Israel is once again singled out as it was recently announced that it is threatened to be put on the docket 0f the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes. Meanwhile, the actions of blatantly oppressive regimes are being conveniently overlooked. So how can the “special treatment” toward the Jewish nation be explained if not by the motivation of antisemitism? We have to understand where the hatred comes from. It is not the result of what we do, but what we fail to deliver: unity to the world.
The international community looks at us through a magnifying glass. They hate us and want to see an end to the Israeli enterprise. Hostile organizations are rising up and multiplying against us day by day, and those who showed some restraint in the past, in line with the previous US administration’s friendly policies toward Israel, now feel more comfortable to act in step with the new White House.
We can continue fighting those who are not on our side, our instinctive reaction is to hate back, but this only confuses our vision and blurs our thoughts. We need to understand hatred from a deeper level, from an internal goal-oriented role demanded of the Jewish people.
We are the ones who fail to rise above the hatred and rejection between us, and the nations of the world reflect the state of our relations. In fact, the hostility against us is not because of our necessity for self-defense, but due to our lack of awareness of what the world demands from us: to connect and provide the world with the system for ultimate connection.
The nation of Israel was created differently from all other nations. Ours is a nation established to serve as a source for humanity’s future connection, for and of every nation in the world. It is why Israel was created and it is our destiny. Moreover, it is what the world subconsciously expects of us. They instinctively feel Jews know how to achieve peace and prosperity in the world and are not sharing it with them, so their complaint is manifested as antisemitism.
Understanding our background is therefore key to understanding that the Jewish people is not a nation in the common sense of the word, but a group of people from many different tribes and cultures who subscribed to an idea. This common vision was the fact that there is one force that governs the universe, the force of unity, the only power that can connect us above our differences.
We agreed to unite “as one man with one heart” at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and received the code of law for conducting a society whose members are united at heart. The task we were given is as valid now as it was then, and the world demands that we carry it out. Is Israel detrimental to the world? We are as long as we do no not overcome our deep divisions and get closer to each other. Thus, the only solution to end the animosity against the Jewish nation is becoming one unified people. As Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag wrote during WWII in his 1940 paper The Nation:
“It is also clear that the enormous effort that the rugged road ahead requires of us mandates unity that is as solid and as hard as steel from all parts of the nation, without exception. If we do not come out with united ranks toward the mighty forces that are standing on our way to harm us, we will find that our hope is doomed in advance.”
Therefore, if we can find this desire to unify within us and fan its flames, we will become a positive force that will permeate the world and hatred against us will vanish.