I read the papers religiously, hard copy and web sites. I read voraciously. And now I almost wish I did not do that as the news in recent months has been miserable and frightening. Certainly it is so to a person who is Jewish and to right thinking people who do not randomly desire the death of all people of certain ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Time and time again one reads of the stabbing, shooting, beating of a Jewish person in Europe, in the same countries that so vigorously sent their Jewish citizens off to the ghettos, camps and killing fields and delightedly moved into their apartments, wore their clothes, used their silver religious articles and found life just wonderful.
Now we have the incitement of anti Semitism once again. No, it never went away, only went underground for the most part as it was not deemed respectable. Now we have a growing wave, where countries are denying that the new anti Semitism is separate from anti Israel feeling, votes that recognize a Palestinian state that urges murder of Israelis, who call Jews "impure" and yes, that is their leader Abbas who said that and who urged his fellow Arabs to fight with all they had to keep these impure people off Temple Mount - the site of OUR Temple.
And do not think that this country is immune to these feelings and statements. I have been cursed here by people from UCO, by supporters of David Israel who forgets his background, and have been called most recently, "a low class Jew". In August, a young couple of the Upper West Side of Manhattan was attacked and beaten , derided for being Jewish, because the young man dared to wear a kippah on his head. Swastikas are marked on synagogues, cars and schools and people have been beaten and attacked here in the good old USA.
Jews in Israel have been stabbed, attacked, shot, kidnapped, run down by cars and this morning I awoke to the news of two or three crazy Arabs, Moslems, who broke into a synagogue during morning prayers. They had with them axes, knives, guns and murderous hearts.This was the neighborhood of Har Nof, smack in Israeli undisputed territory and yet these animals felt righteous in their murderous deeds. In our own country, the only Jewish state in the world as opposed to dozens of Arab and Moslem countries, the scenes of the pogroms of Europe and Arab countries, of Jews lying in pools of their own blood, wrapped in their prayer shawls and phylacteries, of children being attacked with just as much vigor as adults - these scenes are horrifying, petrifying, and should never have been allowed to have occurred.
It is frightening to me when my children and older grandchildren discuss these events and ask what will happen in the future. Will there be another Holocaust? Will Israel be destroyed and the six million plus Jews there be once again decimated and slaughtered. Scary number that! I cannot give answers that they wish to hear for I, too, am frightened far beyond the point where I have ever been. We are all now haunted by the pictures of happy families and social groups, of school pictures and celebrations of life from the late 1920's and early 1930's. We are haunted because we KNOW that these same people were dead, horribly tortured and slaughtered so few years later.
So where does this end? Yuval Dinitz, today, paraphrased the famous statement of Jacob, our patriarch. Dinitz stated, " The hands are the hands of terrorists, but the voice is the voice of Abu Mazen (Abbas)." Complacency has no place left in this world. Vigilance, attention to the world are needed and the world is needed to stand up to fight hate, to stand for justice, to fight against their baser prejudices and insure that we have a good world once more. The USA has the best ally one can have in Israel. Recognize that. State that proudly and openly, honestly. Stand up to fight hate and murder. It is awful when a young American is beheaded and the life of a young American woman is threatened - but it is just as awful when three boys are kidnapped and shot outright, when a mother has to become far stronger than anyone ought to have to be, when a man goes to the synagogue to pray and is talking with his G-d when he is struck down, when a child lies in a pool of blood. If it makes a difference, many of those killed and wounded by these terrorists are American citizens who happen to live or be visiting Israel.
The news has just announced that the head of the English speaking Yeshiva in the building, 60 year old Rabbi Moshe Twersky, was killed. He is the grandson of Rabbi Yosef Dov Solovetchik, an important family in the rabbinical hierarchy of Judaism. And now Abbas says he condemns this murder? Too little too late and words lead to violence - the very words he has been spouting for lo these many, many, years and months and days. Leaders have responsibilities.
If anyone out there has an answer - speak up, speak out. The clock is ticking and remember - "Ask not for whom the bell tolls - it tolls for thee." No one is immune to this type of hatred and insanity. Americans are the great Satan and now we have to thank the Moslems for discovering America! So says Erdogan, our erstwhile "moderate" ally from Turkey. When will we all wake up and see the truth? I hope soon; I really do.
A sad postscript to this posting. When the names of the murdered terrorist victims were published, it turns out that we know one, grew up with his mother and my parents were friends with the grandparents. The world is a small place and an even smaller place for Jews. We all know each other with less than six degrees of separation and thus the mourning is harder for each loss. So I ask the world - have we achieved your so desired proportionality yet? Have enough of us died yet to your satisfaction?
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