General
Martin Dempsey has made it clear that America’s timetable and Israel’s
differ. We are facing utter annihilation; America is not.
Israel, the end of
summer, 2012. We drive down Highway 6, crowded with families headed to holiday
flats in the Galilee, the Jezreel Valley and the Golan Heights, station wagons
filled with laughing children, bikes and pool mattresses.
Along with everyone else, we pull off midway for an ice
cream or a cup of coffee and croissant at a rest stop, getting in line behind
dads carrying restless twoyear- olds, and pregnant women ordering lattes.
Only a few days before our trip, Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed worshipers at Tehran University after nationwide
pro-Palestinian rallies, an annual event marking Quds (Jerusalem) Day on the
last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, saying: “The existence of the Zionist
regime is an insult to all humanity.”
Luckily, our little ones don’t read the papers.
We travel in two cars, one for the grandparents (us) and
one for our son, daughter-in-law and glorious grandchildren, four of them, all
under the age of eight. The little ones are jumping around, anxious to get to
their holiday destination, their minds focused solely on jumping into a cool
body of water. But our holiday cabins at Kibbutz Nir David near Beit She’an
will only be available at 3 p.m., so we must find a way to entertain them until
then.
Our first stop is Beit She’arim. The magnificent
necropolis of burial caves dating back to King Herod is a dark and cool place
for restless children to explore. The walls are covered with Jewish symbols: a
seven-branched menorah, an ark of the covenant, an etrog and lulav, all
thrilling reminders of the flourishing Jewish life of the lower Galilee six
centuries before the Arab conquest.
Most famous is the grave of Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi, head of
the Sanhedrin, who moved that great judicial body to Beit She’arim. More
recently, the statue of Alexander Zaid on horseback overlooking the Jezreel
Valley reminds us of the never-ending struggles and sacrifice to rebuild our
homeland on this ancient ground.
Zaid, a veteran of the Jewish defense organization Bar
Giora, which later became Hashomer, settled here in 1926 with his wife Zipporah
and their four children, serving as a guard on behalf of the Jewish National
Fund. Twelve years later he was murdered close to his home by a local Beduin.
His killer was apprehended and killed by the Palmah.
It is a story we will revisit again and again on our
brief summer vacation. For after splashing in the cool spring waters of Gan
Hashlosha National Park, we visit a museum which is an exact reconstruction of
the courtyard of Tel Amal, the first of the tower and stockade settlements set
up overnight in the pre-state period to forestall Arab attack and British
attempts to freeze immigration and settlement from 1936 to 1939.
The plan, conceived by Moti Gur, a member of Kibbutz Nir
David, was to build a wooden tower crowned by a searchlight for observation and
signaling, surrounded by a few huts, and then to enclose the entire area with a
high wall built of two wooden fences made bullet-proof by an infill of gravel.
Within less than three years, 55 communities were established in this way, from
Kibbutz Dan in the north to Kibbutz Negba in the south, many of them in areas
where there had been no Jewish life for over a thousand years.
It was a hard life for the hardy pioneers. Our children
peek into the bare bedrooms and rough kitchen.
They don the blue aprons and head scarves of pioneers,
hoisting hoes and gathering stones. They carry pails to a spring, filling them
with water which they empty into a bucket with a washboard so they can practice
clothes-washing pioneer-style.
I look at them, these little sabras, born into a free,
peace-loving country of natives and survivors, immigrants fleeing the worst
nightmare of persecution that mankind has yet to invent and impose on their
fellow men. They are full of joy as they pretend to cook dinner and hoe gravel.
Climbing the watchtower, we enjoy the magnificent view of the green oasis and
its sparkling waters. I think of the chain of history that has brought them,
their parents and myself to this place and time in the history of the Jews.
The news broadcasts quote Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the
filthy little proxy warlord terrorist tied to Iran, who announces his group
will transform the lives of millions of Israelis into “hell.” Considering that
the last Lebanese war ended prematurely, thanks to the genius of Limor Livnat
and Ehud Olmert, allowing Hezbollah to completely rearm, I take him seriously.
NIR DAVID is a lush green carpet with a river of spring
water flowing gently through it. Beneath the still blanket of summer heat, our
children play in the shadows of enormous palm trees, feed the ever hungry ducks
and fish day-old bread, and put on their water wings to dive into the Olympic
pool at the modern athletic center. The sound of horses whinnying in the
stables, the riot of birds, the squeak of bicycle wheels are the only ones that
punctuate the calm.
On Sunday, August 19, when we were all back home, parents
getting the children’s clothes and school supplies ready for the start of the
new school year, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy told Hamas Prime Minister
Ismail Haniyeh that “Egypt and Palestine are one entity.”
And so the storm gathers. Turkey, once a friend, ally and
popular vacation spot, has been transformed into an Islamic republic which has
slammed its door in our faces. Egypt, our peace partner, has been taken over by
the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria is overwhelmed by savage forces, none of them
reasonable or less hate-filled toward us than the other. Lebanon’s Hezbollah is
an Iranian puppet. And Iran and Iraq, once enemies, now cooperate to overcome
the Western boycott that is naively attempting to slow down the production of a
nuclear bomb to fulfill the Iranian mullahs’ insane vision of messianic days –
Muslim fanatic style – i.e. a map with no Israel.
We and our children and grandchildren, the remnant of the
great nation of Israel of biblical times, sit in the middle of a maelstrom as
the evil forces of the world gather around our hard-won, industrious, beautiful
little country and its wonderful, creative, beautiful people. Some have faith
in our army. Some in our government. Some in God. Some, like myself, in all
three.
But wherever we put that faith, it is increasingly clear
that we can no longer put it in any of our fellow human beings in America or
Europe. For it is clear that President Barack Obama, unlike his predecessor, is
not ready for a war against a nation with weapons of mass destruction simply
because of the human threat they pose to mankind. He is focused on exposing Mr.
Romney’s tax returns.
His head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin
Dempsey, has made it clear that America’s timetable and Israel’s differ. We are
facing utter annihilation; America is not. Still, in a final ringing slap in
the face, he nevertheless urges Israel to do nothing as he feels we lack the
capability to defend ourselves. How helpful.
As for Europe, instead of calling Iran a global genocidal
enemy of all Europe and all humanity, and Ahmadinejad the spiritual heir to
Hitler and the Nazis, they came out with the “strongly worded statement” that
“Israel has a right to exist.”
Thank you so much. What would we do without you
Europeans? The words “never again” ring hollow these days, as the storm clouds
gather and the peaceful days of summer come to an end, and we wait, patiently,
filled with fear and courage and hope for what is to come.
But our enemies, however numerous, would do well to
remember this: They are not facing the unarmed Jews of Europe 70 years ago. This
time, they will be at the center of any hell they unleash.
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