Once again has Israel, in the Holy Land and in the Diaspora, come to know that nothing has changed since the Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw in 1943.
For over a decade, Israel has had a predisposition to attempt to find reasonable solutions and just resolutions to disagreements that rest upon the anti-Semite's eternal argument, "Do this or die," as if the fate of the Holy Land and Her people were simply a Wimbledon tennis match. For the sake of peace, humiliation after humiliation has been endured by the Jews, not only on a diplomatic level, but on a personal level. Jewish students on US university campuses now are stalked by Arab criminals and Hillel offices guarded, while - surprise! - the civil rights of the most mendacious Jew-haters on US campuses are held to be sacrosanct. Any fact-twisting, identity-politics-driven psychopath is perfectly free to vent his indefensible and fact-free spleen before the students, so long as their diatribes promoting the extermination of the Jews are couched in the moral relativism and G-d-hating terminology of the thesis-plagiarizing pseudo-academic.
Perfectly reasonable police operations - regardless of how lurid and ridiculously alarmist the wire services portray affairs in Lebanon - are being undertaken with efficiency, while selective probity in target pre-identification bordering on the insane is being undertaken by the IDF. At the same time, blush-pink and flower-sweet "solutions", which shall ultimately result in more Jewish deaths, are being elegantly pursued in exquisite comfort over jet-lagged and gold-silverware dinners in Washington DC and near the UN headquarters in New York. How wonderfully empowering it must be to feel one can determine the fate of another sovereign nation over Cordon Bleu-grade repasts.
One dearly wishes Kofi Annan and Condoleezza Rice would put on flak jackets and park their expansive, silk-enclosed backsides in a Merkava III in south Lebanon with the Golani Brigade, so they can proceed in front of Jewish troops toward Hizbullah positions. I am sure the IDF would be pleased to provide covering fire so they may reach their objective - to negotiate with the initiators of this latest Arab-inspired folly. Why must the killing and dying be done by youth, few of whom have even tasted life, when the perpetrators of these conflicts are graying, portly comfort addicts safe in the bosom of their families and friends? Drop the ego-mad ambassadorial solipsists into the killing zone and then see how fast peace is achieved.
How long will it take the diplomatic community to figure out that the only acceptable solution to the "Jewish problem" in the minds of the worldwide Arab community is the complete and total extermination of the Jews; and then, after that is done, of everyone who chooses to be anything other than a Muslim? Please show me the official Knesset documents that substantiate the lie that the State of Israel is engaged in a war for territorial gain against anyone.
It takes so long for truly gentle, self-effacing and tolerant people to find their rage. "Perhaps we are doing something wrong," the just always challenge themselves before responding to attack. "Surely there is another way than paying the enemy out in the currency they pay us," is yet another concept with which the righteous invariably torture their souls prior to taking appropriate action. "If we are nice enough, the enemy will surely reciprocate our virtue," is one of the salient mindsets that made the Shoah an inevitability, when any fool knows you cannot kiss a rattlesnake and not get bit.
Where are the Israel navy vessels - or better yet, the US navy, which lost over 280 marines to Beirut terrorists - to escort Israeli merchant freight vessels out of Haifa harbor to continue necessary international export trade? Why must Israeli workers pay for the peccadilloes of Arab gangsters defending their drug- and flesh-peddling?
It is bad enough that Israel, always Israel, must be the proxy warrior fighting to defend the continued existence of Western civilization, the best aspects of which Jews created or bankrolled generously, in most instances with no thought of reward except the satisfaction of creating something truly beautiful and life-enhancing for all. Now, the Jews are being asked yet again to defend themselves with one arm tied behind their backs and blindfolded.
The time for danger-dodging middle-class suburban comfort- pleasure-worship is gone. The time for being ashamed of one's garlicky, penniless forebears - who fought over thousands of miles to reach the Promised Land only to land in another fight - is gone. It is time to be at one with them and to realize that the same deal Jews faced in 1943 is still the only deal on offer from anyone. The time for glorifying the Name of the Creator is now.
Copyright 2006 Walter James O'Brien
For over a decade, Israel has had a predisposition to attempt to find reasonable solutions and just resolutions to disagreements that rest upon the anti-Semite's eternal argument, "Do this or die," as if the fate of the Holy Land and Her people were simply a Wimbledon tennis match. For the sake of peace, humiliation after humiliation has been endured by the Jews, not only on a diplomatic level, but on a personal level. Jewish students on US university campuses now are stalked by Arab criminals and Hillel offices guarded, while - surprise! - the civil rights of the most mendacious Jew-haters on US campuses are held to be sacrosanct. Any fact-twisting, identity-politics-driven psychopath is perfectly free to vent his indefensible and fact-free spleen before the students, so long as their diatribes promoting the extermination of the Jews are couched in the moral relativism and G-d-hating terminology of the thesis-plagiarizing pseudo-academic.
Perfectly reasonable police operations - regardless of how lurid and ridiculously alarmist the wire services portray affairs in Lebanon - are being undertaken with efficiency, while selective probity in target pre-identification bordering on the insane is being undertaken by the IDF. At the same time, blush-pink and flower-sweet "solutions", which shall ultimately result in more Jewish deaths, are being elegantly pursued in exquisite comfort over jet-lagged and gold-silverware dinners in Washington DC and near the UN headquarters in New York. How wonderfully empowering it must be to feel one can determine the fate of another sovereign nation over Cordon Bleu-grade repasts.
One dearly wishes Kofi Annan and Condoleezza Rice would put on flak jackets and park their expansive, silk-enclosed backsides in a Merkava III in south Lebanon with the Golani Brigade, so they can proceed in front of Jewish troops toward Hizbullah positions. I am sure the IDF would be pleased to provide covering fire so they may reach their objective - to negotiate with the initiators of this latest Arab-inspired folly. Why must the killing and dying be done by youth, few of whom have even tasted life, when the perpetrators of these conflicts are graying, portly comfort addicts safe in the bosom of their families and friends? Drop the ego-mad ambassadorial solipsists into the killing zone and then see how fast peace is achieved.
How long will it take the diplomatic community to figure out that the only acceptable solution to the "Jewish problem" in the minds of the worldwide Arab community is the complete and total extermination of the Jews; and then, after that is done, of everyone who chooses to be anything other than a Muslim? Please show me the official Knesset documents that substantiate the lie that the State of Israel is engaged in a war for territorial gain against anyone.
It takes so long for truly gentle, self-effacing and tolerant people to find their rage. "Perhaps we are doing something wrong," the just always challenge themselves before responding to attack. "Surely there is another way than paying the enemy out in the currency they pay us," is yet another concept with which the righteous invariably torture their souls prior to taking appropriate action. "If we are nice enough, the enemy will surely reciprocate our virtue," is one of the salient mindsets that made the Shoah an inevitability, when any fool knows you cannot kiss a rattlesnake and not get bit.
Where are the Israel navy vessels - or better yet, the US navy, which lost over 280 marines to Beirut terrorists - to escort Israeli merchant freight vessels out of Haifa harbor to continue necessary international export trade? Why must Israeli workers pay for the peccadilloes of Arab gangsters defending their drug- and flesh-peddling?
It is bad enough that Israel, always Israel, must be the proxy warrior fighting to defend the continued existence of Western civilization, the best aspects of which Jews created or bankrolled generously, in most instances with no thought of reward except the satisfaction of creating something truly beautiful and life-enhancing for all. Now, the Jews are being asked yet again to defend themselves with one arm tied behind their backs and blindfolded.
The time for danger-dodging middle-class suburban comfort- pleasure-worship is gone. The time for being ashamed of one's garlicky, penniless forebears - who fought over thousands of miles to reach the Promised Land only to land in another fight - is gone. It is time to be at one with them and to realize that the same deal Jews faced in 1943 is still the only deal on offer from anyone. The time for glorifying the Name of the Creator is now.
Copyright 2006 Walter James O'Brien