Gaza's Reality

Ignoring reality

There’s an irony when a country created for a reason has the opposing effect then the original intention. At the turn of this century a small trickle of Jews made a precarious trip towards a dejected ottoman outpost. By blood and sweat they drained malarial swamps and with persistence made dry dead granules of sand grow luscious vegetation. With the onset of collapsing British hegemony in Palestine, Jewish Palestinians grew hopeful of reincarnating the ancient dream of a Jewish state in the Levant. Coupled with this hope came obvious dread, realizing the tenuousness dream. Reichsfuhrer Heindrich Himmler expressively telegrammed this feeling to the Mufti of Jerusalem; “I am sending you on the anniversary of the infamous Balfour declaration my hearty greetings and wishes for the successful pursuit of your struggle until the final victory” year 1942.

Many eons’ later with Israel realized, I stood as mammoth cumulus clouds over the city drifted apart gold beams of warmth liberating a dreary day. Symmetrical, perfectly lit in its European elegance
Zurich basked for a moment as a gem of perfection. On a bridge over a tributary feeding Lake Zurich a veiled woman walking with her daughter pointed an accusatory finger voicing her revulsion she spat “Itbach al Yahud” death to the Jews. Raised in Brooklyn I responded with an equally foul retort. A colossal man appeared behind her, blond and squared shouldered, and to my lasting dread her husband.

As the intifadah crested I was young student in a Paris environ. Riding the grinding escalator deep into the sickly air of the Paris Metro, Arab youths on the opposite escalator stared curiously, on passing one sucked in deeply his drivel flew–his aim true. Wiping warm saliva from my face, powerless as the escalator drove me further from the now exultant group.

For fifty years Jews have been targeted guilty by association, in 1967 and the years following the pain was barely tolerable. The manhood of Israel’s neighbors impeached the terrorism that flowed from their loss was like a defanged animal yelping for recognition. To be accosted by an Arab meant embarrassed by his shortcomings he vented on the defenseless.

Quintessential Israelis will always inquire what we Jews find in the Diaspora. Defenseless and susceptible to the every whim and mood of our gentile neighbors “wouldn’t you want to live in a country created for the distinct purpose of protecting you”? What was once an artful discussion with truth to each claim, today’s immutable truth is ­ Israel has become a danger to itself and increasingly Jews the world over.

Threatened with extinction Israel sits in the dark shadow of Darwinism’s rule number one, survival of the fittest. The Lubavitcher Rebbe refused to accept a conceited version of the future by ignoring the evanescent punditry of the day. He declared land for peace a fallacy even before today’s rude awakening of suicide bombings and kassam rockets. He entreated Israeli politicians when they sought his advice to avoid the very situation Israel finds itself in, weak, tired, led by a politician that changes his convictions quicker then his underpants. We may have rushed to label him then as an ultra-nationalist with farfetched dreams, but now, now its time to wake from this reverie, and fight for what's ours.

Or die not trying.