Wednesday, October 12, 2022
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Imagine a Jew waking up each morning in his plush, temporary
Jerusalem digs, drinking his chai latte, and saying to himself, “What immediate
steps can I take today to make Judea Judenrein? Is there something I can do
right now to block Israel’s use of the mountain
aquifer that supplies half of Israel’s water? Who can I meet with during my
8-hour workday to ensure that Jerusalem is surrounded by hostile Arab
terrorists sworn to annihilate the Jewish people—little girls like Hallel Yaffa
Ariel; high school boys like Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah; and
babies still housed in their mother’s wombs like Amiad Yisrael Ish-Ran?”
“Most of all, how can I get Jews to stop building homes so
they can’t take shelter or raise families in their indigenous territory?”
If you’ve imagined all that, congratulations. You’ve just
imagined U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides, who, in an October 7 interview
with the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency (JTA), said “We do not support settlement growth.
Period. I work every day behind the scenes, with the Israelis, to try and
eliminate, slow down or avoid that.”
In other words, Tom Nides daily threatens Israel out of the
public eye in his quest to eliminate all traces of a Jewish presence in the
place where G-d made an everlasting covenant with Abraham and his descendants.
God and only God promised the Jews that they would forever inherit this land, which
is why it’s called “the Promised Land.” Tom Nides, however, is apparently so
powerful that he can render God’s promise to the Jews null and void.
God told Abraham that He would make his descendants “as
numerous as the stars in the sky.” But Tom Nides, a Jew, would like to “slow
down or avoid that,” at least in the land where Jacob wrestled with the angel and
was renamed “Israel” (Yisrael),
“for you have contended (‘sarisa’) with the divine and with man and you have
prevailed” (Gen. 32:29).
Ambassador Tom Nides has forgotten these words. He does not tremble, thinking of the consequences of turning Jewish land Muslim. For Nides, the nonsensical makes sense in that he thinks he can announce his intentions, publicly, via a supposedly Jewish news service, and God will not know what he, Tom Nides, plans to do. As if he could hide anything from God, though perhaps even Nides read these words in synagogue not three weeks ago, and would have been wise to consider them well:
You remember the dealings of [men in] today’s world, and You [also] consider the behavior of all those who lived in earlier times. In Your Presence are revealed all hidden things and the multitude of secrets from the beginning of creation; for there is no forgetfulness before the throne of Your Glory, and there is nothing hidden from Your eyes. You remember all that has been done, and even all that which is formed is not concealed from You. All is revealed and known before You Adonoy, our God Who observes and looks until the end of all generations.
For You set an appointed time of remembrance, to consider every soul and being; to cause numerous deeds to be remembered and the multitude of creatures without end. From the beginning of creation, You have made this known, and from before time You have revealed it. This day [Rosh Hashana] is the beginning of Your work a memorial of the first day. For it is a statute for Yisrael a [day of] judgment of the God of Yaakov. And over countries [judgment] is pronounced, which of them is destined for the sword [war] and which for peace, which for famine and which for abundance. And on it, creatures are brought to mind, to be remembered for life or for death.
Who is not considered on this day? For the remembrance of all that is formed comes before You: the dealings of man, and the decree of his fate, and the misdeeds of man’s actions, the thoughts of man and his schemes, and the motives for the deeds of man. Fortunate is the man who does not forget You, the son of man who gains strength in You. For those who seek You will never stumble, and never will they be disgraced— all who trust in You. For the remembrance of all their deeds come before You, and You examine the deeds of all of them.
And No’ach too, You remembered with love, and [therefore] decreed for him a promise of deliverance and compassion, when You brought the flood-waters to destroy all flesh because of the wickedness of their deeds. Therefore, his remembrance came before You, Adonoy, our God, to multiply his seed like the dust of the earth, and his descendants as the sand of the sea; as it is written in Your Torah; “And God remembered No’ach and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the Ark, and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters were calmed.” And it is said: “And God heard their groaning cry, and God remembered His covenant with Avraham, with Yitzchak, and with Yaakov.” And it is said: “I will remember My covenant with Yaakov, and also My covenant with Yitzchak, and also My covenant with Avraham, will I remember; and the land [of Yisrael] I will remember.”
God remembers Israel and always will, but apparently Nides forgot. Or couldn't care
less. At any rate, Nides believes he can go over God’s head by making threats
against Israel behind the scenes. As Nides told the JTA: “This is a sovereign
country. We can’t dictate to them what they can or can’t do, but I can put as much pressure as I can to
make sure they understand our position.”
Tom Nides, it is true, has ways to really hurt the Jewish
people, irrespective of what God might want. We know this because we have
learned to read between the lines. “Pressure,” in the lexicon of America’s
dealings with Israel, is the equivalent of the Arab terrorist’s “legitimate resistance.”
Just as “legitimate resistance” gives moral permission to Arab terrorists to murder,
decapitate, ram, kidnap, rape, bomb, stab, and burn Jews—even civilians,
children, babies, rabbis, and grandmas—“pressure” means, for example, no more American aid,
Iron Dome, or F-35s.
“Pressure” might also, for example, mean many more pallets of cash for Iran, so eager to spend that money toward the obliteration of the Jews.
Why would he, Tom Nides, do these things to Israel? Because he, Tom
Nides, can rally the combined hate of the world against the Jews, to finally
prove to the world, that he, Tom Nides, is not one of THOSE Jews—the ones whom everyone
hates.
It’s a funny thing: God can see everything about Tom Nides,
but Nides can’t see God. Is it possible that Nides has dyslexia, or that he has never read the bible? Does Nides not know that God commanded the Jews to settle
the Promised Land?:
“And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it,
for I have assigned the land to you to possess” (Numbers
33:53).
Settlement in Judea and Samaria is a mitzvah, a religious imperative. But Tom Nides, in his JTA interview, suggests he doesn’t care about any of that, demonstrating that God’s words mean nothing to him. Nides thinks he can turn his back on his tradition, his people, and his God. Perhaps he thinks it is the only way he can declare his allegiance to the non-Jewish world, as if to say, “Here I am, Hineni. I am not one of them, the accursed Jews.”
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