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It’s 2018, 34 years after the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York
and 70 years after the creation of the State of Israel. Rabbi Kahane believed in a Jewish State that
apologized neither for its Jewishness nor its willingness to fight to survive. He was vilified by the
Left, especially the Israeli government as he gained popularity dramatically among the Likud voters,
threatening the status quo. The Israeli Supreme Court outlawed his party as racist when it used quotes
from the Five Books of Moses. He was assassinated by an Arab in New York -- the same Arab who later
stood trial and received a life sentence plus fifteen years imprisonment for the 1993 World Trade
enter bombing, conspiracy to use explosives against New York landmarks, and a plot to assassinate
U.S. politicians.
The following is a letter Rabbi Kahane wrote to the world. “It is a strong
letter based on an unpleasant history, but a true one nonetheless. What rings out, however, is the
clarifying distinction between the call by Muslims and Arabs around the world claiming victimhood
and hatred and calling for murder and indeed terrorizing the world with actual murder, and
this one Jew's proclamation that his desire is not to conquer or convert but to be left
alone. With all of the Left-wing and Arab-based conspiracy theories of Jews manipulating the US
government into war expeditions in Iraq and elsewhere, the simple truth is that Jews around the
world would be happy to be just left alone in one little piece of real estate surrounded by more
than 21 Islamic states with a collective land mass 649 fold greater than Israel's and a total
population 49 fold greater. When Muslims can blame the Jew, the American, the European, and
even the Pope for their misery and wretchedness, one might conclude that the condition they find
themselves in is a product of their own making and constitution. {Emphasis mine]
“The text of the letter follows:
Dear World,
I understand that you are upset by us, here in Israel.
Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry.
Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us. Today, it is the "brutal repression of the
Palestinians"; yesterday it was Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in
Baghdad and the Yom Kippur War and the Sinai campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who,
therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily.
Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we - the Jewish people - upset you.
We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry
into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations - Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians,
Russians, Hungarians and Romanians. And we go back a long, long way in the history of
world upset.
We upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us in 1648-49; we upset
the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so upset at Jews that they
slaughtered untold numbers of us.
For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define our relationship
through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the church, Martin Luther, who, in his call
to burn the synagogues and the Jews within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical
spirit.
And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to leave you -
in a manner of speaking - and establish a Jewish state. The reasoning was that living in close
contact with you, as resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you,
irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you (and thus love you)-
and have you love us and so, we decided to come home - home to the same land we were driven out
1,900 years earlier by a Roman world that, apparently, we also upset.
Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please.
Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and holocausts, having taken our
leave of the general world to live alone in our own little state, we continue to upset you. You
are upset that we repress the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do
not give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The "radical" Arabs are upset and the gentle Egyptian
moderates are upset.
Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel.
In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace between Jews and Arabs.
Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody. Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed
Palestinians slaughtered tens of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were
slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929.
Dear world, why did the Arabs - the Palestinians - massacre 67 Jews in one day in 1929? Could it
have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967? And why were 510 Jewish men, women and
children slaughtered in Arab riots between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967?
And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a
"Palestinian State" alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs cried "no" and went to war and
killed 6,000 Jews - was that "upset" caused by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way,
dear world, why did we not hear your cry of "upset" then?
The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part
of the same people who when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for
their state -attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same
hate, the same cry of "itbach-al-yahud" (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today, were
seen and heard then. The same people, the same dream - destroy Israel. What they failed to do
yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not "repress" them.
Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as seven states launched
a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the Mongol massacres.
You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab capital in the world,
vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. And you would stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing
extinction. And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that extinction, we
will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land. If that bothers you, dear world,
well think of how many times in the past you bothered us.
In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in Israel who could not care
less.” (Ref. 1)
Rabbi Kahane was wrote his letter in December of 1984,
6 years before he was assassinated. In the thirty-four years since he wrote the letter,
virtually nothing has
changed in the world. Jews and Israel are still vilified, attacked and the calls of “death to
the Jews”, accompanied by the strident calls for the elimination of the State of Israel are as
strong - or even stronger - than ever. Two thousand years of virulent ant-Semitism
proceed unabated! As the rabbi said 34 years ago, “Faith in the G-d of Israel and a
powerful Jewish army are the ONLY guarantors of Jewish survival. Let us not fear the world.
Far better a strong Jewish State that survives and is despised by the world than a continuance
of the horrors that have really only just begun.”
(Ref. 2)
Some 34-years after Rabbi Meir Kahane wrote his letter from Israel
to the world, a British journalist wrote a letter to Muslim world. The text of her letter
follows:
“Dear Muslim world,
The State of Israel is 70 years old today and I am writing from its capital city, Jerusalem.
I realize that for most of you, the words I have just written will cause your gorge to rise. In Israel,
they are a source of jubilation.
Israel’s rebirth as the Jewish national homeland out of the ashes of the Holocaust was in itself
an astonishing achievement, unique in the annals of the world.
For it to have survived the unparalleled attempts to destroy it ever since is regarded by many
as nothing short of miraculous.
Yesterday was Israel’s annual remembrance day. When the sirens sounded, the country paused and
bowed its head. It’s the day when Israel mourns the price in blood it has had to pay for existing
at all: 23,646 fallen Israeli soldiers and 3,134 Israeli civilians murdered through
terrorism.
More than 26,000 dead—with most of the military casualties consisting of Israel’s precious young
who must be conscripted to defend their country—purely because there are people determined to
prevent the Jews from living in their own ancestral homeland.
But you know all about that because you are the people killing them.
You are the people who have been trying to destroy the Jewish homeland for the better part of a
century. Look how hard you’ve tried. You’ve used war. You’ve used terrorism. You’ve used the
Palestinian Arabs as pawns. You’ve used the diplomatic game. You’ve used economic boycotts.
Despite all this, you have been forced to watch as Israel has not only survived but become the
strongest state in the region, stronger even than many countries in the developed world.
While your economies are one giant basket-case disguised only by the now fast-disappearing oil
weapon, Israel has become the “start-up nation” with its economy booming.
While your birth rate is falling off the edge of a cliff, Israel’s average of three births per
woman is nearly double the fertility rate for other industrialized countries in the OECD.
Your one undoubted success has been to get the Europeans on your side in your campaign of
demonization and delegitimization of Israel. Well, good luck with that one.
European culture is itself in danger of going down the tubes as the result of uncontrolled
migration. The Europeans may think they support you against Israel, but the harsh reality—which
is about to get a whole lot harsher for them—is that they will increasingly need Israel’s
support against you.
We understand why you hate Israel. Paranoid hatred of the Jews is embedded in your religious
texts. Moreover, since you believe that any land ever occupied by Muslims becomes Muslim land
in perpetuity—and since the very idea of the Jews being your equals in ruling their own land
is anathema to you—your culture of honor and shame means that you cannot accept a Jewish state
in a region you claim as your own.
So we know you will never accept that Israel is entitled to exist. Nevertheless, you are
actually fighting a much bigger enemy than the Jews—an enemy to which you are losing hands down.
That enemy is modernity.
For all the terrible violence and mayhem you have unleashed in the cause of Islamic holy war,
your purpose is ultimately defensive. You realize that, in its freedom for the individual and
particularly for women, modernity poses a mortal threat to Islam.
Unlike the ignorant west, you know that Islam does not mean peace. It means submission. Modernity
means submission can no longer be enforced. Which is why, in its seventh-century form at least,
Islam is on the way out.
Which is why you believe you have to stop modernity. Which is why you are at war with the west.
And which is also why you see the Jews as your enemy of enemies because you believe they are
behind absolutely everything to do with modernity. Destroy the Jews, you imagine, and you will
defeat modernity.
Too late: the genie is out of the bottle. In Iran, women are throwing off their hijabs; as a result,
the clerical regime terrorizing the Iranian people is trembling. The Iranian people are refusing to
submit; and if enough of them rise up, the Islamist regime will be toppled and modernity will have
won.
In Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince has realized that unless the country modernizes, it will die.
Accordingly, some repressive social rules have been relaxed with more reforms promised.
Yes, these are only small steps. But the Crown Prince, who also needs western backing to fight
the Iranian regime, has come to understand that rather than fighting modernity he needs to make
some kind of accommodation with it. And he seems to have concluded something similar about
Israel.
And look at the Palestinian Arabs. In Gaza, Hamas is having to force them through threats and
violence to rush the border fence with Israel. More and more Israeli Arabs want to be known just
as Israelis. Arabs living in the disputed territories by and large don’t want to live in a despotic
and corrupt Palestine state. They want Israeli passports and to live in Israel, under the rule of
law and guarantees of human rights.
An increasing number of the Arab young, who are on Twitter and Facebook and all the rest of it,
don’t want to fight the unending battles of the seventh century.
Of course, none of this means the Palestinian Arabs are about to abandon their war to destroy Israel;
opinion polls suggest widespread continuing rejectionism. But the unstoppable force of modernity is
meeting the immoveable object of Islam, and modernity will win.
Dear Muslim world, we Jews are fated always to be yoked to you. How could it be otherwise? We are
half-brothers and sisters, sharing the same father although we have different mothers (and we
didn’t treat yours very well). Like it or not, we are part of the same extended family.
We know that families, especially stepfamilies, can be arenas of resentment and hatred. Despite
the murderous hatred you have shown us over the last 70 years and previously, we Jews don’t hate
you. Nor do we need you to love us. We just want you to get over yourselves and collectively
grow up.
If you finally were to decide to end your war against us in Israel, finally decide that you love
your children more than you hate us, finally decide that instead of trying to destroy Israel you
want it to help you accommodate to modernity, you will find our hands extended in friendship.
But if you try to remove us from the earth, we will destroy you.
Dear Muslim world, wake up and smell the coffee. The Jewish people has defied all the odds over
and over again and will continue to do so. You may break our hearts by killing our loved ones
but you won’t break us. Progress and modernity will destroy you instead.”
(Ref. 3)
The world, including the Muslim world, would do well to reread these
two letters and learn from them. It is said that the leopard cannot change its spots - neither can
the religious zealots, the anti-Semites, the hate mongers, and the blood thirsty of the world. The
rest of humanity, however, can learn from these two missives and can act to thwart those evil-doers
who strive for the end of the Jewish People and the destruction of the Jewish nation.
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References:
- Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Open Letter to the World, Vic Biorseth, The Embattled
Catholic American Thinker,
5 April 2007.
- An Open Letter To The World by Rabbi Meir Kahane (Z”L), Vic Biorseth, Israel,
Jews, and Judaism,
23 October 2013.
- A bold, take no prisoners, open letter to the Muslim World from Melanie Phillips,
a British journalist, broadcaster and author, living in the capital of Israel – JERUSALEM (Z”L),
Melanie Phillips, Bare, Naked Islam,
27 April 2018.
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