Justifying Your Existence

There is a high-stakes war going on in Israel since its inception, and its not bewteen Israel and the Arabs. No, the far more dangerous struggle is a cultural one, the struggle between Judaism, Torah and tradition vs. Hellenism, moral relativity and liberalism. While the majority of Israelis are moderate and traditional, this war is being pushed by a small minority of secular leftist extremists in a hope of banishing Judaism from Israeli life.

In the form of bans on Jewish prayer in secular schools, gay pride parades down the streets of the Holy City or state-funding of secular burials, a very vocal minority of people would like nothing more than the transformation of Israel into a secular multicultural paradise.

Imagine: Bar cruising (gay bar crusing, just to make matters worse) on erev Shabbat, followed by a nice treif meal by the beach (already a common scene in Tel-Aviv). A state where Judaism is a matter of personal feeling, a quaint antiquated relict from the shtetl, where Jews and Arabs marry and have children, symbolizing the new tolerance of this secularist utopia. A non-denomiinational state where Jews and Arabs have complete cultural equality, where the anthem is changed to be more inclusive, where trains run on shabbat and school hours meant for Jewish education are set aside to teach students about "Nakba" Day. Beautiful? A perfect society of tolerance and inclusiveness? No, it is the death of the Jewish state.

Hedonism and materialism are hardly values that inspire courage and resolve. Being innoculated with post-Zionist ideas, with Jewish self-sacrifice and idealism mocked, is it any wonder that many on the Left dodge the draft? And when times get tough in the secular California on the Mediterranean, why should any Israeli prefer to live there than over the real California, which is probably much safer? There are already close to a million Israelis who have made yeridah to move to the Promised Land, the United States. Without classic Jewish morals and values, the state will lose all meaning, becoming a morally and culturally relative wasteland. A society that stands for anything stands for nothing, and will fall before anything. Faced with a fanatical foe motivated by absolute zeal in his religion and a divine mandate to slaughter the infidels, the secular Jew has nothing to reassure him. With such an enemy there can be no talk of pragmatic solutions, compromise or moderation but the poor shlemiel cannot begin to comprehend the mind of one who believes in the justness of his own cause and who is prepared to fight for it. The secular Jew believes that, just as he is prepared to sacrifice anything on the altar of acceptance and "peace", his enemies share the same desire.

In 1903, Binyamin Herzl was offered a Jewish state in Uganda, Africa. When the proposal was brought forward at the sixth Zionist Congress, fierce oppostion broke our and the Russian delegation stormed out in protest. Over 100 years later, there are some on the far left who wonder if the right choice was made. Why not a Jewish state in Uganda, or in New York? Is a tiny piece of land in the Middle-East worth decades of fighting and thousands of deaths, orphans and widows? To a Jew without the Torah, while few would agree with this, there are few secular arguments to justify a Jewish state in Israel as opposed to on any other piece of land around the globe. One may claim that the Jews were the original inhabitants, but the Native Americans aren't regaining any land with that argument. Simply put, without a strong connection to Jewish history and Judaism, there is no justification for 6 million Jews inserting themselves under the fingernails of 100 million Arabs and over a billion Muslims. Ahmadinejad's query of 'why don't you establish a state in Germany?' is left hanging. Israel currently fears the Jewish answer, rendering it incapable of justifying its existence. As a result, it cannot protect itself. Not from the Kassam and not from a nuclear Iran. Today, we see Israel's post-Zionist self-hating leaders prepared to uproot thousands of Jews, destroy Jewish settlements, and to hand over the Jewish biblical homeland, in the hopes of gaining Western and Arab recognition. Olmert and his cronies are barely convinced in the Jewish claim to the land and feel that the Arabs certainly deserve it more. Instead of fighting like proud Jews in the manner of king David or the Maccabees, the elite self-loathing members of the government force the IDF to fight with its hands tied and endanger Jewish life in a misguided attempt to minimize "innocent" Arab casualties. Without the Torah, Israel is stuck in an existensial rut where it cannot expel the Arabs whom it believes to have legitimate claims to the land.

The State of Israel was not created so that we could eat ham by the beach or go clubing on Friday night. It was not created so that we could break the Torah in freedom or that we should make peace with the Arabs at the price of tearing Jews out of their homes. It was not meant to be a multicultural state with cultural equality for Jews and Arabs, or to be a secular state of all its citizens. G-d, in His infinite mercy, returned us to our land in order that we should fulfill our Jewish destiny, to be a light unto the nations and to perfect the world in the kingdom of the Almighty. Otherwise, the state of Israel becomes meaningless. Little do the secular elites know that whenever they fight for the right of homosexuals to parade their lust in the city that once housed the Holy Temple (and will soon house the rebuilt Third Temple, amen), they strengthen our enemies by giving them liscence to claim that the Jews no longer live by the very text which is the deed to our land. We must realize that our deed comes not from the UN, Lord Balfour, George W. Bush or anyone else, but from Avrahm, Yitzhak and Yaakov, Moshe, Aharon, David and Shlomo. And to merit their land bequeathed to their descendants, we must act like them.