FOR D'VARIM
STANDING UNIFIED WITH ISRAEL
The current campaign, in which Israel is engaged to protect herself and to eradicate brutal and vicious terrorism, is in its fourth week. Entering the Gaza Strip has revealed how much work is still left to be done. Parallel to these efforts, the images produced by this struggle continue to be broadcasted to the world.
Cries of “Israeli aggression,” “massacres,” and world “opinions,” are continuously formulated. Anyone with a keyboard, a voice, or an Arabic sounding name, has opinions to share. While these people may be well-meaning and rational, when it comes to Israel, they express senseless nonsense and much worse.
And then come the protests, especially in Europe, a continent still saturated and dripping with over two thousand years of Jewish blood and persecution. The “friends” who live in a supposedly civilized Europe cannot stop blaming the Jews, enabling rhetoric and violent mobs against Israel and the Jewish people at large (not just Israelis). When Jews, minding their own business, are trapped by marauding and shocking gangs while praying in a synagogue, it is clear who is the enemy. These eerie and dangerous actions invoke memories from dark days, most recently in the 1930s. This is pure anti-Semitism, not anti-Israel. If not, why do people who disagree with Israel’s choices call for Jewish extermination?
Just two weeks ago, on that very continent of Europe, a passenger airline was shot out of the sky, callously and deliberately snuffing out the lives of close to three-hundred innocent civilians. No protests anywhere around the world have been held and directed against the thugs who committed this atrocity. The same is true regarding the indiscriminate slaughter by radical Muslims all over the Middle East and Africa. Some Christians have been literally crucified by radical Muslims. And the world remains silent.
Israel has a duty to destroy the rockets that target her citizens. Israel has a duty to destroy the tunnels wherever they may be, designed not to smuggle computers and medicine for their people, but to murder and kidnap Israelis. Hamas assembles bombs next to children’s cribs. They store rockets in schools. They launch mortars from apartment buildings, hospitals, and mosques. They hide the entrances to terror tunnels inside regular houses. Hamas has rained down thousands of rockets on Israel, each one with the explicit hope of slaughtering random civilians. If they were concerned about their civilians, they would stop the cowardly firing of rockets from inside civilian areas.
To blame Israel for innocent civilian deaths in Gaza is as absurd as blaming the train if someone, Heaven forbid, were to tie his children to the railroad tracks. Yet, Israel – indeed, all Jews – are shamefully blamed by the pathetic and corrupt United Nations. Even more shameful is the cowardly call by the United States administration for unconditional cease fires, of condemnations, and of banning flights to Israel, but not to Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan. These actions clearly take the side of terrorism, in meaningless “moral equivalency.”
Despite the efforts of the Israel Defense Forces to clear civilians from harm’s way, ruthless Hamas terrorists attack them back into civilian houses in which weapons are being stored. If Israel truly wanted to destroy Gaza and its people, it could do so within a day, from the sky, with no loss of Israeli life. Why carry out a more painful, expensive ground incursion that risks the lives of its soldiers? Yet, it is the fault of the Jews. Israel has learned that it is currently without friends and it must fight against terror alone.
What is most disturbing of all, though, is how fellow Jews, in Israel and around the world, are publicly standing against Israel. That is crossing every red line. Even in the event that someone may believe Israel is wrong, now is most definitely not the time to publicly voice negative opinions. Not when: 1) Dozens of rockets are being rained down on Israeli civilian populations affecting millions of people, 2) more tunnels are being discovered intended for purposes of murder, 3) the world is condemning Israel as well as all Jewish people across the globe, 4) open miracles are literally showing the Hand of G-d every single day, as the daily potential of thousands of deaths faces Israel.
For fellow Jews – and, for that matter, any decent person – to openly advocate against Israel’s fully justified defense of its existence, while she is battling those who would like nothing more than seeing more and more of their own dead, is actually promoting terrorism, murder, and the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. Those who do this, while rockets are flying and tunnels are being used for indiscriminate murder, contribute to empowering terrorism, weakening decency, morality, and goodness. This is playing into the hands of those who want to destroy Israel, together with the Jewish people, including countries that espouses freedom.
The ultimate way of defeating an enemy, even a most powerful one, is through standing together despite even sharp differences, as is understand from the use of a word in this week’s Torah portion, “D’varim.” The Torah records the story of the defeat of king Sichon of the Amorite nation and king Og, of the Bashan kingdom. After defeating Sichon, the Jewish people “conquered all his cities… we left no survivors.” (D’varim (Deuteronomy) 2:34.) The Torah then goes into detail: From ‘Aroer’… to ‘Gilead,’ there was no populated city too strong for us. G-d delivered them all before us.” (2:36.)
In the first instance, the Torah chooses the Hebrew word Ir – city. In the second quote, the Torah chooses the word Kiryah – populated city. And the same applies to the following description about Og: “We conquered all his cities… There was no populated city that we did not take from them.” (3:4.)
In Hebrew, the term “city” is a large area where people on any level can live. “Populated city,” however, is where the population, despite any differences, is unified. The two kings Sichon and Og, who were brothers, understood the power of unity. They were, indeed, the strongest nations in the region at that time, and were unified in this cause.
The unity of the Jewish people, however, overwhelmed the unity of those two nations. And this was because they were prepared to enter the Holy Land. When unity is combined with holiness, there is no power, regardless of how prevailing, that gets in the way.
The people around the world who hate Jews realize how the Jews from Israel and the Jews from around the world are considered as the same community. If only those (thankfully, few) Jews who are currently aiding and abetting the malicious and cruel foes of goodness and civility, would focus on becoming unified with their own people, the enemy would lose much of its support and strength.
The Jewish people of Israel are not – and cannot be – “occupiers” in their own homeland. The right of living in the Holy Land is by Divine will, not by the “false grace” of the United Nations or any other power. Israel must defend itself in the face of international ignorance and hatred. The IDF's discovery of Hamas's evil Rosh Hashana plot, to use its tunnels to send hundreds of terrorists into multiple Israeli border communities simultaneously, to carry out a massacre of unprecedented scope, together with the abduction of hostages to Gaza, should be the rude awakening for all Jewish people, and all reasonably-minded people around the world, to support Israel at this time.
A unified stand will put a stop to all bloodshed from all sides for all time. No one can stop the media from operating as accomplices to murderous terrorism and evil. With true unity of all Jews, and all decent people, the energy will be whole. And that will hopefully solidify the unity which will lead to the ultimate form of peace of the Messianic era.
SUMMARY: There is no greater power than unity. Despite the current difficulties instigated by the situation in Israel, unity can help overcome it all.