Crucifixion is an alien concept. Even G-d did not allow Isaac to be sacrificed in the worship of Him. Nor should we allow akeidahs to be erected to the worship of the concept of ‘How good and noble we feel that we treasure the enemy’s children more than our own.’ Since when has heroism become accepting death instead of fighting it – fighting the source of that death? Certain rabbis and intellectuals notwithstanding, this is simply old-fashioned avodah zorah, strange ideologies. These false ideologies never bring peace.
Where is our outrage? In the name of sophistication, we have muffled the normal and requisite response of outrage. Anger born of petulance is immature, rage raised against those who have forever taken that which is yours is necessary and moral. The suppression of justified anger leads to human beings no longer human but mindless, walking cliches – politically correct robots. It leads to the easy acceptance of injustice. So many officials in our community express outrage only when those of other groups claim a civil rights infraction. Yet they display amoral indifference to the murder of Jews by the hands of others.
So many Jews the world over extol how they value life by citing how protective they are of Palestinian Arab life. But by accepting the ever-increasing loss of their own, are they not elevating the life of Arabs over their own? What kind of demented ‘celebration of life’ is that?
The Applebaum-Spero family residing in Israel are the embodiment of what the Bnai Akiva/Mizrachi movement envisioned. Good citizens, whose sons fight in their country’s army, whose daughters serve in noble work projects; who live by the laws of G-d while contributing their talents, energy and vision to the society, Israel, in which they live. They gave up the comforts and earning power of America to live not simply in a country of Jews but in Eretz Yisrael – the historic, G-d given land, the Jewish state.
Foolishly and ironically, Israel has allowed its power to be its own albatross by invoking the fashionable theory that the powerful must show more restraint than those perceived as less powerful. The result is many more Israeli civilians dead than should ever have been allowed, and rendering to the Palestinian Arabs more power than when decades ago they faced Syria’s Assad and Jordan’s Hussein.
Thinking that with its power it always can stop Arab aggression tomorrow, Israel allows countless todays to go by wherein the Arab terror apparatus carries out its bloody slaughter. Perhaps if we were weaker, with our back up against the wall, we would fight with everything we have, and do so today. But because we are more powerful, we tie our own hands and act as if the real fight can wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow, when 2,000 will be dead?
Many are confusing the Palestinian Arab situation with the American civil rights movement of the 1960’s. They’re dead wrong. This is not a social issue where we must understand what motivates the aggrieved. Let us confront the reality that war has been declared by Islam against Israel, indeed against Jews the world over. We therefore must react as those involved in war and be guided by principles of war and not those of social work. No ‘understanding’ on our part will change the creed which lies deep in the pan-Arabic heart. It is hubris to think we can change these deeply-rooted emotions and religiously-based attitudes, these internalisms. Only the Arabs themselves can make that metamorphosis.
Thus far the Arab world is not reversing itself but is daily increasing its threats, diatribes, and theological assertions against Jews. Though all of mankind is born with a common human nature, our minds and hearts – our attitudes – are molded by the teachings we are taught from early on. Here we are dealing with a culture intoxicated by a barbaric bloodlust as well as a craving for power and death masquerading as a desire for statehood. This evil is found not only in the religious elements but the secular ones as well, for example the Baathists in Iraq and Syria.
