13th Avenue Rafah

Have you ever personally been in a position in which you always relied on someone else’s financial support so that you could realize your goals and dreams? Like a father or mother or rich uncle. Or, let’s say, like a miserable dictatorial tyrannical father-in-law? (Just saying . . .)

And did that support sometimes come with strings? Strings that not only tied your hands but curtailed your dreams? (Just saying . . .)

Have you ever reached a moment in your life where you decided “Either I spend the rest of my life toeing to his every command, and later look back ruefully on my deathbed wishing I could go back in time and live the life I had wanted to live — or I tell him right now to stuff his money, and I will be liberated to return to living the life I was meant to live, to pursue my dreams? (Just saying . . . )

So you stopped being an attorney at a major law firm, where you were earning a boatload of money, and returned to being a rabbi because that was your calling? (Just saying . . .)

There is nothing in all the world that compares to standing on your own two feet, living the life you were called to live, the life you want to live, even though now struggling to make it work financially without that old standby monetary support you always had relied on, but now figuring out how to do it yourself, albeit with G-d’s primary help.

This is Israel’s moment right now.

It is time to tell Rich Uncle Joe and Chuck the Schumer to take their money and stuff it. They can go take weapons and stuff it. And then do what obviously must be done: go into Rafiach (Rafah) with guns blazing and aerial bombs dropping, and utterly eradicate Hamas, and — if necessary — flatten that region of Gaza like a tortilla. Indeed, as a humanitarian gesture after flattening the region like a pancake, drop gallons of maple syrup.

But what if innocent civilians are hurt?

First of all, which innocent civilians are we talking about?

-The ones who, in a free and democratic election supervised and validated by Jimmy Carter, elected Hamas to be their voice and actualize their dreams of wiping out Israel?

-Or are we talking about the innocent civilians who danced in the streets of Gaza every time Hamas started a war, Israel fought back until a ceasefire, Hamas declared victory, and the masses danced in the streets?

-Or the innocent civilians who danced in the streets and distributed candies to children when Bin Laden took down the Twin Towers on 9-11?

-Or the innocent civilians who crossed the border into Israel on Shabbat Shmini Atzeret of October 7 and also raped women, and also murdered babies, and also plundered every bit of merchandise from furniture to food in the refrigerators of the murdered Jews?

So which innocent civilians are we worrying about here?

-The ones who refuse to leave Rafah because Hamas wants them to stay as human shields?

-The ones who have lived for years in homes throughout Gaza with entrance points to Hamas underground tunnels etched into the floorboards of their homes, in their children’s bedrooms, under cribs and beds?

Well, here’s the thing. Uncle Joe and Chuck the Schumer won’t give Israel the precision weapons that Congress authorized, capable of pinpointing targets. So Israel will just have to make do with older weapons that sort of come close to their targets, give or take a few buildings or blocks. In the end, it’s like what my Mom of blessed memory would say when, as a finicky boy, I complained that, although I like peas and I like carrots, I don’t like it when the can contains a mixture of peas and carrots together. “David,” she z"l would say, “What’s the difference? Mixed or separate, it’s all going to end up in the same place.” Words to live by (though I still don’t like them mixed).

Same here. An embargo on precision weapons to avoid hitting unintentional targets? Eh, what’s the difference? Rafah needs to be flattened anyway.

Israel does not need America, Uncle Joe, or Chuck the Schumer. (Chuck always told American Jews that his last name means “Shomer” — Guardian of Israel. In reality, G-d Almig-ty, who never slumbers nor sleeps, is the Guardian of Israel. As we now know from Ancestry.com, “Schumer,” by contrast, means “Good for Nothing.”)

Israel has enough firepower to handle Rafah on her own. And the act of doing it without Biden and Chuck the Schumer will be liberating, as it was for that once-young man who finally broke from his controlling source of funds and determined to make it on his own. He was liberated, and the message was sent: “No one but G-d Almig-ty controls me or bosses me around anymore.”

Likewise here, too, the message it will send the Arab world is extraordinary: “If you think Israel needs America to wipe out enemies and flatten regions, think again. It’s just that we sometimes miss, now that we can’t get the precision stuff, so apologies in advance if we accidentally kill more of you and destroy more buildings than we intended.”

Israel had far fewer weapons in 1948 when Harry Truman, who gets far more credit than he deserves, imposed a brutal arms embargo on Israel as she was fighting for her life against seven Arab armies only a few years after Hitler had murdered six million. She had almost no weapons. The Guardian of Israel fixed that. The heck with Truman. Anti-Semitic Poland trained and armed the Irgun, the Lechi, and the Haganah. Czechoslovakia sent weapons. Italian American mafiosi and Irish American dockworkers colluded with young Jewish teens in running guns illegally to Israel. There was always someone.

In 1956, America again turned her back, this time under Eisenhower, so DeGaulle and France stepped in.

In 1967, France backed out, so others stepped in, and — in desperation — Israel defied the pressure of the Americans and launched the preemptive strike that beat the Arabs and liberated the rest of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the Golan — and, yes, Gaza — in less than a week.

In 1973, Nixon — despite all the anti-Semitism expressed on his secretly recorded White House tapes — rushed to the rescue, even over the objections of the Schumer House Jew of that day, Heinz Kissinger. It’s always someone. Even a wild hotel-and-casino developer who came outta nowhere to recognize United Jerusalem as the capital and move the American embassy there, and recognize sovereignty over Golan and the legality of Jewish communities throughout Judea and Samaria, and who now has moved toward taking “The Two-State Illusion” off the table.

G-d always sends someone. Obama and Kerry left office by slashing Israel with a parting stab, refusing to veto U.N. Security Council resolution 2334, which declared even the Kotel (Western Wall) to be occupied Arab territory. Months later the American embassy in Israel was being opened to the public, moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and Trump Administation officials were traveling to the Kotel, wearing kipot, putting notes in the Wall. G-d has an endless list of messengers.

It’s always someone. America pressed Ben-Gurion not to declare independence. Well, next week will be the 76th anniversary of his telling the U.S. to stuff it. Even dear Ronald Reagan pressed Israel not to go after Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor. So Menachem Begin did it anyway, with G-d’s primary help — and, even though Reagan condemned it at the time, Americans fighting years later in Kuwait against the same Saddam blessed Begin for it.

Biden does not matter. It does not take a prophet of G-d to prognosticate that Israel will outlive Biden. Kamala and her “Jewish husband” with his non-Jewish anti-Israel daughter do not matter. Throughout Jewish history: been there, done that. Rather, the blessing will be that, if Biden and Kamala no playa the game, they no make-a the rules.

Israel can go it alone, and it will be with the blessings of a majority of the American public. She will show that all the riots on American college campuses and the louts in the White House cannot tell her how to live. She will live very, very well despite them. She will earn another layer of international respect, as she did when she grabbed those five gunboats that France embargoed even though Israel had paid for them.

And Arabs will watch and take notice. They will see that Gaza has been bombed into the Stone Age, and they will contemplate how their own countries and landmarks would look if converted to dust and rocks. And especially in Judea and Samaria, where Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) still presides, the message will be even more clear: “Talk and bombast all you want. But if you cross a line, the same destiny will unfold in the rest of Judea and Samaria as unfolded in 1967 when Jordan overplayed their hand. Jericho, Shechem (Nablus), Bethlehem — we hear them calling, Mother Rachel crying for her sons because they are not there. Our hope is not lost, and the sons will return to their true borders. Just give us an excuse, chabibi (pal).”

It all is a blessing.

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