The Right of the Jewish People to A Homeland

There are many people in the world who simply ignore the facts of history because they simply do not care. What they care about is living their daily lives, posting photos of their meals, pets and children in Facebook and being entertained.
TV News programs serve as backdrop noise at the dinner table. Many ignore the news since it does not affect them in their daily lives. When there is action, such as a terrorist bombing or some conflict, the viewer reaches for his remote control and makes the choice to either turn the sound up or down. Few are conscientious enough to care since it does not involve them or their immediate family. What we do constantly hear from the world media is of the misery of the Palestinian side and the cry of the liberal left for Justice for the Palestinians. What we do not ever hear of is, "What about the rights of the Jewish People to one country to call our own?"

My friend Ami once wrote an article of some importance in light of the US led move to force Israel to accept a further concession to further a peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians. President Obama and the US Administration want Israel to agree to another settlement freeze without any concession from the Palestinians. The people of Israel through Prime Minister Netanyahu have asked for one major concession from the Palestinians. That sole concession is to be recognized by the Palestinians and the entire Moslem Arab world. That Israel is and has always been the land of the Jewish People.
Is it to much of us to ask the Palestinians that they should in turn recognize the right of the Jewish people to a homeland, just as the Arabs, of the Palestinian Mandated area, wish to be recognized as Palestinians in a country called "Palestine".

Many do not realize nor care that the whole matter of the Jewish Homeland was reborn with the establishment of the Zionist movement at the end of the Nationalist Period of the nineteenth century. The movement was able to realize it's dream in the declaration of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that, "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…" and it was written in the League of Nations 1919 that there would be a Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate states, "Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…"

So between the Balfour Declaration 1917 until September 1st 1939 what happened?

The world turned it's back on the Jews and turned to healing the scars of the "Great War" and to live life again. The modern world, which had awoken with the inventions brought about by the terrible conflict of World War I, came to realize the importance of the need for oil. Slowly and progressively they bowed to the rights of the Arabs. Between the two wars the great powers struggled to exert influence over the vast Arab lands and their strategic oil fields. In the process of their strategic moves their promise to the Jews was ignored and denied.

The Jews of the Diaspora themselves, in the aftermath of World War I, had also turned to making a daily living and the celebration of life, since there was no real threat to their lives as Jews. Only a few Jewish Pioneers - Ha'Lutzim had chosen the path to the "Land of Israel" or Zion. Those brave settlers of the "First Aliyah"- the first wave of immigration, who came before World War I, faced the hardships of life in the uncultivated semi-arid desert regions or in the swampy marshlands of lands purchased from wealthy absentee Arab landlords. These wealthy Arabs, lived in distant cities of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, extorted large sums for supposedly worthless lands. The land sold to the Jews was considered so dangerous and useless for habitation that the local Arabs scorned the settlers and called them, "the Children of Death". With the ingenuity of Jewish knowledge, and with their strength and fortitude, these "Pioneers" brought the land of Israel slowly to bloom again and with it the jealousy of the Arabs.

With the establishment of the British controlled Mandate and the realization of the need to control the access through the Suez Canal to the oil fields of Saudi Arabian and Persia. Britain began to develop the area of the Mandate as a forward base for it's strategic needs.

A Trans-Arabian pipeline was constructed from Iraq through Syria to the Port city of Haifa to supply fuel oil for the Royal Navy. The sleepy port city of Haifa was transformed to a forward military supply base. It's beaches forever negated and ruined by places of industry for the Empire's needs. There was a sudden upsurge in employment to supply the needs of the British forces in the Middle East. This need for labor brought an influx of Jewish emigrates and masses of poor landless Arabs from the surrounding Arabic lands. The competition for employment further inflamed the Arab nationalism which in itself was being pushed by agitators from Fascist Italy during the 1920's and 1930's.

With the establishment and rise of Hitler's regime during the 1930's the fate of the Jewish people in Europe began it's descent towards destruction. At first, Hitler actually opened the gates to allow the Jews of Europe to run away. Hitler knew that for Jews there was no where to run to. Hitler had diabolically outlined his plans for the "removal" of the Jews of Europe in his manifesto "Mein Kamph". His actions in the 1930's, after his rise to power, where meant to show the truth that Jews have no where to go. The famous episode of the Hamburg cruise shows us that even America, the great land of the free, turned their back on those 600+ Jews who later perished in the extermination camps.

The British had conveniently established their Pro-Arab anti-Jewish immigration act known infamously as the "White Paper". Mussolini was creating difficulties for Europe in his war with Ethiopian and his schemes for control over the Mediterranean basin. France had been bled white in the trenches of World War I. The Arabs of the mandated Palestine had the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; Haj Amin El Husseini, who was a friend of Hitler's. The attention of the Americans was on escaping the depression era and it's eyes were busy with Japan. As to the rest of the world they had their own daily isolationist concerns.

This failure of the people of the world to stand up and denounce Hitler and his plans led to the near demise of world Jewry during the Holocaust of World War II. This exact same apathy to deal with the threats of Hitler can be seen in the worlds' reaction Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who threatens the only Jewish state today.

The apathy of the world and the lack of fortitude by the leaders of the world, prior to World War II, led to the infamous Wannssee Conference in 1942. It was at Wannssee that the leaders of the NAZI regime made finite and intricate plans for a methodical industrialized extermination of ALL the Jewish people. The official records of the Nazi's themselves show how efficient their plans were that 6,000,000+ Jews were exterminated.

So what happened?

With the entry of Allied forces into Hitler's empire, Hitler's atrocities were exposed and the world was embarrassed. The embarrassment lasted until the partition vote of November 26th, 1947 in the UN. Once the vote was in Israel was created the world sat back and watched. Five heavily armed regular Arab armies attacked at once and little Israel with its mismatched weaponry and holocaust survivors fought them off and gained victory. The Palestinians who participated in slaughters of innocent Jews on the roads of Israel fled when Israeli forces gained the upper hand. The civilian Arab population, fearful of reappraisal by Israeli forces, especially those of the "Irgun" and "Lechi", for their barbaric deeds carried out prior to the evacuation of the British in May 15th 1948, ran away on the prompting of calls by Arab radio. Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph published on Sept. 6, 1949, stated:

"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agree upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem.”

These refugees and those of their decendants still today, 62+ years later, received housing and supplies from the UN in camps created by those same Arab countries that called upon them to leave. These Arab refugees refer to the loss as the Nakba (Arabic for "catastrophe"). These same "refugees" and their descendants are still confined to the camps and the immediate area today supported on handouts provided by UNWRA, the only United Nations organization created for one specific group of refugees.

Did you know that UNWRA is internationally funded, to the tune of $1.23 billion for 2010-2011? Has anyone in the US pointed out that MILLIONS of US TAX DOLLAR$ are being spent every year to support UNWRA? UNWRA is the organization, run by Palestinians themselves, that freely gives to the so called Palestinian (third generation of free-loaders) "refugees". UNRWA’s major raison d’etre is the existence of Palestinian “refugees” and it has in turn created dependency within Palestinian society on its services.

In 1952 a noted British soldier-diplomat Lt.-Gen. Sir Alexander Galloway, who was then UNRWA director in Jordan, made what was to become a famous statement to a group of visiting American church leaders:

“It is perfectly clear than the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”

How can you be classified a "refugee" after SIXTY TWO years?
Has any one EVER pointed out or asked WHY the Arab countries; Lebanon, Syria and Jordan that these "refugees" live in, forcibly keep them in the camps and NEVER allowed them to become viable citizens of Arab countries? NU? Much of this UN US tax$ is spent on such healthy food items as AK-47s, bullets, Mortar rounds and Katyusha (Qasam) rockets!! By the way the Hamas is very generous they have openly shared some 8000+with the immigrant development town of Sderot and surrounding Jewish Israeli farms and villages on a daily basis!

James G. Lindsay, UNRWA's former general counsel has stated;“UNRWA’s failure to match UNHCR’s success (in resettling refugees) obviously represents a political decision on the part of the agency”, and that “UNRWA has gradually adopted a distinctive political viewpoint that favors the Palestinian and Arab narrative of events in the Middle East. In particular, it seems to favor the strain of Palestinian political thought espoused by those who are intent on a ‘return’ to the land that is now Israel”. By that, concluded Lindsay, “UNRWA encouraged Palestinians who favor re-fighting long-lost wars, (and) discouraged those who favor moving toward peace”.

Recently John Ging, head of UNRWA operations in Gaza has stated, “We shouldn’t exist after so many years … it is the manifestation of the political failure of the international community to resolve the conflict…we should not have had to exist after 60 years”.

Has the mass media ever pointed out that 900,000 Jews were kicked out of Arab countries from 1948 -1967?

Ibrahim Fawal, Ph.D., of Birmingham, Alabama,USA once wrote:
"The Law of Return" allows a Jew from anywhere in the world to move to Israel and receive instant citizenship, while Palestinian refugees - still possessing keys to homes that were taken from them - cannot."

What Fawal fails to mention is what happened to the Jewish refugees of Arab lands and their children?Weren't these Jewish refugees also kicked out in the middle of the night? Where they not dispossessed of their homes and businesses? Where they not murdered in their homes and streets in pogroms of Islamic hatred?
Fawal continued; "Palestinians have neither been allowed to return nor offered restitution of any kind...". And what of the rights of the Jews from Arab lands and restitution to them? Has UNWRA paid for THEIR upkeep for SIXTY TWO years? NO it hasn't!!!
The majority of the Jews of Arab lands- who had to leave their homes and property- were never compensated either. But does anyone EVER mention this? OF COURSE NOT! Because they are Jews!






Here is a list of Jewish refugee camps:
Maalot
Shlomei
Kiryat Shmona
Hatzor Hagalil
Beit Shean
Rosh HaEyin
Dimona
Arad
Sderot
Netivot
Yerocham
Wait a minute these are cities in Israel? You mean the Jews were absorbed into the state and made citizens? "Walla!" These are my neighbors in Maalot
Bouchbout = Moroccan
Reumi = Moroccan
Ben Shushan = Moroccan
Mereck = Tunisian
Levy = Libyan
Mansoura = Egyptian

What?! You mean all this talk by the "Liars of Palestine" that the Jews/Israelis are all descendants of the Khazarim and are Yiddish speakers from Europe is not true? You mean to tell us that the BBC and CNN have been duped into telling lies to us? Have they never heard of FAUD Ben Eliazar or Gabi Ashkenazi?

Yet in the end ALL we hear about in the mass media and from the American administration of BHO -Barak Hussein Obama is about the poor Palestinians! Concession, Concession, Concession!

What do we ask for? As Bibi has stated, recognize "us"-Israel- as the national home of the Jewish People?

So now after six wars and 62 years the Arabs still have not come to fully recognize Israel's existence. Yes, we have a peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan but they wanted to wash their hands of the Palestinian issue. They wished to turn to their own affairs. Syria is led by a leader who sits in power over his people in fear. He is not a brave leader as was Sadat or King Hussein. These men knew the historical mistake of their predecessors who chose to go to war and invade Israel in 1948 rather than accept the Jewish people in peace. The vision of a real peace based on mutual recognition of both peoples was first recognized in 1919 by His Royal Highness Prince Feisal Husseini, king of Syria and Iraq, son of Sherif Husain and later King of Iraq.

In a letter written to to Felix Frankfurter on March 3, 1919 to an associate of Dr. Chaim Weizmann Prince Feisal indicated the willingness of Arabs to welcome the return of the Jewish people to Palestine, and implicitly recognized that the land of Israel is the historic homeland of the Jews. The Prince wrote:

"We Arabs, especially the educated among us look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate proper. We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.
With the chiefs of your movement, especially with Dr. Weizmann, we have had and continue to have the closest relations. He has been a great helper of our cause, and I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position tomake the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and revived Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist. Our movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for us both."

It is sorrowful that this brave Arab leader's words were forgotten and never heeded. That the blind hatred caused by the Arab loss of face in there utteral defeat in wars that so many have died for nothing. At least Prince Feisal had the intelligence to recognize that more could be gained from welcoming us Jewish Israelis as brothers and neighbors than by waging war against us.

EHR KUMT- They Are Comming

I received an email from the Birmingham Jewish Federation of a sermon given by Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Atlanta, Georgia. I thought that the Rabbis comment are worthwhile reading in respect to not only how Israel is viewed in the world but how ignorance and denial of radical Islamic belief threatens all.

 

EHR KUMT First Day of Rosh Hashanah 2010 By Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Atlanta, Georgia (Edited from the Rabbi's Sermon)

Our planet is immersed in perversity where morality is not so manifest – where the book burner is a hero and the pious one, a villain. 

We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. 

During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people. We did not apologize for Dresden, nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day. Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca. It was the entire planet. 

Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent. Not all Germans were Nazis – most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. 

But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense – I didn’t know.” Too many were silent. 

"Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing."

In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the world of malevolence. We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don’t put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct. 

Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London, from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists. To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable. 

Make no mistake; we are under attack – our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land. 

A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city. Before the war there were thirty-seven shuls for 38,000 Jews. Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. 

We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno. After my return home I visited Cherry Hill for Shabbos. At the oneg an elderly family friend, Joe Magun, came over to me. “Shalom,” he said. “Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania.” “Yes,” I replied. “It was quite a powerful experience.” “Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno? The one with the big arch in the courtyard?” “Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon.” His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. “Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the arch. The Choral Synagogue was where I davened as a child.” He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past. His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. 

“I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Zev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky came to the shul” (Jabotinsky was Menachem Begin’s mentor – he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) 

Joe continued “When Jabotinsky came, he delivered the drasha on Shabbos morning and I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. ‘EHR KUMT. YIDN FARLAWST AYER SHTETL – He’s coming. Jews abandon your city.’ ” 

We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right -- his warning prophetic. 

"We got out but most did not.” I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity. Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don’t worship at all. I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated."

"Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers."

Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided.

The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not.

The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeera condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it. Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil." 

We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. 

Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience. 

• Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None. 
• After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None. 
• After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None. 

And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness. 

The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. 

Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? 

Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee? Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz? 

Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma’arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? 

Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero? 

Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. 

I don’t buy the argument:

“When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here.” America is greater than Saudi Arabia. And New York is greater than Mecca." 

Democracy and freedom must prevail. Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. 

But should they build at that site? No -- but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not. 

If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere. 

Believe it or not, I am a dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start to finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least. Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, fire fights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U’Magog. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel. It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobble stoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street. It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bullet-proofed inner-city buses. It is in every school yard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater – in every place of innocence and purity. 

Israel is the laboratory – the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grizzly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West. 

In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank. 

Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psychopathic, loathsome evil. 

As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel’s galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. 

Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel’s galling plight ultimately will be ours. 

Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from “good guys” then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda. 

• Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
•  There is a message sent and consequences when our president (Barack Obama) visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel. 
• There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights. 
• There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel. 
• There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states. 
• There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy. 

There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” John Milton warned, “Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible.” 

 A few days after the Gaza blockade incident in the spring, a congregant happened past my office, glanced in and asked in a friendly tone – “Rabbi. How’re y’ doing?” I looked up, sort of smiled and replied – “I’ve had better days.” “What’s the matter? Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” he inquired. “Thank you for the offer but I’m just bummed out today” and I showed him a newspaper article I was reading. “Madrid gay pride parade bans Israeli group over Gaza Ship Raid.” I explained to my visitor – “The Israeli gay pride contingent from Tel Aviv was not allowed to participate in the Spanish gay pride parade because the Mayor of Tel Aviv did not apologize for the raid by the Israeli military.” 

The only country in the entire Middle East where gay rights exist, is Israel. The only country in the entire Middle East where there is a gay pride parade, is Israel. The only country in the Middle East that has gay neighborhoods and gay bars, is Israel.Gays in the Gaza would be strung up, executed by Hamas if they came out and yet Israel is vilified and ostracized. Disinvited to the parade. 

Looking for logic? 

Looking for reason? 

Looking for sanity? 

 Kafka on his darkest, gloomiest day could not keep up with this bizarre spectacle and we “useful idiots” pander and fawn over cutthroats, sinking deeper and deeper into moral decay, as the enemy laughs all the way to the West Bank and beyond. It is exhausting and dispiriting. 

We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered species.

Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago – “Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v’Laila, yome – Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day.” 

We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom. It is a frightening and maddening place to be. 

How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us? 

How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice? Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure is at risk. 

The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn’t get it is baffling. 

Let’s try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading. Anyone buy that medical advice? 

Well, folks, that’s our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. – There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death. 

I was no great fan of George Bush – didn’t vote for him. (By the way, I’m still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right.

His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror. There was no middle ground – either you were friend or foe. There was no place in Bush’s world for a Switzerland. He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M., not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate and you get crushed. 

I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Krakow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun. 

Enough rhetoric – how about a little “show and tell?” A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen year old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.

That is the enemy. If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha’s mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha’s disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway. Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio. On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha’s face should appear with the caption – “Radical Islamic savages did this.” And underneath – “This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR.”

“The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness. We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies. We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real. If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.

Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis.

We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.

A rabbi was once asked by his students…. “Rebbi. Why are your sermons so stern?” Replied the rabbi, “If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, ‘di hoyz brent.’ Children our house is on fire and I must arouse you from your slumber.”

During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? 

Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? 

Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail. Democracies don’t always win. Tyrannies don’t always lose.

My friends – the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. "EHR KUMT!"

"Facts And the Arab-Israeli Conflict."

Here are overlooked facts in the current Middle East situation 

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem. 

Fact Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE, 2,000 years before the rise of Islam. 

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel. 

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE, the Jews have had dominion over the land for 1,000 years, with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years. 

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 CE lasted no more than 22 years. 

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit. 

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran. 

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem. 

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs towards Jerusalem. 

9. Arab and Jewish refugees: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of the Jews. 68% left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. 

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms. 

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be 930,000. 

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100 million refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey. 

13. The Arab-Israeli conflict: The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won. 

14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them. 15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths. 

16. The UN record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel. 

17. Of the 690 UN General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel. 

18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians. 

19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. 

20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.