The following notions refer to attitudes regarding Israel, but the concept of personal responsibility in dealing with evil is universal. We can confront evil, we can endorse it, or we can remain silent.
Those who endorse evil actions cannot be dismissed with the excuse that they lack awareness or understanding of the situation, or that their flawed psychological makeup compels them to think that way. They too are responsible, no matter what their motivations.
Similarly, those who remain silent or passive in face of evil also share culpability and become part of the evil perpetrated itself. They clear the way for the easy passage of those actions.
You may skip the introduction and go to right to the columns discussed on this post.
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INTRODUCTION
The issue discussed below is Jewish attitudes towards the existence of Israel, the rightful and ancient land of the Jewish people.
Jewish attitudes range all the way from rejection of its legitimacy - to advocacy for the surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to create an Arab terror state - to the defense of that heartland as historically and legally belonging to Israel - to outright passivity in letting government administrators decide.
All that in a setting of ongoing terror, where Arabs swear every day to destroy Israel and the Jews, and with the present PA leadership regarding the partial takeover of Israel - what they call the future state of Palestine - as only a phase in their plan for the complete conquest of all of Israel.
One of the following writers rejects outright those Jews who delegitimize the very existence of Israel. But he has a soft spot for those who endorse its partition, regarding them as simply misguided.
Partition is not an option.
It would leave the country even more vulnerable that it was in 1967, when Arab countries attacked Israel. Those countries were not as well armed and trained as they are now, thanks to the United States that has provided them with the latest war technology and armaments, and the best training available at United States facilities. (Draw your own conclusions.)
It would leave Israel only nine miles wide at some point. Its neighbor would not be Jordan but the Islamic State of Palestine, rife with Islamist factions that have sworn to destroy Israel. Palestine would be within sight of Israeli communities, vulnerable to snipers and rockets. Tunneling into Israel to kill men, women and children would be another horrifying prospect.
The Palestinian Authority is already cultivating warm relations with Iran, which is on its way to become a nuclear state (facilitated by the United States government). Nuclear states inspire respect (just look at North Korea) and no Western country would risk annoying Iran with even the notion of protecting Israel. Russia recently took over Crimea, with barely a grumble from the West, although both the US and the UK had signed a solemn agreement promising to protect Ukrainian borders.
The west bank (and Gaza too once it becomes part or associate of that Palestinian state) - would become Iranian enclaves armed to the teeth, threatening not only Israel but the whole Middle East.
The United States government has for decades pushed for partition - completely disregarding the consequences. Why it does so is open to speculation. Republican and Democrat presidents have pursued this partition, and have already achieved the surrender of Sinai - which is now a nest of Islamic terror, and of Gaza, a dysfunctional entity that feeds on hate for Israel and foreign aid.
So, in face of such a clear situation you would think that Jews all over the world would rally behind Israel's right to Judea and Samaria - whether for historical, religious, legal or security reasons. But they don't. Actually, some of the most vocal enemies of Israel are individuals with Jewish roots. I hesitate to call them Jews.
The Diaspora is generally favorable to partition. Many are liberally-minded individuals who like to be part of the crowd that clamors against occupation. They feel a little less Jewish that way.
But many Israelis too endorse partition. Their reasons are varied, but they can all be classified under "excuses". They have experienced first hand what the Palestinians are all about, and still they choose to give them the Jewish heartland.
The vast majority of Israelis - regardless of where they stand over the issue - remain passive. They have allowed their government - mere administrators - to make decisions about Israel's borders that will have catastrophic consequences not only for Israel but for all world Jews.
This passivity is also part of the wave of evil that threatens the land.
If the above reminds you of the choices Germans had when Nazi thugs became part of their government, with a leader who had written about his plans to exterminate Jews - that's not coincidental. But Israelis seem oblivious to this similarity, as they are to the fact that the Palestinian Arabs, through their leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, were part of the design and implementation of the Final Solution.
How can Jews be agitating for handing over Jewish land to Arab Nazis is perhaps the greatest irony in all of human history.
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TWO DIFFERENT COLUMNS - WITH AN INTERESTING CONNECTION
Israeli media posted two separate articles today that are unintendedly connected, although they come from writers with different very levels of awareness about the issue of Jewish attitude towards evil.
Israel and the Jewish Moral Narcissists by Lawrence J. Epstein attempts to expose Jews who, to put in very simple terms, choose to side with the enemy. Why do they do it?
He separates them between those who are downright bad people, and we don't need to bother analyzing them, he says,
... some Jews who are outright opponents of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. They are hostile to the Zionist enterprise, and they simply need to be opposed not analyzed. It is not worthwhile to engage with them because their hostility is immune to honest debate.
and those who are nice Jews but support the Arabs because they are misguided or have personal psychological issues.
... some Jews whose differences with Israel have more to do with their own psychology than with Israel’s policies. They are worth thinking about.
Epstein, calls them "moral narcissists".
Moral narcissists have a desire for and profound need for moral purity in an impure world. They eschew military power because such power hurts others, because they see power itself as inherently evil or the instrument to enable evil to rule. They are therefore unsurprisingly unhappy with Israel’s application of such power.
They feel guilty that Jews aren’t victims but victors. They are intensely proud of famous dead Jews for such Jews are simultaneously sources of pride and safely beyond the point of embarrassing them with disagreements.
They are so guilty about the supposed crimes Jews and the West committed against Islam, that they are blind to or justify various evil acts committed by the Arab world.
But in the end Epstein excuses these ones by saying
It is cruel to call these people what they are, but the danger they cause requires it. They are useful idiots, not fully aware that they serve the cause of those who oppose Israel’s existence. Those opponents use these well-meaning, often very kind Jews in a cynical way to undermine the Jewish state.
It is time that these good Jews see Israel’s enemies for what they are. In that way, their morality can become genuine and, while their purity may be tainted by reality, they will have attained a true morality.
"Not fully aware"? By excusing them and attributing their treason to convoluted psychological reasons Epstein is basically doing the same thing that traitors do when they refuse to acknowledge the terrorist nature of the Palestinian movement, its Nazi history and ideology, and its explicit goal of killing Jews and destroying Israel.
So there you have two main opposite groups making excuses for the inexcusable.
Lee Kaplan, an investigative journalist who has advised the Israeli government with his intelligence research, had this to say about Epstein's column on the comments section:
Good Article but Epstein is naïve
| Lee Kaplan , | Berkeley, USA | (04.05.14) |
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The other column, Should the People of Israel become the Jews of Silence by David Bedein takes issue with Israelis who - in spite of first-hand familiarity with Arab terror and knowledge of the roots of Palestinian Nationalism - are passively silent as their own government calls for the partition of Israel to create another Arab terror state next to Jewish towns.
Bedein quotes from activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who wrote The Jews of Silence, where he described two kinds of silence: Jews in the Diaspora who were silent about the fate of their brethren in the USSR, and the Jews who were silenced in the USSR itself.
Then Bedein recalls what Elie Wiesel said at a Philadelphia school commencement address on the night of June 6, 1967, the 2nd night of the Six Day War, following a three week siege permeated with Arab threats of total destruction which frightened the Jewish world to its very soul.
Wiesel tossed out his prepared text, and addressed “an Israel that stood alone” in May 1967, (a time when it was clear that Arab nations were ready to pounce on Israel, and no country came to Israel's aid).
Wiesel said that the moments of trepidation in May 1967 brought him back to World War II. when Jews stood alone and to the fate of his family in the crematoria - when no one cared, and when few spoke out when it counted. Wiesel's message that night was that the Jews are indeed alone. which meant that they cannot be silent in the face of overwhelming odds.
Similarly these days, when we are well aware of the Palestinian agenda, and increasing virulent anti-Semitism in Europe and other places, some Jews continue to indulge in denial of the obvious and support plans that under the euphemism of "peace" are nothing but the surrender of the Jewish heartland to the enemy without even firing a shot.
Bedein is an investigative reporter and his website, Israel Behind the News, has published news reports and studies with facts and figures over the years exposing the "Peace Partner" and the "Peace Process" as deceitful and clear threats to Israel's survival. He writes:
The Palestinian Authority does not mask its genocidal purpose, to wipe out the state of of Israel and to replace it with an Arab Palestine.
All you have to do is to watch PA TV, listen to PA radio, read PA newspapers peruse PA school books and follow all publc statements of the PA. Most people in Israel prefer not to see the PA as it is.
Most people do not even know that the Arab League pioneered the creation of the PLO to join the continuing 1948 war to exterminate the entity that is Israel.
The people of Israel do not have a peace partner.
Most people in Israel prefer not to see the PA as it is. That is indeed a frightening statement, considering that what is at stake is the survival of the country and of the Jewish people.
Without Israel Jews could very easily be rounded up and exterminated once again. The signs are all there.
They are in the visceral hatred against Jews that is resurging in Europe, both from the fascist right and European Islam.
And in the United States government, where sympathies to Islam grew, not diminished, after the 9/11 attacks. At the same time the US ruling elite watch their country, once a superpower that inspired fear and respect, decline both in the economic and international political spheres and realize that even if they wanted to, they can't protect Israel any longer.
They are in the visceral hatred against Jews that is resurging in Europe, both from the fascist right and European Islam.
And in the United States government, where sympathies to Islam grew, not diminished, after the 9/11 attacks. At the same time the US ruling elite watch their country, once a superpower that inspired fear and respect, decline both in the economic and international political spheres and realize that even if they wanted to, they can't protect Israel any longer.
Israel stands alone.
And in such a crucial moment in several thousands years of Jewish civilization it is heart-wrenching to see how so many Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora choose to side with evil - whatever their excuse may be.
And in such a crucial moment in several thousands years of Jewish civilization it is heart-wrenching to see how so many Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora choose to side with evil - whatever their excuse may be.
REFERENCES
Israel and Jewish Moral Narcissists by Lawrence J. Epstein
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4506549,00.html
Should the Jews of Israel become the Jews of Silence by David Bedein
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14799#.U0DEqpuPKM8
Lawrence J. Epstein -
http://www.lawrencejepstein.com/wp/about-lawrence-j-epstein/
Lawrence J. Epstein - articles
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/ix_author.php?aid=46399
David Bedein
http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/aboutus.html
David Bedein - articles
http://israelbehindthenews.com/bin/bedein.cgi
Lee Kaplan's websites:
Stop the ISM
http://www.stoptheism.com/
Dafka
http://www.dafka.org/
Lee Kaplan's articles on Arutz Sheva
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Author.aspx/436
RELATED
Where in this ongoing war of physical and psychological Arab terror is it that Jews find a sign that what they want is to live in peace, when not even Arabs can live in peace with one another. Just watch what is happening in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and other places, and in their own communities, with parents killing their own children in the name of "honor".
This Ongoing War - a website about Arab terror
http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.ca/
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For a people who lost 6 millions at the hands of Nazis and collaborators, it is indeed ironic that they are now ready to give up their Biblical heartland for the creation of a Nazi Arab state.
THE NAZI ORIGIN OF THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT
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