Jews Fighting Jews

Kol Yisroel Chaverim - All Jews are Brethren

     On Saturday, December 31, Rabbi Perry Netter of Beth Tzedek congregation in Amherst, N.Y., gave an impassioned sermon concerning the internal bickering and even fighting among Jews of different religious traditions. The sum of the rabbi’s sermon was that not the Arabs but dissension among ourselves is a greater danger to our survival than the hostility of the terrorists.

     Rabbi Netter gave as an example that in Jerusalem an orthodox eight year old girl from a “haredi” (anxious) family was spat on while walking to school on the grounds that her skirt was shorter than the spitter would allow. Here an innocent child is assaulted for the sake of the religious beliefs of a minority of Israelis.

     Some Israeli fanatics also demand that women sit in the back of public buses, reminding us of the civil rights revolution in our country in the 1960’s.

     Recently, some Haredi Jews dressed their children in the striped “pajamas” of concentration camp prisoners and also wore the yellow badge with the German word “Jude,” i.e. Jew, imposed on it. They shouted in the streets that they were being persecuted by the “Zionists” in a manner reminiscent of the Nazi persecutions of the 1930’s and 1940’s. This attack on Zionism feeds the anti-Jews in the Arab world and elsewhere.

     We are here reminded of the manner in which the second Temple was destroyed. As the Jews fought among each other, some invited the Romans to come and help them against other Jews. The outcome was the occupation of all of Israel and the destruction of the entire land and the exile of the Jews from their country from 70 C.E. until 1948 C.E.

     Not to be outdone by the orthodox branch of Judaism, some so called “progressive” or “liberal” Jews participate with the Arab haters in an effort to destroy Israel. Those of us old enough to know a world without Israel shudder at the thought that Israel may be destroyed, not by the Arabs, but by such Jews as Norman Finkelstein, who makes his living cursing the Jewish people before Arab listeners. Among these Israel haters we also have Richard Falk, a retired Princeton professor, who uses all of his competence as a writer and speaker to provide the Arab killers with propaganda denouncing the Jewish people.

    As I demonstrated two weeks ago, hundreds of academics with Jewish sounding names signed a petition in favor of a German Nazi. Almost all Jewish “intellectuals” seek the end of Israel and everything Jewish.

     In our lemming like need to kill ourselves, we witness how a considerable number of Jewish men refuse to even consider a Jewish wife, so that the intermarriage rate for Jews is greater than 52 percent. Therefore not many grandparents will have Jewish grandchildren.

     In sum, the chances of Jewish survival are, as always, questionable. Pessimists are already counting us out and our enemies are enjoying the spectacle of Jews fighting Jews.

     Nevertheless, I am willing to predict our eternal survival. We cannot be defeated. We cannot be destroyed. Not even the Holocaust led to our final destruction. I make this prediction although I have seen horrors that cannot and should not be exhibited because it is not for us to relive the nightmares of the past. It is for us to “to labor and to love.” It is for us to work hard each day and be of good cheer, as we recited at the end of each synagogue service, “Adonai Lee, v’low Ihro.”

Much success in 2012.  Shalom u’vracha.

Dr. Gerhard Falk is the author of numerous publications, including Assassination, Anarchy, & Terrorism (2012).

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