Dear Frank,
I do not define myself as an “ultra-Orthodox Jew.” Nor do I define myself as an Orthodox Jew. Nor religious, observant, practicing, Zionist etc. I define myself as a Jew. That’s it. A pashut yid, as your grandfather probably would have put it. However, you probably label me as an Orthodox or religious Jew, which is why I took your comments offensively, as did many many other people. I have a close friend who made Aliyah, served in an elite unit in the army, serves every year in the Reserve Corps, and fought and was injured in Lebanon two summers ago. He told me that when he read your email he was personally insulted, not as a religious Jew, but as a Jew-especially one who put his life on the line for this country.I was writing an email in the distress following a tragic terrorist attack on teenagers, and the immediate response I get is a barrage of claims blaming all of Israel’s problems on religious people. Is that all we can think about when eight teenagers are murdered in their school library? I know I got angry; I lost my cool. But maybe there comes a time to get a little angry. Maybe there’s a time not to sit and discuss things from a detached, objective point of view and to get a little emotional. When Jews are being murdered, pointing fingers between religious and secular will get you nowhere. Only together, standing up as one for our people and our state, will ever get us anywhere.
I don’t want to get caught up in specifics with you. While it may be true that you and your family have been Zionists and that you follow what’s happening here, you must realize that all of that is being done through the lens of Western media, which is very biased. Terms are thrown at you over and over again until you think they are legitimate; terms like “occupied territories,” “cycle of violence,” “Palestine,” “settlements”, “two-state solution”, etc. Hitler once said “If you repeat a lie enough times even you will start to believe it.” So if you are told a lie day in and day out on the news, you may start to believe it too. It can not compare to actually being here.
Your unawareness of the fact that there are religious people in the army is to me an example of a lack of knowledge of the whole picture on your part. There is an entire religious brigade in the Israeli Army as well as many religious units in every other brigade. Also, not all Yeshiva students are exempted from military service; only the most right wing are, and even they are subject to review every couple of years. Today draft-dodging is just as common amongst secular Israelis as it is amongst religious. If you would like to come visit Israel I would be happy to give you a personal tour and you will see a very different perspective on things. Ask Jeff and Phyllis about their recent visit to Israel; I think it would be fair to say that it gave them a fresh look on the situation. The fact that there is crime in L.A. means nothing to me; ordinary crime cannot compare with terrorism in the slightest. Would it have been rational to tell someone in New York after the World Trade Center was destroyed that there are gang killings in L.A., so you know what it’s like to live in fear? Every city has crime, some more than others, but when parents in L.A. send their kids to school, do they have to worry that the school might get blown up? That someone will spray the schoolbus with bullets? That their children may be beaten to a bloody death while hiking? Also, you say that religious students join the army because they are interested in “expansionism.” This is also not true. They join the army because they want to defend our people, live peacefully in our current borders and just have the world leave us alone. The army here is called the Israeli Defense Forces for a reason. This isn’t America, we’re not interested in conquering the world. We just want to protect our people and our land.
Do you really think that “settlements” is a valid reason to perpetrate terrorism? Even if Israel had agreed not to, which it didn’t (at least not in binding terms), or if it was illegal (which it isn’t), would it justify butchering men, women and children? If someone you knew was killed by a terrorist , would you just say “He shouldn’t have built a house”? It’s ridiculous. Whereas civilian populations being bombarded daily with rockets is a fair “excuse not to make peace.” You say that the Israeli Arabs live with us in peace, yet almost every terror attack carried out in Jerusalem was carried out with a local accomplice.
I do not like the security wall because it’s not nearly as effective as people think, it was incredibly expensive, and yes because the world sees it now as a border, leaving many many Jewish people on the wrong side of it. The wall is not the main reason for the recent decrease in terror. The decrease in terror was caused by the Arabs realizing that they can achieve their goals better by cooling down the terrorism and allowing American Liberal pressure force Israel into giving them land. I guarantee you, once every last bit of land has been squeezed out of Israel, the terror will continue in full force. But some Arabs don’t want to wait, hence the rockets in Sderot and bullets in Jerusalem. The reason why we share genetic diseases with the “Palestinians” is because we are closely related; Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Some other time I will discuss with you how the “Palestinians” already have a state, it’s called Jordan. Originally partitioned to the Jews by the British, over 75% of its residents are of “Palestinian” descent. That’s my “two-state solution.” Also, most “Palestinians” are actually of Egyptian or Jordanian descent.
When I referenced the American Indians I was not referring to the 1600’s. The United States Army rounded up Indians, put them on death marches, and kept them in camps. Thousands died. Look up “The Trail of Tears” in the encyclopedia if you don’t know what I’m talking about. There the comparison ends; the American Indians were in America first, the Palestinians were not in Israel first. Also, the Americans swindled the Indians out of a good percentage of the country, lying and breaking treaties with them. The American Indians were the original ones who learned the hard way that “land for peace” does not work. Israel should have picked up on the lesson before it was too late.
Now, when I said your letter was anti-Semetic, I didn’t mean that you are not proud to be Jewish. But your letter promoted animosity between different factions of Judaism; it promoted separation between Jews, which is one of the most destructive forms of anti-Semitism. United we stand, divided we fall. Look throughout history. In my original letter I made absolutely no distinction between any types of Jews. But that seemed to have been the only thing on your mind, how everything is the Orthodox’s fault. I didn’t say you were self-hating because you disagree with me. I said you were anti-Semetic for attempting for promoting hostility amongst Jews. I don’t think the Holocaust survivors kicked out of Gaza would mind my use of the term “judenrein.” Also this “clearing of settlements” as you like to put it in your politically correct Western terminology, involved forcefully removing 8,000 families from their homes, digging up every Jewish grave in Gaza, and removing all signs of Jews ever having been in Gaza, aside from the Synagogues which are forbidden to be destroyed by Jewish Law. If anyone else besides Israel were to do this, or if Israel would do this to Arabs instead of Jews, it would be called ethnic cleansing. So though the word “judenrein” (which means Jew-free; how many Jews are in Gaza now?) may be a bit strong, it is apropos. You say Orthodox people call all other Jews self-hating. You know full well that that is a two-way street and that Orthodox, atheists, and everyone in between are guilty of calling each other “narrow-minded” or “racist” or “self-hating” in equal measure. This is something we all need to work on. Again, I didn’t say your letter was anti-Semetic because it was written by an irreligious Jew. It was anti-Semetic because it promoted disunity amongst Jews.
I wouldn’t even call Orthodox Judaism a religion in the classic sense; it’s more of a lifestyle really. So why would one include his service of G-d in every other respect of his life, but exclude Him from politics? Doesn’t it seem that if one really believes that G-d runs the world that worldwide events and decisions should definitely be influenced by that? Also, I don’t even know why you brought this up. None of the arguments I gave you were based on religious contexts. They were all practical, based on current events as well as historical precedents. You don’t know me either. I am not a typical Orthodox Jew. Some call me an Untraditional Orthodox Jew. I do not accept anything at face value; I challenge everything until I’m satisfied with the arguments I receive. I am very accepting of all Jewish people, from all sorts of religious and cultural backgrounds. Just because I choose to be observant does not mean that I have a condescending view towards people who are not religious. I am not trying to evangelize the world either. If you go back through my emails, you will see that never do I say stop driving or Shabbat or women can’t be rabbis. I just ask people to be proud of being Jewish and do their best to get in touch with G-d.
“Settlement” is an English mistranslation. The word “yishuv” (mistranslated as “settlement”) in Hebrew means a town, whether it be Jerusalem or a small country town. The word “settlements” makes it easier for people not to think of these as towns, many of them consisting of tens of thousands of people, but rather as “outposts” built to anger the Palestinian people. Many of them have been there for forty years, have paved roads and tall buildings; people have lived their whole lives there. “Settlements” were not started by only religious people, but the reason why now religious people are the only ones left there is because they are basically the last surviving Zionists in Israel.
Now, as I said before “Palestine” is a stolen term. Unless you are saying the Arabs in Israel are still subject to the British mandate then the word “Palestine” does not really apply here. The “West Bank” is half of our country. It is part of Biblical Israel, it was captured in a defensive war in 1967, it’s ours. You also have to realize that the “Palestinians” are not like the other Arabs, so just because we have made peace with other Arab peoples does not mean the same tactics will work with the “Palestinians.” In my lifetime two agreements have been proposed to the “Palestinians”: The Oslo Accords, which they accepted, and the Camp David accords which they rejected. In the Oslo Accords, both Israel and the “Palestinians” made some agreements. Israel agreed to transfer control of land to the PA, educate its people towards peace with the Arabs, give arms to the P.A. to establish a police force, and recognize the PLO. Israel did all of this. The “Palestinians” agreed to end terror, get rid of all terror groups, educate for peace, protect Jewish holy sites, and change its charter to recognize Israel. Terror has not ended, the PA has even been caught supplying arms or support to terrorists countless times. No “Palestinian” textbook even has Israel on a map, nor do they mention the Oslo accords. Jewish holy sites under PA control, including Joseph’s Tomb, have all been desecrated or destroyed. The “Palestinian Charter” has not been changed. In 2000 at the Camp David Accords, Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat 92% of the West Bank and 100% of Gaza, and he turned him down. If all the “Palestinian people” want is a homeland in the “West Bank and Gaza”, why would Arafat say no, and then go on to start an intifada? Tell me, why should we continue to make concessions to a people who have not kept a single item on their end of the bargain and are dedicated to our destruction? They simply cannot be trusted. We would love to make peace with them; the problem is that there’s no one to make peace with. The leaders either have no control over the people or are terrorists.With religious issues aside, it would be very very dangerous to Israel’s security to give up the whole “West Bank.” It would be mean that Israel would be nine to eleven miles wide all along the coast, a condition that plagued the young state with Fedayeen (Arab terrorists) until 1967.
You mentioned Baruch Goldstein and the Rabin assassination. Without to get into how a huge amount of weapons were found inside the mosque that Goldstein shot up, those are two incidents of Israeli terrorism. That’s in comparison with over 1,400 Israeli citizens killed in terror attacks since the Oslo Accords alone. It is not an even fight. It’s a democratic nation defending its innocent citizens versus terror with international backing. And to say that the “Palestinians” don’t commit terror based on religious pretense is also false. Their religious leaders glorify “Martyrdom” (also known as cowardice), and almost every suicide bomber left a videotape of him saying that he’s doing this in the name of Allah. Allah Akhbar are generally the last words of a terrorist in Israel. There are Jews who yell “death to the Arabs” and I am not proud of that. But the difference is that they don’t actually carry it out, whereas many many Jews have been killed by Palestinian lynch mobs, often with their bare hands. And you can judge a person on his worst behavior. The Talmud tells us “When can you see the true nature of a person? Kaso, keeso, koso.” Or in English, when he’s angry, needs to spend money, or is drunk. So actually when a person’s at their worst it is the best time to judge them, for that is when the truth comes out.
I do not want to discuss Torah issues with you now. If you have specific issues or questions, I’d be glad to do my best to answer them. If I don’t know the answer, I will find someone who does. I am not interested, however, in talking about “thematic elements” or gross generalities in the Torah.
In conclusion, I ask you to please not take my comments out of context. So if I reference “judenrein” or Hitler, realize that it is to make a specific point, not to call anyone Nazis. We are two Jews having an intellectual discourse, I don’t see the problem. Frank, though we may have differing views on religion and politics, you are a Jew and you are related to me, so we are family twice. I’m sure we would get along fine. I love hearing from you, but please stick to the point. Try to discuss the matters at hand and not reach out into the far ends of the galaxy. This will be my final public response to you, anything after this I will send to you privately.
The reason I’ve taken a while to reply is because I have been too busy living religious Zionism to sit down and discuss it. I just prayed afternoon prayers at the Western Wall. Tonight I will be studying in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav in memory of the murdered innocent (don’t worry there will be tons and tons of security). Tomorrow I will be bringing a volunteer group down to Sderot (there haven’t been any rockets since Shabbat) to help kids and families living their daily lives under the cruel hell of terror. I hope to write about these things before Shabbat.
Love, Elisha
1 Comment
August 13, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Oh, Thanks! Really funny. Big ups!