Taking a break from Israel

I fantasize about escaping − disappearing, going underground beneath a veil of a Christian façade – concealing myself away in Small-town, USA, where everyone eats vanilla ice cream, dances to the same tune and steals kisses beneath the coveted mistletoe.

The yoke of one’s Jewishness, Israeliness and the burden of every loathsome article and act against Israel from a villainess world is a heavy load to bear and can be straining on the shoulders.

Sometimes I just want to breathe. Not think. Not do. Not write. Not “get the truth out.”

I imagine how wonderful it would be to live as one among a people that does not have to keep justifying its existence to the world…To live among people that long ago usurped the unmerited role of gatekeeper of the planet.

And, I imagine how it would be, not to walk around with a pained heart over the many members of my tribe who chase after the momentary acceptance of these very gatekeepers I dream to run away to. It conjures a scene in my mind’s eye of hounds vying for their master’s attention.

The fantasy is fleeting, as the taste for it turns sour, unpalatable, and repulsive to contemplate further. It is precisely in those moments when I wish to take a break from Israel, from the news from anything Jewish, that I embrace who I am and where I’m from.

I am eternally grateful that I am not a member of a people that would take part in the whole-sale slaughter of another − rich with a history of basking in the rape and torture of their victims − a people that has stood on sanctimonious pedestals while burning others alive, whether to weed out perceived evil spirits or just for sport, or toss babies into the air using them for target practice. I am eternally grateful that I am not a member of a people who now boast great democracies, which sat passively aside while the people of Rwanda were butchered − that continues to look the other way when atrocities are committed towards others and accuse the victims with self-righteous indignation while regarding with deference those who surpass them in unadulterated malice.

Yeah, so much for fantasies. They’re over-rated.

Yet, it astounds me each time I hear from within our own ranks, the desperate call for Israel to acquiesce to the demands of these same sanctimonious power brokers whose history merits them the reputation of Edom that boasts an entire continent as little more than one massive Jewish graveyard.

And these are the people we should engage and beseech for the sake of our survival?

I think not.

We witnessed their blind eye turned towards Rwanda. Do you think Edom will stick their necks out for Israel? For Jews?

Unrealistic? Not pragmatic?

We have to play by the rules?

Whose rules? And, exactly where has pragmatism gotten us thus far?

No matter what we do, no matter whom we placate, no matter whom we cater to, no matter how much we compromise and acquiesce, the world will continue to question not only our legitimate rights to a state of our own in our ancestral land, but our very legitimacy to live. This is evidenced each time, without fail, when we defend ourselves against the strangling terror we face, as well as in the negation on the part of the UN of international law, twisting it beyond recognition in order to further it’s not too latent anti Jew agenda.

Pragmatism? Where has it gotten us?

To state that we have NOT survived our long exile because of European benevolence would be somewhat of an understatement. Wouldn’t you say? Neither has the 236 years of the U.S.’s existence lent to our unparalleled endurance against all odds. And, I direct the following to the U.N. as well as to the delusional inclined; make no mistake, we are not in our own sovereign state of Israel because of the Holocaust. We are here DESPITE the Holocaust.

We answer to an authority more commanding than the western powers. More awesome than anything our adversaries can throw at us.

Take your pragmatism for all that it’s worth. It amounts to nothing more than prostituting ourselves.

I’ll stick to the real − to what has led us repeatedly out of the darkest moments in history and from complete genocide. I’ll go with the primitive, naïve, unpopular, unsophisticated strategy. But, I’m sticking with what works and at the same time, remain true to our heritage, our people and our land.

All you apologists out there, you can grovel to Edom.
I’m sticking with my people and the God to whom we pray.