Amsterdam
How can a pogrom happen in a modern, cultured, sophisticated city of enlightened Europe? In a country where the International Court of Justice is. And so many people are trying to justify it, blaming Israelis for instigating it — just like the antisemites of yesteryear used to blame the Jewish victims.
Amsterdam has shown that even after the holocaust, a time when Dutch police reportedly collaborated with the Nazis, and many Dutch citizens revealed to the Nazis where Jews were hiding; even after all those terrible calamities happened, and Europe subsequently reinforced and spread their ideals of enlightenment and acceptance and understanding and tolerance; even after all that, Amsterdam has now shown that it’s all a facade. By not clamping down against anti-Israel and pro-Hamas demonstrators this past year, Europe enabled last week’s Jew-hunt to happen.
Amsterdam and Europe and the U.S. and the world are realizing that their ideologies don’t work. That their countries are seething with antisemites who are ready to repeat the holocaust in an instant.
So what will work?
In Daniel chapter two, King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. But he can’t remember it, and when his advisors won’t tell him what he dreamt, he threatens to kill them. Finally Daniel appears before the king and tells him, that G-d revealed to Daniel the dream and its interpretation.
The dream consisted of a statue made of different materials — a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of copper, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay.
And then a stone was hewn without hands, struck the feet of the statue, and the whole statue crumbled. The stone became a mountain which filled the entire world.
After relating the dream, Daniel tells the king its interpretation. The materials of the statue symbolize different kingdoms that will rule in the world. The head of gold is Nebuchadnezzar, the silver and copper are subsequent kingdoms, iron symbolizes a strong kingdom that shatters and flattens everything. The feet, composed of iron and clay, are a broken kingdom, composed of two peoples who will mingle but won’t merge, just as iron and clay don’t merge together.
And then G-d will establish a kingdom that will not be destroyed, it will crumble the other kingdoms and last forever, just as the stone crumbled the iron, copper, clay, silver and gold.
Nebuchadnezzar thanked Daniel, gave him gifts, and appointed him to a high position.
Numerous commentaries explain that the feet, composed of iron and clay, represent the Roman Empire (which later developed into the Western powers of Europe and America), and the Islamic Empire; and although these two peoples will be in the same place, they won’t merge together as one. And that is when the stone, representing Moshiach, will knock down the statue, show that those ideologies are false, and fill the world with an awareness of G-d.
Perhaps Daniel predicted what is happening now.
In recent times, millions of Muslims immigrated to Europe and America — but instead of assimilating, many have retained their Islamic culture. (The iron and clay mingled, but didn’t merge together.)
And just as the stone crumbled previous kingdoms and ideologies, Jews are now teaching the world that their ideologies don’t work. Israel is a light to the nations, showing that, for the sake of all humanity, evil must be eradicated. Emissaries of the Lubavitcher Rebbe are publicizing, that the only way to ensure proper morals and world peace, is by adhering to the seven Noahide laws that G-d told Moses, at Mount Sinai, to tell all the nations.
Because G-d, Who created the world, knows how to keep it prosperous and peaceful.
Perhaps the time of Redemption is very close, a time when all nations will be aware of G-d‘s presence, as the prophet says, “and the world will be filled with the knowledge of G-d, just as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11; 9)
May it happen very soon.