I should really be asleep now, but I can't help, having watched for nearly two weeks the appalling and heart breaking situation in Gaza and Israel slip away without writing down how I feel. Whilst in the passage below I have not addressed this particular conflict in much detail, I think that the real tragedy in this conflict isn't its complexity, rather its simplicity. I know that many of you will have different views on the conflict; who's to blame; who started what and who can resolve it etc...But I think that, whatever your own, personal political beliefs are on the matter, one thing cannot be argued: Palestinian, Israeli, Jew or Muslim, at the end of the day we are all human. True, some fight for peace, others fight for much more totalitarianist goals, but in reality, the only pathway to peace goes beyond the statistics. It relies on a mutual understanding of humanity and of a shared goal; a shared dream; a dream of peace:
This war; this tragic, bloody and potentially devastating conflict is war in its purest form. This is the fight for survival, not just of Israel, its citizens and the Jewish people, but a fight for the survival of worldly democratic civilization as we know it. This fight against the Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah (who both strive, not for the creation of Palestine or an end to the ‘occupation’, but world Islamisation) is not just Israel’s fight; it is the worlds fight. Israel is not an occupier; it is a Liberator. Liberators of the many millions of innocent Palestinian people who voted, not for terror and destruction, but voted for peace, for brotherhood and friendship so that ‘peace may reign on Israel’s borders with tranquillity in its homes’. As we say every Saturday morning in Shull, ‘there may mercy and truths come together for the good of all mankind…’ - One of the most poignant pieces in our weekly prayer for peace and our weekly reminder of Ha-Tikva, of the hope, that so many millions of Jews, Muslims, Arabs and Israeli’s long for, is the ONE thing that these terrorist organizations, like Hamas, want to prevent.
Martin Luther King had a dream ‘…that one day, a nation will rise up and all men will be equal…’-this was the dream of Jews all over the world until their hope, their Tikva, was slaughtered on an Industrial scale in Nazi Germany in the 1940’s-only then did the international community help them re-build their homeland; to re-build their dream. Today, this dream is shared by ordinary, innocent Palestinians-the thing is though, their leadership, stretching back to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1930’s to Yasser Arafat in the 1990’s, do NOT share the dream of their people. They do NOT want peace. They do NOT want Palestine. They want the world. Orchestrated by Iran, Hamas use their people as dummies; using them as a pretext for their greater, global, Iranian ambitions. Hammastan is their aim. Palestine is simply their tool by which (they hope) to achieve it. With the international community’s bigoted and hypocritical condemnation of Israel and Israeli actions, we can only hope that the pragmatic, moderate and peace loving Arabs do not fall to the apparent rise of global terror, but stand up and hold firm to their will to achieve their dream; to achieve eventual peace and prosperity, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder with Israel, sharing the implementation of the dream of two great peoples who will be united against Hamas; against terror, destruction, Islamisation and the very need for military confrontation.
War; however pure its intentions, however morally legitimate it may be, is a tragic way to have to implement diplomacy; to implement peace. Hamas though, only need say five small words to uphold their responsibility to create statehood for their people: “Israel can live in peace”. Only when the people of Palestine and when the people of Eretz Yisrael can work together to help the world in its fight against terror (in their joint fight against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran) will Israel lay down its arms, dismantle its army and move on in the honour of Rabin and other peace-makers for the greater good; for the good of Israel and Palestine; for the implementation of that dream, that dream shared by two peoples, who can only hope that one day they will live in peace, ‘united by love and goodness and veering far from violence and strife’ where ‘ANOTHER nation will rise up, and where all men will be equal’-THIS dream is for you and me. To that we say, amen; Salem and Shabbat Shalom.