrate in an Arab country their dexterity with bombs and their grace with machetes. (If Israeli Arabs persist in their support of terror – now at a low level, but who can predict the future? – they should forfeit their citizenship and be returned to military rule as it was before 1966.) Of course, those who wish to stay and be peaceful, acknowledging the sovereignty of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, are welcome to stay. But an enemy is an enemy – and one who wants to kill you, maim you, blow up your buses, trains and restaurants, run over your pedestrians and conquer your capital is an enemy, and a ruthless one at that. Why so many Israelis do not perceive that is an enduring enigma, an enigma that has enabled the relentless slaughter of Jews.

There are other measures as well but here is the problem: not a single method above will be enacted. That is why right now there is absolutely no deterrent to the murder and maiming of Jews. Indeed, it is exactly the opposite. The slaughter of Jews is incentivized in Arab society. Often the terrorist is killed (martyrdom and virgins), lionized and immortalized with the naming after him of streets, schools and camps (eternity), and his family receives a monthly pension of thousands of dollars to compensate for his lost earnings (financial reward). Under those circumstances, and given the primitive culture in which they are raised, it is an irrational act not to want to murder Jews.

That is the dynamic that has to change.

Yet, despite everything, much of Israeli society still clings to the illusion that “peace” is possible with these savages, or at least that someone, somewhere, sometime, will sign a peace treaty with them. That illusion is slowly receding, but it is still abetted by the elites of Israeli society, especially because it is being propounded and pushed by Western governments like the US and in the European Union. There is no more deadly illusion on the planet, except for construing ISIS as a cold summer treat enjoyed by children.

Rational thinkers will argue that the “world” will never tolerate such Draconian sanctions, that countries will sever diplomatic relations with Israel, cut off trade ties and completely isolate the Jewish state. And, in the short term, much of that is true. But is there an alternative short of national suicide and self-immolation? Israel has much to offer the world, without which many people in the world would suffer, that such alienation will be short-lived. And Israel’s pivot to Asia (much more successful than Obama’s clumsy and failed one) has allowed Israel to strike close relations with the two largest nations on the globe, China and India. Neither country is moved in its foreign affairs by a moral impulse and both countries are anxious for military ties with Israel. And do not overestimate the popularity of the Palestinians in the rest of the world; truth be told, they are reviled even in the Arab world, perhaps even more than in Europe.

We should not ignore as well the rank hypocrisy that promotes the double standard that cripples Israel’s ability to defend itself. Case in point: this week, Egypt evicted thousands of Arabs along the Gaza border and destroyed hundreds of their homes for “security reasons.” No courts, no appeals, no process. Some of the homes were being used to conceal tunnels, so they all had to go.

Moral? Not in normal times, but Egypt recognizes it is at war with a heartless enemy, and that enemy and its population deserve no accommodation. Even Jen Psaki found no fault in Egypt’s actions, the phony.

If only Jews would realize the same and stop fantasizing about convincing that enemy of our own goodness. Here is one exercise that should help: the same enemy that lynched soldiers in Ramallah and tore them apart is the same enemy that butchered holy Jews this week in Har Nof is the same enemy that kidnapped and murdered three precious boys just a few months ago.

It’s the same enemy. And that enemy rides our buses, shops in our malls, drives on our roads and lives just two miles from us. The same enemy.

Do you know where that enemy is, and what he is plotting right now?

Change the dynamic. Change the terms of the debate. Change the rules of war. And change the outcome that the enemy now anticipates. Such will save Jewish lives and even bring redemption.

Pruzansky's post as a PDF file:

Download Dealing with Savages | Rabbi Pruzansky's Blog

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky's analysis of Samson’s unconventional military tactics and their possible current application

The Jewish Press: In the book, you write at some length about Samson’s unconventional military tactics and their possible current application. Can you elaborate?

Rabbi Pruzansky: I think the basic idea of Shimshon’s battles was an attempt to provide the people of Israel with plausible deniability. In other words, he conducted himself as a lone wolf, distancing himself from his native population, even committing acts that would manifest a severance between him and the Jewish people (intermarriage for example) in order to inflict damage on the enemy that could not be traced back to the Jewish people. And in that he was very successful. From that I deduce a methodology for fighting an asymmetrical war between a state and, say, a terror group. Today the western world is trying to combat an enemy that basically is faceless and nameless, and does not necessarily have a political address, and yet can inflict grievous harm to civilian populations. How do you fight such an enemy? Shimshon shows one approach, and that is to basically infiltrate their society and inflict damage on them – and then to retreat and disappear. In other words, fight them on their battlefield rather than trying to engage the enemy on our battlefield, which is always a nightmare in terms of the actual combat as well as the moral and political aftermath.

Civil trial attorney Baruch C. Cohen meets Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, Esq.

The chickens have come home to roost

Once again, my college classmate, Rabbi Pruzansky, is excellent.

It should not be overlooked that the foundation for this vote was laid by the Israelis many years ago. The Oslo Accords, whatever the technical language, was obviously designed to create a Palestinian state. That agreement was an explicit admission by the Jewish state that the Jewish people are not the exclusive sovereigns in the land of Israel, despite G-d’s eternal promises set forth in the Bible. Governments of the left and the right embraced that outcome in one form or another. Menachem Begin himself recognized (in 1978) the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” a phrase that stuck in his craw but that he accepted based on his lawyerly interpretation that the words “legitimate rights” could be interpreted to mean anything he wanted it to mean and not what the other signatories understood it to mean. So the chickens of Oslo, Lebanon, and Gush Katif have indeed come home to roost.

     And yet, whatever the psychological value (and most Arabs will assume that the vote means something that it does not, and fire their weapons in the air in celebration), the vote has no effect in the real world. Nothing changes here, today, anymore that Arafat’s declaration of statehood amounted to anything in 1988. A General Assembly vote has no legal status at all. Abba Eban said it eloquently: “If Algeria introduced a General Assembly resolution that the world is flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would find overwhelming support in the Arab world” and elsewhere. And he said it almost forty years ago. Nothing has changed there, either.

     Abbas still needs to be propped up by Israel. There is no Palestinian state. The PA and Hamas are still bitter rivals, and Abbas knows that his political career ends the moment the people are given the right to vote him out, whenever that is. The UN carnival, typically, just distracts the world from the real crises in the region – Iran’s nuclear bomb, Syria’s civil war and Egypt’s ongoing unrest. Anyone who still needs proof of the mendacity and hypocrisy rampant in the Arab world needs to consider only the howls of protest when 150 Arabs were killed and several hundred wounded in the clashes in Gaza – squeals that were intended to awaken the world to the horrors of a nation (Israel) exercising its right of self-defense – while the Arab world is dormant at the massacres in Syria of more than 35,000 people, and the turmoil in Egypt where already more than 500 people have been injured.

    It’s not the civilian deaths or injury that seem to disturb the Arab world and its malevolent allies across the world; it’s that the cursed Jews are doing it, and in defense of their right to exist.

    There are two obvious conclusions to this vote. One, that Oslo is officially dead, and this declaration vitiates its very premises of negotiations over final status issues, and, two, that the United States is now bound by law to cut its funding of the Palestinian Authority. But neither will happen and the blatant violations will be finessed, because neither the US nor Israel has any real interest in changing the dynamic of the struggle. That complicity is emblematic of the failures of Israeli politicians for decades that have seen Israel’s strategic position deteriorate slowly but inexorably.

    Nonetheless, in the beleaguered town of Sderot, barely two miles from Gaza and the recipient of thousands of missiles and rockets in the last ten years, one encounters today personal strength and courage, a desire to rebuild, lifelong residents who have no interest in moving to safer zones. Their resilience is an inspiration to all Jews, and their heroic story will yet be told. In the new communities built to house the Jewish refugees driven out of Gaza in 2005, one encounters the same determination, along with sadness about what was lost and the unshakeable (and usually unmentioned) feeling of “I told you so,” the unheeded warnings of what would befall Israel if they retreated under pressure from Gaza.

    All these brave souls have been betrayed by governments with convoluted miscalculations, wishful thinking and illusions disguised as policies, unkept promises repeated in every election cycle, or statecraft that is often illogical and self-destructive.

   The people of Israel deserve better; if only they would realize it and act upon it.

 Read the whole thing.

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo – for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people voted. As I write, with almost all the votes counted, President Obama has won fewer votes than John McCain won in 2008, and more than ten million off his own 2008 total.

But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.

Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes to win.

That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues – the traditional American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to moral greatness – no longer inspire or animate a majority of the electorate. The notion of the “Reagan Democrat” is one cliché that should be permanently retired.

Ronald Reagan himself could not win an election in today’s America.

The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff. Every businessman knows this; that is why the “loss leader” or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who – courtesy of Obama – receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote; so too those who anticipate “free” health care, who expect the government to pay their mortgages, who look for the government to give them jobs. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.

Imagine two restaurants side by side. One sells its customers fine cuisine at a reasonable price, and the other offers a free buffet, all-you-can-eat as long as supplies last. Few – including me – could resist the attraction of the free food. Now imagine that the second restaurant stays in business because the first restaurant is forced to provide it with the food for the free buffet, and we have the current economy, until, at least, the first restaurant decides to go out of business. (Then, the government takes over the provision of free food to its patrons.)

The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation (by the amoral Obama team) of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in which “47% of the people” start off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money – “free stuff” – from the government. Almost half of the population has no skin in the game – they don’t care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese. They just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.

It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.

That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is dumb – ignorant, and uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters – the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism. That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich. Obama could get away with saying that “Romney wants the rich to play by a different set of rules” – without ever defining what those different rules were; with saying that the “rich should pay their fair share” – without ever defining what a “fair share” is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to “fend for themselves” – without even acknowledging that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending. Obama could get away with it because he knew he was talking to dunces waving signs and squealing at any sight of him.

During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson called back: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!” Truer words were never spoken.

Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico (even if they came from Cuba or Honduras), and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws. He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions – in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone. He could do and say all these things because he knew his voters were dolts.

One might reasonably object that not every Obama supporter could be unintelligent. But they must then rationally explain how the Obama agenda can be paid for, aside from racking up multi-trillion dollar deficits. “Taxing the rich” does not yield even 10% of what is required – so what is the answer, i.e., an intelligent answer?

Obama also knows that the electorate has changed – that whites will soon be a minority in America (they’re already a minority in California) and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America. Obama is part of that different America, knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.

Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his “negative ads” were simple facts, never personal abuse – facts about high unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil’s bargain of making unsustainable promises, and by talking as the adult and not the adolescent. Obama has spent the last six years campaigning; even his governance has been focused on payoffs to his favored interest groups. The permanent campaign also won again, to the detriment of American life.

It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan – people of substance, depth and ideas – to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare – never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups. Conservative ideas failed to take root and states that seemed winnable, and amenable to traditional American values, have simply disappeared from the map. If an Obama could not be defeated – with his record and his vision of America, in which free stuff seduces voters – it is hard to envision any change in the future. The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy – those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe – is paved.

A second cliché that should be retired is that America is a center-right country. It clearly is not. It is a divided country with peculiar voting patterns, and an appetite for free stuff. Studies will invariably show that Republicans in Congress received more total votes than Democrats in Congress, but that means little. The House of Representatives is not truly representative of the country. That people would vote for a Republican Congressmen or Senator and then Obama for President would tend to reinforce point two above: the empty-headedness of the electorate. Americans revile Congress but love their individual Congressmen. Go figure.

The mass media’s complicity in Obama’s re-election cannot be denied. One example suffices. In 2004, CBS News forged a letter in order to imply that President Bush did not fulfill his Air National Guard service during the Vietnam War, all to impugn Bush and impair his re-election prospects. In 2012, President Obama insisted – famously – during the second debate that he had stated all along that the Arab attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi was “terror” (a lie that Romney fumbled and failed to exploit). Yet, CBS News sat on a tape of an interview with Obama in which Obama specifically avoided and rejected the claim of terrorism – on the day after the attack – clinging to the canard about the video. (This snippet of a “60 Minutes” interview was not revealed – until two days ago!) In effect, CBS News fabricated evidence in order to harm a Republican president, and suppressed evidence in order to help a Democratic president. Simply shameful, as was the media’s disregard of any scandal or story that could have jeopardized the Obama re-election.

One of the more irritating aspects of this campaign was its limited focus, odd in light of the billions of dollars spent. Only a few states were contested, a strategy that Romney adopted, and that clearly failed. The Democrat begins any race with a substantial advantage. The liberal states – like the bankrupt California and Illinois – and other states with large concentrations of minority voters as well as an extensive welfare apparatus, like New York, New Jersey and others – give any Democratic candidate an almost insurmountable edge in electoral votes. In New Jersey, for example, it literally does not pay for a conservative to vote. It is not worth the fuel expended driving to the polls. As some economists have pointed generally, and it resonates here even more, the odds are greater that a voter will be killed in a traffic accident on his way to the polls than that his vote will make a difference in the election. It is an irrational act. That most states are uncompetitive means that people are not amenable to new ideas, or new thinking, or even having an open mind. If that does not change, and it is hard to see how it can change, then the die is cast. America is not what it was, and will never be again.

For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel. They voted to secure Obama’s future at America’s expense and at Israel’s expense – in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin. A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative. That Obama’s top aide Valerie Jarrett (i.e., Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett) spent last week in Teheran is not a good sign. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon – and then state that the world must learn to live with this new reality. As Obama has committed himself to abolishing America’s nuclear arsenal, it is more likely that that unfortunate circumstance will occur than that he will succeed in obstructing Iran’s plans.

Obama’s victory could weaken Netanyahu’s re-election prospects, because Israelis live with an unreasonable – and somewhat pathetic – fear of American opinion and realize that Obama despises Netanyahu. A Likud defeat – or a diminution of its margin of victory – is more probable now than yesterday. That would not be the worst thing. Netanyahu, in fact, has never distinguished himself by having a strong political or moral backbone, and would be the first to cave to the American pressure to surrender more territory to the enemy and acquiesce to a second (or third, if you count Jordan) Palestinian state. A new US Secretary of State named John Kerry, for example (he of the Jewish father) would not augur well. Netanyahu remains the best of markedly poor alternatives. Thus, the likeliest outcome of the upcoming Israeli elections is a center-left government that will force itself to make more concessions and weaken Israel – an Oslo III.

But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The most powerful empires in history all crumbled – from the Greeks and the Romans to the British and the Soviets. None of the collapses were easily foreseen, and yet they were predictable in retrospect.

The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations. The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come. Across the world, America under Bush was feared but not respected. Under Obama, America is neither feared nor respected. Radical Islam has had a banner four years under Obama, and its prospects for future growth look excellent. The “Occupy” riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead – years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.

Two bright sides: Notwithstanding the election results, I arose the morning, went to shul, davened and learned Torah afterwards. That is our reality, and that trumps all other events. Our relationship with G-d matters more than our relationship with any politician, R or D. And, notwithstanding the problems in Israel, it is time for Jews to go home, to Israel. We have about a decade, perhaps 15 years, to leave with dignity and without stress. Thinking that it will always be because it always was has been a repetitive and deadly Jewish mistake. America was always the land from which “positive” aliya came – Jews leaving on their own, and not fleeing a dire situation. But that can also change. The increased aliya in the last few years is partly attributable to young people the high cost of Jewish living in America. Those costs will only increase in the coming years. We should draw the appropriate conclusions.

If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back.

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey. He practiced law for 13 years as a general practitioner and litigator in New York City until assuming his current pulpit. This essay earlier appeared on his blog.