The Mapping Project is an undertaking closely resembling what was done during the Nazi era when Jewish businesses were singled out and marked in preparation for the Kristallnacht pogroms in 1938. The project—a database recently launched for Massachusetts which includes the addresses of synagogues, Jewish organizations, businesses, institutions and names of their staffers accused of being behind “the colonization of Palestine”—shows that the enemies of Israel are constantly adopting new and more daring forms of attack against us.
Those behind The Mapping Project, a new version of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, do not reveal their identities but are not shy about disclosing their dangerous intentions. “Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them,” can be read on their website. The FBI is investigating the origin and potential threats of this initiative which links the support for Zionist causes to white supremacy, US “imperialism”, and “other harms” in society.
I hope our haters will not be able to weaken us, but there is still something to fear. They have great power because inside every person there is a potential antisemite that can be triggered, and the haters of Israel and the Jewish people in general can always be trusted to know how to move their tentacles and expand their reach.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, in many antisemitic initiatives such as the BDS movement and others, those helping our haters are Jews themselves. For generations, Jews have been associated with antisemites, and they are the greatest haters of their own nation when they reject the vocation to unite “as one man with one heart,” for which our nation was founded.
True Judaism works to sweeten the innate egoistic desire within every person and directs all human beings towards connection under the tenet, “love your neighbor as yourself,” as the supreme rule for the Jewish people. This same precept should also bring the rest of humanity to embrace and support one another and to connect with the Creator. That is the true Zionist approach. The opposite—meaning, separation, war, hatred, mutual rejection—is anti-Zionism.
There is such a big struggle and gap between these two opposing visions that there is no middle ground that connects them. Therefore, based on my own experience, there is no point in getting into arguments with antisemites. In the past, I have tried to talk to them logically. I invited them for open conversations hoping to change their minds, and nothing helped.
The silver lining of this situation is that antisemites actually help Zionists—by spitting fire at us, they prevent us from falling asleep on duty. This is how Jews from all walks of life wake up and come closer to realizing the Jewish-Zionist idea.
Now that the mapping project targeting us is emerging, we must strengthen and act beyond the mutual ego that separates us, create an ironclad bond between us, and through it connect with the force that controls everything in reality, the force which is the foundation of the Israeli nation.
We should not waste effort building any network especially to counter-attack our haters, but instead should build a network of connection and love between us, and through that, our haters will fall. We do not have to look in their direction; we have to look in our own direction, in how much we achieve a deep connection of our hearts, desires, passions, goals, so we can build one common goal of mutual support. This connection will be the solid and lasting Jewish network that no enemy that raises its head against us will be able to breach.
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