The book making all the news, “Torat HaMelech,” came out of the small Samaria yishuv of Yitzhar, a mountaintop settlement, very similar to the small mountaintop settlement of Pincus that provides the backdrop for the short novella, "The T'shuva of David Dor,"  that opens my collection of short stories, “Days of Mashiach.” And just as the Shin Bet is always trying to plant stinkers amongst the settlers, David Dor, the main character of my novella, has the same task of infiltrating the community to gather evidence that the settlers are planning to blow up the Temple Mount. I’m certain you’ll enjoy the book. In fact, there isn’t any book like “Days of Mashiach” in capturing the Jewish experience today, from the hilltops of Judea and Samaria, to the underground Israel War Command Center, to the Diasporas of South Africa and New York. But why listen to me? Instead of buying a true Jewish book, go out and waste your money of some stupid Hollywood movie.  

"Torat HaMelech"
mk

Regarding "Torat HaMelech," I don't know what all the fuss is about. The book is a scholarly summary of the laws of war, including the question of whether it is permissible to kill innocent (non-Jewish) civilians during wartime operations and battle in order to win the war, and/or save the lives of Israeli soldiers. The book brings down hundreds of Rabbinic opinions over the centuries. I suppose they will all have to be arrested.

But, isn't this what the Americans did when they blew up Hiroshima? Isn't this what the Americans and Nato forces do today in Afganistan, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, or wherever else they bomb? What's the big news? Everyone conducts military operations this way. Why is it such a horror if Jewish law also finds this an acceptable thing to do?

As I have previously written, it's all because the leftists in Israel are terrified that the religious are getting more and more powerful, with the growing wave of tshuva, and all the babies we have, and they are in a desperate panic to save the secular society they have wrongly imposed on the Jewish State. But times are a changing. Yes, my friends, times are a changing.

Shabbat shalom!