(Could 16, 2021 / Jewish Journal) The beneath is customized from a speech I gave at a Stand with Israel rally on Could 13, 2021.
All through our historical past, virtually each pogrom in opposition to Jews, whether or not it was in Europe or within the Center East and North Africa, was incited by a lie.
In our indigenous homeland, within the land of Israel, we sadly have expertise with a protracted historical past of lies—grounded in uncooked Jew-hatred—sparking violence in opposition to us.
Through the 20th century, that historical past features a unhappy repetition of the so-called “cycle of violence,” which we hear repeated advert nauseam within the mainstream media in each the USA and Europe.
Because the Arab riots in opposition to Jews in Jerusalem throughout Passover in 1920, this sample has repeated many occasions (1921, 1929, 1936, 1947 … and extra occasions than one can rely within the 21st century already).
And the lie that incited pogroms in opposition to Jews within the land of Israel? The false declare by Palestinian Arab leaders (even earlier than they started collectively referring to themselves as Palestinian) concerning the horrible risk posed by the Jews or Zionists to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
From notorious Nazi collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseni’s lies and blood libels about threats to Al-Aqsa in 1920 (which throughout Passover of that yr resulted in a pogrom/riot that killed 5 and injured over 200 Jews) to Mahmoud Abbas’s “we welcome each drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem” and the Palestinian Authority’s latest calls on social media for Palestinians to “redeem Jerusalem with [their] lives” and for individuals to “sacrifice for the sake of the Al-Aqsa Mosque till our final breath,” these lies and libels have incited violence in opposition to Jews.
The violence we’re seeing now has been justified by two lies which might be being repeated by so many within the Western media and in social media.
The primary lie is the declare that Israeli troops or police for no motive attacked worshippers within the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Could 7.
However that isn’t what occurred.
What occurred was that Hamas extremists desecrated Al-Aqsa by storing in it fireworks, bottles, jagged items of concrete and rocks, which they actually had on their prayer rugs.
Then, they used these fireworks, bottles, rocks and jagged items of concrete as projectiles to throw from the Temple Mount at Jews praying close to the Temple Mount and on the Israeli Border Police, who have been there to guard the proper of everybody—Jew, Christian and Muslim—to dwell and pray peacefully within the Outdated Metropolis of Jerusalem.
The Border Cops then went into Al-Aqsa to arrest these violent extremists, and a riot ensued.
To recap: Anti-Jewish extremists desecrate a mosque by turning it right into a weapons storehouse and a base of operations for violent assaults on Jews and police, however riot when legislation enforcement enters the mosque to attempt to arrest them.
Sorry, however that’s not how the rule of legislation works. It could by no means be how the rule of legislation works. Nobody needs to be allowed to desecrate a home of worship, attempt to kill individuals with the weapons they saved in that very same home of worship after which declare they need to be immune from arrest as a result of they’re in the home of worship.
The second lie being perpetuated by Hamas and the P.A. after which promoted by a lot of the media is that this violence was a response to “forcible evictions” of Arab households from Jerusalem’s Shimon HaTzadik/Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood; the supposed “ethnic cleaning” of Arabs from Jerusalem.
That is one other lie.
4 Arab households are at the moment vulnerable to eviction within the Shimon Hatzadik part of a neighborhood known as Sheikh Jarrah. These individuals are the tenants of an Israeli group that owns these properties. They don’t seem to be dealing with eviction as a result of they’re Arabs. They’re dealing with eviction as a result of they’re refusing to pay hire and have illegally expanded the properties.
This occurs throughout Israel, not simply in Jerusalem (and definitely not solely among the many nation’s Arab inhabitants). In Israel, and in the remainder of the world for that matter, when individuals don’t pay hire, the property homeowners provoke eviction proceedings.
This could have been nothing apart from an area hire dispute between landlord and tenant. The truth that tenants may attempt to problem possession based mostly on a protracted standing dispute over how they obtained an ostensible proper to reside in these properties from the Jordanian authorities—after the Jewish homeowners of these properties have been removed from the realm (together with all different Jews)—by the Arab Legion in 1948-49, nonetheless makes it a authorized dispute. But it surely has been cynically twisted to serve the propaganda pursuits of the P.A. and Hamas.
These rival teams are motivated to outdo one another in being the one to stay it most loudly to the Jews, after Abbas as soon as once more cancelled an election within the P.A. as a result of he rightfully feared a serious Hamas victory. In consequence, Abbas is getting into the 17th year of a four-year time period and must distract individuals from his unbelievable corruption, abuse of energy and one other election cancellation, by competing with Hamas in spreading lies about Jews and Israel, to show to his individuals that he’s simply as huge an Israel-hater as any of his Hamas rivals.
And Hamas, for its half, cynically sees this as a possibility to show to the Palestinians why they have been going to vote for Hamas within the first place. With most Palestinian Arabs believing the lies about Al-Aqsa (simply as when these lies have been first unfold by Husseini again within the Nineteen Twenties), Hamas desires to make use of this “spherical of violence” to exhibit that Abbas isn’t the true protector of Al-Aqsa and of Jerusalem—Hamas is. So Hamas began firing rockets into Israel.
In three days, practically 2,000 rockets have been fired into Israel, forcing 3.5 million Israelis, together with the aged and little youngsters, to continually run into bomb shelters and sometimes even sleep in them. Virtually a complete nation being terrorized, based mostly on lies.
At the least 9 Israelis useless thus far, together with a 16-year-old Arab woman and a 5-year-old Jewish boy murdered by the indiscriminate rockets Hamas fires at Israeli civilians.
To recap: Over one other lie about Jews attacking or threatening Al-Aqsa, and the P.A. and Hamas hyping up a dispute over unpaid hire, Hamas is bombing a complete nation.
It sounds absurd. It is absurd. And but, as absurd as it’s, once we activate the information or learn social media, or see how a few of our legislators and celebrities are responding to this newest cynical assault on Israel by an Iranian-backed terrorist group with an official charter that reads prefer it was written between some evil hybrid of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden, we see individuals condemning Israel and supporting Hamas.
Hamas is committing battle crimes twice over: deliberately making an attempt to homicide Israeli civilians, coupled with utilizing Gazan civilians as human shields by placing rocket launchers, missile batteries and different materiel in and round residences, mosques, hospitals and colleges.
However Hamas not solely makes use of its individuals as human shields to guard its rockets—it kills them with its personal rockets. At the least 17 so far. Out of some 350 rockets that misfired and got here down in Gaza.
And but we see so many within the media, so many celebrities, and so many western politicians—individuals who ought to know higher—defending Hamas and attacking Israel.
Rep. Ilhan Omar lately tweeted “Many will inform you Israel has a proper to defend itself, to security and safety, however are silent on whether or not Palestinians have these rights too.” She added: “In contrast to Israel, missile protection applications, corresponding to Iron Dome, don’t exist to guard Palestinian civilians.”
However Hamas does have a foolproof system for safeguarding Palestinian civilians from Israeli rockets and missiles. Extra foolproof than Israel’s Iron Dome—it’s known as don’t fireplace rockets at Israel.
Trevor Noah, who ought to actually persist with comedy, primarily stated on The Every day Present recently: “Finally, who cares who’s proper and fallacious within the Arab-Israeli battle; who cares about historical past. What issues is who’s extra highly effective, and Israel is extra highly effective.”
He then proceeded to check Hamas attacking Israel to a 5-year-old attacking a young person. (Inside hours of him evaluating Hamas to a 5-year-old, Hamas’s rockets murdered a 5-year-old.)
What individuals like Trevor Noah don’t appear to know is that the explanation Israelis are nonetheless being maimed, killed and threatened by Hamas rockets, is as a result of Israel goes out of its way to reduce Palestinian civilian casualties.
Final week, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) gave a speech during which he stated: “What’s beneath siege isn’t solely Israel. What’s beneath siege is the reality itself. Circulating on social media is a vicious lie—a lie that deceptively reframes the terrorism of Hamas as self-defense and deceptively reframes the self-defense of Israel as terrorism. More and more, we appear to dwell in an Orwellian universe the place the reality not issues.”
He’s proper. And it’s not solely fact that’s beneath siege; however primary morality itself. An inversion of morality, during which individuals who actually praise Hitler and fly swastikas are praised by many celebrities and social media influencers as freedom fighters, and the Jews, who Hamas and its followers overtly say they wish to mass homicide, are labeled (and libeled) as Nazis.
So what ought to we do about it? What can we do about it sitting right here within the relative security and safety of life in California?
Stand for the reality. Proudly. Stand for Israel. Proudly. Study extra about our historical past. And struggle the lies each time and wherever you may.
Because the late nice Rabbi Jonathan Sacks typically said, the baseless hatred directed at the moment on the Jewish individuals’s solely nation-state is simply the newest model of the antisemitic virus of Jew hatred that “in each technology rises in opposition to us.” As has been the case all through Jewish historical past, the battle in opposition to fact and morality has typically paved the best way for many who homicide Jews, in addition to those that excuse it.
We now have to struggle in opposition to this assault on the reality and assault on morality as if our lives rely upon it. As a result of, finally, they do.
Micha Danzig served within the Israeli military and is a former police officer with the NYPD. He’s at the moment an legal professional and could be very energetic with quite a few Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, together with Stand With Us, T.E.A.M. and the FIDF.
This text was first printed by the Jewish Journal.
