These are sad hard times for the Jewish people. Every day we see our heroic IDF soldiers being killed and injured fighting against inhumane savages. Our hostages, guilty of nothing more than being Jews in their homes, guilty of dancing at a festival, guilty of living, they continue suffering as we all think of them. The entire nation is in mourning.
Yet, the world only 2 months later doesn’t allow us to mourn. Against this backdrop, we see enemies of the Jewish people attacking Israel, yet we all must remember that as Zionist ideologue Ze’ev Jabotinsky noted many years ago, “We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmed agree with it or not.”
The world will not lecture us today. We have learned the lesson of the Holocaust, and Israel is not the 51st state of the United States. We will walk alone, and there is no mandate to stop this war in the State of Israel. No mandate which will allow Israel to not battle against this ideology which is indeed a danger to Europe (for whom it very well maybe too late), and a danger to America.
Many worldwide have often portrayed Prime Minister Netanyahu as the enemy, and without getting into the domestic issues and many issues surrounding him, none of this is about Netanyahu. I was heartened by Politico’s feature on Yair Lapid which said, “Lapid has conveyed resolute support for the Netanyahu-led government’s strategy in Gaza. There has been no second-guessing of the war cabinet or quiet sniping at Israel’s unpopular right-wing administration.”
This whole anti-Netanyahu narrative will strengthen him for in Israel today we know of the need to smash terror, and not America and not Europe and no one will stop our people from doing what needs to be done. None of this is about anything other than smashing Hamas and stopping terror.
This too shall pass, and as we see today history repeats itself.
On June 22 1982, Joe Biden a Senator from Delaware confronted then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during his Senate Foreign Relations committee testimony, threatening to cut off aid to Israel. Begin forcefully responded, “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”
Israel does not wish to walk alone, we hope the world stands with us and stands by us, but we remember the lessons of the world. And the only difference between today and the Holocaust is the fact that there is a Jewish state. And we remember it and we know it.
We have nothing to apologize for and will not, as Jabotinsky said,
“Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.”
And today sitting in Israel I choose to believe in hope and goodness. Because I am thankful for the lessons of the Holocaust. I can’t and won’t say “Never Again” because it happened again. Jews were killed and the world cheers, but my hope remains in the people of Israel. In the flag of Israel, in the army of Israel.
From today’s popular song by Israeli pop artist Jasmin Moallem, “Yiyhe Tov” (It will be good): “In the end, it will be good, The flowers will bloom again, See that it will be good, It will be good, Even if there’s another way to go through, In the end, it will be good.”
In the end, it will be good in Israel. Israel is doing and will do what needs to be done. Will it be good for Jews in the Diaspora? I’m not so sure.
