Dear World,
I understand that you are upset with us, here in Israel. Indeed, it
appears that you are quite upset, even angry. (Outraged?) Indeed, every
few years you seem to become upset by us.
Today, it is the "brutal repression of the Palestinians". Yesterday it was
Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad
(1981) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) and the Six Days War (1967) and the
Sinai Campaign (1956), and our independence (1948). It appears that Jews
who take care of themselves and who, therefore, remain alive, upset you
most extraordinarily.
Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish
people - upset you.
We upset the German people who elected Hitler and we upset the 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 Chamielnitzki 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 archenemy 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 to the same homeland from which 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 deeply angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands
of1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Moscow
is upset and Paris is upset. London too is sometimes 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. Infect, 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.
Some 67 Jews were slaughtered in 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, world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have
created a "Palestinian State" alongside a tiny little "Jewish homeland"
(smaller then Israel BEFORE 1967) the Arabs cried "NO" and initiated a war
in which 6,000 Jews were killed (10% of the Jewish population at that
time). Was that "upset" caused by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way,
dear world, why did we not hear your cry of being "upset" then?
The Palestinians today (who kill Jews with explosives and firebombs) are
part of the same people who - when they HAD all those territories -
attempted to drive the Jews 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 - to destroy Israel and massacre all the
Jews. What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today.
Dear world,
You stood by during the holocaust when 6,000,000 Jews - men, women and
children - where slaughtered.
You stood by in 1948 as seven states launched a war that the Arab League
proudly compared to the "Mongol massacres". 100,000,000 Arabs against a
Jewish population of 600,000 people (at that time) - and we survived. Not
only that, we even won the war.
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. And we won
again.
You stood by in 1973 when both Egypt and Suriyah - enforced by Iraq -
launched a war in order to destroy Israel. Israel was under an existential
threat. And we survived and won once again.
And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that
extinction (did anybody ever bothered to ask their spokesmen, what really
do they mean by the term "occupied territories")
we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land. Because, we
have no other safe place on this plant.
If that bothers you dear world, well, think of how many times in the past
you bothered us.
Shalom uvrachah
In peace and blessings
Rabbi Peter E. Tarlow
I understand that you are upset with us, here in Israel. Indeed, it
appears that you are quite upset, even angry. (Outraged?) Indeed, every
few years you seem to become upset by us.
Today, it is the "brutal repression of the Palestinians". Yesterday it was
Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad
(1981) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) and the Six Days War (1967) and the
Sinai Campaign (1956), and our independence (1948). It appears that Jews
who take care of themselves and who, therefore, remain alive, upset you
most extraordinarily.
Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish
people - upset you.
We upset the German people who elected Hitler and we upset the 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 Chamielnitzki 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 archenemy 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 to the same homeland from which 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 deeply angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands
of1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Moscow
is upset and Paris is upset. London too is sometimes 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. Infect, 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.
Some 67 Jews were slaughtered in 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, world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have
created a "Palestinian State" alongside a tiny little "Jewish homeland"
(smaller then Israel BEFORE 1967) the Arabs cried "NO" and initiated a war
in which 6,000 Jews were killed (10% of the Jewish population at that
time). Was that "upset" caused by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way,
dear world, why did we not hear your cry of being "upset" then?
The Palestinians today (who kill Jews with explosives and firebombs) are
part of the same people who - when they HAD all those territories -
attempted to drive the Jews 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 - to destroy Israel and massacre all the
Jews. What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today.
Dear world,
You stood by during the holocaust when 6,000,000 Jews - men, women and
children - where slaughtered.
You stood by in 1948 as seven states launched a war that the Arab League
proudly compared to the "Mongol massacres". 100,000,000 Arabs against a
Jewish population of 600,000 people (at that time) - and we survived. Not
only that, we even won the war.
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. And we won
again.
You stood by in 1973 when both Egypt and Suriyah - enforced by Iraq -
launched a war in order to destroy Israel. Israel was under an existential
threat. And we survived and won once again.
And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that
extinction (did anybody ever bothered to ask their spokesmen, what really
do they mean by the term "occupied territories")
we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land. Because, we
have no other safe place on this plant.
If that bothers you dear world, well, think of how many times in the past
you bothered us.
Shalom uvrachah
In peace and blessings
Rabbi Peter E. Tarlow
)
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