NUMBER OF DAYS UNTIL THE ISRAELI ELECTION: 50
ISRAELSTREET ENDORSES NAFTALI BENNETT
NUMBER OF TERRORIST MISSILES AND MORTARS SHOT AT SOUTHERN ISRAEL SINCE THE CEASEFIRE AGREED TO BY BENJAMIN NETANYAHU ON NOVEMBER 21, 2012:
34
UPDATE 10 am Israel time Tuesday:
It appears that your humble servant may have been unduly harsh with PM Netanyahu in yesterday’s blog. Whereas it is true that Netanyahu modified the original announcement concerning the construction of 3000 residential units in Judea, Samaria, and in the E1 area of Jerusalem, this morning finds Netanyahu sticking to his guns and refusing to rescind that decision in the face of withering international pressure.
And what pressure it has been during the last 24 hours as France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and the United Kingdom have called in Israeli Ambassadors for harsh lectures. At the same time, condemnations from the United Nations, Germany, Russia, and the United States as well as most of the countries that voted for adding “Palestine” as a non-member observer state to the U.N. have added to the cacophany.
What is the atmosphere in Israeli this morning? While the left-wing Israeli media is in a feeding frenzy doing everything it can to trump up “the crisis”, the attitude among ordinary Israelis is . . . well . . . perhaps you should read the following letter that appears in today’s blog.
TODAY’S BLOG:
The following letter first appeared in the Jewish Press on January 8, 1988 under a pseudonym, Meyer Ben Abraham. As the original letter writer is unable to do so*, your humble servant has updated it here with added information in italics. I have also taken the liberty to add bold type for emphasis.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WORLD
Dear World,
I understand that you are upset by us, here in Israel.
Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry.
Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us. Today, it is the decision to build homes, schools and hospitals in Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria; last week it was the possibility that we might have to enter Hamas Gaza to defend our men, women, and children . . .
Three years before that it was our Operation Cast Lead in which we tried to stop the rain of Hamas rockets terrorizing our southern communities; before that it was the building of a separation fence to stop wave after wave of suicide bombers from decimating our people . . .
Before that it was the “brutal repression of the Palestinians” during the intifadas which they undertook against us; before that it was Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur War and the Sinai campaign.
It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily.
Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we – the Jewish people – upset you.
We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations – Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians. And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset.
We upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us in 1648-49; we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us.
For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit**.
And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to leave you – in a manner of speaking – and establish a Jewish state. The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you, irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you (and thus love you)- and have you love us and so, we decided to come home – home to the same land we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman world that, apparently, we also upset.
Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please.
Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and holocausts, having taken our leave of the general world to live alone in our own little state, we continue to upset you. You are upset that we repress the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The “radical” Arabs are upset and the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset.
Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel.
In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody. Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered tens of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929.
Dear world, why did the Arabs – the Palestinians – massacre 67 Jews in one day in 1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967? And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967?
And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a “Palestinian State” alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs cried “no” and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews – was that “upset” caused by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way, dear world, why did we not hear your cry of “upset” then?
The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with rockets and explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state -attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same cry of “itbach-al-yahud” (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today, were seen and heard then. The same people, the same dream – destroy Israel. What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not “repress” them.
Dear world, you stood by during the Holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the Mongol massacres.
You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea.
You have stood by from 1992 until today as the Iranian nuclear weapons program has continued to develop without cessation–only recently seeing a few countries belatedly undertake sanctions.
You stood by between 1993 and 2008 as the Palestinians sent 169 suicide bombers into Israel and blew more than 1000 of our sons and daughters to pieces and permanently maimed thousands of others..
You stood by between 2001 and 2009 as Hamas fired over 8,600 rockets into southern Israel killing civilians and causing incalculable psychological trauma.
You stood by in 2006 when Hezbollah crossed the Israeli border and kidnapped Israeli soldiers from Israel and then launched 4,228 Katyusha rockets against northern Israel.
You have stood by this year as Hamas has fired 2725 rockets and mortars at the people of southern Israel.
You have stood by this past week as Hamas has fired dozens of more rockets into Israel following the latest “ceasefire”.
And you would stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction.
And since we know that the Arabs and the Palestinians dream daily of that extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land.
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If that bothers you, dear world, well think of how many times in the past you bothered us.
In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in Israel who could not care less.
Meyer Ben Abraham
Addenda:
*Of course the reason that the original “Letter to the World” was never updated is that two years after its writing, its real author, Rabbi Meir Kahane, was assassinated in New York City by an Arab terrorist.
**Of course, this original letter was written before recent massive outpourings of Christian support for Israel by such organizations as CUFI, Christians United for Israel.
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A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.