Beryl Ratzer, author of "A Historical Tour of the Holy Land," periodically sends out an interesting newsletter. This is her December newsletter, which may also be read on her web site.
Shalom!
Here
we are, almost halfway through both Hanukah and December and I still
haven’t fully processed the events of November. It began with a few
days of long-awaited rain and, for me, with twelve days exploring the
country, from the snowcapped Hermon Mountain in the north to sunny
Eilat in the south, with twenty six delightful Australian tourists,
interested in absolutely everything.
What none of us expected was that their Israel experience would include a brief war, “Pillar of Defense” (in Hebrew “Pillar of Cloud”
Ex 13:21), a rush to the bomb shelter in our Jerusalem hotel and a
chance meeting with a family who were taking a vacation from their
Ashkelon home which had been repeatedly attacked over the last months
by rockets fired from Gaza Strip, that very same Gaza Strip which they
had left when Israel evacuated it in 2005.
For
months the world turned a blind eye on the thousands of rockets,
missiles and mortars raining down on Israeli towns and villages, fired
from the Gaza Strip. When Israel decided to retaliate the world very
briefly supported the Israeli precision bombing of strategic targets
before returning to the customary condemnation of Israel and our
“disproportionate” actions.
Then came the 29th
of November the very date when, sixty five years ago, the UN voted to
partition Palestine, then under British Mandate rule, into two
entities, one for the Jewish Palestinians and one for the Arab
Palestinians. Resolution 181 was joyfully accepted by Jews and
vehemently rejected by the Arabs. The Jews established the State of
Israel. As they had no claims of nationhood instead of doing the same,
the Arabs declared war on the nascent Israel, a war which they lost and
then called this missed opportunity a Naqba, a disaster.
On 29th
November this year, 2012, the UN voted to recognize the Palestinians as
a non-member state. In one fell sweep, UN resolutions 242 and 338 were
tossed into the rubbish bin along with all the agreements between
Israel and the Palestinians, from the Declaration of Principles signed
by PM Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1993, the Wye River Memorandum in
1998, the Camp David Agreements and the Road Map.
The
Palestinians no longer feel the need to recognize Israel, to negotiate
a final settlement with Israel or to stop their attacks on Israel. Why
should they? By winning the media war, the PR war, which has denied the
history of the Jewish people in this land, despite written and
archeological proof and virtually erasing all the previous agreements
signed with Israel, all calling for direct negotiations, the world has
given them all they asked for, and more, with no strings attached.
It
has taken a long time but I think that most people here in Israel have
come to realise that we have no one to rely on but ourselves. The world
turned a blind eye while over six million Jews were slaughtered during
WWII and the world is turning a deaf ear to threats to “wipe Israel off
the map”, to the Palestinian glorification of those who will commit
suicide if they can kill a few Jews at the same time, Jews – not
Israelis, to the claim that Israel does not and has not any right to
exist.
Nor
is it concerned that the Palestinian demand for a state includes the
proviso that it be totally Judenrein, absolutely without one Israeli or
one Jew, which is the same thing as far as they are concerned, thereby
proving that anti-Israel, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and
the same thing. Hitler failed to achieve this in Europe but there are
Arab and Moslem countries which have succeeded.
Not
surprisingly, overlooked is the fact that the more than a million
Arabs, Moslem, Christian and Druze, living in Israel are Israeli
citizens with the right to vote in elections and have 16 members (out
of 120) in the outgoing Knesset.
Please take the time to see these two brief presentations, directly from ‘the horse’s mouth’.
In
a world rife with civil wars, massacres, military revolts, starvation,
human trafficking, women and child abuse, dictatorships and economic
upheavals the world is pre-occupied with a potential plan to perhaps
build a few thousand homes in Jerusalem, the three thousand year old
capital of the Jewish people, area E1 which adjoins it and Israeli
‘settlements’ in general.
I
doubt if there are many people that know the area E1 is a barren hilly
piece of land a mere twelve square kilometers (4.6 square miles) in
size, on the road which descends through the Judean desert from
Jerusalem to Jericho. Try and picture the size. I also doubt also if
many people know that the ‘settlements’ take up a mere 2% of all the
land of the West Bank.
The
world obsession with Israel is disproportionate to say the least. And
it explains why we are beginning to realise how accurate were the words
of the first century sage, Rabbi Hillel, who said "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if not now, when?"
This is the same Rabbi Hillel who, when asked to explain Judaism while his interlocutor stood on one leg, replied: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn."
In these days of political correctness I end with the innocuous “Seasons greetings”!
Beryl Ratzer
Author of "A Historical Tour of the Holy Land"
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