For centuries, particularly in Europe, Jewish communities and Jewish people were discriminated against and often told to “go back where you came from.” Finally in the 20th century there exists a place for Jews to actually go home to. Their ancestral homeland the land in the Middle East now known at Israel.
Beginning in the 1800s, Jews from Europe slowly began to leave Europe and return to the land of Israel, then known as the region of Palestine, in order to purchase land, develop the land, and fulfill the prophecy to make land bloom again. Part of the reason for doing this was the centuries of persecution that they were subject to in Europe. Jews also saw the increase in Jew hate, ultimately manifested in the Holocaust of the 20th Century wherein Jews were no longer told to “go home”—there were to “be gone”; the Nazis put in play a system to accomplish that task. Other governments, regional and national, including Communist governments, also engaged in systematic extermination of Jews.
Now that the Jewish people have a dedicated state the as a homeland, a state that respects its occupants of various religions and cultures, this state does have a Jewish identity. This Jewish identity means that laws and policies and governance come from the moral and ethical underpinnings of Jewish religious text; however, it is not a theocracy—meaning it does not impose religion on its inhabitants.
Throughout the centuries a remnant of Jews always existed in the land. A Jewish presence always remained in the land of the Middle East now known as Israel. Therefore, the Jewish people being there is not a colonial effort but an effort to return home. Nevertheless, now Jewish people and Israel is being told that they do not belong there they have no right to be there—it is not their home. This message is being manifested across the spectrum of human society worldwide.
Western universities, their professors, their educational organizations, and their student groups as well as political entities and organizations and religious leaders, are telling the world and Jewish people they have no right to the land of Israel and are violating human rights by being there. This message is being drummed down to the point where lies about the conduct and the spirit of Israeli society and government are being told to garner their support to be against Israel existing.
One way this message is manifesting is in outright violence—the current rash people in Israel being killed doing everyday tasks in their own communities, walking on their own streets. Not even all the victims are Jewish. The lying notion feeding into communities to oppressed people about why they are oppressed and what the problems are in their communities is that they blame the Jews. The result is the anger (based on the lies) spills out and innocent people are killed on the street.
No other form of a hate crime is more obvious than when somebody is killed on the street of their own community simply because that person is Jewish. It is a travesty when it happens in New York City, in Los Angeles, in Paris, or in Tel Aviv. It is the very definition of anti-Semitism
The Jerusalem Connection stands in solidarity with Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East and to exist in peace and coexist with its neighbors and diverse citizenship. We stand in solidarity with Jews living anywhere in the world that they may have the same rights and privileges, security and safety, as any of their neighbors. We want truth reporting–that context and history is properly examined when identifying an event or studying a situation.
We urge you to be that voice of truth when the mainstream media, the schools, and the pulpits do not voice that truth. We commit to you that we will do our best to also be that voice.
Shavua Tov. Have a great week.