Letter to Piers Morgan: We Are All in This Together, Are We?

I am glad you admitted that you are confused, because you totally missed the best point of your own article! You gave a perfectly sensible reason for Jews not to move to Israel, and then you devoted an entire article to spewing venom about Bibi and rambling on and on about irrelevancies. Let me show you how your vitriol overcame your logic. You wrote:

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says his country is in imminent danger of being nuked off the face of the earth by Iran.
But he wants every Jew to flee terror attacks in the rest of the world…and come to live in Israel?
Makes perfect sense, right?
Well, no, obviously it doesn’t.

I thought to myself: Brilliant! Of course it doesn’t make sense, Mr Morgan. I never thought of it like that before. You made a remarkably astute point. While you veered off a bit to the side by bad-mouthing Bibi, it seemed you were about to get it when you wrote:

If every Jew in the world DID heed his clarion call to emigrate to Israel, then the only winners would be Islamic fundamentalists.

Heart beating in anticipation, I waited with bated breath for you strike a bulls eye. Just imagine my dismay when you didn’t even hit the target. You pronounced that the reason the winners would be the Islamicists is because this, for them, would be a PR coup.

What? A PR coup? What were you thinking? This is much much bigger than a PR coup. This is stupendous. (And a sign that you may even be someone who cares.)

But let me digress for a moment, as you did. I cannot let this letter go by without talking about the silly reasons you gave for why Jews should not leave where they currently reside and head for Israel. You wrote about how terror attacks don’t just target Jews and nonsense about how we are all in this together; and how Jews should not run (home) in fear because leaders like Denmark’s Prime Minister say they will protect their Jewish communities from the growing anti-Semitism that you do acknowledge. At least Denmark has a history of valiantly resisting attempts to harm the Jews within its borders, but this is not a commonality among nations.

Then you got on Bibi’s case again, writing about what a “rough, tough old political bruiser” he is and that you can legitimately say so because you personally interviewed him, with him even giving you a morning of his time. Of course he is rough and tough, Mr Morgan. Who but the roughest and toughest political bruisers would survive in Israeli politics (or any politics)? What does his personality, however, have to do with whether or not Jews should come to Israel? Your extreme disrespect for Bibi seems totally out of place in a discussion on whether or not Jews should abandon the Diaspora and move to Israel. I’m sure you can find better contexts within which to express the entitlement you feel to tell him to shut up, as you put it.

Back to the point: All the Jews in the world should NEVER EVER be in one geographical place at the same time, not even in Israel. Especially not now, as the Iranians seem close to achieving nuclear military capabilities. If all Jews were within Israel’s borders, a single nuclear bomb would wipe us all out in one fell swoop. Very few in our supposed global “in this together” community would shed a tear. It would take out a lot of our neighbours as well, of course. Collateral damage, you know. But I suppose that would not matter to anyone if it is not us Jews doing the collateral damaging.

Now, more than ever, we need to know that we have a strong Diaspora that would survive a nuclear attack on Israel, should one happen. And we need a strong Israel so that there will never be Jewish refugees knocking on closed doors if things go wrong anywhere else. You see, Mr Morgan, the ones who are in it together are us Jews. And we need to be able – all of US – to prevent our diametrically opposed views of Bibi from pulling us apart.