The Paradox of a Nation Alone Through Which the World is Blessed (Lekh Lekha)

There seems to be an inherent contradiction in Bereishit 12:3 when God tells Avraham:

וַאֲבָֽרְכָה֙ מְבָ֣רְכֶ֔יךָ וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ֖ אָאֹ֑ר וְנִבְרְכ֣וּ בְךָ֔ כֹּ֖ל מִשְׁפְּחֹ֥ת הָאֲדָמָֽה
I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you.
All the families of the earth will be blessed in you

After all, if all the families of the earth will be blessed in us, the descendants of Avraham, then what about all those who are cursed?

This paradox is repeated and made much more forceful through the powerful prophecy of Bil’am in Parhsat Balak (Bamidbar 23, 24)

הֶן־עָם֙ לְבָדָ֣ד יִשְׁכֹּ֔ן וּבַגּוֹיִ֖ם לֹ֥א יִתְחַשָּֽׁב׃
… It is a nation that will dwell alone. It will not take heed of other nations
Bamidbar 23:9

מְבָרְכֶ֣יךָ בָר֔וּךְ וְאֹרְרֶ֖יךָ אָרֽוּר׃
Blessed are they who bless you, Accursed they who curse you!
Bamidbar 24:9

I would suggest a sequential unspooling of contemporary history that would make sense of this paradox. What’s more, we seem to be living through its flash point at this very moment:

God is making an end-time declaration when he says “those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you ill be cursed”. And take careful note that He does not, in Parshat Lekh Lekha (Bereishit 12:3) say that all the nations will be blessed through the Jews , but all the “families” – hardly the same thing.

Right now, we in Israel are experiencing our isolation as a nation alone. Yes, we enjoy some grudging and conditional support here and there. Nevertheless we are on our own in a war against an Islamist juggernaut whose goal is vastly greater than the mere destruction of Israel.

Iran, a mighty nation of nearly 90 million, has assumed the leadership of the Muslim ummah in a grand vision of subjugating the entire world to the dictates of Shariah. In this endeavor, Sunni and Shia have sidelined their murderous mutual hatred, deferring that internecine Armageddon until later.

The Islamist attack is primarily a frontal battle, manifest in the necklace of terror that surrounds Israel. The goal is to eliminate the single non-Muslim presence in the Near East before moving on to the conquest of the West. The call for a Palestinian State is merely a decoy, ranking very low, if at all, on the Islamist agenda, but one that plays very well among the intersectional Western left.

It is also a battle being waged in Western countries through the systematic, and exponentially increasing, population invasion of Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. Asia is of tertiary concern as much of Asia is already Islamic – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, a huge part of India, much of the Philippines.

In the West, Islamism wages its war by tapping into an ever-simmering, pervasive antisemitism that blinds the haters to the suicidal aspect of making a pact with the Islamist devil. Who doesn’t see the devastation being wrought by the metastasizing Muslim presence in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Great Britain? And yet, so great is the endemic Jew-hatred of a 2,000 year culture of anti-Semitism that many in these countries willingly risk their own security and future by allying themselves in the toxic war against the State of Israel – a war not for the establishment of a Palestinian State, but one, as is now apparent, against the very existence of Israel.

And while western governments may not – at least not yet – be in synch with this ethos, they do pander to it by exhorting, even warning, Israel not to take unilateral steps: Do not invade Gaza. Do not enter Rafah. Do not attack Lebanon. Do not cut off UNWRA. And if you must attack Iran do so in a manner that will not harm the mullocracy.

Under these circumstances Israel is very much a nation that dwells alone הֶן־עָם֙ לְבָדָ֣ד יִשְׁכֹּ֔ן. And its strategy must be to ignore the advice, exhortation and threats of its western ‘allies’ וּבַגּוֹיִ֖ם לֹ֥א יִתְחַשָּֽׁב׃. Fortunately we seem, finally, to be adhering to the latter.

Right now Israel is the only nation in the world that is fighting a full frontal battle against the mutli-tentacled Islamic enemy of the free world that is Iran. It is doing so very much alone and despite the constant warnings and outright threats from the capitals of the free world and, of course, the United Nations.

That the pundits of Paris and London, of Berlin and Brussels, of Dublin and Madrid, of Ottawa and Canberra, and yes Washington DC, insist on hobbling Israel from single-handedly thwarting an evil that threatens their world is astonishing. Meanwhile they allow their Muslim populations to increase exponentially through family unification, liberal immigration policies, Qatar-funded “student” visas that somehow become permanent, and, of course a staggering birthrate largely funded by local taxpayers.

So Israel, at least for now, must go it alone. And it must – for its sake and for the sake of the free world – ignore the sage advice of the likes of Antony Blinken and Emanuel Macron, not to mention the venomous hatred spewing from Norway, Belgium, Brazil, Chile and others.

When the dust settles – and that is a question of when not of whether – Israel will still be here. Iran will have become a bullwark of Western freedom and creativity. The Jew haters of the West will once again go dormant (never extinguished). And the “families” of the world – the good people who supported us in the darkest hours – will share with us the blessings of victory against a violent Islamist tsunami that threatened to engulf us all.