As I mentioned below, I'm not a rhetoratician. I know others who are, though! ;) I've had this article for a while. The copy I have is from the Hamodia, September 7, 2001, but it's been printed in a number of newspapers. I find it rings rather true.
This article...has been making the rounds as a "message from an unknown soldier"...
Upsetting the World, Again
This article...has been making the rounds as a "message from an unknown soldier"...
Upsetting the World, Again
Please, we understand that you are upset with us here in Israel. It appears that you are quite upset, even angry and outraged. Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset with 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 yon Kippur War.
It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most.
Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we, the Jewish people, upset you. We upset a German people who elected a Hitler, we upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a slew of Slavic nations - Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russian, Hungarians, and Rumanians.
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, we 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 archenemy of the Church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews in them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit.
It is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to come home to our ancient, G-d given homeland -- the same homeland from which we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman world that, apparently, we also upset.
What better notion than to leave you and thus love you -- and have you love us? And so we decided to come home.
Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please. Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and the Holocaust, 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.
Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel. In 1920, 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 hundreds of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered in one day in Hebron in 1929.
And when you, world, proposed a U.N. partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a Palestinian state alongside a tiny Israel, and the Arabs cried and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews. Was that upset stomach caused by the aggression of 1967?
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 "idbakh-al-yahud" -- "Slaughter the Jews!" 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 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 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 to face extinction.
And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians daily dream of that extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land.
We survived in your land -- unwelcome visitors -- by the grace of G-d alone. And we will continue to survive by the grace of G-d alone. We will stay in our own little, G-d given corner no matter how upset you get, and long after you forget why you got upset at us, by the grace of G-d alone.
In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in Israel who could not care less.
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 yon Kippur War.
It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most.
Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we, the Jewish people, upset you. We upset a German people who elected a Hitler, we upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a slew of Slavic nations - Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russian, Hungarians, and Rumanians.
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, we 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 archenemy of the Church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews in them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit.
It is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to come home to our ancient, G-d given homeland -- the same homeland from which we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman world that, apparently, we also upset.
What better notion than to leave you and thus love you -- and have you love us? And so we decided to come home.
Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please. Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and the Holocaust, 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.
Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel. In 1920, 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 hundreds of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered in one day in Hebron in 1929.
And when you, world, proposed a U.N. partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a Palestinian state alongside a tiny Israel, and the Arabs cried and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews. Was that upset stomach caused by the aggression of 1967?
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 "idbakh-al-yahud" -- "Slaughter the Jews!" 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 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 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 to face extinction.
And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians daily dream of that extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land.
We survived in your land -- unwelcome visitors -- by the grace of G-d alone. And we will continue to survive by the grace of G-d alone. We will stay in our own little, G-d given corner no matter how upset you get, and long after you forget why you got upset at us, by the grace of G-d alone.
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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