[Peace-discuss] An Open Letter To The World

[Lisa Chason]

I rec'd the following on July 13, via a Jewish friend, before all the
escalating madness in Lebanon. I didn't share it then but I keep thinking
about it and want others to see this example of the traumatized and twisted
vitriol that exists there

 

 

 

 

 

For Your Information

 

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WORLD

 

Dear World, I understand that you are upset by us, here in Israel. 

Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry. (Outraged?) 

Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us. Today, it is the
"brutal repression of the Palestinians"; yesterday it was Lebanon; before
that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur
War and the Sinai campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who,
therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily. 

Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish
people - upset you. 

We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who
cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations -
Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians.
And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset. 

We upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us
in 1648-49; we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy
Land, were so upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us. 

For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define
our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the
church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews
within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit. 

And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we
decided to leave you - in a manner of speaking - and establish a Jewish
state. The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as
resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you,
irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you
(and thus love you)- and have you love us and so, we decided to come home -
home to the same land we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman
world that, apparently, we also upset. 

Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please. 

Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and
holocausts, having taken our leave of the general world to live alone in our
own little state, we continue to upset you. You are upset that we repress
the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do not
give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the
Middle East 

Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The "radical" Arabs are upset and
the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset. 

Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel. 

In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace
between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody
Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered tens
of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron.Indeed, 67 Jews were
slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929. 

Dear world, why did the Arabs - the Palestinians - massacre 67 Jews in one
day in 1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967?
And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots
between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967? 

And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would
have created a "Palestinian State" alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs
cried "no" and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews - was that "upset" caused
by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way, dear world, why did we not hear
your cry of "upset" then? 

The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and
stones are part of the same people who - when they had all the  territories
they now demand be given to them for their state -attempted to drive the
Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same
cry of "itbach-al-yahud" (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today,
were seen and heard then. The same people, the same  dream - destroy Israel.
What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not
"repress" them. 

Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as
seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the
Mongol massacres. 

You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab
capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. And you would
stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction. 

And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that
extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land.
If that bothers you, dear world, well - think of how many times in the past
you bothered us. 
  

In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in
Israel who could not care less. 

 

 

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