What Were We Thinking?

"Postcards from America - Postcards from Israel" ^ | February 9, 2011 | Ari Bussel

[Ari Bussel]

What Were We Thinking? by Ari Bussel

They say they do not hate the Jewish State, some even say they “feel right at home.” They say they are “pro-Israel” and are concerned with Israel’s well being and her ability to maintain a democratic and Jewish character. But their actions do everything possible to bring about the Jewish homeland’s demise, her downfall.

They say they care so much about Israel, although they are American and do not live there. They are “distance” lovers, which apparently gives them the right and obligation to dictate to the Jewish State their views on her existence. They claim it is in her best interest, but they will not waiver an iota from their destructive positions.

They are dispensing advice TV-viewing style, where they sit in the comforts of America, using their viewing glasses based on the ideology and freedoms prevalent in the USA, and render decisions about what is good for Israel and what she must do. Alas, theirs does not fit the Middle East, and trying to force on a garment that does not fit is bound for failure—the garment will tear. They care not, which means their motives and approach are not pure.

Those who view them ask “Why do they hate Israel so much, these Jewish-self-haters?”

Do they really hate Israel that much? Is Israel that bad that she must be punished, obliterated, erased from the map and replaced with a country where all its citizens are a Muslim entity? Or do they not see the consequences of their actions and the threat looming on the horizon?

Muslims, who have been brainwashed from an early age to hate the notion of Jews (and by extension Israelis, understood to be Jewish) really are not to blame. Most have never met a Jewish person, and would probably be surprised to learn they have hands and legs, eyes and ears and a mouth and no horns on their heads.

Jewish people, Muslims may discover, are really not that evil once they get to know them. Except most have never met a Jewish person and only know they are “pigs and apes” that must be exposed and destroyed, slaughtered and beheaded.

The Muslims’ acquaintance with the Jews is quite personal. They have been told of the Jewish enemy in Friday sermons, on TV in broadcasts around the clock, in cartoons and caricatures and even in music videos.

Once, last century, we were compared to vermin, infested with diseases which we supposedly helped spread. Today we are the very disease rather than its carrier, but our fate is the same— annihilation.

The Muslims, though, are very clear: They hate us (for all the wrong reasons), have a very specific plan of action and are working toward the goal of conquering the Zionist (i.e. Israeli, i.e. Jewish) enemy.

While I, and Israel, come from a different school of thought—one that respects the other and allows a playground for all, side-by-side— Israel’s enemies’ determination, conviction and clarity are striking. Qualities we seem to lack.

My concern is with the Jews, and some Israelis, who are not ignorant but lead the struggle to help the world rid itself of Israel. They come in all shapes and sizes, a great variety of self-hatred covered and presented in a varying degrees of acceptability to cater to every taste.

The spectrum is wide, so allow me to divide them into two main categories: those with us, and those against us. To belong to either category one needs not be Jewish. There are many Christians who belong primarily to the former, and Muslims are predominantly part of the latter. I am afraid, though, that too many Jews, the vast majority of American Jewry and a sizeable number of Israelis belong to the latter camp as well.

Allow me to be as politically incorrect as possible: I need not prove I want peace, for the simple reason I have done nothing to prove the opposite: I have not attacked my neighbors, nor do I wish their destruction. I have not engaged in blood libels and created a false image of those on the other side of the border. I have not raised my children to hate or trained them to be terrorists. Nor have I clung to an ideology dating back a millennium and a half that looks backwards rather than to a positive future.

There is goodness in Judaism, toward the self and others. It is a religion that asks a person to love and treat the other the way the person wants to be treated by others. It forbids us to murder, and it makes no difference who is the person being murdered, Jew or Gentile. The Ten Commandments speak of man as one and hold all accountable to the rules. There is no difference between “believers” and “non-believers,” the prohibition and consequences are the same. It is a pivotal part of Judaism itself.

True, my people have clumsily (and stupidly) advocated the position of the other side on numerous occasions. So preoccupied they became, they took our very existence for granted and now assign full responsibility for all the evils of the world singularly on Israel’s shoulders. They care only for the enemy, nothing more.

My enemies are playing games, saying they want Peace, but doing everything possible to resist its implementation. They allow Jews and Israelis to advocate their position and to protect their actions. Thus, it has become acceptable to burn Israeli products. Next they will burn books and then people. This, too, has happened before.

I stand alone, knowing I am right for I have seen the future. I will be walking in the valley of darkness, death looming everywhere, the abyss full of dry bones. Bones of all those (non Muslim) who joined the enemy camp believing they were ushering in peace.

They ushered in death instead, in whose shadow I must now walk. With them are so many others, too many to count or grieve, innocent ones, who were collateral damage. They had no bad intentions, no ulterior motives. They simply stood along the way of Death’s march. They stood no chance; they were doomed, their fate decided by inaction. I cannot blame them.

They refused to see or believe, so they called me a dark-seer. Hezbollah was training to take over cities in Israel. What did they think, that there would be an orderly transfer of power, a transition from a Netanyahu-Likud-led government to Hezbollah? When Hamas vowed to destroy the country, were the missiles just children’s toys?

After the cries of the first to be slaughtered in the Northern cities of Israel were heard, the country—and the world—momentarily froze in utter shock. No one could understand the atrocities. “Islam is a peaceful religion,” the world was constantly told. Yet they didn’t even behave like human beings. They were savages, animals excited into frenzy by the smell and sight of blood.

Women raped in the streets, pregnant women had their stomachs ripped open, just for the fun of the exercise. Children were pulled out of apartments, their skulls crushed. Those with fatal wounds were left in the streets, their vision blurry, no longer coherent. No one came to collect them. No one was there to console.

No, they were left for all to see, and fear, and learn the lesson. It happened before, its effectiveness proven.

Then they went to the next city, and the next, and the next.

It has all happened before, and then it happened again. Human beings have a very short memory and refuse to learn from the past, so they repeat their stupidity time and time again.

In the rest of Israel, people did not know where to escape. The sights and sounds from the North were the background, but the missiles landing, one after the other, with precision guidance systems, left one nowhere to go, no place to turn.

Israelis knew about the immense stockpiles of missiles in Gaza and Lebanon. The military and governing echelon knew of the supply routes from Iran via Syria, via the Sinai Peninsula and via the Mediterranean Sea. But they allowed the piles to grow bigger, for the supply chains to continue undiminished.

Everywhere one saw plumes of smoke, huge fires raging, so numerous they overwhelmed those who were still on their feet. The noise of explosions was overpowering, instilling even greater fear against those we cannot fight any longer.

The major sights, like the Tel Aviv skyline along the Mediterranean, obliterated into rubble. In Jerusalem, the square in front of the Western Wall became an impenetrable zone. Israel’s main airport resembled a plowed land, preventing any airplane from landing. Thus, even those Israelis and Jews living in the Diaspora who wanted to come and help were prevented from doing so.

The screams and the pouring blood, the body parts and the mutilated bodies strewn in the streets would remain for days then became weeks. The stench was horrible, but the sights forever engraved in the collective memory of humankind.

It is here that I now walk, amidst the remains of all those who once aspired for “Peace” and who had a final taste of their own poison. I witness the horrors and images of pogroms and massacres pass thru me: those in Eastern Europe, later—just last century in 1929, not even a hundred years ago—in Israel by the Arabs and further, even closer in time during the Holocaust.

I recall all those “enlightened” who vanished from starvation or cruelty, experimentation or disease or just methodological extermination in gas baths, shooting grounds and in the ovens. The “enlightened” European Jews of pre-World War II were replaced later by those who wanted “Peace” or the American Jewry who was “Pro-Israel, but more Pro-Palestinians.” Their fate was all the same.

What were they thinking, these Jews and Israelis who were urging the world to boycott, divest and sanction? Those who blamed Israel for wrongdoings and evil? Those who planted in our minds and our hearts images of brutal soldiers killing for fun or power, occupying lands not theirs and forcing the inhabitants out of their homes or into submission? Those who compiled statistics of homes we supposedly demolished and water we apparently stole and diseases we knowingly and purposely spread specifically to target only others?

That as a result of all the hatred they spread, people will feel sorry for young impressionable Jews?

They helped build the case against Israel. In their actions they justified the inevitable. They are guilty as the perpetrators of these atrocities, but I blame them no longer. For now their bones need to be brought to mass burials. I ache but my eyes are dry and my heart cannot contain the sorrow. There is no longer room left for hatred, just for grieving and rebuilding.

When Israel realized what was going on, she reacted. It was far too late already, but the response was just. There was nothing left of Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Egypt (now submerged underwater), Turkey and Iran. The “proportionality” argument, raised so many times in the past, finally was put to an ultimate test. Jews vowed “NEVER AGAIN” but no one took them seriously, not even they themselves. And when it did happen AGAIN, and the images, sounds and smells penetrated the human cognitive defenses, Israel reacted. She retaliated.

I am walking in a place that once was blessed with children playing, trees growing, bearing delicious fruit. A place that was so taken for granted, that no one paid attention to its medicinal properties or the goodness it bestowed on the whole world; especially not its inhabitants.

They grew accustomed to the place, so they turned their hearts elsewhere. It was their sympathy for so-called Palestinians, a figment of a very creative Middle Eastern storytelling, that managed to bring down the Jewish State.

What were they thinking, those refusing to see and those who felt strength and power were on their side? They were all guilty, and I now walk along this valley of destruction, with the Angel of Death guarding my every step.

Am I at the end of times? The place is deserted, the silence as sharp as a knife. My heart can contain no more horrors, all of which we brought on ourselves. But as long as death surrounds me, I know there is a future, for it is an Angel nonetheless.

A nation will reemerge, as we have done so many times before. We will rejoice once again, and the sound of a bride and groom will be heard, of children once again roaming freely, of people worshipping our God, closer than they ever were. All this will happen again in Zion Jerusalem, and this time—it will be different.

We paid the price we ourselves determined. Our enemies have extracted what they set out to get. They are no more, and we have to rebuild, to remember, for once not to repeat past mistakes.

As long as one Angel is around, so must be another. I blame no one but myself, and I now have to start rebuilding. Walk alongside me, for I am aching, eager to shout and explode. Yet I will not. I am holding my composure, keeping my head high, my eyes set forward. We will rebuild, we will survive: We never wanted to harm anyone, so we managed to destroy our very being, bringing it close to extinction. We insulted God, and He does not forget.

If I could only blink my eyelids a few times and wake up back in time, to that point where we could have acted, should have stood up, but did not. Maybe I could have done better to safeguard Israel, the country given to us not as a gift, but for safekeeping and protection; maybe I should have acted differently? Maybe all the Jewish people should have.

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The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.

The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover.

This point—and often—counter-point presentation is sprinkled with humor and sadness and attempts to tackle serious and relevant issues of the day. The series began in 2008, appears both in print in the USA and on numerous websites and is followed regularly by readership from around the world.

© “Postcards from America — Postcards from Israel,” February, 2011 Contact: bussel@me.com

First Published February 9, 2011