Posted on 02/10/2004 5:32:33 AM PST by SJackson
My friend Michelle Nevada and I talk a lot about the situation in Israel. And, often, one of the things we discuss is the "prime minister" situation. I often kid about how there must be some gas pumped into the prime minister's office that makes them lose their nerve and turn wishy-washy. And, lately, I've been saying about Ariel Sharon, "Who is this man and what has he done to our prime minister?"
But with his new mishegas (craziness), I'm starting to think that Sharon (or whatever body double is making his policies right now) has really forgotten what the State of Israel means to Israelis and to Jews around the world. So, I guess I'll have to remind him.
Since the destruction of the first Temple in 586 BCE, Jews have lived out of Israel. There were Jews in Iraq (Babylonia, hence the Babylonian exile), Iran (Persia, from Esther's time), Egypt (there was a big Jewish community in Alexandria in Roman times), Syria and probably other Arab countries before Muhammad was born. In the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, there were more Jews in Rome than Jerusalem.
Jews have lived in just about every country in the world. In just about every country Jews have lived in, we have helped the country to thrive. And, in just about every country in the world, Jews have been persecuted.
We're not just talking about mobs or people acting out of the law. We are talking about country after country, political entity after political entity, passing laws to limit Jews. But, like Jacob working for his father-in-law Lavan, whatever we did was blessed by G-d with success.
However, after thousands of years of persecution, living in other peoples' countries, we decided it was time for us to return to our own country. One major impetus for this was the Dreyfus affair, being covered by a reporter named Theodor Herzl, and another later major impetus for this was the Holocaust.
One of the few countries that never had anti-Jewish legislation was the United States. The Dutch set the tone for that by responding to an attempt by Peter Stuyvesant to legislate against Jews in New Netherlands (the entity that later became New York). The relationship between Israel and the United States has been, for the most part, a friendly one, one of allies fighting a common enemy. But for some reason, the US government lately seems to be blind to the parallels between the US struggle against Al-Qaida and Israel's struggle against Hamas/Hezbollah/Fatah/Al-Aqsa Brigade/you-name-it terrorist group.
Like Israel, the US was also started by people who fled to her shores looking for religious freedom. But Israel also, just by its existence, makes things better for Jews all over the world. Because there is an Israel, every Jew in the world has a home when the world kicks him/her out.
And, though they might not believe this, Israel by its very existence gives people in the world a beacon of hope. We also give the world a buffer between supposedly civilized people and terrorist murderers. Unfortunately, instead of appreciating this and appreciating the importance of Israel's existence in their lives, many people in this world criticize Israel. They criticize Israel for trying to defend its citizens. And when they criticize Israel, they call the terrorists attacking Israel "militants". Makes it sound like all they want to do is take over the prime minister's office and protest the war in Vietnam. (While I'm not exactly a huge fan of Rabbi Meir Kahane (z.l.), I find it hugely ironic that this man, who never killed anyone, who didn't advocate murder, who was assassinated by a terrorist, was considered a terrorist, while the people murdering hundreds of Israelis, Jews and Gentiles, the members of Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, etc, are called "militants".)
It's amazing how twisted the world has become. Good is being called evil and evil is being called good. And why is this? I think it goes back to what it is about Jews that makes people uncomfortable. Judaism requires that we live a moral and ethical life, that we care about others, that we live our lives according to certain rules of civilized behavior. Now, I have to tell you, I personally think that it is not just right for us to treat others this way, but when we act this way, people respond to it positively.
Unfortunately, an awful lot of people don't understand this. They prefer to live selfish lives, taking and taking. They are like Arafat or Hitler. Hitler, by the way, had a mission to "free" the world of the burden of conscience. We, as Jews, are a reminder to the world that the way they are living is decadent, it's evil, and it eventually leads to ruin, ruin of the soul, ruin of the body, and ruin of the world.
So, in a way, I can understand why people hate us. They don't want to be reminded.
This brings us back to Sharon. He's running into the easy way out. He's falling into a pattern that seems to dog the prime minister's office. He's giving up. He's allowing the immoral and unethical ways of the world to infect his brain and make him forget that Israel and the Jewish people are worth fighting for. If he gives up on this, the people who have fought and died for the State of Israel since it's inception, since 1948 and before, will have died in vain.
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