In The Beginning
The Bible opens with the words “In the beginning.” Modern physics has finally caught up with the Bible. Out of chaos, after the big bang, came the stars, the planets, and ultimately humankind.
Leaving for Israel, I could not help but think of how Israel has traveled from chaos to order and back to chaos again. October 7, 2023, to borrow Roosevelt’s phrase about Pearl Harbor, will not only live in “infamy” because of the Hamas assault upon farmers, innocents, peace activists, and especially women, but because it marked a descent of humanity into the bowels of unspeakable depravity.
Leaving for Israel aboard the El Al 787 Dreamliner, one did not see the enthusiastic young people traveling to discover the Holy Land, Christian activists, and Jewish supporters. Rather, this was citizens of the State of Israel and dual citizens traveling to and fro mainly for family reasons. The woman sitting next to me told me that she grew up in Scranton. She has 6 children. She is not a citizen of Israel. However, her 6 children live in Israel and her somewhat elderly father is still in Scranton.
The illogic of a world filled with hate for Israel and renewed antisemitism, is too painful for most people to even talk about with one another. Rather, we engage in trite conversation about the weather, our travel plans, and how long we will be away from home, family, and jobs.
In Israel, the pervasive feeling is one of quiet, unless rockets are being fired from the south by Hamas into pastoral Israel and into the north of Israel by Hezbollah. In both cases, the targets are peaceful villages and farms. The West helps to finance Iran, and Iran, together with Qatar and other Arab nations, keep the caldron boiling with irrational hate for the Jewish people, Christians, and the West.
Upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, there is a noticeable absence of activity. After a hard landing in a morning filled with low clouds and a murky atmosphere, it is noticeable that the only planes at the airport have the blue Star of David on their respective tails. One airplane from another country was all that we saw.
The woman at the rental car booth noted the absence of travelers and tourists. “Hopefully, this will all be over by Passover,” she lamented. The Passover and Easter season was always an important time for religious pilgrims and tourists in the Holy Land.
Driving to Be’er Ya’akov in the rental car, to see our kids and grandkids, revealed somewhat less traffic than we customarily experience in this tiny, crowded nation. Every store echoed the sentiment seen at the airport, “Bring Them Home Now.” Walking down the incline at the airport from the deplaning area to the baggage pickup, the gangway was lined with pictures of the hostages.
The hostages are a valuable commodity for Hamas and other terrorists, dead or alive. The Jewish and Christian passion to respect the living, and honor the dead, is matched by an equally demonic negativity demonstrated by the Jihadists. Hostages, and other captives, are just one more bit of ammunition for the Jihadists, together with their own women and children used as human shields. The more people who die, the greater the sympathy that radical Islam seems to receive from bizarre and hateful people.
The bad guys, wherever they are in the world, are thrilled to the point of ecstasy to see Americans and Europeans marching in the streets, closing down airports, attacking Jewish members of universities and governing boards, all in support of a terrorist assault on the West. Meanwhile, Americans and Europeans of good conscience are flummoxed and not able to understand why their nations are being turned into a hotbed of hate.
Those in Israel, as well as others in the West, wonder how did we get from supporting the civil rights and liberties of all peoples, to endorsing the destruction of those labeled by extremists as their enemy?
While it seems quieter in Israel, we have yet to travel to the border areas where Israel’s war of survival is being waged. At least two people told me right off the bat that the next stage of the war will be dealing with Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, in the north, which currently occupies Syria and Lebanon. Many soldiers have been told they can return home, but that they should expect to be called up again in May.
There was something ambiguous and oddly appropriate about the movie I watched on the airplane flying to Israel was “Oppenheimer.” The physicist who was most responsible for the development of the atomic bomb used on the civilians living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was presented as a complex, at times confused but dedicated scientist. He convinced himself that developing and using the A bomb would shorten the war, and perhaps make all wars impossible to comprehend. However, it did not take him long to understand that the bigger and badder the weapon, the more likely that some lunatic will use it to dominate the world.
The more weaponry that we have provided to the Arabs, the more passionate they have been in using that weaponry to marginalize the Christians and kill the Jews.
We have graduated from the Barbary pirates who wreaked havoc upon Mediterranean shipping 250 years ago, and took their share of captives, now to a much more pernicious and dangerous form of piracy called Jihad.