This was actually the first time I exploded over the Internet, but the anniversary is later than the last one--November 8th, to be exact, two years ago. No one specific incident triggered it, but the anger built up gradually, mainly centered around the point raised in the last paragraph. But it's all from the heart.

"I come from a small country that has a population that is smaller than New York City's, and every single day we are under attack. Rockets, arm-smuggling, kidnappings. And who is to blame for all this? Why, WE are, of course.

Never mind that there never was any such thing as a 'Palestinian'. Never mind that the term was invented in the 1960s and based on the ancient Roman name for Israel. Never mind that they have always rebuffed offers of statehood in favor of bloodbaths. Somehow, according to the rest of the world, we are the ones at fault here.

Even according to about half of us we're at fault. Until 1993, Israel's responses to terror was unequivocal and exacting. Entebbe, the Yom Kippur War, the Six-Day War. We always knew that the only good terrorist was a dead terrorist. Come '93 and--well, what do you know! Turns out those bigoted creeps from beyond the Green Line are actually a bunch of really swell guys, 'freedom fighters' all, just sticking up for the poor 'little guys' and desperate for a peaceful end to this COMPLETELY unwanted conflict. Terrorist? No, no, Yasser Arafat was never a terrorist! He was a freedom fighter, and now he's a pioneer of independence. (Cue applause track as the Nobel Piss Prizes* are given out.)

BULL****.

Rabin gave them Oslo. Netanyahu gave them Oslo II and Wye and Hebron**. Barak offered 98% of their demands including the Temple Mount. Sharon pulled out of Gaza and Northern Samaria. And all this can be summed up in the words of our current Prime Minister, Mr. Olmert: 'We are tired of fighting... [W]e are tired of winning.' None of this has been enough for the Arabs. They want Jewish blood, and failing that, they want their land. It's not OUR land, you understand. It never HAS been. And to get their point across, they are destroying all the Jewish antiquities they can find (including those on the Temple Mount itself), and educating their children that our presence here dates back only to the Ottoman Empire--that is, when they're not teaching math using equations like, 'If 1 bomb kills 3 Jews, and you kill 1/2 of a group of 12 Jews, how many bombs did you use?'

But the French and the Germans and the Irish and the Italians and the Russians and the Chinese and the Libyans and the Dis-United Nations say we mustn't grumble, because all of the Palestinians' demands are true and require honoring. And if they kidnap us and kill us and maim us, we still mustn't grumble, because they are merely freedom fighters, doing what all peaceful freedom fighters around the globe do. (Besides, we deserve it, uppity stiff-necked people that we are.) 'Terrorism'? NO, NO, NO! Mustn't use the T-word! Mustn't grumble too loudly else the oil-bearing Arabs might cut off our precious flow! Ahamdenijad [sic]--eh, he's full of hot air, just ignore him. Remember, Hitler was in power for only 12 years, and he didn't reach his goal of killing all of you, right? So all's well, eh? That's right! We're all happy chums now, just so long as you never mean it when you say 'We will not capitulate.'"

* When Arafat was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, one of the committee's members had the guts to resign in protest.
** Various "peace" agreements which, naturally, never panned out.


TODAY'S BOOK: "The Seventh Game: The 35 World Series That Have Gone the Distance", by Barry Levenson ((c) 2004)

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.zootorah.com Rabbi Nosson Slifkin is one of the leading Jewish lights in the battle to show that science and religion are not irreconcilable. This is his website.

Labels: rant