By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
People who follow the news are perplexed. At a time when a small beleaguered country does battle with terrorists who carried out genocide in their country, why do the nations of the world call for a ceasefire? Is there really support for terror states? Is there no limit to hypocrisy? What would those countries do if their country was attacked?
The United States says that it stands behind the victim country, yet it seeks to have them take a break in their war against evil to win some political points in Michigan. Does that make any sense to anybody?
How would the United States have responded had someone attempted to curtail their battle against the axis of evil following 9/11?
Does anybody know history?
Speaking of history, let’s do a short rewind on Gaza.
In the year 2002, President George W. Bush laid out his plan for peace in Israel. The first US president to call for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, he called upon “the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty.” For good measure, he added that the “Palestinian state will never be created by terror – it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change or veiled attempts to preserve the status quo.”
Bush had a lofty vision, yet where did it leave Israel? What came of his utopian plans?
In 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in a perfidious act, defied his party and his past and unilaterally pulled Israel out of Gaza, stating that Israel’s handing over of Gaza to Palestinian rule would bring the hoped-for peace with the Palestinian people. It was a farcical argument, yet the majority of the Israeli people supported him, so, like other Israeli hypocrites are wont to do, he formed a new party, named it Kadima, and signed up ambitious Likud and Labor politicians.
Sharon suffered a stroke shortly thereafter and was taken over by his deputy, the arrogant and corrupt Ehud Olmert, who was blinded by ambition and ego.
It didn’t take long for the world to see what happens when Palestinians are granted their wishes. The terrorists, whose main aim is to destroy Israel, began to take advantage of the new stage from which they could carry out their jihad against Jews.
President Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, maintained that the next step to bring about peace was holding democratic elections in Gaza. They also insisted that Hamas be allowed to run, even though they did not give up violence and refused to acknowledge that Israel has a right to exist. Israel didn’t think Hamas would win anyway – another intelligence failure – and Rice argued that even if they would win the right to govern the new Palestinian enclave, governing would force them to act responsibly and come around to the American position.
Of course, they were all wrong.
Thousands of Jews were mercilessly thrown out of their homes in the pursuit of a policy that guaranteed that such radical moves would bring relief from the constant terror.
The idyllic Jewish towns in Gaza were taken over by terrorists and used as bases for launching terror into Israel. Elections swept Hamas into power. And then, daily barrages of Kassam rockets began raining down on nearby Israeli towns. One day, Hamas terrorists popped out of an underground tunnel they had dug under the Israeli border and kidnapped a soldier, Gilad Shalit, bringing him back to Gaza, where he was held for over five years. Binyomin Netanyahu traded him for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar, who was in charge of governing Gaza until a little over a month ago. That kidnapping led to Israel’s first Gaza War.
Yet, no one – not Olmert, Bush or Rice – would admit that their plan failed.
When Israel went into Gaza back then, nobody called on Israel to finish off Hamas. None of the many peace-loving nations of the world lauded Israel for the failed experiment and asked them to quickly end it before Gaza would become another Iran terror state.
As prime minister, Ehud Barak pulled Israel out of Lebanon in 2000. He forsook the security buffer zone they had set up on Israel’s northern border. Everyone praised the move and the United Nations even passed a resolution calling on the government of Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah and take over the border area. That resolution was ignored, like so many others.
In 2006, Israel was back in Lebanon, battling Hezbollah, as the world called for a ceasefire, condemning Israel for fighting back. So soon after 9/11, France, Russia, Italy, Norway, the Vatican and many other self-righteous voices called upon the country continuously victimized by terror to halt its actions.
President Bush stood out among all major heads of state for championing Israel’s right to defend itself, even as his own secretary of state called for restraint.
It is astonishing to see how willfully blind people can be, and how they can twist facts so that the victim is the aggressor and the aggressor is to be pitied.
Over the weekend, the American secretary of state was in the Middle East, traveling from state to state, starting with Israel of course, where he pressed for a pause in the fighting to allow humanitarian aid. The snide insinuation of his repeated calls and those of his boss is that Israel doesn’t care about providing humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians. They need America to force them to do what is decent and moral, and even with American pressure, they don’t always cooperate.
But putting that aside, he did even worse, going to meet Yassir Arafat’s colleague, Mahmoud Abbas, where, according to his spokesman, he “expressed the commitment of the United States to working towards the realization of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
The entire world just saw what happens when Palestinians are given complete and total rule and control over a part of Israel, yet the Biden administration sits with a terrorist who seeks Israel’s destruction and discusses with him a state as a reward for years of terror and enmity, as if that would solve anything and lead to peace.
They also discussed “efforts to restore calm and stability in the West Bank,” because – and you probably were not aware of this – there is a “need to stop extremist violence against Palestinians and hold those accountable responsible.” Once again, it’s those Jews who are causing trouble in the West Bank. The sheer hypocrisy is overwhelming.
But no matter what is offered to them, it is never enough. According to the PA press office, Abbas told Blinken that he would agree to take over Gaza “within the framework of a comprehensive political solution that includes all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”
Blinken also discussed with Abbas putting the Palestinian Authority in charge of Gaza once again when Israel defeats Hamas. The experience of what happened to Gaza when Israel left and handed the keys to the Palestinian Authority is ignored.
He then went to Jordan, where he discussed with the Jordan king their “shared commitment to the protection of civilians and to facilitating the increased, sustained delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance, the resumption of essential services, and ensuring that Palestinians are not forcibly displaced outside of Gaza,” as if anyone would let them in.
He “also expressed concern regarding the increasing violence in the West Bank and emphasized the U.S. commitment to working with partners towards a durable and sustainable peace in the region, to include the establishment of a Palestinian state, a shared priority of both the United States and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” according to the State Department.
So, for those Jews, who felt comfortable with the feeling that the United States is backing Israel and won’t let it down, the trip and statements that emanated from it should throw some cold water in the faces of those who don’t yet realize that it is Hashem who is our Protector, nobody else.
There has been a debate since the Holocaust whether it could happen again and whether it could happen here. That debate has been settled, as the world that defeated fascism and communism and went to war against Islamic totalitarianism is now marching in capitals and cities around the world to drive the Jews into the sea. Many of the marchers are young, but those who brainwashed them are not, yet when ISIS beheaded tens of thousands of Arabs in Libya, Syria, and Iraq in the name of Islam, nobody marched. When Arab dictators in Syria and Libya killed hundreds of thousands of their Muslim citizens, nobody marched.
When Saudi Arabia and the Houthis fought and killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenites, there were no marches, no flag-waving by the concerned people of the world.
When Russia bombs civilians in Ukraine, do any of the hypocrites who march for the so-called freedom of Palestine protest the slaughter of innocents? When Africans kill each other by the hundreds of thousands, does anyone march? Does anyone cry over the loss of life – of Muslim life? Do they even know how Gaza is ruled under Hamas, and that nobody there is free or has any dreams of freedom?
Where are all the people who care so much about the slaughter of innocents when they aren’t killed by Jews?
Where were all the peace-loving anti-genocide warriors before Israel went into Gaza, when 1,400 innocent people were barbarically tortured and killed by savages?
They were nowhere to be found. They were hugging trees, waxing poetic about climate change.
Most people were initially shocked, but almost immediately, their inner anti-Semitism took hold of them and they began blaming the Jews. It’s the Jews’ fault. And why not? Everything that goes wrong in the world is the fault of the Jews, so when Jews are mercilessly killed, it’s also their fault. It makes as much sense as blaming them for so many other things they have nothing to do with.
It is plainly evident that the campaign for Gaza’s freedom, for a two-state solution, for a Palestinian state, and for a ceasefire, not to mention the ripping down of posters of the hostages, the painting of Mogein Dovids on Jewish homes in France, and the entrapping of Jewish students at Ivy League universities, has nothing to do with peace or care for Palestinians and everything to do with Jew-hatred.
Jewish people who had grown detached from Yahadus and adopted the life and culture of their neighbors, as well as irreligious people in Israel, were shocked into reality on Simchas Torah. They realized that there is more to life than living a physical non-spiritual existence. They realized that without the spirituality of their grandparents, they are lost in a world that wants them dead.
Millions of Jews around the world are connecting with their Jewishness, and some are adopting mitzvos, while others resolve to accept upon themselves the strictures of the Torah, including shemiras Shabbos.
Hashem brings tragedies upon Am Yisroel when they veer away from Him to shake them up and bring them back to where they belong.
We have heard many times that the Rambam (Hilchos Taanis) writes that it is a mitzvas asei to cry out and blow shofros for every tragedy that befalls us. Everyone must acknowledge that the tragedy happened due to their sins. But if instead of crying out to Hashem, they ascribe the threat facing the community simply to “the way of the world,” that attitude will cause the calamity to continue and get more severe.
The purpose of tragedy is to inspire us to do teshuvah.
Rav Chaim Vital, in his peirush on Sefer Tehillim, writes that at the End of Days, we will suffer at the hands of the Yishmoelim, who will bring us unprecedented grief. They will seek to wipe us off the face of the earth, and without Divine intervention, they’d be able to implement their murderous designs.
He wrote that when that time shall arrive, we will cry out to Hashem and He will hear our cries and prayers. Hence the name Yishmoel, composed of the two words yishma and Keil, meaning Hashem will hear, according to Pirkei D’Rebbi Eliezer (32).
What is happening now with the offspring of Yishmoel is pre-ordained. In order for us to prevail over Yishmoel, we must raise our voices in prayer. His name does not hint that if we are strong and battle him with chivalry, we will defeat him. His name does not hint that if we engage him in diplomacy, we will outwit him. His name does not indicate that if America stands at our side, we will be able to defeat him.
His very name proclaims that the way to defeat him is through tefillah.
All the analysis, clips and speeches won’t help us. The only thing that will help us is for more and more people to realize that everything that happens in this world and in this war is b’Yad Hashem.
We need to learn better, daven better, and guide those Jews around the world who are returning to their roots, helping bring them back to Hashem’s embrace.
Let us all improve our shemiras hamitzvos, our love and care for each other, and our feelings of achdus for all Jews – yes, all of them, even the ones who are different than we are. Let us demonstrate to our friends and family how great it is to be a Torah-observant Jew, so that we may be zocheh very soon to victory in this war and the coming of Moshiach tzidkeinu. Amein.