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| Israeli Flag in the fence of a Copenhagen Shul where a Jew was killed (AP) |
Interestingly, while the American people don’t agree with
what Boehner did and think it politicized support for Israel, they also do not agree with President Obama’s refusal to meet with him. I agree with my fellow
Americans about that. Agree with Boehner or not, once here, President Obama should meet with the Prime Minister
of America’s closest ally. Like him or not, he is the leader of the only true democracy in the Middle
East. Not doing so is petty. The
symbolism of it is not.
As for politicizing support for Israel, no one is doing more
damage to that relationship than the boycotters of his speech to congress. There are about ten or so members of congress
that have announced that they will not attend. They say that Netanyahu will not
tell them anything they haven’t heard from him before.
But to presume to know what
he is going to say as an excuse for not attending is exactly politicizing it. Furthermore, if you
boycott the leader of the country you support, you are in effect boycotting the
country itself. It would be like the members of the Likud boycotting Obama
if he accepted an invitation from Tzipi Livni to address the Kenesset. Truly a stupid thing to do.
But then again I
never really thought too much about the intelligence of Senator Patrick Leahy
and Vice President Joe Biden – the 2 most prominent boycotters. They are not
the brightest bulbs in the room. Stupid things come out of their mouths all the
time.
But this post is not about that. It is about a statement made
by the Prime Minister with which I totally disagree. In response to the latest
terrorist attack against Jews in Denmark, Netanyahu made the same pitch to Jews there that he did to the Jews of France after they were attacked. He told the
Jews of Europe to get out! It is no longer safe for Jews in Europe. And they should make Aliyah (immigrate) en masse to Israel.
Do not misunderstand. I am not God forbid opposed to making
Aliyah. The holy land is the place where we Jews belong. It is the place where
more Mitzvos are available to us. It is God’s gift to the Jewish people. There are many reasons to make Aliyah. But running
away from Europe is not one of them.
Not that I am a fan of Europe. As Menachem Begin once
put it, Antisemitsm is in the mother’s milk of every European. Rashi’s
commentary about Esav Soneh L’Yaakov surely applies to Europe. Today just as it
did yesterday. That’s why there was a Holocaust. And that’s why today it’s so
easy for Muslim fanatics living in Europe to rake up all those old feelings – submerged via
guilt after the Holocaust.
But the Holocaust did indeed change things. Antisemtism is
not only no longer government policy, it is no longer tolerated. Unlike it was before
and during the Holocaust. Then Euroean Antisemitsm was official or at best
tolerated. France, for example, had no problems rounding up its Jews and
handing them over to the Nazis for shipment to Auschwitz.
There were Jews in the immediate years prior to the Holocaust
that saw what was coming and urged their Jewish brethren to get out of Europe… most
notably Zev Jabotinsky. He was not a religious Jew. But he saw what was coming
and told the Jewish people to get out! Religious leaders were opposed to that and
told the Jewish people to stay put. And they did to the tune of six million Jews
who ended up dead.
Just to be clear, I don’t blame the religious leaders. They
had no way of knowing about the ‘Final Solution’. That wasn’t even decided
until 1942 at the Wanasee Conference. But
the fact is that they were wrong and Jabotinsky was right.
Why were the Gedolim opposed to running away from Europe? They
feared that leaving the confines of the Shtetl and moving to a free America or
a Zionist Palestine would destroy the Yiddishkeit of most Jews. What good was
it, they asked, if their lives were saved but their souls weren’t?
But as we all know now, those fears never materialized. The
very freedom they feared would destroy Judaism actually enhanced it. America
has proven to be a haven for the Jewish people unlike any country in history even
in the best of times. The same thing is true of Israel. Torah Judaism is
flourishing in both countries like at no other time. There are more Jews learning
Torah in these two countries than at any other time in history.
True, assimilation is a problem derived of that freedom. Both
America and Israel allow us to choose what kind of life we want to live. The
draw of a free lifestyle is very strong. But as I said instead destroying us that
freedom has allowed us to flourish.
Back to Europe. The Antisemitism that exists in Europe today
is not government policy. Nor is it even government sanctioned. It is in fact
not tolerated. Whereas in pre Holocaust European governments were anxious to
rid themselves of Jews, and collaborated with the Nazis, today’s European
leaders are begging the Jewish people to stay.
After the attack in France,
their Prime Minster Manuel Valls said that “France without Jews is not
France.” Denmark’s Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt said: “The Jewish community has been in this country for centuries.
They belong in Denmark, they are part of the Danish community and we wouldn’t
be the same without the Jewish community in Denmark...”
My message to Prime Minster Netanyahu is… Yes! Urge the
Jewish people to make Aliyah. But urge them to do it for the right
reasons. Jews should not make Aliyah to run away. Europe of 2015 is
not the Europe of 1939. They should do it because they want to live in Israel.
That would be the right thing to do. Urging them to do it now – saying it is no longer safe for Jews to live there now, is not the way to relate to nations from whom you seek
support.
