Listen To Them Howl!

Listen to them howl, the Jew-haters of the world. Listen carefully as they condemn us for living.

Thousands of bloodthirsty Muslims and Europeans congregating in the streets, screaming for Jewish blood, and these are the people Israel wants approval from. The hell with the European Union! The hell with Obama and his band of anti-Semites! They would see us drown in our blood.

While our troops are on the ground, (may G-d protect them!) I will try to refrain from attacking the government.

But I have demands of my own.

• I demand that our soldiers be given every bit of protection and cover during the operation.
• I demand that Netanyahu stop valuing the lives of beasts more than our brothers and sisters. And G-d willing,
• I demand that when the battle is over, we retake Gaza and throw them out because if they remain, they will murder us; this much is clear.

These are my demands because the Torah requires it.

 The full force of the IDF must be unleashed. I mean this in every sense of the word. If ever there was a savage enemy that warranted no mercy, Gaza certainly is one place he can be found. The barbarism of the Arab world cannot be fathomed and it is on full display in Gaza. Those who use their own children as human shields have clearly thrown away their souls. They lack something that is most basic in the brutal world of the animal kingdom. Watch how a mother bear protects her cubs and then compare this to the inhuman behavior of Hamas.

Gaza, where the murder of three Jews warrants a holiday with treats for the kids and music in the streets; where parents send their sons and daughters to detonate themselves in a crowd of Jews, and then celebrate with ghoulish smiles and adoration for the last act of their accursed shaheed. Gaza, where a “civilian” populace allows tunnels to be drilled in their own homes and schools, because they know that the Jew will be hesitant to fire on his home, but he is willing to risk it, if the possibility exists that Jews will be murdered there.

Most of the Israel is now experiencing a modicum of what the Jews of the westernmost Negev have endured for years, the consequence of Sharon’s perfidious expulsion of the Jews of Gaza and hisappeasement of Hamas. That is to say, they are experiencing the terror of the unknown, the “W” questions: When will that awful wailing siren begin its terrible cry? Where will the kids be? Will we have time to get to the shelter? Will Netanyahu allow our noble soldiers to “finish the job” in Gaza? The sense of hopelessness when a government refuses to do what the social contract mandates, cripples the body politic.

The double standard of what Jews have to put up with is nauseating to any Jew with self-respect. If terrorists fired a rocket in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and hit a rural lake that only the most ambitious campers have ever seen, this group of terrorists would be destroyed, without a doubt. Perhaps not today under Obama, but virtually any previous U.S. President from the right to the left of the spectrum would have acted likewise. Why? Because the people would demand it. Why must Jews accept the unacceptable and live the unlivable?

(As an aside, I ask the reader to consider the long-term affects of people in these regions. Places like Sderot, and other rural communities. Several years ago a study reported that approximately 45% of people were suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Foolishness. I would double the number and tack on a few points. No one can endure such long term madness without succumbing. The most battle-tested soldiers would become psychic casualties. That’s why combat soldiers are given leave after extensive time in the field. Today, military minds understand what they didn’t thirty five years ago. So I worry about the long term effects, particularly of children who are terrified, anxious, and whose parents cannot tell them that everything will be okay. Such people cannot grow up without lashing out in frustration for things out of their control.)

But I digress. Israel’s leaders constantly speak of the need for hasbara (public relations). Doctor, heal thyself first, I say. If Israel wants to articulate our moral divine right to the country and our right to preserve our lives at whatever cost, they have to first believe it themselves. They have to stop begging the world for approval. Righteous gentiles know wha’ts going on. The handful or so of genuine U.S. politicians on our side don’t need to be told what’s happening. Their speeches are stronger than those of our own leaders, who are given praise for stating the sanitized obvious truth, ‘that we have the right to defend ourselves.’

Dignified Hasbara…V’Zehu. Not asking the world for the right to defend ourselves. Such a right is obvious to anyone with a spine. Not begging or spouting wimpy phrases. You don’t have to keep saying it. Those who would deny us this right are anti-Semites and we shouldn’t even be talking to them. We need to forcefully, and without compromising anything, state our position. Once. Not as a means of obtaining their permission to act. Then backing it up in the military field with the full arm of Jewish might. The righteous indignation of our position, our willingness to enforce it, and the guaranteed divine providence of The Almighty to those who fulfill His Will are enough.

 Perhaps never before in history were we so fortunate to merit a powerful army that was capable of destroying the enemy, and been so unwilling to use it. It exposes a genuine weakness in the Jewish condition. It highlights that although the Jewish body has largely been rehabilitated after two thousand years of death and despair, the soul of the shtetl still resides within too many Jews. In his classic collection of articles, “Battletruth,” the great Irgun leader/historian Shmuel Katz recalls a speech he gave at Kibbutz Hashomer Hatzair in 1967 to a group of non-Jewish British volunteers. While detailing the brutality of the British Mandatory regime that the Jewish Underground endured, he noted that the British republic would have reacted similarly under such conditions. To which one of the students started to reply, but then turned shamefaced and became silent. Evidently, he had caught himself, but the damage was done. “But you Jews are accustomed” (hence the title of the essay)…. this fool began before stopping short. That is to say, you Jews are accustomed to beatings, lynchings, pogroms, etc.

Heed the words of this young Brit of yesterday who imbibed such toxic views from his upbringing. It’s very tragic that polite anti-Semites would justify their Jewish double standard by creating a false moral standard for the Jew. But even more tragic are the untold numbers of Jews who believe it themselves, and adopt it as a Jewish value. Judaism says otherwise. It is a mitzvah to live, and not to die. And although there are things for which the Jew is obligated to give his life for, (idolatry, murder, forbidden sexual practices, and the all-encompassing Milchemet Mitzvah), the underlying principle is that even such measures are intrisically tied to the preservation of the most Jewish principles and values. They are tantamount to ensuring that the Jewish soul lives.

 And so I say, dignified hasbara… v’zehu.

Let them howl. We will live.

 May Hakadosh Baruch Hu protect Am Yisroel.

Featured in the Jewish Press: http://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/guest-blog/listen-to-them-howl/2014/07/20/