Israel… is a miracle. Yom Ha-atzmaut, Israel Independence Day 2009

It is the embodiment of 2000 years of hopes and dreams. The hopes and dreams of your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents and your ancestors before them. It embodies the dreams of generations who were repeatedly forced to move across kingdoms and continents, of generations who were persecuted and exterminated over blood libel after blood libel. They were accused of killing Christ. Accused of using the blood of children in the baking of Passover matzos. Accused of blocking the path of the “master race.” Accused as enemies of the state. From Rome to the inquisition to the concentration camps to the gulags to the Arab street. Accused, hated and executed for lie after bloody lie.

It is painful to remember all of this on such a happy and momentous occasion as this 60th anniversary of the founding of the modern State of Israel. But we are commanded to remember. It is part of our collective and individual history. In a world where the old blood libels are raised anew, in a world where children are taught that it is their duty to die killing Jews. In a world where Israel is treated like the Jew among the nations, we must remember, because Israel is still today the embodiment of our hopes and our dreams and our future.

What does Israel mean?

Israel means challenge. It challenges every single one of us to play a role in our history, to be active instead of passive. It challenges us to do something, anything, instead of nothing. It challenges us to defend ourselves and to save ourselves. It challenges us to stand up for our rights to live in a world that has time and again denied us the right to live. It challenges us to keep ourselves from falling into another 2,000 years of living at someone else’s pleasure. For every single one of us, it challenges us to survive, not just individually, but as a people.

Israel means courage. It gives us courage and it demands courage from each of us. Courage to travel to Israel. Courage to live in our place in history. Courage to speak out against a growing voice questioning Israel’s right to exist and questioning our rights to have a say in our government here in the United States. It means courage to be angry when Jews are the victims of suicide bombers and gunmen, or assaulted or killed on the streets of Europe. Courage to be angry when synagogues and cemeteries are attacked or defaced. Courage to speak out for the release of kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Courage to speak out against rocket attacks on homes and schools in Sderot. Courage to cry for the last words of Daniel Pearl. Courage to refuse to be a victim. And it demands the personal and individual courage to act.

Israel means being chosen. To quote from an article in the March issue of Commentary Magazine [1]: “What it is about this strange little people that continually finds itself at the center of international attention, repeatedly on the front lines against totalitarian forces of evil—Nazism, Soviet Communism, now jihadism—all of which have marked the Jews as their primary obstacle to achieving world domination.” But…here we are…living with the miracle of a resurrected and thriving Israel. “We live in an age when one might think that the chosenness of the Jews had become impossible to doubt.”

Israel means home. A refuge for the tired, the poor, the oppressed Jews of Europe, South America, the Arab world, Russia, Ethiopia, and yes it is even home to Americans who have chosen to make it home. It means home to Bedouins, Arabs, Muslims, Armenians, Christians, B’Hai and other minorities who have the right of citizenship, the right to vote for elected representation and the freedom to practice their religion. Israel means home to Holocaust survivors, who even after the war faced displacement, pogroms and death at the hands of their neighbors. Israel means home to people who could live elsewhere but who choose to live there. It means home for our people and it beckons us to come home.

And Israel means hope. Perhaps more than anything else…hope. Hope that our future is better than our past and our present. Hope that our people endure. Hope that each of us will see and act on our role in history. And it means hope that we will teach our children to do the same. With moral clarity and courage our actions will define the future. As Herzl said: If you will it, it is no dream.
May Adonai cause a new light to shine over Zion, and may we all soon be worthy of that light.

Am Yisrael Chai

 

1: Soloveichik, Meir. “Mysteries of the Menorah.” Commentary Magazine. March 2008: 37-42

Yom Ha'atzmaut - Israel Independence Day 2009

Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel Independence Day, begins at sundown on April 28th. This is the 61st anniversary of the founding of the modern State of Israel. It is preceded by Yom Hazikaron, Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers, a reminder that Israel owes its independence and existence to the many soldiers who sacrificed their lives.

For almost 2000 years the idea of the re-establishment of the Jewish State was only a dream. Efforts to re-establish Israel took hold with the First Zionist Congress, called by Theodore Herzl, on August 29, 1897 in Basle, Switzerland. Herzl wrote in his diary after the congress, “In Basle I founded the Jewish state . . . Maybe in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will realize it.”

Fifty years and nine months later, on May 14, 1948, approximately six months after the UN General Assembly voted in favor of the plan for the partition of Palestine, just a few years after 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and European Jewry looked down the shaft of extinction, and while Egyptian fighter-bombers flew overhead, David Ben Gurion proclaimed the independence of the State of Israel. One day later the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon invaded the Jewish state. Thousands of Jewish soldiers died defending their reborn country. For a summary of the events leading up to and after independence, titled Israel's War of Independence, visit http://isracast.com/articles/548.aspx.

In reaction to the establishment of Israel over 1 million Jews in ten Arab countries and Iran, whose communities existed in the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region for more than 2,500 years, were expelled from their homes. (The population of Jews in those areas today is estimated at 27,000.) Approximately 600,000 of these refugees sought refuge in Israel, including more than 100,000 Iraqi Jews who emigrated in 1951 in a dramatic airlift. The Jewish refugees were forced to abandon virtually all of their property, especially as they fled from the most hostile countries of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. (See http://tinyurl.com/2ukwe7 and www.justiceforjews.com/jjac.pdf.) They were gradually absorbed and integrated into Israeli society without any assistance from the United Nations.

Their story is told in a film titled The Forgotten Refugees. A few years ago the film was shown at the Jewish Film Festival, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, at the Jacob Burns Film Center. It is currently available on DVD. After the film there was a discussion with two of these refugees. One gentleman told the story of his family, how they secretly traveled from Syria, hid in Lebanon, lived under threats against their lives and of their desperation to leave. He was unable to contain his emotions as he told how his family learned on Passover that they had received permission to enter Mexico, living their own personal Exodus. You can learn more about this film and the Forgotten Refugees at www.theforgottenrefugees.com.

There have been several hundred resolutions on the Middle East conflict adopted by U.N. General Assembly including over 120 resolutions referring to Palestinian refugees. During that same time, there were no U.N. resolutions, there was no U.N. recognition and there was no U.N. assistance for Jewish and other refugees from Arab countries and Iran. (See http://tinyurl.com/c6gt6d, http://tinyurl.com/2gpoz5, http://tinyurl.com/2ofl9v and http://tinyurl.com/2vz2b6.) Today efforts are underway to catalogue the loss of their communal and individual assets and document the mass human rights violations committed against them (www.wojac.com and www.justiceforjews.com).

In contrast to the experience of the Jewish refugees, refugee camps were established for the approximately 600,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled their homes during war for independence. The camps were set up and maintained, and are still maintained today, primarily by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is dedicated solely to the welfare of the Palestinians. Not the Holocaust before nor subsequent genocides or ongoing world strife since have warranted the creation of another relief agency dedicated to the continuous maintenance of a single people as refugees. They are still denied citizenship and basic rights by their Arab hosts including the right to work and own property.

New York Times ♥ Zahi Hawass

Leave it to The New York Times to come to the rescue of world famous Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptian archeologist and secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt, with a textbook whitewash defending his reputation. Hawass is a familiar face to millions who have seen him reveal secrets of the past on TV programs about Egyptian archeology aired on the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and PBS. Now he has revealed a secret about himself and his innermost beliefs. In an Egyptian TV interview Hawass said this about the Jews:

“For 18 centuries they were dispersed throughout the world. They went to America and took control of its economy. They have a plan. Although they are few in number, they control the entire world.”

The interviewer continued, asking Hawass how it is possible that Jews “have taken control of the entire world.” In response Hawass explained:

“The reason is that they are always united over a single view. They always move together, even if in the wrong direction. We, on the other hand, are divided. If even two Arab countries could be in agreement, our voice would be stronger. Look at the control they have over America and the media.”

What else does Hawass have to say about Jews? In an article for the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, which is distributed around the world, Hawass wrote that:

"The concept of killing women, children and elderly people... seems to run in the blood of the Jews of Palestine. [In fact,] it seems to have become part of the false faith of this people, who is tormenting us in our [own] homeland.”

"When I speak of the Jewish faith, I do not mean their [original] faith, but the faith that they forged and contaminated with their poison, which is aimed against all of mankind... The only thing that the Jews have learned from history is methods of tyranny and torment - so much so that they have become artists in this field. They have done to the Palestinians what Pharaoh and Sargon [of Akkad] did to the Jews..."

Hawass issued a “clarification” on his web site complaining that his statements are being widely “misrepresented.”

Where does the The New York Times enter the picture? On Saturday April 18th in a 1,251 word article titled “Egypt’s Tomb Raider – Off and (Mostly) On Camera,” author Michael Slackman, with contributing reporter Mona el-Naggar, wrote about Hawass’s “star” status as an all-round archeology superman. There is no reporting about Hawass’s statements or writings about Jews. But there is one indirect reference in this whitewashing, reputation defending, article published the world’s newspaper of record:

“…and he has been taken to task for his critical statements about Jews. He insists, though, that he is not anti-Semitic and that his remarks were aimed only at Israeli Jews and their treatment of the Palestinians.”

The reader is left to wonder about those “critical statements” without any hint of how vile they were. Indeed, how interesting the phrase “critical statements” is itself. What does it say about the writers, the editor and the publisher? Was Hawass only critical of Jews? Isn’t he really perpetuating the same old lies that have been used for centuries as the basis for hatred and murder of Jews? On the same page, one column to the left, is an article titled “Palestinians Urge Envoy to Press Israel on Statehood”. One is reminded of Laurel Leff’s Buried by the Times.

Here are links to the articles and videos cited above. Take a look for yourself.

MEMRI TV: “Renowned Egyptian Archeologist Zahi Hawass: Jews Control the Entire World”

• Video (http://tinyurl.com/akugv7)
• Transcript (http://tinyurl.com/c8277p)

MEMRI: “Antisemitic Statements and Cartoons in Wake of Gaza War” (search the page for Hawass or scroll down to the 12th paragraph) (http://tinyurl.com/d2jo4v)

The New York Times: “Egypt’s Tomb Raider – Off and (Mostly) On Camera” (http://tinyurl.com/cwx6et)

Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Day: the anniversary of the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem

At sundown on May 21st we celebrate Yom Yerushalayim, the anniversary of the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem in 1967. For the first time in thousands of years the entire city of Jerusalem, the holiest city in Judaism, came under Jewish sovereignty. The destruction of Jerusalem began thousands of years of mourning and longing for Jerusalem, as we were reminded just a few weeks ago when we concluded our Seders with the words “Next year in Jerusalem.” Living in a time of the reunification of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state should be a joyous celebration countering thousands of years of destruction and exile. (http://tinyurl.com/2mowqa)

You can listen to the historic and dramatic sounds of Israeli Defense Forces entering the Old City of Jerusalem and reclaiming the Western Wall on June 7, 1967, including the sound of Army Chief Chaplain and Brigadier General Shlomo Goren sounding the shofar, soldiers saying prayers, including the shehechianu, singing HaTikvah and crying. A transcript is also available. Visit http://tinyurl.com/23a4ej.

Under Jordanian occupation between 1948 and 1967, Jews were refused entry to the Old City and Jewish monuments were systematically destroyed. In 1967, Egypt provoked another pan-Arab war against Israel (the Six-Day War) by ordering UN peacekeepers out of the Sinai Peninsula and blockading the Straits of Tiran. When Israeli soldiers recaptured Old Jerusalem a few days later, they discovered that the Jordanians had not only dynamited synagogues. They had used Jewish tombstones to pave roads and built latrines (http://tinyurl.com/3x6lqs).

Yet, soon after the victory of 1967, Israel unilaterally gave control of the Temple Mount to the Islamic Authority of Jerusalem — the Waqf. Jewish prayer is still forbidden on the Temple Mount and the battle in Israeli courts to allow Jews the freedom to pray on the Mount continues. In 1996 the Waqf changed the accepted status quo that was kept for generations. Without oversight of archeologists or assessment of damage to the Temple Mount and its history, the Waqf converted two ancient underground Second Temple Period structures into a new large mosque. The two structures, known as Solomon’s stables and the Eastern Hulda Gate passageway, were never mosques before. The new mosque extends over an area of 1.5 acres and is the largest mosque in Israel. It is able to accommodate 10,000 people. Thousands of square-meters of the ancient Temple Mount were dug up by tractors, paved and announced as open mosques. In November 1999, the Waqf opened what it called an “emergency exit.” The exit expanded into a gaping hole, 18,000 square feet in size, and up to 36 feet deep. Thousands of tons of the ancient fill from the site, subsequently found by Israeli archeologists to contain artifacts dating as early as the First Temple Period, were dumped into the Kidron Valley.

What has been found in the crushed rubble discarded by the Waqf? Arrowheads shot by Babylonian archers 2,500 years ago, coins from the Jewish revolt that preceded the destruction of the Second Temple by Roman legions in 70 CE, and a bulla, or seal impression that bears the name Gedalyahu Ben Immer Ha-Cohen, suggesting that the owner may have been a brother of Pashur Ben Immer, who is described in the Book of Jeremiah as a priest and temple official.

You can learn more about the archaeological destruction of the Temple Mount at www.har-habayt.org and about the Temple Mount Antiquities Salvage Operation at http://templemount.wordpress.com.