I Am a Jew

I am a Jew.

Those have been the words of the Jewish people for three millennia.

Those were the words of the men, women and children of Masada.

Those were the words of the followers of Bar Kochba.

Those were the words of Jews in Granada in 1066 and the Rhineland in 1096 and Khmelnytsky from 1648-1657 and Kishinev in 1903, in Hebron in 1929.

Those were the words of Jews in Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Those were the words of Daniel Pearl.

Those are my words, too.

They are the words of my parents, my wife, my children.

Over the weekend, my people were attacked. Murdered. Mutilated. Our women raped. Our children kidnapped.

This has happened millions of times before, to millions of Jews. Jew-hatred exists because evil exists. Because there are people who have, for all of human history, hated the Jews and sought to strike at them while they are weak. Who have blamed the Jews for their own problems, who have crafted complex conspiracy theories about the supposed power of the Jews, who have sought to destroy the Jews.

From Pharoah to Haman. From Hitler to Hamas.

The words of the Nazis are indistinguishable from the words of the Hamas charter. The chain is unbroken. And for two millennia, since the destruction of the last Jewish dynasty in the holy land of Israel, those Jew-haters were ascendant.

No longer. That is the promise of the State of Israel.

Never again.

The Jews will not stand by and be murdered. They will not leave their Biblical homeland. They will not surrender. They will be strong and courageous, as Joshua said three thousand years ago.

Israel is indispensable. Its presence is a miracle, its strength a gift.

Thank God for the State of Israel.

There are those who say that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. Tell that to the dead women and children in Sderot. Tell that to Hamas, who proclaim in their charter: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

There are those who say that the Israeli-Arab conflict is a “cycle of violence.” Only the morally blind and obtuse could ever say such a thing.

Look at the videos. Look at the pictures.

That is what evil looks like.

LOOK.

Look, because this is what moral equivalence brings. Rape of women. Kidnapping of children. Murder of hundreds of innocents, including full families.

For decades, we’ve been told that to look evil in its face was somehow unsophisticated. That to pretend evil away was an act of intellectual virtue. That to cater to evil, to concede to evil, was the pathway toward a better world. It was all a damned lie.

LOOK.

There are those who proclaim the complexity of it all. Those people are fools. What’s worse, they are enablers of evil, fellow travelers, justifiers of the worst human rights violations on the planet, from targeting civilians to hiding behind them.

Do not turn away.

LOOK.

This was the worst week for Jews since the Holocaust.

Do not turn away.

LOOK.

Look it in the face. I know that you will. I know you will because I am a Jew, and because I am an American.

Americans love justice. Americans love good. Americans resonate to the book of Psalms, that says, “Hate evil, those who love the Lord.”

Hate evil. And fight it. Americans always have, and they always will.

I know we will.