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Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Peace Now "Haggadah" compares Israel to Pharaoh

Every year, Americans for Peace Now adds  its own bizarre Haggadah inserts to be read by its fanatic members at their Seders.



This year's includes "This Pesach, let us learn to love living within the lines -- Green Lines, and other necessary boundaries. Let us embrace the spirit of dayenu. By ensuring “enough” for everyone, may our own abundance endure."

Yes, the Peace Now Haggadah demands hundreds of thousands of Jews to leave their homes and virtually every single Jewish holy site, like the Kotel, which is outside the "Green Line" that they have decided is "necessary." Much of the very land that God brought the Children of Israel to - celebrated in the very same "Dayenu" song - is off-limits to the "rabbis" of Peace Now.

No land swaps here!

Last year's was worse. It includes:
Victims of abuse often become abusers themselves. The Torah commands us "No!" Don't be an abuser. 36 times the Torah tells us "do not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Despite all those warnings, our national homeland, Israel, has become an oppressor to another people. Palestinians living in the West Bank do not have freedom of movement. Israel rules their lives with checkpoints, refusing to allow construction in Area C, subjecting them to arbitrary military law. They have no representation and no voice in the government that controls their lives.

Some Palestinians compare the Israeli Occupation to a Nazi regime. We know that's not true. We know that such a comparison is ignorant.

But what if they compare us to Pharaoh?

Pharaoh ruled over us with a harsh hand in Egypt. We must not do the same to others.

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. We must not become Pharaoh in Palestine.
Pharaoh, let us remember, tried to kill all Jewish boys and thereby destroy the Jewish people. He enslaved an entire people, quite literally, forcing them to do hard labor. He behaved virtually exactly like the Nazis. Why is comparing Israel to Pharaoh an appropriate analogy while the one to Nazi Germany is out of bounds?

Perhaps because Peace Now "rabbis" aren't above twisting the words of the Torah for their own political ends.

This isn't as bad as the "Jewish Voice for Peace Haggadah" but clearly the Peace Now Haggadah inserts - which used to at least acknowledge Arab terror attacks during the intifada - is moving in that direction.