Obama\u2019s Example For Israel\u2026Change<\/p>\n
by Gerald A. Honigman<\/p>\n
Israel has a very important lesson to learn from Barack Obama\u2026and it better do so quickly.<\/p>\n
I checked out Obama\u2019s official website, Obama For Change, and here\u2019s what\u2019s highlighted:<\/p>\n
With the right leadership, and a change of attitude and focus, Barack Obama brings a new viewpoint to discover solutions to the problems at hand.<\/p>\n
It’s about time…It’s about change.<\/p>\n
Exactly.<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019m a registered Independent voting for John McCain, but certainly my own country needs a good dose of proper change\u2026in how we get energy, as just one example. McCain knows this as well.<\/p>\n
Certainly, if this idea is important for America, it is even more so for Israel.<\/p>\n
Jews and\/or Israel have been undergoing change imposed from the outside for centuries.<\/p>\n
In the 19th century, the Reform movement emerged among Jews who–among other things–were determined that the days of the imposed ghetto, degradation, and such (from which Napoleon had freed them) should never return.<\/p>\n
Assimilation was the name of the game–to the point of recommendations to change the Sabbath to Sunday. The idea was to rid themselves of their identities as Jews. Henceforth, they would just be Frenchmen, Russians, Poles, Germans, etc. of the (much diluted) Jewish faith\u2026not German or French Jews.<\/p>\n
Sounded reasonable–if not a bit pathetically nauseating–no?<\/p>\n
Too bad the Germans, Poles, French, and so forth didn\u2019t see things this way.<\/p>\n
Modern political Zionism, leading to the resurrection of the state of the Jews, arose because–in perhaps the most enlightened of nations in the 19th century–France–the most vile anti-Semitism proved to be alive and well, targeting even the most assimilated of Jews–whom Alfred Dreyfus, of the infamous Dreyfus Affair, symbolized. And it flourished amongst the intelligentsia as well as the rabble.<\/p>\n
Another assimilated Jew, Theodore Herzl, was a reporter from Austria covering Captain Dreyfus\u2019s railroaded trial. Shocked to the core at seeing mobs shouting such things as \u201cdeath to the Jews,\u201d he later wrote, Der Judenstaat–The Jewish State.<\/p>\n
So much for that change\u2026<\/p>\n
It was as if G_d was saying, \u201c Israel will be reborn–whether you Jews like it or not!\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Jews\u2019 quest for normalcy, they bent over backwards in the pursuit of modern political Zionism to create a state like all others\u2026somewhat reminiscent of the Reform movement\u2019s motivations, but on a national scale.<\/p>\n
Now, don\u2019t get me wrong, not all saw things this way. Religious Zionists saw G_d\u2019s hand in all of this\u2026the Hebraic prophecies unfolding as planned. I agree. And they too had many supporters.<\/p>\n
But most of the Zionist leaders who came to rule both pre-state and post-\u201848 Israel also deluded themselves into believing that the rest of the world would forget that Israel was the Jew of the Nations.<\/p>\n
Well, since Auschwitz, it\u2019s not proper–in at least some circles–to be \u201canti-Semitic.\u201d<\/p>\n
No problem\u2026<\/p>\n
Utilize absurd double and moral equivalence standards, and replace anti-Zionism for anti-Semitism, and the age-old animus now remains kosher.<\/p>\n
All other peoples can demand national liberation except the one people who needed it the most\u2026the condemned to wandering \u201cG_d-killers\u201d of the Christian West and the \u201cslayers of Prophets and Jew Dogs\u201d of the Arab\/Muslim East.<\/p>\n
Being the oldest, still existing victims of imperial conquest, the Jews were expected to simply remain that way.<\/p>\n
Seeking to gain acceptance in an \u201cArab\u201d world which sees them as sons of apes and pigs, too many Jews then continued to pursue this change even further in pursuit of a \u201cpost-Zionist\u201d Israel.<\/p>\n
Again, recall one of the key motivations of the Reform movement\u2026What can we do to change ourselves so we\u2019ll gain acceptance from the Gentiles?<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, ignorance of one\u2019s enemies has characterized too many of those who have called the political shots in Israel. The very idea that dhimmi Jews (or Kurds or Berbers or Copts or black Africans, etc.) should demand political rights in what Arabs consider to be purely Arab patrimony and the Dar ul-Islam is laughable to anyone truly familiar with this subject.<\/p>\n
Add to post-Zionism a continued movement away from the idea of Israel as a Jewish State, and you have the mess Israel now finds itself in.<\/p>\n
So, so much for those changes as well.<\/p>\n
Therefore, guess what?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for Israel to try another type of change\u2026a return to its proud roots.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for Israel to stop trying to alter itself to be accepted by others.<\/p>\n
The values of Jews became the moral guidelines for much, if not most, of the modern world; and, despite its imperfections, Israel is still that light unto the nations the Bible asked it to be.<\/p>\n
The national liberation of the Jewish people in the land in which they have thousands of years of continuous history–Zionism–ranks as noble as any of such movements can be. If Arabs can have almost two dozen states–conquered and forcibly Arabized from mostly non-Arab peoples–then why not one resurrected state for Jews?<\/p>\n
No, Israel has nothing to cover up for\u2026certainly nothing to revise its very being. If compared with the same set of lenses to the \u201cArab\u201d world (rarely done), Israel should indeed be canonized. Indeed, as I write this article, black Muslim African refugees fleeing Arabs from Darfur are fleeing to Israel.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s needed now is change–but done the right way\u2026<\/p>\n
There are Jews in Israel who still have the sense of justice, passion, and compassion of Golda, Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky, and Begin. Where are they?<\/p>\n
Where are the leaders who will insist that Israel no longer trade live, captured, rabid butchers for the bones of dead Jews–regardless of how nice they make it sound? Where are the leaders who will institute a quick death penalty for such \u201cheroes?\u201d Better yet, why are they taken alive?<\/p>\n
Where are Israeli leaders who will insist on \u201cpeace for peace\u201d instead of \u201cland for peace?\u201d It\u2019s obvious that the latter has not worked\u2026it\u2019s only brought closer to fruition the Arabs post-\u201967 \u201cdestruction in stages\u201d plans for \u201ctheir\u201d kilab yahud–Jew dogs. Think Gaza\u2026the same will happen after a total Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, aka, the \u201cWest Bank.\u201d Not to mention the Golan. Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion Airport, the Knesset, and so forth will receive what Sderot gets daily now.<\/p>\n
Where is the change which will bring new Israeli leaders who will insist that Israel get a reasonable territorial compromise granting it real borders to replace former, UN-imposed, suicidal Auschwitz\/armistice lines a la UNSC Resolution 242? America\u2019s United Nations\u2019 representative in \u201849, Ralph Bunche, openly stated that those lines were never meant to be Israel\u2019s permanent borders.<\/p>\n
The Arabs will never play ball, you say\u2026<\/p>\n
Of course they won\u2019t. So what?<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t accept a 9-mile wide Israel either. Think about what other nations have done thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own national security and interests. <\/p>\n
Israel must do what it must do to thrive–not just survive.<\/p>\n
Demanding reasonable territorial compromise merely undoes the injustice created by the Arab invasion of a nascent Israel in 1948 and the mostly armistice lines–not borders–which emerged as a result. Those lines simply marked the points at which a half dozen invading Arab armies were turned back. As would become all-too-common later on, the UN only got involved after the Jews turned the tide and had the Arabs on the run\u2026not before, to stop the Arabs\u2019 initial aggression.<\/p>\n
Where are the new Israeli leaders who will tell the State Department\u2019s next James Baker or Condi Rice, when he or she insists on such things as Israel supplying its enemies with weapons (which were then used to massacre Jews in yeshivas, etc.), to go fly a kite?<\/p>\n
Where\u2019s the change which will bring to the fore proud Zionist Jews who will draw the lines beyond which no further retreat will be allowed–regardless of who is twisting the arms, turning the screws, and increasing the heat from across the sea?<\/p>\n
If it means losing American aid, then so be it. My prediction is that such games will backfire big time on any White House which lowers itself this way.<\/p>\n
Millions of fair-minded people will not expect the sole, resurrected Jewish State to sacrifice itself on the petroleum greased altar of international hypocrisy so that Arabs can get their 22nd state–and second, not first, in the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine. Jordan sits on almost 80% of that territory.<\/p>\n
So, as a solid McCain supporter (despite some concerns ), I\u2019m now hoping that Israelis will do some real soul searching and take a cue from the Obama camp.<\/p>\n
Replacing Olmert with someone of similar ilk will accomplish nothing but a continuation of the sort of change we\u2019ve explored earlier\u2026the change that gave Israel its first military defeat, handed over a live Samir Kuntar, and so forth. The latter\u2019s head needed to have been parachuted onto Hizbullah\u2019s headquarters.<\/p>\n
That Condi loves Tsipi Livni should send another disturbing signal as well.<\/p>\n
Israel must get itself new leaders, at all levels, who will place the overall Zionist forest ahead of individual, parochial trees which hold fragile coalitions together. Olmert should have been dumped long ago.<\/p>\n
The change that Israelis must insist upon may very well determine if the Jews\u2019 long-awaited, reborn state will continue to even exist.<\/p>\n
Hamas and Fatah\u2019s Abbas refuse to recognize a Jewish Israel. Abbas\u2019s \u201cmoderates\u201d just sung praises to a returning butcher–Kuntar–who murdered a father while his 4-year old daughter watched and then beat her skull in with his rifle butt against a rock until she too was dead.<\/p>\n
In short, the type of change that Israel must have will bring forth leaders who will know how to better address such things. And for those who care, it\u2019s time to do all that\u2019s legally and humanly possible to see to it that this happens sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Obama\u2019s Example For Israel\u2026Change by Gerald A. Honigman Israel has a very important lesson to learn from Barack Obama\u2026and it better do so quickly. I checked out Obama\u2019s official website, Obama For Change, and here\u2019s what\u2019s highlighted: With the right … Continue reading