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If the Europeans had their way (and, indeed many Americans as well), Israel’s security barrier would be taken down, Palestinian terrorists would be roaming the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Be’er Sheva, the Israeli population would be living in despair, Israel would be de-legitimized as a “racist State,” and Israeli society would be in shambles - undermined by a worldwide economic, political, scientific and academic boycott.
All of which leads to the question….If Israel is such an evil force in the world that its mere existence is anathema to most nations, then perhaps we ought to reconsider our position as well.
I, for one, would be prepared to abandon my support for Israel in a heartbeat if and when
....Jewish rabbis in Israel exhort their followers to murder Palestinian men, women and children at every given opportunity;
....Jewish suicide bombers strap to their bodies twenty-two pounds of high explosives surrounded with nails, screws, nuts and ball-bearings dipped in rat poison and HIV-positive blood, climb aboard passenger buses and become human grenades in the name of G-d;
....Israelis force a car off the road and slaughter a pregnant mother and her three infant children as they sit in the back seat……because they are Palestinians;
....Palestinians are lynched by an Israeli mob who then have a death orgy by washing their hands in their blood;
....Israelis decapitate a Palestinian and use his head as a soccer ball;
....Israelis throw candies into the air to celebrate the murder of a Palestinian child who is stoned to death because he happened to wander too far from his home;
....the number one rap tune in Israel expresses the hope that one day, every Israeli will become a suicide bomber;
....Israeli children compete in a national essay contest and the winning essay is titled: “Why I want to become a suicide bomber;”
....Israelis use ambulances not to rescue the sick and imperiled, but to ferry weapons and terrorists to hunt down Palestinians;
....posters of Jewish murderers adorn buildings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem;
....polls show that 70% of Israelis want a Jewish State over all biblical Israel and are willing to slaughter any number of Palestinians to achieve that goal;
....billboards proclaim that the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon an Israeli is that of becoming a murderer;
....flags bearing the images of Israeli murderers hang from the ceiling of the Prime Minister’s Office;
....the Chief Rabbi of Israel proclaims that “the will of G-d” demands that Israelis murder Palestinians and take their land;
....Rabin Square in Tel Aviv is re-named in honor of a Jewish murderer who breaks into a Palestinian home and murders a father, mother and their four small children;
....Palestinian corpses are chopped into pieces and their body parts used by Israelis as bargaining chips; and
....video game arcades in Tel Aviv allow seven-year old Israelis to receive points for murdering Palestinians and lights across the screen boast in Hebrew: "May G-d’s blessings and peace be upon you"....
In the past month, the world has witnessed the front page photograph of a dead girl hanging out of the window of a suicide-bombed Israeli bus in Be'er Sheva, a poor Nepalese worker having his throat slashed by terrorists in Iraq, and Russian children being murdered like animals by Chechen terrorists. An attack on children is an attack on humanity. It is beyond cowardice. It is moral depravity. All these victims were united not simply by the fact that they were murdered in the name of some Islamic cause, but because they all defined innocence.
So, when should we abandon Israel? When Israel becomes such a depraved society that it’s only rationale for existence centers around a culture of death; when its leaders justify the murder of innocents in the name of a vindictive, unforgiving G-d; when religious bigotry becomes so profound that a "Jewish believer" can hold a gun to a child's head, pull the trigger and term the act "divine justice;" when Israel disgraces the memory of our prophets and sages and becomes a pathological society like so many that surround it; or when it betrays the hopes and dreams of millions of Jews who perished in the belief that one day a Jewish State would be reborn. That's when we should abandon Israel.
In the meantime, no amount of global hypocrisy, hatred, deceit, appeasement or even disagreement with Israel’s policies should dissuade us from our ancestral allegiance to the land of our forefathers.
While I cannot speak for others, for me and for my family, Israel remains “a light unto the world,” a leader in the fields of international scientific and agricultural research, a democratic spark in the midst of Islamic darkness, and a nation struggling against great adversity while remaining loyal to its faith and ancient traditions. Until Israel descends into the abyss (if and when that day ever comes) my pride in being Jewish and my love of the Jewish State will be inseparable.
Mark Silverberg is a former member of the Canadian Justice Department, a past Director of the Canadian Jewish Congress (Western Office) based in Vancouver, and served as a Consultant to the Secretary General of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem during the first Palestinian intifada.
In 1945, after the liberation of France, it would have been unthinkable for the Allies to have stopped at the French-German border (believing they could contain Nazi expansionism in the post-war era) and begun attempts to stabilize and reconstruct France without first destroying the Third Reich and de-Nazifying Germany. For the same reason, the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, and indeed the entire Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa cannot be accomplished unless and until the Iranian mullahs have been removed and Iran has been de-Islamified.
The foreign policy paradigm that an apocalyptic, messianic Islamic enemy bent on establishing a global caliphate can be appeased and contained is not only delusional, but guarantees the rise of Iranian Islamic hegemony throughout the region and beyond. Iran is to go nuclear, we had best insure that a friendly government rules in Tehran. If not, no nation that ever opposes the mullahs' global Islamic ambitions will be secure once their nuclear shield is in place.
Despite thousands of missiles being fired at Israeli cities, towns and villages, the European Union recently condemned Israel's "disproportionate use of force" and issued a communiqué urging Israel to "refrain from all activities that endanger civilians" in Gaza on the grounds that "such activities are contrary to international law.”
Amid the controversy surrounding Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture on “Faith and Reason†delivered at the University of Regensburg in Germany, scant attention has been paid to the central theme of his thesis, namely - rejecting any religious justification for violence. In the lecture, the Pope cited the words of a medieval Byzantine emperor who referred to Muhammad’s command “to spread by the sword, the Faith†and who characterized the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman.â€
For the first time since the birth of the State of Israel, the Israeli war machine had been challenged by a small, fanatic, well-funded, well-prepared and well-trained radical Islamic army that lived to tell the story when the final bell tolled. Hezbollah’s survival, however, was due as much to mismanagement of the war effort (on the part of Israel and America) as to Hezbollah’s cunning, although the latter cannot be minimized.
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