(Originally posted on author’s website, Shalom Pollack Tours}
Once again, Jerusalem is in mourning. I attended the funeral yesterday of three of the four men who were murdered as they stood in prayer. Apparently one of the murderers worked in a grocery store near the synagogue. He probably knew some of the people he butchered with his meat cleaver.
I joined the large crowd in shared grief and shock, but this time it was of a more personal nature. My cousin was one of the victims. They say he struggled with one of the man beasts before he succumbed.
Aryeh Kupinsky was brought to Israel from the USA by his idealist parents as they settled in Kiryat Arba, the then, new pioneer outpost near Hebron, He leaves five orphans and a widow behind to figure out how to carry on.
Far too many Jewish families in Israel have a cousin Aryeh… or father or spouse or son or daughter , may God avenge all of their blood,
So what is happening today? Well we are assured that the authorities will vanquish the terror and calls for calm…and,,,lets see..more security personnel on the streets, and, oh yes, the placing of big concrete blocks near train stations. I have also noticed that police vehicles accompany the trains especially in the Arab neighborhoods where they have burned down the stations and attack the passing trains. Citizens with gun licenses are now asked to be armed at all times just in case..
Schools and similar places are to be more tightly guarded. Walls, tunnels concrete blocks. Fortress Jerusalem.
How many light years away is this situation from the heady days of 1967 when after the miraculous victory, Jerusalem Arabs would barely dare to look a Jew in the eye. I remember. A Jew felt more than simply safe in Jerusalem then. That was exactly why I left Brooklyn, NY and came home.
Sadly,the warped values and disproportionate influence of the Israeli Left has succeeded in just about erasing that feeling, a feeling that isn’t even a memory for younger Israelis. They never knew the high spirits I felt in those few years. Similarly, the younger Arab generation never knew the shock and awe of the Jewish lion that riveted their parents.
The cost of this reversal can be seen in the cemeteries and the thousands of orphans and widows.
One is never angry with a wild dog. The one that lets him off the leash is the culprit.
As our Torah informs/warns us, Ishmael is a “wild man”. The Torah uses this description only once, and it has been true ever since.
From the time of and just after the Six Day War when the Israeli government and particularly Defence Minister Moshe Dayan urged the defeated and panicked Arabs not to flee for the borders, the seeds for an ever increasing Jewish blood letting were sown.
There is no other country in the Mid East as strong militarily as Israel. Then again it depends on how one measures strength. If in the end of the day the best jets and pilots and tanks etc. have no effect on a population that fears waiting for a bus or praying in the morning, .. ?.
How sick is it to hear too many politicians , journalist, jurists and other beacons of morality and knowledge, equate the “extremists on both sides” and warn of a lack of a ” hopeful political horizon” or the need for dialogue.. bla bla bla….
No, what drives Arab terror is not despair but rather hope. The hope of brutally killing all the Jews. Simple. And guess what? It has nothing to do with the Temple Mount or the price of tea in China. Its about us.