The other day I read that some yokel named “Paul O’Brien” thinks Israel shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state. Which is interesting, because I’ve never heard of the guy, so who cares what he thinks? Personally, I think that people who think that Israel shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state, shouldn’t exist.
Paul O’Brien is apparently some sort of an icon for the hard,
Jew-hating left as head of Amnesty International USA—even if no one else has
ever heard of him. (I certainly haven’t.) He’s probably getting much more
attention than he should at the moment, especially from Jews, regarding his
response when told of a survey in which most American Jews said they identify
as pro-Israel:
“I believe my gut tells me that what Jewish people in this
country want is to know that there’s a sanctuary that is a safe and sustainable
place that the Jews, the Jewish people can call home.”
O’Brien’s “gut” didn’t tell him these things at all. Paul
O’Brien, however, thinks that if he tells Jews that his gut tells him
something, they will listen and believe him. Which is funny, because Paul
O’Brien is a nonentity, a flash in the pan, a dumb little twit.
Paul O’Brien knows that Israel is not about having a safe
space and it’s not about having something Jews can “call” home. It’s about a
very particular piece of real estate and we don’t “call” it home. It actually
IS home. And has been for thousands of years.
We think that’s pretty darned “sustainable.” Unlike Paul O’Brien.
People like O’Brien—conniving, ugly-hearted people like O’Brien and Haman—have come
and gone throughout the centuries. But guess what? The Jews are still here.
Even though that grinds your gut, Paul O’Brien.
Paul O’Brien thinks he can cajole Jews into thinking that
Israel is superfluous to them by warning them off and threatening them. When O’Brien
tells Jews what they really need is a safe, sustainable place, what he’s
telling them is that Israel never really belonged to them. According to O’Brien,
the Jews only created Israel to be safe, but their presence in the land is not “sustainable,”
which means they will never be safe if they try to stay in Israel. Because
what Paul O’Brien really wants is to
get the Jews the hell out of Israel so he can flood it with fake Arab refugees.
Because hey, “Those nasty JEWS.”
He doesn’t even try hide it, Paul O’Brien. “I think they can be convinced over time that the key to
sustainability is to adhere to what I
see as core Jewish values which are to be principled and fair and just in
creating that space.”
Aye yay yay. Everything “I” Paul O’Brien. Or should I say
RABBI Paul O’Brien, since he clearly knows so much more than your average Chaim
Yankel about core Jewish values. But no. Jews see what he did there.
By saying that Jewish values are to be “principled and fair
and just,” O’Brien is saying that Jews are not being principled, fair, or just,
in creating our “space,” meaning the Jewish State, which—as it happens, Paul O’Brien—was
created on Jewish indigenous soil. We didn’t create or invent our history in
the land or our religious imperative to live there. As Balfour and the League
of Nations, as people who have actually read the bible, well knew.
In fact, I am sure that Paul O’Brien himself is familiar
with the bible, and knows the truth. Israel has always belonged to the Jews.
But in O’Brien’s Jew-hating little mind, Jews are an unprincipled lot, and so
unfair in having created a Jewish State of Israel on Jewish land that Arabs
want. That’s just not just, says “Paul O’Brien,” who insists on goy-splaining
to us that we are going against our own religious principles, by insisting on
living on land coveted by others, POC who only lately tried to claim it as
their own.
What we have here in O’Brien’s statement is not a treatise
on Jewish values, but a threat (emphasis added):
“I think they can be convinced over time that the key to sustainability is to adhere to what I see as core
Jewish values which are to be principled and fair and just in creating that
space.”
What Paul O’Brien did here was to say that the Jews will
never be safe in Israel, that our presence there is unsustainable. O’Brien as
much as said, “If you want to stay alive, you better do what I, Paul O’Brien
say, and get the hell out of Israel.”
In case you haven’t, AS A JEW, absorbed his meaning, O’Brien
is happy break it all down for you (emphasis added):
[Israel] shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state, [though Amnesty] takes no political views on any question, including the right of the State of Israel to survive.
In other words, Israel has no right to exist, but Amnesty
will cover its butt by saying it has no particular view on whether or not
Israel has a right to survive. Which
kind of means Amnesty doesn’t think Israel has the right to survive. Which is
pretty much a green light for Arab terrorists to do what terrorists do: kill Jews in order to remove them permanently from the Land of Israel—land that has always
belonged to the Jewish people.
Look at it like this. You go to the Riviera for a month's vacation.
You come back and strangers are in your house. But it’s your house. They don’t get to stay there, even if they’ve unpacked
and settled in—lived there for an entire month. Their presence in your home is
and remains actually illegal. It’s breaking and entering.
Of course, the Jews were not in the Riviera on vacation. We
were expelled from our home. Numerous times. By foreigners who covet our land,
having created new religions built on Jewish scripture that repaint reality and
distort the truth: that Israel belongs to the Jews. That God gave the land to the
Jews, and commands them to live there.
O’Brien however, not content with denying the Jews’ rightful
presence in the land, and Jewish land rights, says Jews may have a right to self-determination,
but not in Israel, where Jews, according to O’Brien, have no right to be. “The
right of the people to self-determination and to be protected is without a
doubt something that we believe in, and I personally believe that. We are
opposed to the idea — and this, I think, is an existential part of the debate —
that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people.”
O’Brien thinks all peoples have the right to self-govern,
including Jews. It’s just that the Jews should not be in Israel, which should,
in his opinion, not be Jewish. (Personally, I think Paul O’Brien shouldn’t be
Irish. But what do I know?)
What Paul O’Brien needs to know is that the Jews aren’t
going anywhere, and this time, the enemy will not vanquish us, no matter how much
O’Brien would like them to off those effing Jews. We’ve built a powerful army
to protect us from outsiders trying to take our land from us once again,
outsiders who resort to violence against civilians, much as the Russians have
done with Ukraine and to Ukrainians.
The Jews did not leave their home to vacation in the Riviera
for a month. We were forced out of our land by strangers, and left to wander
the inhospitable world. The truth is, there is no “safe space” for Jews. Even
Israel is not safe for Jews. People like O’Brien and the organization he
represents, ensure and perpetuate this truth and this lack of Jewish safety.
But O’Brien cannot pull the wool over our eyes. His false
assurances are false. And anyway, we will never be convinced that our presence
in Israel is somehow unprincipled, unjust, or unfair. We will never be
convinced that Jerusalem is not ours. We will never be convinced that some
random people can have our holy land. Because our ancient prayers and
commandments tell us all day long that Israel is ours and we need to be there,
no matter what.
No matter that “In each and every generation they rise up
against us to destroy us.”
O’Brien perhaps forgot the next bit of that verse: “And the Holy One,
blessed be He, rescues us from their hands,” as He did when we were enslaved in
Egypt, as He did when Haman attempted the genocide of the Jewish people in
Persia, as He did when the Greeks came into the land and outlawed the practice
of Judaism.
O’Brien may have forgotten, but the Jews did not. We didn’t
forget any of the times that Jews were attacked and forced to wander from place
to place. We didn’t forget being expelled from our land, and returning again
and again. We daily spoke of our return to the land, numerous times a day in
our prayers, prayers that are in our ancient tongue, which we always retained.
The connection was never severed. And O’Brien will one day grow old and die and he will be gone. But the Jewish connection to the Land, and the Jewish presence in the Land, will continue. Whether O’Brien and his ilk, and the false claimants to the Land, like it or not.
