So long and Thanks for the Hate

'Weapon of mass destruction', reads the label, easy to use anytime anywhere contains pure high grade anti-Zionism /anti-Semitism. If the weapons dealers could have bottled it or encased it in steel they would have made a fortune. These WMDs can be made out of anything animal vegetable & mineral. The most powerful trigger is certainly the human voice striking in the name of hate, ignorance, propaganda, incitement, disinformation and indoctrination. In fact just about anything in any form anywhere in the world has been used in one way or another in the active pursuit of wiping the Jewish people off the face of the Earth.

What a warm feeling it should be to be the center of attention. The state that goes out of its way to send help to earthquake and mudslide victims, medical and, dare I say it, humanitarian aid to the world's dark places, is the subject of so much hate.

Yet here we stand, more powerful than ever. Strike us down and we become more powerful, to paraphrase a famous man.

So bring it on. Misquote the Koran and bible, pervert your religious beliefs as much as you want, rewrite history and create facts on the ground. Write books about world domination, conspiracy theories. Yes, my relatives were the Elders of Zion, they loved Zion and they were old, but that's where it ends.

You'll keep trying, you won't stop. And the more you fail the more you'll try and then just as your grandfathers and generations spanning 4000 years have tried and failed so will you, because good always defeats evil. Maybe not immediately, but ultimately. But you have no idea how much good you are doing as well.

Where there is no anti-Semitism we disappear, assimilate, but you're too involved in rewriting history to notice that. Take Poland and Germany before the Holocaust you love to deny. The places where we were harassed most are the places we thrived and the places that accepted us we assimilated and disappeared.

It seems your greatest weapon of mass destruction is to accept us, welcome us, integrate us and make us assimilate and then we will cease to be. Well two things, we won't disappear even if you love us you'll never stop hating us so we don't need to worry. Every Kassam rocket you fire, every grave you defile, every word of your hate-filled rhetoric only strengthens us and secures us. So I guess what I am saying is, thanks. Thanks for hating us, thanks for reminding us we are Jews, thanks for bringing us together , trying to unite us.

But the trouble is that although you have done so much good, you're not going to escape unpunished. The price our people have paid for all the goodness you have bestowed on us over the generations is quite unbearable. We are still only a few million. You have culled our numbers, murdered us in unspeakable horror, and any Rabbi will tell you, really you can't do a sin in order to do a mitzvah, a good deed. You can't steal to give charity and you can't hate us in order to drive us together. And, oh, how you have sinned.

In an effort to neutralize your WMDs which you will never do willingly, we will have to wait. We have waited 4000 years, another few won't hurt. Then on that day we will totally vanquish you and on that day good will overcome evil.

Jewish Blood

Whenever we went on long car journeys when we were kids we would play all manner of word and general knowledge games. Describing the Prime ministers cat with every letter of the alphabet (X was always a challenge, he was always Xenophobic), countries of the world using the last letter of the country (A was the best, Australia, would then become Austria, Angola, Albania etc) and then there was ‘I Spy’. We have a new game, name a country that does not have a problem with Muslim fundamentalists, militia or terrorists. Now there’s a challenge. Now name a country where an act of Muslim terror has occurred which hasn’t somehow tied in with Jews and Israel. From Iraq to Bali, every act of terror by the many, many Muslim extremist and not so extreme groups have killed in the name of their global Jihad and, oh yes, for their brothers and sisters in Palestine.

Now name a time in the last 40 years when we have stood up for ourselves, turned our back on the demands for self restraint, diplomacy and doing what was right for us as a state, a people and nation without pandering to the US, EU, BBC, and any other worthless acronym you can think of. Actually that’s another game. Name all the acronyms of organizations seeking to destroy, destabilize or delegitimize Israel and the Jews. PLO, PFLP, UN, EU, HRW the list is endless.

OK a new game. Name a time when the world has cared, been moved, wept or mourned or uniformly condemned the spilling of Jewish blood.

Name a country that has stood up to the Muslim extremists and fundamentalists among its own citizens. Name a country that is not in denial about what they are seeing before their eyes. Name a country that isn’t trying to brush the problem under the carpet hoping it will go away and name a country that feels that action rather than words will solve the problem.

I Mumbai, an attack perpetrated by Pakistani extremists, Kashmiri separatists or Iran, they purposely targeted and attacked the Chabad center killing the Jews inside. Jews in India totally unrelated to any of India’s problems, non military, non-political, just there to help their fellow Jews with a warm smile, a Shabbat meal and maybe some direction in life. And Jewish travelers escaping to see the world and be young for maybe the last time before they returned to Israel, to study, work and settle down.
We are victims, and that’s our lot. In every generation, as we recite in the Haggada, they rise up to destroy us but the Holy One blessed be He, saves us. Or the running joke, they tried to kill us, we were saved, lets eat! We have been victims ever since Abraham was thrown into a fiery furnace by Nimrod. And since then look at our history. Pretty horrific. True in every generation they rose up to destroy, and some of us were saved to regroup and wait for the next round of crusades, blood libels, inquisitions, pogroms, holocausts. We have more ways to describe the way we have been persecuted and murdered than Eskimos have for snow.

Now name a nation that has more Nobel prizes under their belts, in every category. Name a nation that has produced some of the greatest teachers, thinkers, scientists, doctors, mathematicians. Name a country that in just 60 years has overtaken almost every country on the face of the world in commerce and industry.

Name a nation that should be proud, upstanding, strong and selfish in the face of so much adversity. Name a nation that seems to drag its feet and panders to the will of others at the expense of its own citizens.

Name a nation that will one day, with the help of those who are not in denial and don’t have their heads in the sand, breed great leaders that will stand up for the blood of their brothers and sisters and represent our people as a strong determined nation, pursuing peace and prosperity, security and tolerance and an example to the rest of the world.

Train of thought

The 7:43 train pulled out of Modi’in Central station. I sat on my seat mildly out of breath after a last second sprint an acrobatic dive saved me from waiting another 25 minutes for the next train.

In the UK when you’re on public transport, the idea is to be as anonymous as possible. You don’t look at anyone and you certainly don’t speak to anybody, in fact if you say hello or ask an innocent question about changing trains people look at you with suspicion and you are immediately branded a strange and people will avoid sitting near you. Great if you’re on a packed train.

Yet the train here is the absolute opposite, the antithesis of London. Firstly, when you get on the train everyone has to look at you. Sizing you up, who are you? Where do you come from? Nice shoes etc. Then you are inevitably sucked into conversation, could be with the person sitting next to you or the person three rows behind. Once somebody starts talking everyone gets involved. Opinions, ideas, political theory, theology anything. Of course everybody has his or her own opinion and everybody is right, or so they think.

The games we play on the train range for trying to decipher the shoulder tags of the soldiers. What do they do, where are they based why do they all have slightly different shades of green. There are dark green shirts, blue shirts, grey shirts, beige shirts and light green shirts. Reminds me of the bus we used to take to school. A myriad of uniforms and combinations of colour, even Joseph would have been jealous.

It’s funny the perceptions we invent in our mind for people we don’t know. The guy with a laptop case, blonde beard and ponytail must be a Russian programmer, the guy in a suit is definitely a lawyer and the guy with his sunglasses plastered to his head, tight jeans and smart shirt, definitely a hi-tech salesman.

Then there is the Arab girl sitting trying not to attract attention, but when she got on the train everyone went quiet, so now she has all the attention as whispers start circulating. What’s in her bag? Is she really pregnant? Don’t worry they check everyone before they enter the station. It’s a mixture of fear and self preservation with an unfortunate drop of discrimination. But where is she going? To Tel Aviv? Probably Haifa, which would make more sense. Why? Well it just would.
I counted 23 mp3 players in my carriage including mine, 12 laptops and two play-stations.

That’s a lot of hardware. The buzz from 46 speakers provoked my neighbor to throw down her paper and sit with her fingers in her ears. A bit extreme I thought until I removed mine and heard the incessant drum and bass reverberating from end of the carriage to the other.

I read the free paper and then took out my book, hoping that it would have registered with my fellow travelers that I was not one of the Anglos rejecting everything Israeli. I see myself as bridging both worlds I even try and put some accent into my Ivrit, which is more than can be said from some of my trans-Atlantic cousins. Did I mention the trains automatic announcements which have the most annoying American Israeli accent. What’s wrong with the way they do it on the London Underground? English (the Queens) heavily accented with a mix of Afro Caribbean and Indian, touch of the Empire. I never understand what they are saying, but then that’s half the fun.

My stations is coming up. Got to get ready for the final sprint to my connecting bus, miss that and I’m in trouble. Mp3 players go silent, newspapers are discarded and people start to make their way to the doors.

I jump off the train, no ‘mind the gap’ announcement here. I have my ticket at the ready as I run to the barriers and up the stairs to the bus stop.

The Arab girl waddles passed me, mp3 player in one hand, laptop bag over her shoulder. She is also running for a bus.

Jewish Blood

Whenever we went on long car journeys when we were kids we would play all manner of word and general knowledge games. Describing the Prime Ministers cat with every letter of the alphabet (X was always a challenge, he was always Xenophobic), countries of the world using the last letter of the country (A was the best, Australia, would then become Austria, Angola, Albania etc) and then there was ‘I Spy’. We have a new game, name a country that does not have a problem with Muslim fundamentalists, militia or terrorists. Now there’s a challenge.

Name a country where an act of Muslim terror has occurred which hasn’t somehow tied in with Jews and Israel. From Iraq to Denmark, every act of terror by the many, many Muslim extremist and not so extreme groups have killed in the name of their global Jihad and, oh yes, for their brothers and sisters in Palestine.

Now name a time in the last 40 years when we have stood up for ourselves, turned our back on the demands for self restraint, diplomacy and doing what was right for us as a state, a people and nation without pandering to the US, EU, BBC, and any other worthless acronym you can think of. Actually that’s another game. Name all the acronyms of organizations seeking to destroy, destabilize or delegitimize Israel and the Jews. PLO, PFLP, UN, EU, BBC, HRW the list is endless.

OK a new game. Name a time when the world has cared, been moved, wept or mourned or uniformly condemned the spilling of Jewish blood. (Maybe the Munich Olympics, maybe.)
Name a country that has stood up to the Muslim extremists and fundamentalists among its own citizens. Name a country that is not in denial about what they are seeing before their eyes. Name a country that isn’t trying to brush the problem under the carpet hoping it will go away and name a country that feels that action rather than words will solve the problem.

In Mumbai, an attack perpetrated by Pakistani extremists, Kashmiri separatists or Iran, they purposely targeted and attacked the Chabad center killing the Jews inside. Jews in India totally unrelated to any of India’s problems, non military, non-political, just there to help their fellow Jews with a warm smile, a Shabbat meal and maybe some direction in life. And Jewish travelers escaping to see the world and be young for maybe the last time before they returned to Israel, to study, work and settle down.

We are victims, and that’s our lot. In every generation, as we recite in the Haggada, they rise up to destroy us but the Holy One blessed be He, saves us. Or the running joke, they tried to kill us, we were saved, lets eat! We have been victims ever since Abraham was thrown into a fiery furnace by Nimrod. And since then look at our history. Pretty horrific. True in every generation they rose up to destroy, and some of us were saved to regroup and wait for the next round of crusades, blood libels, inquisitions, pogroms, holocausts. We have more ways to describe the way we have been persecuted and murdered than Eskimos have for snow.

Now name a nation that has more Nobel prizes under their belts, in every category. Name a nation that has produced some of the greatest teachers, thinkers, scientists, doctors, mathematicians. Name a country that in just 60 years has overtaken almost every country on the face of the world in commerce and industry.

Name a nation that should be proud, upstanding, strong and selfish in the face of so much adversity. Name a nation that seems to drag its feet and panders to the will of others at the expense of its own citizens.

Name a nation that will one day, with the help of those who are not in denial and don’t have their heads in the sand, breed great leaders that will stand up for the blood of their brothers and sisters and represent our people as a strong determined nation, pursuing peace and prosperity, security and tolerance and an example to the rest of the world.