Ordinarily a story like this – the “Palestinian” flag flying over a Jewish camp for kids in Washington State, USA – would rate scant attention, except that it symbolizes two points: 1. Our desperate need to be loved. 2. It happened at the time when an Islamic preacher in California got caught sermonizing death to all Jews.
That imam at Davis, CA lamely apologized (to stem the bad PR), and so did the officials at Camp Solomon Schechter who explained that they won’t do it again, but that they hoisted the flag because some Arab kids were coming to visit so this would be a good time for some solidarity.
According to them at the camp, it was meant to provide “a teachable moment” and to foster “empathy…”hope”…”love”…and “peace.”
Talk like that is not exclusive to that camp where the leaders meant no harm and no disrespect to Israel. Their apology, I do believe.
We keep pleading for acceptance against enemies who just won’t take love for an answer. 
They were simply caught being stupid.
Stupid is who we are when we keep pleading for acceptance against enemies who just won’t take love for an answer.
Groveling is what we do even at home in America and even with Israel at our side; blessings that ought to make us feel high spirited and invincible instead of pathetic and submissive. (Borrowed from and based upon the novel “The Bathsheba Deadline.”)
I guess it’s too late to remind (some) American Jews that the “Palestinian” flag represents nothing, zero, since there is no “Palestinian” country or nation…and if it does mean anything, it means precisely what that imam preached – “the annihilation of all Jews everywhere.”
Yet faced with such baseless uncompromising hatred, for the sake of hope, love and peace, we persist in turning the other cheek.
Some day, we keep dreaming, they will love us back…if only we keep begging enough, and kowtowing enough.
I suppose it’s those 2,000 years in exile that have turned us into marshmallows, at least here in the USA, and Canada…certainly Europe.
We have no faith in our own strength.
Mark Twain had it like this (from the top of my head): “Jews are like horses. If they knew their own strength we should be afraid to ride them.”
During the exile we expected no favors and were grateful for anything, so long as they left us alone…between pogroms.
Now what’s the excuse?
In Toulouse, France, back in the Middle Ages, once a year the chief rabbi had to present himself at the steps of the cathedral to receive a ceremonial slap across the face. Nowadays that would be a mosque and indeed we do keep showing up at the steps as if we truly are inferior and deserve to be slapped around and humiliated.
The Israelis are right. Jews in America have gone so Liberal and so soft that they’ve lost touch with any sense of Jewishness or pride in Zionism.
Sorry to bring it up, but even in Israel itself some Jews act like strangers. At a time when Abbas called for “days of rage” and which led to the murder by an Arab of three members of the Salomon family, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it was learned, offered yet another “land swap.”
That only says that even the prime minister, a leader supposedly on the right, is insecure about “this good land” that was promised us in the wilderness.
No, we have not yet arrived, have we?
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the international bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and the ground-breaking inside-journalism thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” His latest is “News Anchor Sweetheart.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com