Posted by
RabbiHaim on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 5:46:51 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuI2tjJxlv8
The link above is to the first part of a six part series of YouTube® submissions. The six comprise an authored documentary, by journalist Richard Littlejohn in which he investigates the rise of anti-Semitism in modern Britain. I urge you all to watch all six. Each episode is near ten minutes run time, so we are talking about an hour of well spent time IMHO.
I watched the six episodes one after the other this morning. I couldn’t tear myself away from it. Part of why I was drawn so deeply into it was my experience as a substitute teacher in the Duval County Public School System, where I was abused by students on an almost daily basis and never supported by the administration.
I wear a “kippa” and therefore it was clear to many students that I am Jewish. In nearly every class the first words addressed to me were, “Are you Jewish?” In a way, I considered it a teaching opportunity, and that is what I tried to make it at all times. Some times it was easy, but some times it was not, as the question was posed with open hostility by one or more of the students. I was never quite sure why my religion was important to the students, and occasionally asked them point blank why it mattered what my religion was.
Those questions were not as troubling as the shouts in the hallways of “hey you got the Jew Teacher today,” or the couple of absolutely excessive incidents which happened in two separate schools, but which summed up the “welcome” given a visibly Jewish person by students in the schools. The first of the two incidents culminated with a student leaving the classroom shouting at me claiming that he had nothing to learn from a @#$@#ing Jew, and that I should get my butt [edited by townhall] to church. I reported him and nothing else happened to my knowledge.
The second incident occurred in the schoolyard of a school named after a prominent Jew. From nearly three-quarters of the way across the yard, a student shouted at me, “Hey Mister, you a Jew?” being inured to such incidents, I responded with a simple “Yes.” The student then proceeded to shout from that distance, “You are going to burn in Hell! I know, ‘cause my Pastor told me so! You are going straight to Hell!” No teacher, student, or administrator of what amounted to nearly the entire school, attempted to intervene or interfere.
I say all of this as a preface to what is really burning my gut today, after watching that documentary. What really burned me was the lie that was accepted so broadly that it did not need to be spoken! What is that terrible lie that is so widely accepted that clearly it is accepted even by Jews about Jews?
The BIG LIE is that there is something about Israel that we should be ashamed of. Over and over, the discussion moved to the dissociation of Jews from Israel as a way to protect the Jews from anti-Semitism. The clip in which Galloway associates Israel and Apartheid left his bigotry exposed, but also left his claim of Israel’s culpability by virtue of his association of Israel’s actions [unnamed, of course] with Apartheid standing. Over and over the message was clear. Jews should not support Israel! Jews should not support the actions of the Israel government!
I saw two professors from Israel, in Britain trying to stop the Academic Boycott of Israel. They sat there and admitted that Israel has done, I don’t know what, which should not be supported. They were in a long line of Jews and non-Jews who preached this terrible message against Israel with no specific accusation, and with no documentation.
What has Israel done wrong?! Israel’s greatest sin before the rest of the world is its existence. Its sin is its tenacious grip on some semblance of sanity while engaged in its original War of Independence for nearly one hundred years. Yes, I did say nearly one hundred years. The War, Cold, Hot, and Luke-Warm began with the Balfour Declaration, in which Great Britain declared the Jewish State’s right to exist on or in Palestine. Since that date the Jewish State has thrived against all odds, and against all comers.
Israel has done demonstrably less against its enemies than the United States, England, Argentina or the U.S.S.R. to mention a few. Israel’s courts are among the fairest in the world with regard to minority rights.
Israel stands alone in having welcomed boat people from the American debacle in Vietnam, and Black African Moslems from the ravages of Darfur. Israel is the first to ship medical supplies, doctors, heavy equipment and enhanced technology to disasters around the world. This is done with no litmus test as to the politics or religion of the government in power where the disaster occurred, or the wealth or “alliance” of the government. This includes shipments of Medical aid and disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina, which was promptly refused by the U.S. Government.
When Israel assumed control of the disputed territories as a result of Arab aggression against Israel, conditions there were appalling. The Refugee Camps were indeed Refugee Camps. There were tents; no potable water system; no electricity; no sanitary sewage; no medical infrastructure, and; as Sheikh Jaba’ari used to cry – no colleges. Israel built all of those things. There was no economy in the disputed territories. Israel built that too. The standard of living steadily rose for “Palestinians” under Israel. It plummeted when the PA was given autonomy to administer the disputed territories.
I am proud of the actions of the government and people of Israel for the most part. Where Israel failed, is with its own Jewish population. Israel displaced thousands of Jews from their homes of over thirty years to unilaterally realign Israel’s borders and has not yet resettled most of them.
The problem with my problem is that the Lefties and the Righties both aren’t crying about the Jews. They are crying about the “poor Palestinians” who are oppressed by the State of Israel. They are crying about the treatment of Terrorists by Israel’s courts which sentence them to jail terms and not death. They are crying over stupid Rachel Corey who committed “suicide by tractor” to make a political statement, as the tractor was razing the home of a terrorist. They are whining about how Israel is standing in the way of Peace, not only in the Middle-East, but in the entire world, by not “allowing the Palestinians to govern themselves.”
I know that the world is not fair. I know that I will be called an [expletive deleted] Jew until I die. I choose to do it as did Daniel Pearl, who with the knife on his throat said: “I am Jewish. My Mother is Jewish. My Father is Jewish.” Yes, I would rather die beheaded like Daniel Pearl than castrated like Steve Centanni.