You've heard that Israel is committing atrocities, mercilessly killing Palestinians.
It is not true.
You've heard that Israel is starving Palestinian children, denying them humanitarian aid.
It is not true.
You've heard that Israel is a colonial state.
It is not true.
You may have even heard that Israel would gladly continue the war to conquer every other country in the universe! Also not true. That is an Islamic agenda, not something Jews would bother with, conquering with no religious purpose. Israelis are happy to be in their own little country, fulfillment of a covenant with the Old Mighty three thousand five hundred years ago, give or take a few.
Israel is about the size of Illinois and will undoubtedly remain that way.
But as one of my favorite rabbis likes to say, before we begin. . . .
 Steven Sotloff |
Beheaded by ISIS September 2, 2014 |
It haunts me.
They bragged about it. The Islamic State bragged about killing an innocent man in cold blood. They killed him because he was an American, make no mistake.
Any chance you remember that poem, And then they came for me?
A soldier told me last week that two years in a tank he never killed anyone. But the other day he injured a terrorist. He didn't feel happy about it. He thought he would, but he didn't.
Killing, maiming, bloodshed not our thing.
It is what the enemy does. October 7: gang rapes, beheadings, defilement, the murder of old people and babies. Why the need for these viscerally nauseating images, so, so graphic, so intimidating, so terrifying.
Terrifying. See, that's the answer, the expected bullet of the enemies of the Western world (again, make no mistake who these enemies are).
To terrorize, this is a magic infinitive, an objective. Israel's enemies thrive on flaunting power, flexing sometimes imaginary muscles and strength, the power to make us afraid.
Before moving to Israel we attended a lecture by an Israeli lobbyist who informed his listeners, most of whom hoped to move to Israel, that Hezbollah in Lebanon had a cache of 250,000 missiles with our names on it. He didn’t want to scare anyone, but thought we should know.
Where did he get his information? Who knows! Maybe it was true. But if you were to ask: Who won the war with Hezbollah? The answer would be easy. Not Hezbollah.
The magnitude of numbers— deliberately designed to evoke fear, to destroy our Zen, scare us. Rational people are afraid of missiles. We are afraid of violence, pain and suffering. October 7, a decisive if temporary win in this regard—the entire Jewish world? Terrified.
But wait. Isn't Israel the state that has terrorized and starved poor Palestinians, committed war atrocities? You think to yourself, I read that, it must be true!
No, not true. They warn the Palestinians to get out when they are about to target a tunnel, an ammunition supply, a terrorist.
What is true is that Israel has lost the PR war. The other side has slaughtered us fabulously, this time by the media, the press.
Last night I sat in on a cousins class. We meet every Sunday night on Zoom, have for about five years, starting with Covid, nursing that need humans have to connect with one another. Such a very special thing, family and friends, the friends now family.
Someone in class mentioned that we (the Jews) are becoming like them (Hamas), vigilantes, not soldiers, destroying property indiscriminately in the West Bank. He put it out there as a question, something we need to look at, examine critically.
A rabbi in the class who doubles as a dignitary, a man who shakes hands with the presidents of real countries, prime ministers, who has had an audience with the Pope, maybe two, asks him: Where did you hear that?
Everywhere! There are reports about this everywhere.
Said dignitary goes on to say that if anything the Israel Defense Force works desperately, daily, hourly, to ensure that October 7 does not recur, this time at the hands of the enemy across the green line, the residents of the West Bank.
That's real close to where I live.
The thought of Arab terrorists tunneling under my city gives me pause. A solid pause. Does it cause panic? Brushing thoughts like these aside (like flies) is a professional specialty. So no.
Should it cause you panic? No! This is what they want. They want us to be afraid. Never, never be afraid (cautious, yes. prepared, yes). This is a lesson Israelis learned from this war that our friends and relatives overseas have not.
The Buddha is on point:
Just as a rock is unmoved by wind, so too the wise remain unmoved by fear.
We are rocks, friends. It is possible to be a rock. And here in therapy we used to eschew stoicism. We still do, but there is a time and a place, ways to express emotion, all good. But be a rock when it counts, when it takes over.
But back to our original dilemma. Will the tide ever turn? Will Israel ever see an end to the seeming ubiquitous anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic propaganda that has hounded us for millennium? Is it even possible for Israel, for the Jews, to win the propaganda war?
It feels a little late in the game to me. But who knows? We like to say: Sure. We will . . . when mashiach comes. Mashiach the messiah (mah-shi-ach). When (s)he comes (thought to be a male, but who knows?) that's when they'll stop hating us. The bringer of world peace, the ultimate ChapGPT education, the messiah will teach humanity how to let go, let God, how to put down the swords, disable the bombs. How to establish gun control in the United States.
As a rule some of us say when mashiach comes if we think something extremely unlikely. 'I'll win the lottery when mashiach comes.' As in, never.
Although there seems to be no light at the end of the proverbial tunnel of bad publicity, and considering the continuous verbosity and threats of our enemies, this doc wonders: if not now, when?
Mashiach should come now. We always say במהרה בימינו: Mashiach should come quickly, in our lifetime. We say this often. We put it in greeting cards at the end of all the other blessings, a happy life, health, success, children, and Mashiach should come, quickly in our lifetime. We put it at the end of a speech, no matter what the speech is about, whether we believe it or not. We say it as a prayer.
It always felt unlikely, the very concept of a messiah, very hard to believe, a world leader, everyone's teacher. But millions of us pray for what feels impossible and sometimes our prayers come true. Then there's that Garth Brooks line, Thank God for unanswered prayers.
Wow. And all I wanted to do today was repost an item from this morning's Israel Live News 17, an online news source about the war, peppered with advertisements to buy apartments in Jerusalem that nobody reads.
Let's take a look at the story.
Following claims that scores of Gazans had been killed by IDF soldiers firing at humanitarian
aid convoys this morning, the IDF has published footage of the incident from the soldiers at the scene
Despite the hundreds of Gazans rushing towards their position to reach the supply trucks, multiple soldiers can be heard shouting 'Nobody shoot!', and no gunfire can be heard throughout the recording
IDF Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee added Arabic subtitles to the video and tweeted 'There is neither famine nor deliberate killing of civilians, only more Hamas ׳.propaganda
*𝗜𝗦𝗥𝗔𝗘𝗟 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗡𝗘𝗪𝗦*
https://chat.whatsapp.com/GHnMSPhx8yMFxdTyOb9xnQ
To peace, dear friends, and a grip on our fears. therapydoc
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