Two Crystal Nights |
Two Crystal Nights
During the five weeks now past we have seen Arab mobs and their Muslim brethren throughout the world run through the streets screaming “kill the Jews.” We know they mean it. During these five weeks more synagogues were burnt down than in all the years since the infamous “Night of the Broken Glass”, or Kristallnacht, as the Germans called it.
That earlier pogrom occurred on the night of November 9-10, 1938 and was
organized by the German government with a view of burning down every Beth
Hatefillah in Germany and Austria while the fire departments stood by and
insured that “Aryan” homes would not be burnt as well. Then, Hitler’s
minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, shouted over the radio that the German
people are “rising in bloody vengeance against the Jews.” This year Arafat
and his henchmen bellowed similar slogans as they attacked the Jews of Israel on
the highways, in their villages and even in Jerusalem.
On November 9/10, 1938 mob violence
broke out in all German communities as the police stood by and crowds of
spectators enjoyed the beating and murder of defenseless Jews on the streets.
Uniformed Nazi hoods broke into Jewish homes and stores, smashed all the
furnishings and threw then into the streets. They brutalized Jewish women and
children and vandalized synagogues. They desecrated Torah scrolls, destroyed and
burned Jewish books or books by Jewish authors and dragged 25,000 Jews into
their “concentration camps.”
Likewise, the Arabs of Israel burned
the Tomb of Joseph, desecrated the Torah scrolls there, burned the Jericho
synagogue, vandalized the synagogue in Efrat and in other places while their
sympathizers in this country attacked our synagogues in Syracuse and elsewhere.
All told, the Germans in 1938 destroyed 267 synagogues, smashed 7,500 businesses and murdered 91 Jews on one day. Worse was yet to come.
Likewise the Arabs, during the past 5
weeks and before, killed 61 Jews, while their
Muslim co-religionists burned more synagogues worldwide that the Germans
did in 1938.
Yet, there is a difference. In 1938 we
were defenseless. There were only 580,000 Jews in Germany that year out of a
population of 70 million Germans. We had no government. We had no weapons. No
one helped us. No one came to our aid. A tiny minority in a sea of hate, we died
in their gas ovens and only a few survived. But not this time. This time there
is a Jewish government. This time we have tanks. This time we have helicopter
gun ships. This time we have an army. This time we have an air force and this
time we mean to defend ourselves.
Of course the so-called United
Nations, a hotbed of anti-Jewish bigotry, sides with the haters and killers.
According to the Jew haters such as Amnesty International it is a “war
crime” for Jews to defend themselves. Murdering Jews is not crime. Lynching
two Jewish boys in Ramallah is also no crime. But Jewish self defense, that is a
crime. Of course, it is understandable that the world has a hard time learning
that Jewish blood is not cheap or free. For two thousand years anyone who wished
was able to slaughter Jews at will. For two thousand years the expulsion,
persecution, destruction and obliteration of any Jewish community was a sport in
Europe and the Arab lands. That has now come to an end. Therefore, the would-be
killers are disappointed. It seems unfair to them that they are deprived of
Jewish blood and can no longer loot the property of slaughtered Jews. Jews, for
the first time in all these years, can and do fight back. How dare they? Are not
Jews expected to run to their deaths in anti-tank ditches and die inside burning
synagogues?
No more. Today we stand together with
our friends in the Christian community and we say with Isaiah: “Kol k’li
yootzar olayich low yitzloch – no weapon forged against you shall prosper.”
We may justifiably ask why Arafat and
his cronies launched these attacks on Israel after having almost reached a
so-called “land for peace” agreement with Israel only four months ago. We
already know that that agreement was entirely at the expense of Israel as Israel
gave up more and more land but received literally nothing in return. Yet, seeing
the weakness of the Barak government, Arafat promised his followers more. He
even promised his people that he could establish a Palestinian state with all of
Yerushalayim as its capital. When that was too much even for Barak, Arafat and
his gang decided to resort to violence. Now it must have been obvious to the
Palestinian manipulators that although Shimon Peres had given them weapons, they
could not overcome the Israeli defense forces. Nevertheless they believed that
violence would favor their cause.
Recently, Sakhar Habash, the so-called
ideological head of Arafat’s Fatah party said that violence would
“internationalize” the fight of the Arabs against Israel. Habash believed
that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would do to Israel what NATO had
done to Yugoslavia in March of 1999. At that time, NATO bombed Serbia and killed
thousands of civilians on behalf of the Muslims of Kosovo. The Palestinians
interpreted that assault on Serbia as a precedent leading to an assault on
Israel by the same forces on behalf of the Muslims of Israel. It ought to be
understood that Muslims see everything in religious terms and concluded that
NATO is a military force interested in Muslim causes. It should also be recalled
that some Jews were in the lead in shouting for the destruction of Serbia in
favor of the Muslims of Kosovo, despite the fact that the Serbs were the best
allies we Jews had during the Nazi horrors while the Muslims of Kosovo formed a
brigade which marched with Hitler into Russia and murdered Jews there during
1941-42. When NATO made no move to bomb Israel, Arafat then demanded that the fight against Israel be internationalized by having the United Nations send a “Commission of Inquiry” there. Such a United Nations commission would of course consist of the usual gang of anti-Jewish hate mongers so that it is a foregone conclusion that any committee or any decision made by the United Nations is always anti Jewish and anti-Israel. Evidently then, Israel will not allow any so-called commission of inquiry to enter there.
It is therefore likely that the Arab
effort to internationalize their attack on Israel has failed. It has failed
because the United States, our country, will not accede to every Arab
demand because we, the American Jews, together with our Christian
friends, will not allow our country to act against Israel. This latest effort to
destroy Israel has also failed, however, because for the first time since the
year 70 Jews can fight back and stay alive. In the words of Winston Churchill,
“we will never surrender;” not now, not ever, but we will stay alive and
build Eretz Yizrael in the firm knowledge that we need not fear anyone.
“Adonai lee, v’low eeroo –G’d is with me, I shall not fear.” So
we say every week at the end of the Shabbat service and so we shall act now and
all our days to come = bimhayro v’yomenoo. Shalom
u’vracha.
|