Trotsky and the anti-Purim BDS
Trotsky and the anti-Purim BDS

On Purim we celebrate how Mordechai and Esther used their influence in the Persian Royal Palace to protect the Jews from Haman's evil plot to kill all the Jews. 

Mordechai and Esther protected the Jews in Persia but during the Russian revolution another Jew in an influential position refused to protect the Jews. During the Russian revolution when the Red Army was fighting the Tzarist White Army Leo Trotsky (whose real name was Lev Bronstein) was second in command after Lenin and one of the architects  of the Red Army. 

The White Army was repeatedly attacking Jewish communities, but Trotsky refused to help the Jews when asked to come to their aid. Arthur Rosen explains "...He began to exhort the Jewish Communists to abandon Yiddish and learn the local languages. He hoped that the Jewish worker would act as a catalyst to convert the local workers. Yet he failed to realize that most Soviet Jews were ruined financially by the revolution, had lived in poverty and misery for many years and were skeptical that Communism could revolutionize the world. 

Even though many Jews reached high ranks in the Communist Party after the revolution, they were only a small minority. In his own locale, the place where he was born, he was hated intensely and accused of robbing and plundering the Jews.

It is related that the chief Rabbi of Moscow, Rabbi Jacob Maze, once appeared before Trotsky to plead on the behalf of the Russian Jews. Trotsky answered him, as he had done on various occasions, that he was a Communist and did not consider himself a Jew. To this Rabbi Maze replied: "Trotsky makes the revolutions, and the Bronsteins pay the bills." 

Churchill was quoted as saying that so great was the contribution that Trotsky made to the Red Army, that he deserved to be made Dictator of Russia, save but one obstacle: He was a Jew. He was still a Jew and nothing could get him past it. It is difficult when you have deserted your family, repudiated your race, spat upon the religion of your fathers, only to be denied the great prize of being considered a non-Jew..." 

Instead of following Mordechai and Esther's example, today many Jews are choosing to follow in Trotsky's steps. On May 17, 2018 Mary Ann Butler reported about a letter written by Ifnotnow, a group of Reform Jews, condemning Israel's "occupation" and demanding that Reform leader Rabbi Jacobs oppose it, calling the "occupation" a "moral disaster".

"...the Occupation, an ongoing moral disaster for those who uphold and support it and a daily nightmare for the Palestinians who live under it. As current members and alumni of Reform synagogues, URJ camps and NFTY, we were taught by our community to value peace and pursue social justice, and to view every person as someone made b'tselem Elohim, in the image of the Divine. We demand now that you commit to opposing Israeli repression and ending the Occupation.." 

On June 20, 2018 JNS reported "At New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on Monday night, Birthright Fellow and student leader Ariel Tidhar reported that the American Jewish activist group IfNotNow waylaid their group, as well as four other Taglit Birthright groups trying to check into their flights to Israel. 

IfNotNow attempts “to end American Jewish support for the occupation,” referring to lands administered by Israel after wars, including eastern Jerusalem. Tidhar told JNS, “They set up a table with a sign and snacks, and then they were coming up to participants while we were standing in line. While they were talking to participants, they were video recording and transcribing the conversations, saying ‘you should learn the truth about the country you’re about to visit’ and that ‘Birthright goes against Jewish morals..." 

Ifnotnow members claim that the "occupation" is "against Jewish morals" and a "moral disaster". They are wrong, even non-Jews recognize the "occupation" is not immoral, Native American activist  from Alberta, Ryan Bellerose defends the right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria. In an interview for the Times of Israel Bellerose said  "I feel compelled to fight the idea that Israel is a colonialist state, that the Jews are colonizers from Europe and the entire invalid and false Arab narrative that has been spread since the 1960s". 

"This ridiculous inversion of history has been accepted because nobody really stands up and fights it. And I believe coming from an Indian from Canada, who has lived through actual apartheid (two laws, one state for two peoples), I have a unique perspective. I have lived through colonization, and Israel is not even remotely colonialist.

"I also do not like people who tell lies to Indians or who use our naivete and ignorance of the world to weaponize us. You are Jews from Judea. Your entire history is in the earth you walk on. Some of you were displaced and you fought for 2,000 years to return to the land of your forefathers. You do not need to be apologetic for doing something that is the goal of every indigenous people.

"You need to be celebratory. You need to be proud...  Israel needs to be more assertive about its ancestral lands, that it cannot be ambiguous and that the people as well as the government need to understand that it’s not about your “religion or spirituality.” It’s about your very identity. 

"Your connection to your ancestral lands is not only spiritual but physical. Israel itself needs to take a larger role in stopping lies and false assertions because they really do cause issues. I believe that you need to become better at telling your story, which really is an amazing story. I think that once Jewish people start seeing themselves through a Jewish and not European lens, once they understand themselves as indigenous people, they will be stronger in their identity and will become what they are meant to be, which is a light unto the nations. 

" ...You are a great example to my people and to all indigenous people of what indigenous peoples are capable of. You were a damaged fractured people who had the entire world against you, yet you not only regained your ancestral lands, you rebuilt them and you built a thriving powerful nation without losing touch with your ancestral roots. Tell me that’s not a powerful story and example." 

       Those who call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria need to explain why no Jews can live there while Arabs can live and work anywhere in Israel where they are 20% of the population.

 They also need to explain how they plan to protect Israel considering that an Israeli withdrawal from endanger Israel.  When the Jews left Gaza Hamas took over and started attacking Israel with missiles from there. If Israel withdraws from Judea and Samaria, Hamas will take  over and attack Israel from the West Bank as they do from Gaza making life in Israel impossible.

 It would be suicidal for Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria as long as the Palestinians continue supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization that rejects the two state solution and is committed to the destruction of the Jewish State.   

  The Palestinian Media Watch translated an interview by one of Hamas founders Mahmoud al-Zahar to the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam in which he said “transfer what it has [in Gaza] or just a small part of it to the West Bank, we would be able to settle the battle of the ‘final promise [to destroy Israel] with a speed that no one can imagine…[Some] have said Hamas wants to create an Islamic emirate in Gaza. We won’t do that, but we will build an Islamic state in Palestine, all of Palestine…”         

    Ezequiel Doiny is author of "Obama's assault on Jerusalem's Western Wall