The status quo is unacceptable; no-one quite knows how it can be remedied, but what we do know is that the option of dead Jews is no longer acceptable.
By SHMULEY BOTEACHIDF soldiers man a checkpoint in Hebron on June 17(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
There have been other Jews murdered at the hands of terrorists. Countless, in fact. Walk the streets of Jerusalem and see all the plaques on cafes, pizza shops and street corners memorializing Jews murdered by Palestinian terrorists.But something changed with the murder of these three innocent teens. It was not just the senselessness of the act; three defenseless teen boys killed for no reason other than that they were Jewish, for no other purpose but to indulge Palestinian hate. Rather, it was a feeling that this had happened one too many times. That there was a critical mass of dead Jews that had now been reached, beyond which the Israeli public and the world Jewish community is not prepared to mourn any more.That we were finally fed up. That we weren’t going to take it any more. That we weren’t going to make peace any longer with the fact that Jews are born to die. That Israel doesn’t have to make do with the sight of children’s carcasses found rotting in caves.That Israel, even after all the innocent men women, and children it has buried in the Arabs’ 66-year war to annihilate it could still be shocked by the sight of more young Jews dying just because they wore yarmulkes.Israel and the Jews are fed-up with the sight of dead Jews.Fed up with Palestinians justifying barbaric murder in the name of their grievances.Fed up with the foul moral equivalence of Jews dying as targets of terrorists and Palestinians dying undertaking acts of terrorism.Fed up with a world that has indulged in anti-Semitism for thousands of years continuing to scapegoat the State of Israel and overlook dead Jews.Fed up with Western media that makes more of Israelis adding rooms to apartments in east Jerusalem than 150,000 Arabs killed in Syria.Fed up with the United Nations condemning the only democracy in the Middle East while overlooking the ghastly human rights abuses of its Arab neighbors.
Fed up with watching Jewish mothers and fathers wailing over the coffins of their children.Fed up with Palestinians ululating at the same scene.Fed up with Islamic terrorists believing they were getting sex with virgins in heaven for killing children on earth.Fed up with haters of Israel being more concerned with how Palestinian terrorists are treated in Israeli jails – humanely – than with their victims’ families, whose lives have been destroyed forever.Fed up with an American government which, with the best of intentions, pushes Israel to recognize a Palestinian unity government with Hamas when the United States would never even talk to al-Qaida, which murdered so many innocent Americans.Fed up with seeing Israeli communities in the West Bank surrounded by barbed wire to keep killers out while the Palestinian villages live openly and without fear because they know Israelis don’t target children.Fed up with the big lie that Israeli settlements are the reason for Palestinian terror when the PLO was founded before Israel ever conquered the West Bank in a defensive war; Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at Israel even after Israel forcibly removed every last settler.Fed up with morally confused churches like the Presbyterian Church USA initiating boycotts against Israel for simply protecting its citizens from terrorists, while overlooking Arab atrocities against Christians throughout the Middle East.Fed up with having to teach our children to fear the basic neighborliness that was once so common in Israel, like hitching, lest your children never arrive home.Fed up with Arab nations claiming to feel humiliated by, and swearing eternal enmity toward, a tiny little sliver of Jewishness that is a but a small fraction of total Arab land.Fed up with a never-ending river of Jewish tears.Fed up with a tragic history that never seems to recede.And we have every right to be fed up. No nation should have to live like this. No nation should have to die like this. Something has to be done. The status quo is unacceptable. No-one quite knows how it can be remedied, but what we do know is that the option of dead Jews is no longer acceptable. We have a right to live.The author is founder of This World: The Values Network, the foremost organization influencing politics, media, and the culture with Jewish values. He has just published Kosher Lust: Love is Not the Answer. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
