The UNSC unanimous decision indicates that had a vote on establishing a Jewish state been made today, Israel wouldn’t exist.
Just over two weeks ago, UK Premier Theresa May declared, “I couldn’t be clearer: The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is wrong, it is unacceptable, and this party and this government will have no truck with those who subscribe to it.” Less than two weeks later, the UK government made a U-turn and voted in favor of a US initiated UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution that opens the door to indiscriminate sanctions and boycotts against Israel.
Since his inauguration in 2009, Barack Obama has placed more and more “light” between the US and Israel, as he termed his policy of distancing the US from Israel. His latest, poorly covered maneuver to expose Israel to sanctions by the UNSC, is probably not the last we’ve seen of him, not if he can help it.
Yet, Obama is not Israel’s biggest problem. Surprisingly, Israel’s worst, and only true problem is Israel itself. The unanimous decision at the UNSC indicates that the entire world, almost every single one of the 193 member states of the UN, has a negative view of Israel. No other country, not even Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or any other despot-governed country has managed such a “remarkable feat”—to unite the entire world against it. Had the vote on the establishment of the Jewish state been made today, Israel would never have come into existence.
Moreover, if a vote to revoke the establishment of the state of Israel were brought before the UN General Assembly today, it would be approved by the same majority that approved the recent UNSC resolution, and to the sound of the same cheers by the member states.
Why the Hatred?
First, it must be clearly stated that the US government’s initiative to stymie Israel’s building in the West Bank does not stem from the efforts of the Obama-Kerry duo to promote peace in the region. It is part of the current administration’s effort to eliminate the Jewish state. The Palestinians, as Obama knows perfectly well, have never been partners for peace because they have never aspired for it. Since the 1921 Jaffa Riots, they have launched periodic waves of murderous attacks against Jews in Israel and around the world, and have formed alliances with anyone who promised to help them exterminate or drive the Jews from Israel, including an alliance with Nazi Germany. When the “primogenitor” of Arab terrorism—the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)—was founded in 1964, there were no “occupied territories” to return; they were only taken three years later in the 1967 Six Day War. Even more, the captured territory never belonged to the Palestinians; it was Jordanian territory.
The current US administration knows all this, as do more than 100 states that recognize the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Simply put, the vast majority of countries agree with the Arab position that Israel should not exist. The Obama administration has set out to begin to put this position into practice, and will do everything it can to realize its agenda in the time remaining until the inauguration of Donald Trump, and even beyond. I previously warned that the UNESCO resolution denying the Jewish history on Temple Mount was only the canary in the mine. Now that Obama is untroubled by election results, we are seeing the realization of the threat to end the existence of the State of Israel.
In 2013, I published the book, Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are Today’s Call of the Hour. I warned that the catastrophes of the Holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition were not isolated events, but part of a process that must be completed. Now we are seeing the beginning of the unfolding of the next stage in the process. However, as I wrote in “Why Do People Hate Jews,” we have control over the current stage. This does not have to be a traumatic process. If we focus on why we are hated and what we need to do about it, rather than bemoaning the fact that the world hates us, we will go through this stage quickly and pleasantly, and in the process eliminate the hatred toward Israel and eradicate anti-Semitism.
Israel—the Jew among the Nations
Abraham Foxman, former national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said that Israel has become “the Jew among the nations.” How very true. There is no fundamental difference between the accusations that Israel is facing, and the allegations that Jews have faced throughout history.
The difference is that now there is a target—the State of Israel—the Jew among the nations. Now everyone can target their hatred toward a clear entity and make up blood libels and false accusations just as they had previously done toward Jews. But as we often see in BDS demonstrations, the anger at Israel is merely a thinly veiled pretext for venting anti-Semitism.
When trying to understand the roots of the deepest, most lasting hatred in the history of humankind, we have to go back to our roots, since this is where it all began. We Jews are unlike any other nation. We are the only nation in the history of humankind to be given the task to save the world by setting an example for it. We are the only nation whose birth was declared by God, but not before we met the condition of uniting “as one man with one heart.”
We were declared as chosen by the God that all three Abrahamic religions worship, and that God tasked us with being “a light unto nations.” It does not matter what people say; it is a fact that the darker the world becomes, the more it points the blaming finger at us.
The Talmud writes (Masechet Shabbat, 31a) that when a gentile came to Hillel and asked him to explain Jewish law to him, Hillel replied, “That which you hate, do not do unto your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah.” This law was supposed to be the light to the nations, but if the progenitors of the law, its intended harbingers, do not implement it among themselves and do not set an example that others can follow, how can we blame the world for hating us? How can we not understand the world when it says that we are to blame for all the wars, when we are not making the slightest effort to overcome our mutual hatred and unite?
The most fundamental law of our ancient society was mutual responsibility. How is this implemented among us today? In what way are we responsible for one another? We have adopted the competitive and egocentric Hellenistic culture, the very culture to which we were intended to offer an alternative, yet we are offended when the world tells us we are redundant.
The Windsor Star quoted the first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, as saying, “It matters not what the nations say, but what the Jews do.” This is true. The nations’ hatred stems from our inaction toward unity, toward mutual responsibility, toward rekindling the bond that had made us a nation in the first place. Without our example, the nations will not be able to make peace among themselves, and they will blame us for it. The process that I mentioned earlier is one of development from disconnection to connection, from separation to mutual concern. Yet, without our lighting the way for the nations by setting an example, they will not be able to achieve connection and will therefore have no need for us.
When the nations switch from words against Jews to actions, as they have done so many times in history, it will be too late for us to do what we must. We must unite before words become actions. Now is the time to act.
When discussing the fierce disputes among Jews, Baal HaSulam wrote back in the 1930s: “I know that even if we tie them together in one basket, one will not surrender to the other even a little, and no danger will interrupt anyone from carrying out his ambition.” He was trying to warn us about the impending Holocaust.
I am trying to do the same. I don’t enjoy being the wet blanket in the party celebrating the victory of Donald Trump, whom I had hoped would win. Yet, if we do not unite above our differences soon, our future will be bleak. The world is already taking concerted action against us; we must not wait, or it will be too late.
Our forefathers, the Maccabees, succeeded in overcoming the separation among them, thereby defeating the forces of separation. Through their unity, they drove the enemy out from the land of Israel, though they were few against many. Let us learn from their example what unity can achieve if we truly aim for it.
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