Dayenu: A Rant

(This post is rather long, but bear with it-there's a movie at the end, children!)
Pesach is just around the corner. It was my most favorite chag as a child; different dishes, utensils and pots and pans; different tablecloths, kiddush cups and beautiful embroidered matzah covers instead of challah boards. Even different bedspreads on the beds; a scrubbed and polished apartment: I was entering a new universe, olam habah on this earth.

My new and shiny surroundings set the stage for the important message of that holiday: That the Jewish People were delivered from slavery to freedom, to form a nation under the one G-d, who chose us for a higher purpose, to be a higher civilization; perhaps to give the world The Law, the Torah that Hashem gave us-to set the standard for ourselves and to raise the world to that standard as well.

But I think we Jews have lost our way. Two thousand plus years in galut, and we are still having growing pains and identity crises. These were not so prevalent before, or maybe just not so noticeable, because we were always under the thumb of some nation or other.
We are not a warlike people; the Torah has raised us to a level where we do not live by the sword. All those liberal leftists may not know it (-or may not want to know it) but their humanitarian sentiments have their source in our ancient Torah, which among many other humanitarian laws entreated us to relate to the stranger among us with kindness, for we were once strangers in the land of Egypt.

We have always followed the rules of our countries of residence and tried to be good citizens--which Jews were for the most part, contributing to the betterment of the societies in which we lived--while trying (some of us more, some of us less) to follow our religion and our halacha at the same time.

But we didn't have to make the kind of decisions a nation makes, because we weren't a sovereign nation. Until 1948. Now, with the existing Jewish State of Israel--a truly, hand-of-God-miraculous event when one thinks about it (so think about it: the oft-persecuted, diaspora-scattered Jewish people creating a State in their ancient homeland after 2,000+ years of exile?)--we seem to be a bit out of practice in governing ourselves.
We are afraid to step into a true world leadership position. I'm not saying that we have no leaders; there are lots of people in Israel who think they are leaders; most of whom are being led by their egos for their own personal power and self-aggrandizement. But we don't have smart leadership which protects us; we still seem afraid to make decisions supporting our sovereignty. The position of being 'sovereign' doesn't yet feel comfortable; we're just not used to it--yet. It's like the old slave mentality: we're afraid of being decisive, afraid of offending the world (read='our masters?') It all points to this: we are afraid of being adults making adult decisions, because we still want the world to love us (the original dependant mommy love: please, please accept us! Validate us!)

After all these years, and all the persecution, and even with having a strong Armed Forces in the IDF, we deep down are still a nation of ghetto-dwellers:
"you can take the Jew out of the ghetto but you can't take the ghetto out of the Jew."

We need to take a good look at ourselves in the proverbial mirror, and see who we are and who we really should be. Psychologists would tell you that this can be frightening, because once we do see who we should be, we will have to take a stand. Taking a stand means you have to leave your 'comfort zone' and face the consequences of your actions. And the disapproval of the rest of the world.

But hey, we're in good company, right? We are not alone in being afraid: look at Europe and the United States, who are right along there with us, afraid to take a stand against the Muslim threat. Just read on Arutz Sheva about what Network Solutions did, blocking access to an anti-Islamic site. Read it also on Klein Verzet as well.

Fear rules.

And it's still so politically incorrect for TSA and other security agencies to racially profile at airports, even though the vast majority of terrorists and hijackers are "Middle Eastern" (read: Muslim) types. We are just deathly afraid of being branded "racists." And look at much of Europe, bending over backwards to accept their Muslim citizens, even though they are sucking their adopted countries dry in welfare , and off and on violently rioting for really IMPORTANT reasons such as anti-Muslim cartoons (now there's a good example of a really mature people--hey, waddaya say we give 'em another country of their own, by golly!)

And of course, everybody knows the Jews didn't suffer and were not persecuted for thousands of years. Nope. We never suffered murderous pogroms, blood libels, serious discrimination in Europe, and in the United States even in the 20th century: university quotas, anti-Semitism and rejection when applying for jobs, barred from membership in country clubs, etc., just to name a few. Holocaust? What Holocaust?
Everyone knows that most of the Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe were filthy rich, controlled Hollywood, the diamond district and Wall Street and didn't have to struggle to feed their families, right?

But here's some information for those of you with your heads in the sand: throughout all the difficult years of poverty and persecution, we Jews valued a strong family life and taught our children respect for elders and teachers; we valued education-especially for our children, often to the parents' own personal sacrifices-and worked very hard to better ourselves, and make positive contributions to the society in which we lived. And we overcame poverty, and many of us did become wealthy (present company excepted)--through education and hard work.We earned it. Peacefully.

Compare that with how Muslims function in their adopted countries. Heck, look what they did to Gaza, when Israel handed it over to them (at the terrible expense of Israeli citizens) practically on a silver platter: they turned it into a dung heap.
Nice job.

I find myself repeating and repeating myself, so, why not one more time?:

Islam is not the 'religion of peace.' Islam is an intolerant, barbaric religion. If you disagree, read this article by Susan MacAllen, for starters. And here is a portion of a comment on an article on the site Islam watch, telling the West what it needs to do to stay alive and win this war of civilizations (emphases mine):

So long as the weenies in the West refuse to recognise that muslims love Death over Life, so long as they continue drinking multiculti fizzy, muslims will commit heinous crimes against natives, and make never ending demands till they achieve their goal of islamic caliphate. History teaches that the way to prevent such an enemy from fulfilling its cruel, merciless ambitions is to confront it with catastrophic and uncompromising force. Evil does not merely win when good men do nothing. It wins when the supposed good men do their utmost to fight fiercely on its behalf. Failure lies with the natives who allow evil to flourish and win. No one is safe until and unless islam is eradicated from earth and muslim annihilated.

Or better yet, we should do as the Danes are now finally doing to combat Muslim immigration to their country, in this article, here.

The bottom line is that the Pali and Hamas leaders are totally disinterested in founding a state of their own; radical Islam wants to restore the caliphate, and they are all very interested in the total destruction of Israel.

So it's time the Jewish People and Israel as a sovereign nation turned away from this need to have the world love us. The world never has, and never will. We cannot base our actions on that wish. We need instead to base our actions on what is necessary for our survival as a people, and on what is morally right.

But in order to do that, we have to love ourselves first, by believing in our inherent G-d given purpose, by disallowing terrorists and murderers to have rights and citizenship, and by forbidding them to have easy access to our shops, schools and places of worship. And yes, Israel will also have to overcome its past, as Yoni the Blogger writes:

Israel is not America with a Hebrew accent it is a third world country struggling to rid itself of it's Marxist roots and at times when it comes to keeping the elite in charge then the state doesn't fail to step down hard on freedom.

So let's all work together, to rid Israel of its "Marxist roots," get the "elites" out of power, and stand up for Israel's sovereignty, as a Jewish nation, over the whole land of Israel--its rightful inheritance and legacy. Amen.