What Does “We Stand For Israel” mean?
As “Operation Protective Edge” enters its third week we hear the “We stand for Israel” slogan everywhere. What does it really mean? How does one stand for Israel in these crucial times?
Imagine if you went back in time eighty-five years ago to Europe to the summer of 1939 and met a group of trapped Jews with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Imagine if you told them that you come form an age where there is an independent Jewish State with a “right of return” where every Jew receives automatic citizenship: A State where Hebrew is a living spoken language, a State where Jewish farmers farm their land, a State where Jewish soldiers defend our pride and dignity, a State where Jews live in freedom and are in charge of their own destiny.
The Jews of pre-Shoah Europe would fall on their faces thinking that you were talking about some kind of messianic era. After all, Jews yearned and hoped and prayed for two millennia to be “free people in our land.” Jews declared “Next Year in Jerusalem” after the Passover meal and Yom Kippur services and broke countless glasses at weddings saying, “If I forget thee O Jerusalem.”
Yet this is our reality as we live in the times of miracles and wonders of the sixty-sixth year of the State of Israel. We arrived at this place in our history not just because of prayers and hopes but also because of actions. Our youth returned and; one word at a time revived our dormant language, revived the idea of Jews working our land and revived the Jewish idea of self–defense. We should be jumping out of bed with the “Shechiyanu” prayer on our lips thanking our lucky stars that we live in the times that we do. So what can we do to show we, “Stand for Israel?
Things you can DO to support Israel. To Jew is to DO!
- Come here now:
Take a trip. Stay in a hotel. Meet the troops and families of troops in the field. Eat at a restaurant here. Take a tour. Our economy has taken a hit. Tourism for the summer is virtually dead. If you would like to help that is the best way.
- Make Israel your home:
Go to the options in your web browser and make www.timesofisrael.com your choice of Israel news the first tab on your homepage.
- Colour your face blue and white:
Update your Facebook status, twitter and your other social media sites with news on or support forour IDF soldiers and our embattled southern cities of Israel.
- Open your wallet in Israel’s support:
A lot of great causes – for example,http://lonesoldiercenter.com, Friends of the IDF, or http://www.zdvo.org (IDF Disabled veterans association), to name just a few.
- Say thank you:
View the statementsof and WRITE TO THANK your elected officials for their support of Israel during this difficult time. Write to thank the brave IDF troops on the front lines, http://www.thankisraelisoldiers.org/?CategoryID=164
- Advocate for Israel & attend rallies for Israel:
Check out ideas on: https://www.standwithus.com
May God show compassion upon our soldiers and our people and lead them and us from danger to security, from darkness to light, and from attack to freedom, as speedily as humanly – or as Divinely – possible.