Essays About the Middle East Conflict
Excerpts from A MESSAGE TO JEWISH CHILDREN - a speech delivered by Rabbi Ed Feinstein, of Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles, this past Yom Ha'Atzmaut (http://www.vbs.org/rabbi/rabfeins/yomha.htm) April 16, 2002.
"I want to talk to the children tonight. Because I'm concerned for your souls and your faith. You've heard that we are aggressors -- savagely invading, occupying, oppressing a sovereign people. You've heard we have brutally destroyed their cities and towns, their homes and shops... You've heard that we have massacred hundreds of innocents...
And it seems that everyone says it. You hear it on CNN and ABC and NPR, you read it in the LA Times, you hear it from world leaders and organizations devoted to humanitarian causes. The Portuguese Nobel Laureate, Jose Saramago... declared that "what is happening here is a crime that may be compared to Auschwitz". Robert Sheer, in this morning's Los Angeles Time, compares Ariel Sharon to the Serbian butcher, Slobodan Milosevic...
You, our children, you hear these things, you read these things. You witness demonstrations on college campuses and in the great cities of the world. And you have to wonder: Is this the truth? Are these really my people? What kind of people are we? What kind of society is Israel? What happened to the dream that once was Zionism?
Koffi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations put it succinctly: "Is it possible," he asked, "that Israel is right and the whole world is wrong?"
As long as you live, I want you to remember this night. Tonight, something extraordinary is happening. Tonight, we have come, your parents and grandparents, your rabbis and teachers, distinguished leaders from every corner of the Jewish community -- Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, religious and secular, right-wing and left-wing, to say one thing: Is it possible that Israel is right and the whole world is wrong? You bet your life it is.
You bet your life, because we've bet our lives. It is true now and it always has been. From the time the world worshipped rocks and trees and Abraham discovered the Creator of all. From the time the world bowed low to Pharoah and Moses commanded that we stand up and be free. From the time when the world idolized and revered Roman power and Akiba risked his life to teach Torah.
And it's true today. Because the world has no memory. They forget, but we remember. In 1947 the United Nations voted to partition Palestine and to create two states between the Jordan and the Mediterranean: One, the Jewish state of Israel. The other, a homeland for Palestinian Arabs. The Zionist leadership, the acting government of the Yishuv, accepted the plan. In 1947, we affirmed our desire to live in peace, side by side with a Palestinian State. But the armies of nine Arab states came pouring over the borders, to extinguish the nascent state of Israel and to murder yet another million Jews. When a truce came, the territory for the Palestinian Arab State had been devoured by Egypt and Jordan and Syria.
They forget, but we remember that thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled in the face of that Arab invasion. But when they reached the borders of Jordan and Egypt, they were not permitted to enter. Israel, tiny beleaguered Israel managed to absorb and settle millions of Jewish refugees from Europe and the Middle East. But the entire Arab League and all 26 Muslim nations, with all their oil-wealth, couldn't find room for their poor Palestinian brothers and sisters -- and left them to rot in squalid refugee camps, festering in hatred and rage.
...We remember [that] Ehud Barak went to Camp David and then to Taba, and offered, for the second time in 50 years, to create a Palestinian State, comprised of 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza with sovereignty over half of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount, and $30 billion in world economic aid. And we remember the answer... [the Dolphinarium, Sbarros, and other terrorist massacres] And then came Pesach. This year, the Angel of Death did not pass over. Whole families were murdered at the Seder table. But even now, do we bomb from the air, like America? Risk hitting hospitals and schools and embassies like America did in Bosnia and Afghanistan? No. We send our kids through the alleyways and byways -- to face booby traps and snipers and mines.
Tonight, your parents and grandparents, your rabbis and teachers, your community have gathered here in the thousands to testify that the whole world is wrong and Israel is right. And we will not apologize for doing what's right -- for defending our children and their dreams from murderers... You must not be apologetic for Israel or ashamed of Israel. You must not be embarrassed by Israel or afraid to stand up for Israel. And you must never, ever grow bitter, cynical, or dark..." ------