YOM HAATZMAUT 5785

Fires on Israel’s Birthday

Today’s Torah portion Tazria/Metzorah deals primarily with a disease—the disease of tzaraat. Tzaraat in Biblical times, was a spiritual disease with physical manifestations on the skin. And so our Sages tell us that a metzorah—one who has this disease—is an acronym for one who was a motzi sheym ra (one who spreads gossip). It was the pernicious evil of gossip that spread—not just evil talk—but a physical disease with terrible skin lesions.

In our world today, we also have a pernicious, deadly, disease that spreads—not just evil talk—but maliciously damages actual lives in so many ways—some violent! And that disease is hate! Hate has many forms in our world, but none more damaging than antisemitism—as we’ve unfortunately seen recently all over the world. Today it takes its form mostly in anti-Zionism. As I often point out, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. responded when approached by a student who attacked Zionism: “When people criticize Israel, they mean Jews—and you’re talking antisemitism!”

Today is Yom HaAtzmaut—Israel’s 77^th birthday. We celebrated it on Thursday, because today is Shabbat, and the usual celebrations would be inappropriate. Our celebrations this year—as with last year—with Hamas holding hostages—are somewhat muted. To make matters worse, as Yom Haatzmaut began, Palestinians militants tried to burn down Jerusalem and other parts of Israel. As we watched Jerusalem burn on our day of joy and celebration, it is striking that Jew-haters can be quite intentional. What do I mean by that?

When Hamas massacred 1200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, they chose the happiest day of the religious calendar—Simchat Torah. And with this week’s fires, as the Times of Israel reported: The fires coincided with calls made by Palestinians [Hamas and other terror groups] on social media to carry out arson attacks on Israel during the country’s Independence Day. PM Bibi Netanyahu reported the arrest of 18 Palestinians for arson—one caught in the act!

Eli Beer, president of the United Hatzalah said: “It’s a terror attack on Israel. Fires were started in 20 separate locations”—certainly not a random or accidental act! David Suissa in the Jewish Journal added his insight: It’s hardly a coincidence that these fires are raging on the happiest day of the Zionist calendar: Yom HaAtzmaut. Israel’s enemies, evidently, don’t just hate Jews when they’re alive; they also hate them when they’re happy. Suissa notes that: We Jews are so focused on taking responsibility, we tend to look at our own actions to explain everything. What did we do to deserve this animosity? What can we do to live in peace with those who hate us? As valuable as those questions can be, at certain moments they deserve a time-out. This is one of those moments. We did nothing to deserve such a fire; we did nothing to deserve the massacre of 1200 Jews on Oct. 7.

In fact, Hamas, on Oct. 7, attacked the very Israelis who were trying to help them—like the residents of Kibbutz B’eri who hired them to work in their homes and kibbutz, who drove them to doctors’ visits. These Palestinians didn’t care that about any of that, only that they were Jews and deserving of murder, rape and imprisonment. Let’s not forget the glee on the faces of the Hamas monsters as they savaged innocent human beings at the Nova festival and surrounding kibbutzim? Let’s not forget the video clips of them proudly displaying human atrocities on a scale we’ve never seen.

As Israel burned on Yom Haatzmaut, is there any doubt that the Jew-haters holding Israeli hostages in Gaza were in a frenzy of joy at Israel’s misery? Of course not. As Suissa writes—and this is such an important point: Until we recognize the depth of contempt for Jews among the Islamic terrorists who dream of nothing else than total Jewish annihilation, we’ll get sucked in by the dumbest deals and most naive pipe dreams.

You can be the biggest lover of peace and biggest hater of war and still conclude that the only way to deal with those who will stop at nothing to annihilate you is to stand strong with a clear message: “We know how much you despise us because we’re Jews. We don’t trust anything you say. We only have one thing to tell you: Am Yisrael chai, The Jewish people live and you will never ever destroy us!

The contempt for Jews among those who want to destroy them is black and white. They’re telling us: “As long as Jews are alive and happy, we’ll never leave them alone.” The sooner we recognize this terribly inconvenient truth, the better we will be able to fight it. It’s up to us to let them know that as long as they preach such hatred, we’ll be vigilant and never leave them alone.

During the 2^nd Intifada some 25 years ago, when Yasir Arafat was blowing up Israeli buses and restaurants, I wrote on Yom Haatzmaut: Sure, it is important for all of us to remember the Holocaust. And let us not only remember it as Jews, let us make sure Yasir Arafat and all the Palestinians remember it as well. Let them remember, as someone once put it:

         “That people smarter, more efficient, better equipped and more dedicated than them failed to destroy the Jewish people. And if the Germans couldn’t do it, then the Palestinians are never going to be able to do it. Let the Palestinians see where the Jews were 5 short decades ago during the Holocaust and think about where we are today. Let it sink into their heads—and into the head of every other Palestinian and Arab and Ayatollah and Hamas leader and Neo-Nazi…

         “They ripped the gold from our teeth and yet we’ve built a world leading high-tech country. They can say we went like lambs to the slaughter, but now we have a country of our own that is a nuclear superpower. If Auschwitz couldn’t destroy us, they never will. And the sooner they—and others—realize it, the better off the whole world will be!”

My friends, we are the generation that has seen our people go from the crematoriums of Auschwitz to the Kotel/Western Wall in Jerusalem in our hands. Yes, the Jew-haters have NOT stopped. Nevertheless, we continue to be a blessing to the world, in fulfillment of the promise Gd made to Abraham (Gen. 12:3) regarding his descendants: V’nivr’chu v’cha kol mishpachot ha-adama, “And through you will all the nations of the world be blessed.” Besides all the contributions of Diaspora Jewry, Israel, in its 77^th year, is an oasis of technology and innovation that has enriched the lives of everyone. That’s how we Jews respond to hate. We create, we build, we innovate. Let the world see how much a better world it is because we Jews are in it.

After 2000 years of exile, inquisitions, pogroms, a Holocaust and Oct. 7^th … surrounded by countries that have done everything possible to destroy it … Am Yisrael chai—the people of Israel live. May they continue to live and ever and be a blessing to the world. Happy 77^th birthday Israel. Amen!

Sing Hatikvah…