Because We Are Jews, Shimon

An Open Letter to the President of Israel, Shimon Peres on the occasion of his formally announcing…something stupid again.

Dear Mr. President

I am a Jew. I am a daughter and a wife and mother and now even a grandmother. I am a businesswoman. I am Israeli. I do not know the exact order of those identities, but they are all an integral part of who I am and no single one of those things can be denied or ignored.

I have lived here for 20 years, nothing compared to the almost 80 years you are about to celebrate. We have shared a common history for all of my life, perhaps all of your life and the thousands of years that have preceded both of us. I have listened to you over the years. Sometimes, I have felt such pride in your attempts to explain Israel to the world; and sometimes, like now, I feel only anger.

I disagree with your willingness to compromise to the point of suicide; your insistence that Israel can accept the world’s double standard. You have willingly offered to concede too much for too little throughout your political life.

Despite that, overall, you have served Israel long and well and your life has been one that has been dedicated to Israel. Never have you forgotten that Israel stands for Jews all over the world, or so I thought.

The brutal fact is that no matter what you have done over your life, Israel is really no closer to peace than it was when you first came to Israel. We have a “peace” agreement with Egypt that could fall at any time; we have a peace agreement with Jordan that will last until Hussein’s Arab brothers call him to war. And we have nothing with the Palestinians… as we have had nothing for all of the 65 years since our re-establishment.

In the last week alone, we were hit with 11 missiles. No nation in the WORLD would accept this and yet rather than speak out, as I know you have in the past, against the rockets and bombs and mortars and knives and explosives they throw at us…you find it necessary to offer them compensation, a way out of that niggling little fact that they want to deny. But that little niggling fact is the essence of Israel and what sets us apart from all other nations.

Are we so desperate that we have to deny who we are to try to bribe them into the oh-so-temporary peace agreement we might get from them? You know it would only be temporary. Even today, as a slap in your face, Abu Mazen said that Jihad should be directed at Jerusalem, not Syria. He has already said that not one Jew will be allowed in the Palestine he dreams of. Not one Jew, Shimon, not one Jew. He didn’t say Israeli…he said Jew. He recognizes Israel for what it is – the land of the Jews. And he doesn’t like it.

You are the grandson of a rabbi. You came to Israel in 1934 and have lived here through all the years of our history as a modern, democratic, Jewish state. How dare you offer to allow others to deny who we are, what we are!

Israel is the only Jewish State in the world. There is no shame in that fact. We seek no other land. There are more than 40 Muslim countries where Sharia is the law, where a man can be stoned to death. They follow Islamic law proudly and loudly… why do you offer them their own religion while denying ours?

If Abu Mazen can deny the Holocaust, can refer to Jews as the sons of pigs…Jews, Shimon, not Israelis – if he can remember who we are, why can’t you? When they hunted us down in Europe, it was because we are Jews; when they attacked a man last week in Kiev, it was because he was a Jew. When they bombed synagogues in Argentina, Tunisia, Iraq, and France – it was because Jews prayed there, not Israelis.

When the Nazis separated the Jews in World War II, and when German and Palestinian terrorists separated Jews from the other passengers on a hijacked plane in Entebbe – it was because they were Jews. The Arabs are honest enough to admit they hunt us, haunt us, hate us – because we are Jews. It is our religion they hate, as much or more than our politics and our nationality.

I thought, years ago, that you had finally found the position in government best suited for you. Oh, you lapsed way too often into politics, which is not the job of the President, but you represented us well, until now. More than once over the last few years, I have thought you well suited to the position, gracious in a way that a younger man might not be, strong enough to make statements that need to be made…until now.

Of all the people in the world, of all its leaders, you more than most, should have learned the lesson of the Holocaust. The world will not guard its Jews. We must, we have, we will. There is only one nation in the world that carries the responsibility for the safety of our people. If Israel is not the Jewish state, than it has responsibility only for its nationals. The US and others will fly across the world to help their own; only we fly to save Jews.

When the tsunami hit Indonesia, our teams went to assist, but also to find the Jews – not just the Israelis, but Jews. We flew to Yemen to save the Jews, we flew to Ethiopia and Uganda – to save the Jews. We fought for the freedom and the rights of Russian Jews long before so many were Israelis. All this would you allow others to ignore?

We are the Jewish nation – the only one. If you cannot accept that, if you allow others to deny it, you have no right to be our President. None.

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