A friend I grew up with wrote the following in response to what happened in Amona:
My first emotion was anger. Anger at the Israelis-by-lack-of-Green-Card who have hijacked this mighty nation toward the path of national assimilation, demoralizing and physically beating good members of the tribe along the way. Then came pain; pain that a good man, who laid it on the line for the Land of Israel, is now saying, "We are grasshoppers in their eyes and are but grasshoppers in our own eyes." Just like ten of the twelve spies sent by Moses to scout out the land said before our people first left exile for the Promised Land.
The pain and anger subside quickly, though, once I acknowledge that, despite the feelings of emptiness, the glass is so full. There is an Aliyah Revolution afoot, like it or not. The rise of Nefesh b'Nefesh, with planeloads of olim-by-choice touching down multiple times a year, are not due to any Israeli economic boom or enlightened government here in the Jewish State during these years since the collapse of the Oslo Accords and the launch of the Temple Mount War (to translate the Arabic Al-Aksa Intifada). It is due to a conscious return home by people who know it is time.
This Aliyah does not consist only of activists, nor does it consist largely of settler-types like myself. These people are suburbanites, Hassidim, good ol' American Jewish hippies, Ph.D. students, kids straight out of high school who join the IDF, instead of some fraternity, and a whole bunch of hipsters, who are just way too cool for the Exile. This Aliyah is not about escaping some outside force (economic hardship, Jew-hatred); it is about Israel simply being the place for the Jew who wants to 'do Jewish' in 5766.
Everybody is on their way home to Zion and everybody is needed here (even if you want to see a reenactment of the Six Day War with an armed Hamas-run Palestinian Authority and a nuclear Iran).
For a moment, though, I am going to address my 'homies', if you will - those Jews who are tuned-in, but are considering dropping out (of the Jewish Project), due to seemingly insurmountable odds.
I, for one, don't see Ehud Olmert, some consistently-wrong polling agencies and a state-controlled press to be 'insurmountable', but that's just me.
I don't know what the events in Amona looked like to those who were not there, but if they weakened your resolve that this is the place to be, then the bloodied heads of teenage activists distracted you from the panoramic shot of what went on there. What I saw on the beautiful mountain of Amona, where Abraham stood and was shown all of the Land of Israel by the Most High, was a glimpse of the Land of Israel at the center of the stage of world Jewry. It was that glimpse that every American oleh (lit. "ascender") saw for a moment or longer at some point, which initially made them consider staying here and making it their home - leaving perfectly excellent lives in the Exile for the most complicated piece of real estate on the planet.
Through all the blood and the hate, I saw dedicated Jews who decided that there is something in this world worth sacrificing for. Don't get me wrong, there were entire families there who expected Amona to be a festival of democratic carry-me-away-gently protest, like back in the days of 'Nam or the US civil rights movement. But wait. Back then people also had to submit to police violence in order to stand up for justice. Every generation has its challenges, and what I saw in Amona was similar to what I see every time I see hundreds of American Jews disembarking from airplanes on the Ben Gurion Airport tarmac, greeted by the national anthem and hundreds of Israeli soldiers who help carry their bags to the hangar, where the prime minister awaits them.
Those people in Amona are the same kind of Jews as those who leave America for Israel. The kids in Amona are no longer dazzled by the uniform worn by the order-follower who comes to tell them a Jew has no right to the Land of Israel. The American Jew who says, "Thank you and Shalom," and boards that plane is no longer willing to believe the lies about America being a "perfectly okay place for a Jew to live."
What is more, I would venture to say that a large percentage of the protestors in Amona were olim or the children of immigrants. And I would not be surprised. Every Diaspora community brought with it some key ingredient from the Exile to modern day Israel - a spark, if you will - that enriches and drives the Jewish Project being played out in the Land of Israel.
We American olim, immigrants-by-choice from the pinnacle of Western civilization, bring with us the willingness to stand up for justice - no matter how impractical The Man tells us that is - until justice prevails and injustice crumbles. We bring with us the knowledge that the statement "good and evil cannot mix" is merely an excuse to sit on the sidelines and allow evil to be perpetrated until good just drops from the sky, which would defeat the entire purpose of our creation.
We bring with us from the fleshpots not only liberal arts educations, imbuing us with the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Jewish brother Abbie Hoffman, but the cultural Torah of twin-souls, and mass-Aliyah-enthusiasts, Rabbis Shlomo Carlebach and Meir Kahane. They taught American Jewry, each in his own way, what love of Israel was all about.
We came to Israel to build and are unfazed by physical destruction. We came from the permanent spiritual destruction wreaked in the Exile. Compared to that, the demolition of a concrete structure is not an emotional hardship. Those in Amona did not leave there with a sense of defeat, but with the sense that they stood up for justice and were forced to pay a heavy price. The wounded all say they are ready to continue to pay on behalf of their dream and the Jewish destiny.
We need more people, though. I am not just talking about more people to stand up to face the police horses and clubs, but more people to be here, to play their role in improving and enriching all aspects of Jewish statehood, in the rehabilitation of our nation after an extremely long and difficult journey through Exile. If you are alive in this generation and see something wrong with the State of the Jews, or even have the desire to turn it into the Jewish State, then you are, as Stephen Gaskin once said, "God's eyes on the scene". It is your responsibility to get a move on and get fixin'.
The wounds incurred in Amona will heal. The wounded in the hospital told each reporter the same thing: they don't regret a thing and vow to return the next time. Israelis-by-choice are a growing force on every level, fixing our people's great sin of rejecting the Land of Israel the first time around by embracing the good and fixing the not-yet-awesome.
I am told Ehud Olmert has two sons who refused to serve in the IDF and a daughter who lives in Paris. Meanwhile, I have a brother moving here in less than two years and recognize at least one person every time Nefesh b'Nefesh brings over a planeload of American revolutionaries. (They call 'em olim.)
Meanwhile, Israel is now the largest Jewish population center in the world and will soon be home to the majority of the Jewish people. The Land of Israel is where the game is being played. It is the only place where the Jewish Project can be implemented in all its glory. Moreover, if you believe the Master of the World indeed gave us a blueprint for perfecting the world at Mount Sinai, then you must concede that the holy document makes it quite clear where this society must be built. If you don't buy that, but somehow have the secular Jewish urge to implement some sort of massive world-fixing project, then forget Honduras. The cameras of the world are focused on Jerusalem, just waiting for someone to do something right here so it can be broadcast as an example to the rest of humanity.
And seriously, between the color-war and the school-yard skirmishes (okay, even following the occasional 'pogrom' called for by an unelected, interim prime minister), life in the Promised Land remains rich and beautiful. You meet human gems on the streets each day and in the line at the supermarket. Spring has arrived early and everything is in bloom, and all the while more and more Americans are packing their bags to make the move. American accents are heard in places like Afula, Jaffa and Beit She'an. At my home in Sde Boaz, where a house was demolished less than a month ago, trees are taking root in soil that was evidently not meant for a house, and a community has grown stronger. I planted a carob tree the other day before I went to work in Beit El (home of the original Stairway to Heaven).
So, please, as someone who was hit with a baton by an Israeli policeman in Amona, as someone who saw a house built laboriously by Jewish hands crushed under the bulldozers of the Jewish army, let me assure you that not only are the other 45 homes in Amona still standing, but the community of Sde Boaz is still planting, growing and building - and Jews just like yourself continue to make Aliyah.
The only way we can lose this struggle, or fail to deliver the goods to our children's generation, is by throwing up our hands and choosing the irrelevance of Jewish exile, replete with its struggles against Holocaust-forgetting and gentile-marrying, over the awesome task of moving the Jewish destiny forward using the puzzle pieces each and every one of us holds. Together, those pieces constitute Jerusalem rebuilt.
After wasting so much time and energy trying to better a state that I thought was reishit tzmichat geulatenu [the beginning of the flowering of our redemption - ed.], I now understand that good and evil can not mix, that this state is truly evil (this is hardly the first example, just one of the more shocking). Though I will continue to identify as a member of the Jewish People, I can no longer side with the 'Israelis.' This is an evil state and an evil society, and I will not volunteer to continue to be a part of it.I shed a tear after reading it. After seeing emails from others - some who have not even finished their Aliyah paperwork - talking about reconsidering, as well, I realized that, although I have been in news-writing mode for the past few years, I must address this issue.
Goodbye Israel. You broke my heart.
My first emotion was anger. Anger at the Israelis-by-lack-of-Green-Card who have hijacked this mighty nation toward the path of national assimilation, demoralizing and physically beating good members of the tribe along the way. Then came pain; pain that a good man, who laid it on the line for the Land of Israel, is now saying, "We are grasshoppers in their eyes and are but grasshoppers in our own eyes." Just like ten of the twelve spies sent by Moses to scout out the land said before our people first left exile for the Promised Land.
The pain and anger subside quickly, though, once I acknowledge that, despite the feelings of emptiness, the glass is so full. There is an Aliyah Revolution afoot, like it or not. The rise of Nefesh b'Nefesh, with planeloads of olim-by-choice touching down multiple times a year, are not due to any Israeli economic boom or enlightened government here in the Jewish State during these years since the collapse of the Oslo Accords and the launch of the Temple Mount War (to translate the Arabic Al-Aksa Intifada). It is due to a conscious return home by people who know it is time.
This Aliyah does not consist only of activists, nor does it consist largely of settler-types like myself. These people are suburbanites, Hassidim, good ol' American Jewish hippies, Ph.D. students, kids straight out of high school who join the IDF, instead of some fraternity, and a whole bunch of hipsters, who are just way too cool for the Exile. This Aliyah is not about escaping some outside force (economic hardship, Jew-hatred); it is about Israel simply being the place for the Jew who wants to 'do Jewish' in 5766.
Everybody is on their way home to Zion and everybody is needed here (even if you want to see a reenactment of the Six Day War with an armed Hamas-run Palestinian Authority and a nuclear Iran).
For a moment, though, I am going to address my 'homies', if you will - those Jews who are tuned-in, but are considering dropping out (of the Jewish Project), due to seemingly insurmountable odds.
I, for one, don't see Ehud Olmert, some consistently-wrong polling agencies and a state-controlled press to be 'insurmountable', but that's just me.
I don't know what the events in Amona looked like to those who were not there, but if they weakened your resolve that this is the place to be, then the bloodied heads of teenage activists distracted you from the panoramic shot of what went on there. What I saw on the beautiful mountain of Amona, where Abraham stood and was shown all of the Land of Israel by the Most High, was a glimpse of the Land of Israel at the center of the stage of world Jewry. It was that glimpse that every American oleh (lit. "ascender") saw for a moment or longer at some point, which initially made them consider staying here and making it their home - leaving perfectly excellent lives in the Exile for the most complicated piece of real estate on the planet.
Through all the blood and the hate, I saw dedicated Jews who decided that there is something in this world worth sacrificing for. Don't get me wrong, there were entire families there who expected Amona to be a festival of democratic carry-me-away-gently protest, like back in the days of 'Nam or the US civil rights movement. But wait. Back then people also had to submit to police violence in order to stand up for justice. Every generation has its challenges, and what I saw in Amona was similar to what I see every time I see hundreds of American Jews disembarking from airplanes on the Ben Gurion Airport tarmac, greeted by the national anthem and hundreds of Israeli soldiers who help carry their bags to the hangar, where the prime minister awaits them.
Those people in Amona are the same kind of Jews as those who leave America for Israel. The kids in Amona are no longer dazzled by the uniform worn by the order-follower who comes to tell them a Jew has no right to the Land of Israel. The American Jew who says, "Thank you and Shalom," and boards that plane is no longer willing to believe the lies about America being a "perfectly okay place for a Jew to live."
What is more, I would venture to say that a large percentage of the protestors in Amona were olim or the children of immigrants. And I would not be surprised. Every Diaspora community brought with it some key ingredient from the Exile to modern day Israel - a spark, if you will - that enriches and drives the Jewish Project being played out in the Land of Israel.
We American olim, immigrants-by-choice from the pinnacle of Western civilization, bring with us the willingness to stand up for justice - no matter how impractical The Man tells us that is - until justice prevails and injustice crumbles. We bring with us the knowledge that the statement "good and evil cannot mix" is merely an excuse to sit on the sidelines and allow evil to be perpetrated until good just drops from the sky, which would defeat the entire purpose of our creation.
We bring with us from the fleshpots not only liberal arts educations, imbuing us with the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Jewish brother Abbie Hoffman, but the cultural Torah of twin-souls, and mass-Aliyah-enthusiasts, Rabbis Shlomo Carlebach and Meir Kahane. They taught American Jewry, each in his own way, what love of Israel was all about.
We came to Israel to build and are unfazed by physical destruction. We came from the permanent spiritual destruction wreaked in the Exile. Compared to that, the demolition of a concrete structure is not an emotional hardship. Those in Amona did not leave there with a sense of defeat, but with the sense that they stood up for justice and were forced to pay a heavy price. The wounded all say they are ready to continue to pay on behalf of their dream and the Jewish destiny.
We need more people, though. I am not just talking about more people to stand up to face the police horses and clubs, but more people to be here, to play their role in improving and enriching all aspects of Jewish statehood, in the rehabilitation of our nation after an extremely long and difficult journey through Exile. If you are alive in this generation and see something wrong with the State of the Jews, or even have the desire to turn it into the Jewish State, then you are, as Stephen Gaskin once said, "God's eyes on the scene". It is your responsibility to get a move on and get fixin'.
The wounds incurred in Amona will heal. The wounded in the hospital told each reporter the same thing: they don't regret a thing and vow to return the next time. Israelis-by-choice are a growing force on every level, fixing our people's great sin of rejecting the Land of Israel the first time around by embracing the good and fixing the not-yet-awesome.
I am told Ehud Olmert has two sons who refused to serve in the IDF and a daughter who lives in Paris. Meanwhile, I have a brother moving here in less than two years and recognize at least one person every time Nefesh b'Nefesh brings over a planeload of American revolutionaries. (They call 'em olim.)
Meanwhile, Israel is now the largest Jewish population center in the world and will soon be home to the majority of the Jewish people. The Land of Israel is where the game is being played. It is the only place where the Jewish Project can be implemented in all its glory. Moreover, if you believe the Master of the World indeed gave us a blueprint for perfecting the world at Mount Sinai, then you must concede that the holy document makes it quite clear where this society must be built. If you don't buy that, but somehow have the secular Jewish urge to implement some sort of massive world-fixing project, then forget Honduras. The cameras of the world are focused on Jerusalem, just waiting for someone to do something right here so it can be broadcast as an example to the rest of humanity.
And seriously, between the color-war and the school-yard skirmishes (okay, even following the occasional 'pogrom' called for by an unelected, interim prime minister), life in the Promised Land remains rich and beautiful. You meet human gems on the streets each day and in the line at the supermarket. Spring has arrived early and everything is in bloom, and all the while more and more Americans are packing their bags to make the move. American accents are heard in places like Afula, Jaffa and Beit She'an. At my home in Sde Boaz, where a house was demolished less than a month ago, trees are taking root in soil that was evidently not meant for a house, and a community has grown stronger. I planted a carob tree the other day before I went to work in Beit El (home of the original Stairway to Heaven).
So, please, as someone who was hit with a baton by an Israeli policeman in Amona, as someone who saw a house built laboriously by Jewish hands crushed under the bulldozers of the Jewish army, let me assure you that not only are the other 45 homes in Amona still standing, but the community of Sde Boaz is still planting, growing and building - and Jews just like yourself continue to make Aliyah.
The only way we can lose this struggle, or fail to deliver the goods to our children's generation, is by throwing up our hands and choosing the irrelevance of Jewish exile, replete with its struggles against Holocaust-forgetting and gentile-marrying, over the awesome task of moving the Jewish destiny forward using the puzzle pieces each and every one of us holds. Together, those pieces constitute Jerusalem rebuilt.