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Jewish World Review Sept. 13, 2001/ 24 Elul 5761
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
I HAVE never been prouder of the United States of America.
I have never been prouder of the state of Israel.
I have never been prouder to be a Jew.
I have never been prouder to be an American.
I was, of course, horrified and angered and saddened and
pained looking at those pictures of the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon, pictures of such incredible devastation, of such
incredible human suffering, of such incredible inhuman
savagery.
But what I found myself feeling most was pride. Pride in this
country and in the Jewish country, in the Jewish people and the
American people.
For the terrorism in America this week, like the terrorism Israel
has endured so many weeks for more than 50 years, is the
result of the fact that dark, evil forces in this world cannot abide
what the United States and Israel stand for. And that they stand
together.
Of those to whom much is given, much is expected, Jewish
tradition teaches. And no two countries have been more
blessed, are closer to G-d's ideal of what nations on earth
should be than America and Israel.
But that didn't happen by accident. It happened because the
American and the Jewish people made it happen. By what they
believe in, by how they act, what they do and what they don't
do.
Watching Palestinians on the West Bank dance and rejoice on
terror Tuesday when they heard the news of the World Trade
Center attacks, angered me, yes, disgusted me, yes, but mostly
saddened me.
The Palestinians say they have gripes about the way Israel
treats them. Say they have suffered, say they want their land
back, say they want their own country.
Not unreasonable. But how they have chosen to accomplish their
goals is a very different matter.
It was only about 50 years ago, please remember, that the
Jewish people were attacked like no other people ever have
been at anytime at anyplace anywhere on the face of the earth.
The Jewish people are the only people to have every single one
of its men, women and children targeted for extermination.
Every single one.
Six million of them were. With several nations eagerly helping
out, with all other nations turning away, not caring, doing
nothing.
When it comes to gripes, we have more for better reasons than
anyone else. When it comes to having your property and your
possessions taken from you, we have lost more, suffered more
than anyone else. When it comes to being persecuted at the
hands of another, no one has gone through what we have gone
through.
And yet. And yet, look at us, see what we have done.
Unlike the suicide bombers in Israel, unlike the animals who
crashed into the World Trade Center, the Jewish people, despite
all, has never lost sight of how civilized people are to act, how
the Chosen People are to be.
Deprived of everything, including six million of our men, women
and children, we went about the business of establishing a state
for the Jewish people. By appealing to the United Nations, by
winning world approval, by making our case to foreign
ministries.
And when the partition plan was adopted, we eagerly agreed,
were happy to accept the notion of two states, side by side,
Jewish and Arab, Israeli and Palestinian.
And then we took in Jews from around the world and welcomed
them home, made them feel at home. As former Israeli prime
minister Ehud Barak recently said, "we didn't call them refugees.
We called them brothers and sisters."
For more than 50 years, lots of Palestinians have lived in horrific
conditions in refugee camps. Been purposely kept refugees by
their own people, just to score political points.
The Arabs have tremendous resources, could have absorbed
their refugees, gotten them on their feet, given them homes
and jobs, improved their lot, improved their lives.
But they have not. By their peculiar way of doing, they have
allowed their own people to live in misery. Israel, from its very
beginning to this very day, has taken in every single Jew who
needed a home, treated them not as refugees, but as brothers
and sisters.
We have always opted for choosing life, not destroying it,
creating, not attacking, lessening suffering, not increasing it.
To watch what happened at the World Trade Center is to see a
world view, a way of life that is so sick, so twisted, so coarsened,
so evil.
To watch as Palestinians rejoiced at what was done is to see a
people choosing to deal with their gripes and their suffering in a
way that is nothing but destructive, not only to those they hate,
but to themselves.
Jews, Americans do not, cannot act as those who attacked the
World Trade Center. That is simply not who we are, what we are
about, how we deal with things, how we see things.
That is what makes us so special, that is what makes us so
threatening to those whose lives are so dark.
When Pope John Paul visited Syria earlier this year, most of the
news coverage focused on the fact that Syrian president Assad
made a speech full of anti-Semitism right in front of the pope.
But what I found most telling is when the pope visited the Syrian
city of Kuneitra on the Golan Heights. What he found there was
a bombed out shell, a city destroyed during the Six Day and
Yom Kippur wars.
Almost thirty years after that last war, the city remains in rubble.
Why? Because the Syrians say it is a monument to Israeli
"crimes" and they intend to keep it that way until they get back
all of the Golan.
We don't think like that. We being Jews, being Americans.
Oklahoma City was cleaned up, the USS Cole is being repaired,
the World Trade Center will be rebuilt. The Sbarro pizzeria is
being remodeled and will reopen. Every site of similar terrorism
against Israel and Israelis, has been restored.
We act like menschen, we live like menschen. The Syrians would
rather let a city of theirs lie in ruin just so they can make some
political point, damn the effect on peoples' lives.
There are people who wish to act in a way that builds, that
heals, and those who surround themselves with rubble and wish
to inflict the same on others.
Israel has fought four major wars with the Arabs, had thousands
of its citizens killed in those wars and in thousands of terrorist
attacks. And yet, when peace seemed a real possibility, the vast
majority of Israelis enthusiastically jumped at the chance. We
put aside all the hurt and pain and anger and blood and tears,
showed we wanted to make life better not only for ourselves, but
for others.
That is the Jewish way, that is the American way.
Jews could be mad at the world forever, could wish to see it
suffer like it has made us suffer. But we aren't and we don't. We
recognize that anger is as destructive to the one who aims it as
it is to the one it is aimed at. And that inflicting suffering on
others, ultimately most devastates the one doing the inflicting.
There are ways for people to behave, even when they have
grievances, even when they want change. Jews, Israel,
Americans, the United States understand that and live by that.
The people who planned and aided and executed the World
Trade Center attacks, and the people who rejoiced over them,
do not understand that, do not live by that.
The World Trade Center attacks made me feel pride in Israel, in
the path it has chosen, in all it has accomplished, in its not
letting go of its high ideals, even in the face of the kind of
challenges Americans this week got a very vivid and personal
sense of.
The World Trade Center attacks made me feel pride in being a
Jew, for the values we hold dear and live by, for not acting like
so many have acted toward us, for knowing that not every
means justifies any goal.
The Word Trade Center attacks made me feel pride in being an
American, in this country, which will not allow what happened this
week to change our core beliefs, will not cause us sink to the
level of those who harm us, will, indeed, make us cling ever
tighter to the freedom and justice we hold so dear and so
uphold.
We will, I am confident, get those who did this, but we will get
them in the right way, will do the right thing. We will not allow
what they did to us to change how and what we are.
The United States and the state of Israel, Jews and Americans
are the world's shining lights, with inspiring principles that, most
inspiring of all, we are guided by and live by.
What a blessing it is to be part of both countries, to be part of
both
12/07/00: Is the media Jewish controlled?
Bombing made me proud to be an American Jew
By Joseph Aaron
JWR contributor Joseph Aaron is Editor of
The Chicago Jewish News. Send your comments to him by clicking here.
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