Thursday, June 10, 2010
אני אוהב את ישראל
You've seen it, right? Old bat/left-wing nut/"journalist" Helen Thomas gettin' all anti-Semitic on-camera?
This is the best takin'-Thomas-to-task opinion piece I've yet seen. A sample:
While Thomas’ comments were outrageous in their content and angry in their tone, they were hardly unique. This pernicious idea that Jews are outsiders who have stolen Arab land is widespread. In this version of history, the Western powers decided that after killing six million Jews they should give the survivors a state in Palestine as some sort of consolation prize. Overjoyed, a bunch of ethnic Europeans left their ancestral homes in Berlin and Warsaw and set sail for a strange and exotic new land where Jewish feet had never before tread.
Sadly, President Obama helped to promote this myth in his speech in Cairo back in June, 2009. There Obama noted that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied." He then proceeded to discuss the European anti-Semitism "which culminated in the Holocaust." By completely ignoring the fact that the Jewish right to a homeland in Israel is rooted in a long and deep connection to that land, and by focusing only on the "tragic history" that convinced some Jews to exercise that right, our President seemed to be suggesting that Israel’s right to exist is rooted solely in the Holocaust.
Let me be clear. If the Jewish people had no connection to the Land of Israel, I could not in good conscience support the building of a Jewish state there. If the sole Jewish claim to the land was that Europeans had selected it as compensation for the Holocaust, I could not be a Zionist. If the Jews had as weak a claim to Israel as let’s say the pilgrims did to Massachusetts or the Australians to Australia or the New Zealanders to New Zealand, I would be an anti-Zionist of the first order.
I am a Zionist today because the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel is ancient, deep, unbroken, and unbreakable. I am a Zionist today because rarely in the course of human history has the bond between a people and a land been so strong and so profound and so central to that people’s very being. I am a Zionist today because Israel’s cause is just.
To assert the Jewish claim is not to deny that other people migrated to Israel over time – including large numbers who came after the Jews began their modern return — and have likewise developed a deep attachment to that land. To assert the Jewish claim is not to oppose mutual recognition between Israelis and Palestinians. On the contrary, most Israelis support the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel provided that this state would recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce terrorism.
But precisely because so many now seek to deny it, asserting the Jewish claim has become essential to the cause of peace and mutual recognition. By denying the Jewish ties to the land, Israel’s enemies seek to reinforce the dangerous idea that the creation of Israel was a massive theft and injustice of historic proportions. This lie drives the very terrorism and rejectionism that has prevented peace in the Middle East ever since the day Israel was reborn. The only way Israel’s enemies can one day recognize and respect Jewish rights is if they are made aware of them.
# posted by Joltin' Django @ Thursday, June 10, 2010 
