Will your children respect you

If you move to Israel because some over-the-top Zionistic rabbi like Hershel Schachter, Joel Zeff, Ari Shvat, or Yitzchok Breitowitz guilts you into it, you might have a big problem with your children. I meet all kinds of people who give up their house to come live in a little apartment. They give up their cars to take buses. 

Breitowitz probably didn't have to give up his car because he only retired here after having a legal, academic, and rabbinic career in America (where he was educated). But he still pushes everyone to come here whether they be rich or poor. That's how idealogues work. You are just a pawn in their games.  

Here's how you look to your children now, like a loser. And if you don't speak Hebrew -- and few olim over 30 learn Hebrew -- you look like a bigger loser. If you are a baal teshuvah or convert that grew up without any exposure to Hebrew, it will be even harder. You can't help your kids with their homework. You need them to get on the phone and talk to the customer service rep. You look helpless. You are helpless.

So if you are escaping Czarist Russia in 1905, and you need to come to America to be a poor immigrant who never learns more than broken English, well you were poorer in Russia. You are not dropping by coming to America. But when you come to Israel, your standard of living drops significantly. And you stumble around because you can't speak Hebrew. 

And now you have brought them to a country with a broken government, that is relentlessly at war (largely by choice in my opinion), that is relentlessly after your sons to draft them into its secular army. People left Russia to escape the draft. Why would you come to a country that has a draft, that as we have learned, really don't care about its soldiers, and sends them into slaughter where this year 750 have been killed and 5,000 wounded. Since only Jews are drafted, that's the equivalent of 41,250 fatalities for soldiers in America. That's approaching the number of soldiers the US lost in the Vietnam war. As for injuries, that's equivalent to 275,000. That's what you brought them to. You look like a loser.

Why is the SOI in Gaza? Is an army attacking us from there? There's no army. A year ago some hoodlums climbed over a fence that the IDF easily could have watched but didn't due to arrogance and incompetence. Is it because some Arabs occasionally send a few of their homemade projectiles to border towns (oftentimes in response to an Israeli assassination)?  Why are we living on the border? There's plenty of room in the middle of the country. It's the same with Lebanon. Why are they living there? Is it to push the borders, the same reason the government build towns in the Shomron? So boys are dying because of Zionistic ambitions. Isn't that lovely. And you brought your children into this mess. 

Now you don't have any authority over them. Why should they listen such a fool?

You want to say that you'll teach them that the sacrifice is worth it, that you are winners because you live in Israel? What if you don't believe that? Not everybody thinks that way. They do. But that's the  derech of the aliyah salesmen. What they are doing is imposing that on you, and that's dangerous.

What if you don't believe that yishuv ha-aretz is the most important mitzvah in the world? What if you think that having good middos is more important? Well, you are going to have a big problem living in Israel. What if you are not so thrilled with the society? What if you are really bothered by rude people. What if you raise them to be polite at home, but they go into the schools and get massacred by the Israeli kids. This is an ongoing complaint of 'olim' kids. 

So I'm warning you what kind of mess you will get yourself into by moving Israel. The aliyah pushers paint such fantasies. They are liars.