Ever since I first started doing "Hasbara" on the Internet in 2005 I have witnessed the spread and "trend" of ignorance and "revisionist anti Israel / anti-Zionistic" rhetoric and teachings.
In my research I have found that this has been going on now since 1967 ever since Israel successfully defended itself and liberated the areas of Judaea and Shomron, which we were unable to do so in 1948.
This trend is also due to the total neglect and abandonment of the field of "Hasbara" by successive Israeli Governments and clarity of Israel's stance regarding the fate of our Indigenous homeland.
As for many Jews in the Diaspora, our greatest failure was caused by our parents overwhelming desire to "blend in" and assimilate to negate "Zionism" - to be "faithful citizens" in reponse to the latent anti-Semitism that exists in the world.
How during the post World War II / Holocaust rush to identify as "faithful citizens" our parents negated and hid their Jewishness and rushed to embrace secularization.
There are countless stories, but what stood out to me the most was the volunteer work I did in the summer of 1970 in New York when we would deliver food to elderly Jewish couples -the parents of children who fled New York City to the neighboring states and the wealthy suburbs leaving some of their parents in rat infested decrepit apartment buildings!
Though many of the apartment buildings were utterly disgusting, once you entered the apartment of the elderly mother or father. you entered a lost world, a world of Yiddishkite. As an 18 year old, totally "Driving Miss Daisy" Southern reform and secular Jew I was dumbfounded. You could not "just deliver" the packages of food we brought! My two fellow volunteers would be immersed in such warmth and love of grandparents from a world we never knew, the world of the Shtetl of Galicia. The Jews of the "Old Country". I was embarrased, for I knew nothing, no Hebrew no Yiddush. Even the basic terminology of Jewishness of religious ceremonies to "daven" "Mincha" "Tefliah" or even what a "Tallit" was!
One can vividly see today the outcome of how our non-Orthodox parents, failed or out right refused to teach their children nor adhere to even the basic rudimentaries of Judaism, are responding!
In Israel, our greatest success was in the liberation of our indigenous homeland in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War and our two greatest failures were the failure to "stop" the local Arab populace from fleeing and our establishment of control over the Temple Mount!
Our secondary failure was the makeup of the post 1956 Sinai War Israeli political system that allowed the spread of the "soul searching among comrages" inspired by those Israeli communists of Mapam and Matzpen who were at a loss when Stalin broke and purged the Jews from the "Party", as part of the embarassment of the defeat of the Soviet Armed Armies.
This "soul" searching spread throughout the "Leftist" -read Labor Party, reached it's peak in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967. When those "Labor Party affiliated" Israeli leaders rejected outright any Israeli attempt to annex or cease control over or settlement -read "occupation" of the liberated areas and allowed the void to be filled with the "Big Lie". The "Lie" of Palestine!!
Israeli leaders failed then to relay the HISTORICAL TRUTH! That Judaea and Shomron ARE (still) part of the Balfour Declaration designated "Homeland" of the Jewish People enshrined by the League of Nations "Mandate" that was given to the British to rule over
That the Arabs who claim today to be "Palestinians" said zilch, nada to King Abdullah I of Jordan when he invaded and conquered the area in 1948! Nor when he tried to Annex the area.
Israel was a society "drunk" with the financial victory of the Post Six Day War and the control over expansive territory in Sinai, the Golan and the "Disputed Territories" of Judaea and Shomron. Israel suddenly had a large pool of cheap laborers. Jews from "Arab lands" who had been neglected and held in destain suddenly went up the ladder in society from being the street cleaners and laborers to the "managerial" positions.
We -those who ARE NOT of the Knitted Kipa modern Orthodox -have failed to impress upon our "secular youth" what life was like as stateless people, and how daily life was prior to the Six Day War!! We need to teach and impress upon each and everyone of them how precious it is to have a "country/home" of our own.
That as Jews WE CAN BE a "moral nation" and people- a true "light upon other nations", but we must be totally aware of the very real and malicious world we live in!
Though the Nazis were "THE" most "efficient" and most "successful" in their attempt to eradicate us -and when I say US I mean ALL Jews! The very real hatred and despisal known as anti-Semitism is still whispered behind our backs or shouted in our faces, or passed out in leaflets, or posted on Social Media. Anti-Semitism the hatred of Jews exists openly throughout the "Western" "Enlightened World" and it is spreading thanks to OUR failure to unite as one to push back!
As Jews We -collectively- cannot afford the luxury of descending into a state of slumber! We must arise -TOGETHER -from the stupor
We -ALL JEWS MUST remember "WE" -especailly here in Israel, are surrounded by a people whose basic instincts for utter barbarity are well documented!
Arfaia: "I made my parents very proud of what I did".
Q: "How do murder and rape cause pride?"
Arfaia: "I didn't just rape someone, I murdered a Jewish woman. You won't be able to understand it because our thinking is different. If you ask anyone if they would be happy to kill a Jew... you will see that I have done everything that Arabs dream of doing".
Q: "Why didn't you just do it a while ago if you so longed for it?"
Arfaia: "This is not what Allah planned for me this murder is the best and most important thing I have done in my life. If she had stayed alive it would have meant that I had failed in what I had planned and failed in the mission, that was the hardest feeling I felt in my life".
Arfaia: "I planned to enter Jerusalem through the forest to kill Jews ...I wanted to kill multiple Jews and not just one, but when I was there I saw that Allah had sent me the Jewish woman I realized that I had to kill her, this was the fate that Allah summoned me".
"I planned to enter some place to wear a kippa so that they would think I was Jewish and to stab as many Jews as possible to kill them".
"If I hadn't met the girl on the way I would have entered Jerusalem to carry out the attack and murder Jews".
"After I murdered her, I stayed by the body for a while longer, waiting for more Jewish people to come so that I could surprise them and stab them with a knife and kill them...." "If I had died during the attempt to kill more Jews, for me it is a blessed thing because then I would have died as a martyr"
We see by the words of Arafat Arfaiah the deep hatred and sickness within the "Palestinians" the same sickness that is reinforced daily to their children.
One should take heed and note from this recorded transcript he refers to murdering JEWS and not "Israeli" nor Zionist's nor Settlers as the apologists for falestinian dezinformatsiya claim!
We must live by the words of Zev Jabotinsky, and in the mannerisms of warfare taught to our pre state "Night Squads" by Major General Orde Charles Wingate -A son of missionaries, Wingate carried a Bible wherever he went in pre-state Israel and trumpeted Jewish claims to the land just as British Mandatory policy turned anti-Zionist.
Wingate, known as the "Known Friend"(Hayedid HaYaduah) strived to remind us of to be like Gideon, Shimeon Bar Kochba and Judah HaMaccabee! To be leaders who are willing to stand boldly -unafraid of death to fight like lions and to be proud Jews.
Above ALL else we Jews must cease to fight between ourselves! WE all of us must work to stay a people united for only then will AM Yisrael continue to be Alive in Ertzanu!
