Thank you. Your antisemetic rhetoric has taught me four powerful lessons.
1. As Jews, we are different. No amount of assimilation can erase that.
Over the years, a part of my Jewish identity has been compromised. I’ve looked to the non-Jewish world for directions on big questions like “how to live” and “who am I”. The past few weeks, you have reminded me that I don’t belong. I can no longer rely on the non-Jewish world for those answers. I am forced to turn towards my Jewish roots for answers.
Thanks to the wake up calls that I am Jewish, I am beginning to ask real questions. What does it really mean to be a Jew? What are the passions and pleasures of a Jew? What’s the role of connection and love in Judaism?
I am grateful to the Jew-haters for sparking my journey into a rich and meaningful Jewish world.
2. Yep, I am part of the chosen people.
The notion of “the chosen people” always evoked shame surrounding privilege and elitism. I distanced myself from it. Then the war happened and the western world, particularly anti-Israel advocates, have been obsessing over Israel’s morality in battle. They are holding Israel accountable to a higher standard than any other country. I can’t help but marvel at the world reaffirming the Jewish narrative of being the chosen people. If they can say it without shame, then I can internalize it with pride.
The Japanese have known for years that spending mindful time in the woods is beneficial for body and soul. Now western doctors – and royals – agree
Every day, apart from when it’s raining heavily, Dr Qing Li heads to a leafy park near the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo where he works. It’s not just a pleasant place to eat his lunch; he believes the time spent under the trees’ canopy is a critical factor in the fight against diseases, of the mind and body.
The Biden administration thinks that a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA) could run a post-war Gaza Strip at peace with Israel, but that ignores several inconvenient facts:
2) The same poll shows that 72% of respondents supported the massacre of October 7. But somehow a new Palestinian state in Gaza would embrace coexistence with Israel?
3) The PA has an abysmal track record of corruption and was too weak to prevent a Hamas-led coup in Gaza, less than two years after Israel’s 2005 withdrawal. So why would the PA perform any better this next time?
4) The Gaza Strip has one of the highest population densities in the world and the problem will only get worse, thanks to an estimated population growth rate of 4% (among the highest in the world). A 2018 study by Mario Coccia found that “terrorism thrives … with high growth rates of population combined with collective identity factors and low socioeconomic development.”
5) The plan to create a post-war Palestinian state in Gaza would establish an unthinkable precedent with far-reaching consequences for global security: terrorist movements can now rape and behead their way to statehood.
6) There is no Arab or other power with the popularity, authority, and morality to educate for coexistence and to ensure that all reconstruction funds rebuild Gaza as Singapore instead of Somalia.
Yet the international community – including the U.S., EU, and U.N. – still clings to the delusional idea that if they just pressure Israel into accepting a future Palestinian state in Gaza, that the impoverished, overcrowded, and radicalized territory will suddenly flourish.
While Japan and Nazi Germany were successfully de-radicalized, that was only after the kind of absolute defeat and extended occupation that global opinion would never allow for Gaza.
Given the six inconvenient facts above, resettlement is the only solution that avoids perpetual war between Gaza and Israel.
Instead, the international community insists that Gazans stay in the overcrowded and now largely destroyed Gaza Strip, despite their hateful determination to keep attacking Israel. That’s even though leaving them in Gaza is a recipe for humanitarian disaster and endless extremism: a failed state with a fast growing population, no economy, no infrastructure, and now huge numbers of homeless. How is insisting that Gazans remain in Gaza actually helping them?
And the longer the international community coddles Palestinians with massive humanitarian aid and diplomatic pressure that prevents Israel from conclusively winning the wars that Palestinians start, the longer they’ll think that “resistance” might someday pay off – maybe by the 34th war, in the year 2075.
Why are Palestinians the only people not allowed to lose a war? What makes Gazans worthy of such preferential treatment? The Tibetans never blew up a bus in Beijing nor massacred their Chinese occupiers, and yet they must submit to China’s military superiority. But somehow Gazans have a stronger moral claim to a state and are therefore exempt from the rules of war and history?
Adding to the absurdity of insisting that Gazans remain in Gaza, they aren’t even indigenous to that land, which has been ruled and inhabited by countless peoples over the centuries, as this brief history explains.
Most Gazans are the children or grandchildren of people who arrived as refugees. Indeed, one of the root causes of the Israel-Gaza conflict is the conviction among Gazans that they are refugees who will one day return to live in the territory of sovereign Israel. Their real desire is not to live forever in Gaza City, Khan Younis, and Rafah, but to move to Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem (after removing the Jews “from the river to the sea”).
HUH? What in the world does he mean with that title? What is “on the face”?
In honor of Purim, continue reading and see how many Hebrew expressions and words are translated directly into English and how funny they appear in that fashion…enjoy! (Hebrew equivalent words listed under the post…try to do this without peeking first!)
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I remember the day well; it really was on the face (1). When I first woke up, I really thought it would be in order (2), but as it turned out it was a waste of time(3).
I arrived at the office and saw what looked like a pretty(4) piece of cake on the table. Then, I put my heart(5) that someone was working on me(6). It was not cake at all! It was just a plastic blob that others wanted me to think was cake. Just then, Dave walked in and looked at my face and said “plaiiiiin!”(7) At first, I was angry on him but after a few minutes, I commented: “Biiiig! (8) You really worked on me! (9) Waste of time!” (10)
After that first, disappointing incident, I decided to flow(11) and see if I could also work on someone. And I knew exactly who I would work on: Yonatan! After all, he truly lives in a movie (12)and will not have any idea what I was up to.
