By Ted Belman
A buddy of mine, Rachel Neuwirth wrote On The Present Danger Facing Israel And All Jews
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The entire body of the Jewish people today — in Israel, in Europe, in America, in Australia and New Zealand, and throughout the world — is in grave danger. Our very existence as a people and as a faith is in jeopardy. The threat to our survival has two components to it: the external siege being waged against Israel and the Jewish people throughout the world by the international jihadist movement, its sympathizers and appeasers; and the internal siege that we Jews, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, including the United States, are waging against ourselves.
She breaks her article down into the following headings;
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– military threat
– threat of violence
– diplomatic threat
– propaganda threat
– internal threat
and ends with,
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This time, we will not have the luxury of a slow response to the dangers facing not only the Jews of Israel, but also ourselves.
Nor should Christians and other non-Jews in America and throughout the Western world be indifferent to what is happening. The international jihad waged by the radical Islamists targets not only Jews, but all Christians (referred to by the jihadis as “Crusaders”) and all of Western civilization as well. The Jews are the first on the list of groups targeted for extinction by the radical jihadis, but they are by no means the last on this list. In our vulnerability to the poisonous ideological winds sweeping in from the Middle East and South Asia, we Jews are the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” — the first to suffer the lethal effects of the poison, but not the last.
When I turned to face the enemy, I found the enemy is me.
Ted, this is really an excellent paper (thanks for posting it) and I think that students in Canadian Universities facing the upcoming “Israel Apartheid Week” should read this to prepare them for what they are about to witness and to give them an overview of the threats to everyone as a result of the jihad war against us that is now simmering but growing at an exponential rate.
The turning point was the retreat from Gaza and the recent war in Lebanon – had that been executed with better results, I don’t think that we would be so despondent today in the prospects for the future. Wars are ugly and to be avoided but when war is waged against Israel, Israel needs to respond by winning, not by looking to please those who wish for our demise by tying our hands and watching us suffer and lose. I would rather be hated and respected rather than crippled and dead.
In the Diaspora we have all kinds of dead end efforts to make amends with the enemy and avoid harsh realities. It makes me sick to see Jewish academics, union leaders and others supporting the Palestinian movement and religious and business people who take the time to “dialogue” with Muslim members of the community who then turn around and use, abuse and laugh at their Jewish stooges for their own political and ideological gains.
I am not sure if the Jewish community or the Christian community will wake up first. I think that the Jewish community has done a poor job of communicating the urgency of the situation before us both here in America and in Israel. Israel has either done a bad job communicating, does not care or is too busy on a number of fronts to bother getting the word out. However, the message needs to be broadcast wide and far – silence and the tendency to want to shut up and carry on with our safe lives is no longer an option.
As Rachel Neuwirth explains, there is a lot happening and events are surpassing our collective ability to address them with any strength. Like during the pre-Holocaust era, many are sticking their heads in the sand or trying in vain to appeal to the humanity and goodness of Islamic leaders who lack both – in fact, they have never indicated any willingness to change their present course of destruction.