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| Family and friends attend the funeral of Yehuda Dimentman, in Homesh, in the West Bank, on December 17, 2021, Dimentman was murdered in last night's shooting attack near Homesh. |
Do you grasp the difference between a government flailing about for a COVID policy and one dealing with Chomesh?
No one should blame such a government as it gropes for a better way to deal with COVID. On that, the government must be given its freedom of decision. No one in the universe — except for the guy who sits near you in shul — knows what to do about COVID: not Boris Johnson, not Biden, not Fauci, not Bennett, not Gantz, not Lapid, not nobody. No Jew living outside Israel has the right to command Israel whether and what she must do as she grapples in the dark for the wisest policy in the face of this two-year pandemic.
Any Jew outside Israel who is angry that he or she cannot travel in and out of Israel at will, like a hotel revolving door, has a simple solution: make aliyah. Pay Israel income taxes. Pay VAT. Have all your kids serve in the IDF. Fly around the world with an Israel passport. Then you have a say. Then you can boss Israel around rather than sit in Long Island, earning $250,000 a year, complaining that, since Israel is trying to reduce sources of Omicron infection, you won’t lend Israel $10,000 at 8 percent interest next year when they come with Israel bonds. So, yeah, go ahead and show Israel how angry you are that they won’t let you in for a brit.: buy a year’s supply of Ben & Jerry’s, join J Street, and promote BDS.
By contrast, unlike COVID, the pandemic of Jew-hatred is not two years old, but two thousand years old. We have had Arab Muslims murdering us for the past 1500 years, long before there was a State of Israel, long before Balfour, long before you-name-it. By now, we should have figured out a few things:
1. If you walk out of Gush Katif and Gaza unilaterally, Arab Muslims do not reciprocate by electing peace makers. They elect Hamas.
2. If you walk out of South Lebanon unilaterally, Arab Muslims do not reciprocate by electing peace makers. They elect Hezbollah.
3. When you win a Six-Day War and declare Jerusalem reunified, Jordan stays out of the next war and the war after that.
4. When you stare them in the eye, recognize united Jerusalem as israel’s capital, move the American embassy to Jerusalem, declare Israel sovereign over the Golan, declare Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria to be legal, throw the PLO out of Washington, and cut off UNRWA funding . . . they rush to sign Abraham Accords.
A Jew with self-respect does not respond to a murder in Chomesh by tearing down its yeshiva.
Nor does a Jew respond to Arab terror by imprisoning Arab terrorists who know, s surely as day follows night, that they can rely on being released some day for Hadar Goldin, Oron Shaul, and Avera Mengistu.
ENTIRE ESSAY BY RABBI DOV FISHER - HIS VERY HARSH LANGUAGE INCLUDED -