Ruthie Blum in Israel Hayom:
It was a few months into the First Intifada – on the eve of the Passover Seder – when my 5-year-old asked me to remind him whether “Pharaoh was the Hitler of Pesach or Purim.”
His question was as apt as it was precocious. It made me laugh to hear it, though it should have made me cry. Had he been trying to make sense of his history, the query would have been merely adorable. In this case, however, it was tragic, because what he was pondering was still alive and well in his own immediate surroundings. Indeed, when our car was pummeled with rocks on the way home to Jerusalem from Bethlehem one day, he got a taste not only of what the past looked like, but what the future held for the Jews, in general, and for him – up close and personal.
What it held for the Jews was a series of new Pharaohs and Hitlers attempting to annihilate them. What it held for him personally – other than no longer visiting towns with hostile Arab populations – was virtual house arrest, listening for air raid sirens and then running into a sealed room to don gas masks until Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles had landed and it was safe to resume watching cartoons.
What it held for him personally was the sound and sight of death and destruction on a daily basis – within his earshot and among his peers.
What it held for him personally was fear of riding the bus to school.
What it held for him personally was visit after visit to hospitals and cemeteries.
What it held for him personally was years in the military, learning more how to avoid killing innocent Arabs than defending innocent Jews.
What it held for him personally was learning, first-hand, what his Jewish ancestors had contended with generation after generation.
When he got a furlough for Passover in his second year in the Israel Defense Forces, he was very happy. Coming home for the holiday was not a given, and he was among the lucky ones allowed to enjoy a Seder with his family, instead of having to read the Haggadah in the mess hall with his fellow soldiers.
The thrill was short-lived, however. News of a major terrorist attack made its way to our table – somewhere between the matzah ball soup and the macaroons – just as it was spreading across the country like wild-fire.
The year was 2002 – exactly 10 years ago today, according to the Hebrew calendar. (The secular date was March 27.) The location was the Park Hotel in Netanya, where hundreds of mostly elderly vacationers were gathered to celebrate their people’s freedom from enslavement. As they were eating, drinking, and making merry, a suicide bomber entered the premises and blew himself up smack in the midst of the dining room.
Blood and body parts were everywhere, covering tablecloths and food-laden plates. In an instant, screams of horror and moans of pain replaced joyful singing.
Thirty people were killed that evening, and 140 others were wounded, many seriously. It was what would be deemed the worst such attack of the Second Intifada – no small feat, considering all the other carnage perpetrated by Palestinians during that period. It is the event that sparked then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to launch Operation Defensive Shield two days later – in an attempt to destroy the Arab terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria. It was during this military incursion that Yasser Arafat – the Hitler of both intifadas – was placed under siege in the Muqata complex in Ramallah. Considered successful by some standards, Defensive Shield did not put a stop to suicide bombings in Israel’s population centers. In fact, three years later, Sharon orchestrated the disengagement from Gaza, after failing to keep terrorists out. All that maneuver accomplished, however, was to displace Jews, and pave the way for incessant missile strikes on the part of Hamas and other proxies of the Hitler in Tehran.
Tonight, as we Jews in Israel and the Diaspora sit down to recount our release from the bondage of ancient Egypt, let us pause for a moment to contemplate our contemporary condition. While engaging in the ritual of thanking God for our freedom, let us ask ourselves whether we have actually achieved it. Those who were killed in the Park Hotel a decade ago lost their lives solely because they were Jews. This is what makes their plight no different from that of their forefathers. It is what makes my son’s question as relevant today as it was when he was in kindergarten, 25 years ago.
Is it not about time we begin to acknowledge that freedom from all the Pharaohs and Hamans and Hitlers and Arafats and Ahmadinejads is an ongoing internal and external battle that has yet to be won?
Ruthie Blum, a former senior editor at The Jerusalem Post, is the author of a book on the radicalization of the Middle East, to be released by RVP Press in the spring.
The common analogous reference of 3028 years ago and what happened under Nazi rule is truly a repeat of history. Estimates are Moses only left with 20% of the Jews, while the rest perished under the pestilence brought to Egypt. Even those who went with Moses still weren’t convinced in their faith as is testament of the Golden Calf debacle.
The Jews figured if they absorbed themselves into the culture under the dictatorship of the Pharaohs all would be well. Instead, the wealth of such an arrangement allowed to Jews to increase their numbers therefor threatening the native Egyptians who in turn instituted regulations, not unlike the Nazis under Hitler. But instead of Instituting death camps, the Egyptians made slave of all the Hebrews, accomplished through a slow bureaucratic method which removed their rights as citizens.
Jews have suffered the wrath of other beliefs for a long time. What I call the Olde Testament is history to them. If one thing is true is that the Jews have incorporated their existence, the defining moments into their religion. In a way, Judaism is the most progressive of the belief systems still existing to date.
Although, Christianity by default is inherently more progressive because it has absorbed past beliefs and knocks off new Saints when ever the need is required, and interpretation of scriptures is allowed to vary as long as the peaceful message of Jesus Christ doesn’t get lost.
So, in spite of the thesis of who is more Liberal in the aplication of religion, the Jews have been at it for much longer.
Funny. The comment thing forced me to post what was before. So I continue;
Where both the Jews and the Christian off shoot of it have learned to not take the scripture verbatim, Islam is stead fast, in the most part except for the few Liberal Muslims who are under constant death threats for thinking otherwise, insisting the word of God/Allah is not up to interpretation, even though it was delivered by a man, the Pedophile Warlord Prophet Mohamed. Islam is Islam and is not up for debate.
Judism has always been up to debate whereby being the roots to Chrisianty and Western nations has given birth to the Magna Carta and democracies over time. No such thing can ever come from the strict Sharia and the Caliphate of Islam. Islam gives no equal rights to non-Muslims or women and expects all other to follow a strict rule of servitude. A nation built upon slavery is doomed to fail, as Rome did
If Easter should teach anybody anything is that the sacrifice of one man who claimed to be the son of God proved that the strength of his conviction was fuel to the fire within all who knew him for freedom from oppression. A similar oppression has haunted the Jews for centuries after Jesus, but let us not forget that Jesus was a Jew.
Passover has a special significance because it is as H
It did it again. I continue.
…it is as Holy as Easter, which is the most significant Christian celebration of our faith/even greater than Christmas.
After all, who can compare the birth of a child to the sufferance and torture of a man endured over days only to result in a supernatural event of resurrection?
And there in lies the rub. Jesus came as yet another Jewish prophet but the Jews held steadfast to their ancient belief and the Talmud. And so, a new tribe began leaving the Jews to continue their journey until they in turn resurrected the Third Temple which is no modern day Jerusalem. And the new tribe of Christians never forgot their roots and to this day continue to give Israel support and visit the Holy Land when they can. Indeed, missionaries in the 1800′s created 90% of the colleges and universities which still exist today in the Middle East in the hope that it would help the Jewish return to the Holy Land.
Christians owe Judaism a debt of gratitude and naturally feel a familial love for Jews, one that is not often reciprocated, but that doesn’t matter to Christians, because Jesus said true love was unconditional.
I don’t believe and never have that Jews feel culturally superior to other faiths. That has always been the real tenant behind the pogroms of the past. Insular for reasons of historical reckonings for sure. Thousands of years without a country of your own, always living under the yoke of non-egalistic
Fer Christ sake, it did it again…
…the yoke of nations with an inherent upper class, an elite social construct ready to use the Jews yet never ready to allow them into that social strata.
Therefore, if Jews are ready to integrate within host country yet always maintain a culture seemingly impenetrable to non-Jews, it ain’t personal; It’s just a result of more than a millennial worth of caution awareness.
It’s not that Jews don’t trust non-Jews, it’s just they’ve been fucked over so many times by non-Jews, longer than Jesus has been around, that the normal reaction is caution.
Bloody comment thingy booted me out again…
Chag Sameach and Happy Easter. I wish I could win the lottery and take all my friends to Israel.
Thank you for that. Happy Easter my righteous Gentile friend.
You’re welcome. I do ramble on at times though. Usually I make a post of it, instead it’ll be kept in your comments this time.