Al Chait Shechatanu...We Have Sinned Against You

[Nannette]

Hat tip: Israpundit

By Gerald A. Honigman

IHC Abstract
Though it is customary to begin the Ten Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim) with a confession of sins against God and Man, defending yourself against an enemy who tries to annihilate you is not a sin that begs forgiveness. At Passover, it is customary at the Seder to symbolically remove drops of wine to diminish our joy of deliverance from our enemy. But we owe no apology to those who have carried out two thousand years of massacres, pogroms, Muslim dhimmitude or the Holocaust, this writer declares.

That Jews have repeatedly sought a just solution with the Arabs is not debatable. The Peel Commission of 1937, the U.N. partition of November 1947, and Barak’s offer of 2000, have continually offered statehood to the Palestinians, which they have countered with violence each time. These unequivocal facts attest that Arabs want their twenty-third state and second Palestinian state to be comprised of all of Israel and not exist in peace alongside Israel.

Occupation or “land for peace” has never constituted the core stumbling block to peace. Rather, it is the refusal of the Arabs to grant anyone but themselves political rights in a region such as in Kurdistan, Sudan and the Palestinian mandate.

The double standard applied to Israel over and over again, by the world’s demands that it respond to those who foreswear to annihilate it with one hand tied behind its back, should be ignored by Israel. Israel should do what is right in order to protect its citizens. No nation in the world given similar circumstances would act otherwise. Israeli response to repeated Arab slaughter of its innocents should be exponential, in order to be effective.

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Jews begin the Ten Days of Awe, which fall between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur each New Year, with a confession of sins committed in the eyes of God. Additionally, it is required that transgressions committed against fellow human beings be addressed as well. Without a true turning of the heart in attempts to rectify both, however, the confessions and fasts associated with the High Holy Days remain meaningless words.

In terms of Arab-Israeli politics, Jews have been accused of countless sins by much of the world. But as is noted in terms of yet another Jewish holiday - Passover, we consider it regrettable that any hardship had to be suffered even by enemies. Yet even as we symbolically remove drops of wine from our cups at the Seder dinner to diminish our joy of deliverance, we offer no apologies for wanting to put an end to our two thousand year-old nightmare. We wish to halt the horrors of massacres, forced conversions, expulsions, ghettoization, pogroms, dehumanization, inquisitions, dhimmitude and the Holocaust. We are weary of being labeled either killers of God by the Christian West or “Jew Dog” killers of Prophets in the Muslim East by doing what was necessary for our own survival - working, with God’s timely help, for the rebirth of Israel.

Arabs and their fellow jihadists and hypocrite supporters elsewhere offer no confessions and ask no forgiveness from either God or man for blowing up buses, restaurants and schools. They show no signs of remorse for deliberately targeting innocents, subjugating, enslaving and massacring millions of non-Arab peoples (Kurds, Black Africans, Jews, Copts, Berbers and others) in the last half century alone. Jews, on the other hand, can honestly say they have truly and repeatedly tried to reach an honorable and just solution to their problems with Arabs. To any objective observer, this is not debatable.

While wanting to put an end to their own perpetual nakba (as Arabs like to refer to the rebirth of Israel – “the catastrophe”), Jews nevertheless agreed to one compromise after another over the past century so that Arabs could gain their 22nd or 23rd state. Those of us who are knowledgeable are tired of reminding the world (and each other) that this included Arabs being granted the lion’s share of the original 1920 Palestinian Mandate with the creation of purely Arab Transjordan – today’s Jordan - from 80% of “Palestine.” Just a few years ago, Arabs rejected an offer which would have eliminated most of the Israeli settlements on disputed lands and would have turned over some 97% of those lands to Arab control. That Arabs want their new, additional state to exist in place of Israel, not along side of it, has always been the problem. “Occupation” and “settlements” are not the core issues of the debate. Since Arabs see all of Israel proper in those latter terms, however, we have an even more serious dilemma in these regards.

This problem has always involved Arabs not granting anyone else but themselves political rights in the region...with the possible exception of some of those whom they successfully Islamized centuries earlier. While this holds true for Turks, Afghanis, Pakistanis and Iranians, for example, this is not the case with Kurds, Black African (Muslim and non-Muslim) Sudanese and Berbers. For the latter, the issue becomes more of a clash of nationalisms than of religion. The ongoing forced Arabization process is still under way centuries after Arabs burst out of the Arabian Peninsula in their imperial Caliphal conquests of the region. And while they demand that others confess and address their “imperial” sins, Arabs see their own conquest, forced imperial Arabization, colonization and settlement of other peoples’ lands (including in the Mandate of Palestine, where most Arabs were newcomers themselves in the last century) simply in terms of their own just due.

So as the New Year of 5765 begins, Jews have a lot - both individually and collectively - to work on before God and Man. The latter will include continuing to try to find an honorable solution to problems involving Arabs. But to do this, we must have true partners for peace, ones who recognize our rights as well as their own, and understand that others besides themselves are entitled to a share of justice in the region. Unfortunately, this is not how Arabs have ever dealt with any of their own national competitors. As just two other timely examples, consider the current plight of Kurds in both Syria and Iraq or Black Africans in the Sudan. Furthermore, everything that Arabs say, write, teach and preach to their own people works against this ever happening. Under such circumstances, no amount of Israeli concessions will ever be enough.

Until such a day arrives, however, Israel must do what it must do to thrive, not just survive.

The world’s demand, for example, that a miniscule Israel fight with one hand constantly tied behind its back must be rejected by Israel’s leaders - even when such demands come from its ‘friends’. When Israel recently carefully targeted a Hamas training camp right after the latter blew up two more buses filled with children and other Jewish innocents, the so-called Palestinian Arab moderate, Prime Minister/Arafatian chief marionette Ahmed Qurei endorsed further barbarism against Jews as being ‘justified’ because of the Israeli assault. Using his logic, murderers should never be pursued or dealt with. So even in ‘moderate’ Arab eyes, Jews are supposed to allow themselves to continuously be slaughtered with no response.

What Israel actually needed to do here was to follow the above assault on the murderers of its innocents quickly with even more devastating blows. The day of the Hamas funeral comes to mind, with hundreds more Hamas members and their supporters crying out during the procession for additional Jewish blood and firing weapons into the air. Many with Jewish blood already on their hands were likely in that procession.

Will such Israeli counter measures make Arabs hate Jews any more? Well, nobody likes to have their own nose bloodied, but these folks are already dedicated to the Jews’ destruction - both individually and collectively. The only thing that prevents more of their barbarism is Israel’s non-stop counter measures. So Israel must fight to win and must ignore the hypocrites elsewhere (including the Foggy Folks) who will condemn it. The latter would have leveled Gaza years ago if subjected to the same treatment Jews have been told to constantly endure.

Fallujah in Iraq is deemed a fair target for American Air Force fighter-bombers to attack day after day because we believe our enemies are located there. Then what about the locations of hundreds of Hamas folks, dedicated to Israel’s destruction, crying out for revenge and announcing their planned intentions to butcher more Jews? Unlike a huge, three thousand mile-wide America, thousands of miles away from its Iraqi Arab enemies, tiny Israel faces these problems right in its own backyard. While 9/11 changed this reality a bit, it is still far better to be in America’s rather than in Israel’s position. Any innocent Arabs killed as a result of their support of those who are openly dedicated to the murder of Jews and their sole state are not ‘innocent’.

On the other hand, women, children and others aboard Israeli buses, in restaurants and such are not dedicated to the murder of Arabs or denial of Arab rights. Yet they are the targets of choice of Arabs. The problem has always been that Arabs see their rights as being exclusive and negating those of others. There is no room for a true ‘compromise’ with this mindset - only for a temporary hudna – ceasefire - until the time for total conquest better presents itself for the Arab cause. Under these unfortunate but very real circumstances, five million Jews cannot afford to simply fight a war of attrition with an Arab world that is numbered in the hundreds of millions, with one of the highest birthrates anywhere. Yasser Arafat talks of the Arab mother as being his best weapon. Sick...

While I hate to stoop to such thinking, taking out fifteen murderers after a like number of Jewish innocents have been massacred and scores more maimed, is a losing tactic. Killing hundreds of them, on the other hand, sends quite a different message. A few well-placed, two-thousand pound bombs during the next Hamas or Islamic Jihad funeral procession is certainly at least as justified as anything America has been doing in its own fights in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. And when Hamas follows through with the next inevitable attack, the Israeli response must increase exponentially.

This is not to say that all hope must be given up regarding a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israel conflict. But it is to say that deceiving ourselves along the suicidal lines of a Burg, Beilin, Peres or such ‘peace’ (i.e. accepting millions of ‘returning’ Arab refugees or an Israel in its United Nations’ imposed, nine-mile wide armistice line existence, etc.) will only lead to the demise of the Jewish state. Remember the response, above, of the ‘moderate’ Ahmed Qurei’.

Of all of our real sins that we must seek forgiveness for during this Holy season, we must remind ourselves that the rebirth of the Jewish state and our struggle to survive are not to be counted amongst them. And the latter requires decisive action, not just words.

May we all be blessed with a New Year in which all people will reach out to find better, more equitable ways to live with each other. Amen

http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=4/b/viii/220920042&lang=
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He who is merciful with the cruel, will end-up being cruel to the merciful
- Kohelet Rabba 7:16

[BIG]

Disproportional response is the only answer right now. Israel should give it a chance. Afterall, the UN has stood by and watched the slaughter of 2 million in the Sudan these past few decades and they can't even decide to call it a genocide. Maybe they will ignore the deaths of so many PLO-Arabs in the same manner?

[Levi]

"Disproportionate response is the only answer right now." I agree. But will Israel do it, or we will be fuming and moaning about it here forever? I don't understand Israel in these things at all. The Palestinians are shooting at them and Israel gives them back just a limited response that enrages them only to further continue their terror instead of dissuading them from further attacks.

[BIG]

It does not make any sense to me. The world condemns limited response. So the world will condemn disproportional response. What is the difference except one might stop the Arabs from murdering Jews?

[Nannette]

[Levi]

[Intruder]