Author Archives: Rabbi

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

In a world that seems constantly on edge, on the verge of apocalypse, and saturated with daily outrages – usually fabricated, contrived, or vacuous – there is a surprising lack of outrage at genuine indignities that we ignore at our peril. On second thought, perhaps it is not so surprising, as the outrages are perpetrated against Jews. There is a daily stream of anti-Israel outrage about the plight of the Gaza civilians that certainly elides the role that they play in their own suffering – and they continue to play gathering intelligence for Hamas. But Hamas rockets are still launched against Israel’s cities, towns and villages, and we are still forced into our safe rooms. Where’s the outrage? Why does the world not find it intolerable that Hamas, presumably on its last legs, continues to target Israeli civilians after massacring 1200 of us on October 7? Do not Israeli civilians bleed as well? Why did the “world” ever find it tolerable? Why is Antony Blinken silent about this continued affront to civilization? And if the answer is that, well, the flow of rockets and missiles has decreased significantly in the last few weeks, why is any rocket or missile acceptable, and not worthy of a devastating response? What other country in the world is forced to tolerate missiles on its citizens – and receives no sympathy for it, no expression of outrage?

Pursuant to the much-vaunted “international law,” civilians caught in a war zone are entitled to leave, and the international community is obligated to find them safe passage to avoid the ravages of war. Such was done for more than five million Syrian civilians who fled Syria’s civil war in just the last decade, finding a haven in Europe and elsewhere. Why are such accommodations not afforded to Gazan refugees, far fewer in number than Syrian refugees? Why does “international law” not pertain to them, or is “international law” just a cynical, rhetorical cudgel to use against Israel? Where is the outrage?

Where is the international effort to save these “civilians” or at least to condemn Hamas to the extent that they are not allowed safe passage out of Gaza? Instead of affording these “civilians” the protections of “international law,” haters of Israel and their accomplices use the plight of these “civilians” to hamstring Israel and encroach on our right of self-defense. They are deliberately kept in the war zone in order that they should be killed – and some who try to flee have been killed by Hamas. So where is the outrage?

Even worse, in defiance of international law, Antony Blinken has trumpeted a number of conditions that are supposed to serve as the end game, the ultimate goal of the cessation of hostilities: the first – “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza” – is hollow, as even voluntary displacement is denied them. What measures have been undertaken to aid the resettlement of Gazans out of the war zone – not north to south (which is only a few miles) but out of Gaza entirely? It is clear that the entire territory of Gaza, small as it is, is a center for terror. It is equally clear that Gaza will be uninhabitable for years. Why is the obvious solution – resettlement from the terror-infested war zone – not seriously contemplated? Where is the concern? Where is the outrage?

Blinken’s other conditions are equally farcical. “No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks,” which is a delusion if Israel is not responsible for security. Oh, “no reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict end,” so how will Israel ensure that Gaza does not revert to a terror center? Relying on “others” recalls PM Yitzchak Rabin’s Oslo fantasy that Yasser Arafat will crack down on terror better than Israel can because Arafat will not be encumbered by Israel’s Supreme Court. And how did that work out?

Furthermore, Blinken routinely intones, “no attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza,” which is an odd tactic if the goal is to preclude future terrorist activity. The day is nearing when Israel will be told that we must again allow concrete and metal back into Gaza for “construction purposes,” which has always meant the building of terror infrastructure. And finally, in the Blinken world view, “no reduction in the territory of Gaza.” In other words, there can be no victory for Israel and there should be no price paid by the aggressor. This is a classic recipe for stalemate, for conflict management, by the chief diplomat of a country that has not won a war in eighty years. It should be indulged in the short term – and then rejected for the repugnant absurdity that it is.

After all, Israel is now in the process of conquering Gaza for the third time. Israel first conquered Gaza in 1956 (and surrendered it under American pressure in 1957). Israel conquered Gaza again in 1967 (and surrendered it in a mindboggling act of folly, a self-inflicted wound, in 2005). How many times must we conquer the same land? How many soldiers must die over the same few kilometers? Where is the outrage?

There is no other country in the world that is expected to surrender to the aggressor the territory from which it was aggressed – and whose invasion was repeatedly repulsed. Why must Israel? The question answers itself – we must not, and if we do, we have only ourselves and our weak leadership to blame. It is worse than insane – it is immoral to continue to coddle our enemies and restore to them the bases of their aggression, regardless of what “new leadership” is suddenly produced. After all, to do so means there is no price to be paid for attacking, for marauding, for murdering – and that simply incentivizes the next attack.

The mere suggestion of such a policy – the Blinken objective – is abhorrent. It will consign us to future invasions and wars, is the opposite of victory, and renders our suffering futile and our sacrifices pointless. Wars end when the aggressive enemy loses its territory and all hope of recovering it. The Blinken plan promotes stalemate, provides the enemy with hope and a way forward. And the enemy is not just Hamas – that is just today’s bogeyman Israel was savaged in the international media for bombing “hospitals, schools, and mosques,” all venues touted by “international law” as sacrosanct, inviolable, and off limits to military activity because of their primary civilian purpose. In truth, the verbal attacks on Israel have somewhat subsided, once it became clear that each of these facilities were used for terrorist purposes, as weapons depots, rocket launching pads, and entrances to tunnels.

It is actually worse than that. The terror infrastructure was so extensive that it is patently obvious that these facilities were constructed as terrorist bases in the first place. In other words, a terror base was erected – with schools used as fronts. A terror center was established – with hospitals used as cover for their nefarious activities, with the doctors, administrators, and staff all Hamas operatives. Hamas built a terror headquarters – and masked its evil behind the façade of a functioning mosque.

And where is the outrage? The time has come for Israel to define its ultimate objective in this conflict as victory, with all that entails – security, sovereignty, and settlement. We have become so accustomed to stalemate that we have no bigger picture, not even a clear expression of our strategic goals. Every war cannot end in a draw, tilling the soil for the next war.  We should be rightly outraged as a nation that we have been forced to fight in Gaza repeatedly, win, leave, and then do it all over again, and again.

We cannot expect the world’s outrage or even recognition of its own hypocrisy. The biblical destiny of the Jewish people in   G-d’s land is not yet universally acknowledged. Nonetheless, we can at least muster our own outrage – at the repeated retreats, at the failed “quiet for quiet” policy, at the political and diplomatic games played at the expense of the lives of our soldiers and civilians.

If we tolerate these outrages, the world community will demand that we continue to swallow one indignity after another, and never win. That is because its vision for our future is wholly different than what our vision should be. Certainly, we cannot thumb our noses at the world. What we must do, however, is define our ultimate interests, stand up for them and not back down, and achieve them. That is how nations act when they want to prevail and not simply stalemate. Then we will garner the respect we deserve from our friends, and gain even more allies.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

The abrogation of the Knesset’s “Reasonableness Law” by Israel’s Supreme Court was expected, given its ideological bent, although the thin margin that voided a Basic Law should give pause to any reasonable jurist. It seems lost on the majority of justices that the law that passed 64-0 was considered too narrow to meet the Court’s standards but the overturning of the law by an 8-7 majority must be, to the Court, a landslide. Suffice it to say that self-awareness is not the Court’s strength.

It further escapes the Court – or perhaps it does not – that the Oslo II agreement, as well as other significant pieces of legislation, passed the Knesset with even thinner majorities. And, like this decision for which the 8^th vote in the majority was provided by an Arab Muslim justice, both Oslo Accords were passed without a Jewish majority voting for it. Of course, the difference as always comes down to ideological and political preferences, not law or justice. The Court finds rationales to sustain anti-democratic legislation and policies it favors and negates democratic legislation and policies it disdains. The justices are essentially politicians in robes, unelected and part of self-perpetuating oligarchy, claiming to be preserving democracy while evidently mocking it.

The decision legalizing same-sex adoption is of the same character. Its ban in Israel reflected Jewish tradition and the Torah’s ideal conception of a family and parenting, with mother and father raising children. Perhaps more importantly from a technical perspective, current law already accommodated same sex adoption, as can be seen from the Knesset Speaker’s family. Why, then, would the Court (again) usurp the Knesset’s power of legislation to coerce an unnecessary law? It would be only to flex its muscles by (again) poking a stick in the eye of Jewish tradition. It did, only because it could, because it has no restraints, no guardrails, no limiting principle.

The justices are not defenders of democracy; they are mockers of democracy, purveyors of pluralism and contempt for Jewish tradition, engineers of social justice rather than arbiters of the law. A child of nine could read in the current adoption law the words “a man and his wife” and understand their meaning. A progressive justice reads those same words and sees something else entirely – not a new interpretation of a Knesset law but an opportunity to usurp the voice of the people and implement what the court perceives as a desirable social policy. 

Whatever that is, it is not democracy, as anyone but far left activists would understand the term. Our votes literally mean nothing. We don’t get to choose electors who propose laws with which we agree and thwart others with which we disagree – of whatever political persuasion that voter is. The judicial activists and their acolytes who fear the loss of democracy actually fear democracy itself.  And a Jewish state that is not rooted in Jewish values rests on a shaky foundation. 

Where does it end?

Well, where did it begin?

The great economist and political thinker Thomas Sowell recently published (at age 93, in fact!) a book entitled “Social Justice Fallacies” in which he discusses, among many other concepts, the development of judicial dictatorships, now well over a century old. It is rooted in the idea that the masses know little and need to be ruled and controlled by a cadre of elites who uniquely possess the “consequential knowledge” that affords them, and only them, the capacity to make correct decisions for everyone. And then, too, it was done under the false façade of democracy.

Its political patron was Woodrow Wilson, who posited (even before he became America’s 28^th president) that consequential knowledge was concentrated in “experts,” whereas the people were “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn or foolish.” Wilson deplored the “error of trying to do too much by vote” (Chapter 5).

Roscoe Pound, the long serving Dean of the Harvard Law School, aggressively promoted this notion, among other progressives.

Professor Sowell continued (ibid): “Roscoe Pound set forth principles of judicial activism— going beyond interpreting the law to making social policy— that would still be dominant, more than a hundred years later, and on into the present. One of the rationales for such an expanded role for judges has been the claim that the Constitution is too hard to amend, so that judges must amend it by “interpretation,” to adapt it to changing times.”

“Like so much that has been said and repeated endlessly by elites with the social justice vision, this rationale is contradicted by readily available facts. The Constitution of the United States was amended 4 times in 8 years— from 1913 through 1920 — during the heyday of the Progressives, who claimed that it was nearly impossible to amend the Constitution. When the people wanted the Constitution amended, it was amended. When the elites wanted it amended, but the people did not, that was not a “problem” to be “solved.” That was democracy, even if it frustrated elites convinced that that their superior wisdom and virtue should be imposed on others.”

“Why judges and sociologists should be making social policy, instead of people elected as legislators or executives, was not explained…Whether in law or in other areas, one of the hallmarks of elite intellectuals’ seeking to preempt other people’s decisions— whether on public policy or in their own private lives— is a reliance on unsubstantiated pronouncements, based on elite consensus, treated as if that was equivalent to documented facts… Supreme Court Justices with lifetime tenure are classic examples of elites who institutionally pay no price for being wrong— no matter how wrong, and no matter how high the price paid by others.”

Professor Sowell was not, but could have easily been, defining and excoriating Israel’s judiciary, which has far exceeded even Wilson and Pound’s wildest fantasies in its contempt for the people. And that has become the bottom line in Israel’s Supreme Court – not merely the trampling of democratic norms but also the sheer hubris in thinking that they are better, wiser, and superior to the rest of us, that we the people are rubes who cannot be trusted with any decision and that even our votes should not count for much. In a nutshell, that is the essence of the Court’s nullification of the “Reasonableness Clause.” It is a keen distrust of the people and the people’s voice. Knesset members – the people’s voice – can and should pay a price for bad policies. The Court pays no price at all, ever; no matter the harm it inflicts on the people, it marches merrily along wrapped in the robes of its sanctimony.

Thus, the Court comes alive when a right-wing government is in power and sits quietly when a left-wing government rules. It is less a Court that defends democracy than a star chamber that endows its own decisions with sanctity and certitude, is convinced of its inerrancy, and protects its prerogatives at all costs.

That the Court chose to release these decisions at such a perilous time in our history underscores how disconnected it is from the rest of us. Granted, the internal regulatory bookkeeping mandated, it will claim, the publication of these decisions. But since when was this Court bound by anything in writing, by tradition, or by legislation? Surely it could have found a better way than to sow disunity in wartime.

This is especially true because of, arguably, the Court’s own complicity in the catastrophe of Shemini Atzeret, as its ruling in years past that prohibited the IDF from opening fire on hostile elements approaching the Gaza border fence could have inhibited the preparations and response of the army. And we will likely never know because this Court will insist on controlling the formation of any commission of inquiry after the war – to protect its power and to influence the conclusions.

The Court’s pronouncements make our country less Jewish, less democratic, and less safe. For how long will that be tolerated? What can be done? The answers to these questions will literally determine the spiritual and physical future of our State.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” chant myriads of Jew haters and their airheaded acolytes in academia. It is meant to be offensive, provocative, and intimidating, and is a not-so-subtle call for the genocide of the Jews of Israel. It has become a staple at rallies and on college campuses, where analogous calls for ethnic cleansing anywhere else in the world but Israel and to any other ethnic group but Jews would be met with swift retribution. By the modern standards of the loony left, this is protected free speech.

There are those who argue that this is the case (although campus rules are stricter and the First Amendment does not alow for threatening speech) but “free” has never been synonymous with “intelligent,” and this slogan is one of the dumbest imaginable. If those who scream it ever came within a country mile of understanding the full implications of what they were saying, they would halt immediately, apologize profusely, burst out laughing, or become Zionists.

Because these protesters are more known for their blind hatred and ferocious anti-Jewish venom than they are for their perspicacity, decency, or common sense, they will pay no mind to the absurdities they continue to squeal.

Consider:

1) If Palestine would be indeed “free” if Jews in Israel were exterminated or expelled, it would become the only free Arab, Muslim country in the Middle East. This region has a sorry – i.e., deadly – history and Arabs have an unblemished record of being incapable of sustaining any type of democracy or protecting the freedoms of any of its citizens. We must therefore believe, as the chant goes, that something breathtaking and novel will occur in the Arab polity that this land – “from the river to the sea” – will achieve something no Arab state has achieved: freedom.

2) There were (are) two areas “from the river to the sea” that are controlled by Arab Muslims – the territory under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (our Judea and Samaria) and the shrinking territory under the jurisdiction of Hamas. Neither of those areas are “free” by any reasonable definition of the term. No freedoms are protected – not press, not movement, not commerce, not speech, not religion, not assembly. Women are routinely subjected to “honor” killings by their loving relatives. The death penalty is arbitrarily and summarily applied. If “Palestine” were to be given over to the Palestinian Arabs, and is indeed to be free, it will necessitate the elimination of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

3) The only time in all of history that “Palestine” has ever been “free” is when it has been controlled by Israel, meaning, now. Palestine was never a country or a nation. It was a geographic entity formerly called Judea, spawned by the Romans, and ruled over by Christians, Byzantines, Muslims, Crusaders, Ottomans, and the British. In the more than nineteen centuries since the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of most but certainly not all Jews (there has always been a remnant of Jews in the land of Israel), the territory of Palestine has only tasted freedom in one era. That is from 1948 until today – and only those areas under Israel’s control. All of which makes the proper retort to “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” that “it already is! And it will only be free if it exists under its classic name, Israel, not under the name the Roman interlopers gave it. And it will only be free as long as it is governed by Jews.

4) If the pusillanimous protesters want to get technical, historic Palestine includes land on both sides of the Jordan River. That was the original British Mandate over this land in the aftermath of its conquest during World War I. The eastern part of the territory called Palestine was unilaterally severed by the British from the Jewish homeland in 1921 by Winston Churchill, who later boasted that he created Transjordan “with the stroke of a pen one Sunday afternoon in Cairo.” Perhaps that is why they mention “the river,” because though Jordan is part of historic Palestine, the lack of freedom for its citizens troubles none of the chanters, if only because the Jews do not administer that country.

In fact, the lack of freedom anywhere else in the Middle East or the world, for that matter, is of no interest. It is then not freedom that concerns them, but Jewish sovereignty. For historic Palestine to be “free,” Jordan would have to be displaced as well. But then they would need a new slogan. “From Iraq to the sea…?”

The chant is certainly insincere, but it is also fraudulent to the core. Israel is the only bastion of freedom in the entire Middle East, the only country where the rights of citizens and residents are protected. That is one good reason Israeli Arabs, for all their conflicted identity, prefer living in Israel with the Jewish Zionists rather than moving to the territory controlled by the PA or by Hamas and living under Arab Muslim rule. This is born out not only by repeated polling – but by the votes with their feet. They would rather be in Israel than anywhere else. No Israeli Arab leaves his home in Nazareth to go live in Jenin.

Indeed, it is instructive that this chant has not made its way to Israel – anywhere in Israel, from the river to the sea. The Israeli Arabs know firsthand where they find freedom and where they will find oppression, brutality, and hatred. They choose to live as a minority in freedom with the Jews than in despotism with their fellow Arabs.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a poor reflection on the chanters’ morality and intelligence. As has been demonstrated, most of them cannot even name the river and the sea they are yelping about. All it has going for it is a rhyme, fueled by an intense hatred of Jews.

Our response should be a better rhyme, one created by Ribonut Achshav, the Israeli Sovereignty movement: “From the river to the sea, Israeli sovereignty.” It rhymes perfectly. It has the additional bonus of being cogent, coherent, moral, and Jewish.

We should get used to it, because when we do, the world will get used to it as well.

Like a volcano dormant for many decades but still active, the lava of Jew hatred has spewed forth across the world for more than a month. Many Jews have resumed a posture they thought unthinkable in modern times – of fearing for their lives and well-being, of being scorned by neighbors, co-workers, and ideological fellow travelers whom they perceived as friends and allies, of witnessing their social standing in society collapse in an instant, and of pleading to the Gentile authorities for protection and relief.

Those who assumed we were post-history thought those days were long gone. They fervently believed that in the wake of the Holocaust and the repeated attempts to destroy the State of Israel, Jew hatred was a vestige of some ancient era, like eighty years ago. They attributed modern Jew hatred to the political issues surrounding Israel, all resolvable if only Israel would make the requisite (and limitless) concessions. With those assumptions shattered, it was good for American Jews to stand together at the Washington rally last week if only to find comfort in mutual support. The way forward will not be simple for a variety of reasons.

Certainly, it is gratifying to realize that Jews are not completely friendless. Rallies across the world and on almost every continent demonstrate a reservoir of good will emanating from good people who appreciate the Jewish contribution to civilization, spiritually and materially. It is disheartening to contemplate that a significant and growing base of the Democratic Party is hostile to Jews and to Israel, sharing that antagonism with a fringe element of the conservative movement. They not only blame Israel for existing, but they also blame the Jews, apparently, for forcing their confederates to murder, rape, and kidnap us. The gap between sympathy for Israel and the horrific massacre and blaming the Jews for bringing this suffering upon ourselves (known in diplomatic parlance as “context”) was measured not in days or weeks but in hours. That antagonism, fueled across the West by the growing population of radical Muslims who have emigrated (legally or not) to what were formerly bastions of civilization now enduring steep declines in their native populations, will only increase over time.

Additionally, those who call themselves “progressives” have created not only a political and social movement but also a faux morality, even a religion, with its own laws, ethics, saints, and sinners. They do not tolerate dissent from the heretics and, foolishly, their intellectual meanderings and perverted moral notions are celebrated by much of the liberal media that control public discourse and deem themselves arbiters of what views should be embraced and what must be reviled. Even worse, the American political and legal establishment has largely turned away from enforcing the law, arresting, prosecuting, and jailing rioters and purveyors of mayhem under the guise of permitting free speech. If an end is to come to the American Jewish experience it is not because – as has been warned for decades by those fighting the last war – that American Nazis or white supremacists will seize power; it will be because the institutions of society – government, law, police, press – have abandoned Jews to the violence and viciousness of the rioters and cowardly given those haters free rein to attack, burn, destroy, and devastate Jewish communities because clamping down on the marauders opens them to facile and frivolous charges of racism and Islamophobia. That is how societies disintegrate.

Perhaps even more shocking to American Jews is that the explosion of Jew hatred has intruded on a community that – as in the Germany of the 1920’s and 1930’s – is largely assimilated and mostly ignorant of its Jewish heritage. If anything, American Jews are collectively the fulfillment of the American dream, the descendants of immigrants who became materially successful, politically prominent, culturally dominant, and intensely loyal and law-abiding. (The few exceptions are notorious for that very reason.) The average Gentile would not recognize the average Jew in the street. American Jews assumed they had finally made it, once and for all, the pleasant, permanent exile. Now that dream threatens to turn into a nightmare.

A paradigm shift in thinking is required – but it will require a readjustment that is rooted in understanding Jewish tradition and history as well as a renewed commitment to Jewish uniqueness. Assimilation will not help Jews hide. A rejection of Jewish faith and observance does not help Jews blend in. It never has. A return to Jewish tradition as the source of a revival of Jewish pride is the way forward as well considering Israel more than just a place to visit. That will demonstrate resolve to our enemies who have nothing to offer but hatred, violence, lies, empty slogans, threats, and intimidation. American Jewish leadership would do well to foster that return and revival rather than disseminate cliches, placards, entreaties, and hopeful wishes that education, dialogue, conversation, blind faith in any political party, or more legislation will accomplish the same goal. And a more robust self-defense would also be appropriate.

In Israel, a different paradigm shift is necessary to dispel the fantasies produced by the decades of politicians who concocted the Oslo process and the Gaza Expulsion and the geniuses (that is meant seriously, not facetiously) who devise the defensive weaponry that wards off the enemy’s rockets, missiles, and other weapons.

Let’s get real. It is not just about Hamas, today’s bogeymen, who are distinguishable from Fatah only in tactics and not at all in objective. The problem is more profound, and we have long chosen to ignore the reality that stares us in the face.

Israel is the only country in the world whose citizens can be subjected to daily attacks from hostile forces who live next to us and within our boundaries. It is not normal to drive a car and consider that someone might shoot you, stone you, or toss a Molotov cocktail your way. It is not normal to stand on a street corner and wonder if a vehicle will ram you. It is not normal to walk on the sidewalk and speculate whether someone will stab you. It is not normal to sit in a café or on a bus and contemplate whether someone has placed a bomb there. And it is not normal to be the recipients of enemy rockets and missiles on a regular basis.

No citizens of any country – no self-respecting country in the world – would tolerate that. And yet, we do, and we have for decades. We build defensive mechanisms to thwart the enemy – bypass roads, bullet proof cars and vests, stab proof jackets, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, etc., without addressing the real problem, which is the relentless hatred of our enemies who assume they have the right to murder us. Some of us comfort ourselves by saying “it is hard to be a Jew” or that “it was worse in Europe eighty years ago.” (The former is false; the latter is true.) The pious among us will quote the Talmud (Brachot 5a) that “the land of Israel is acquired through suffering.” That is assuredly true but that does not mean we have to accept it, reconcile ourselves to it, or console ourselves with it as we eulogize our victims of terror. Any thinking person would conclude that this cannot continue, and that no normal country would tolerate this. But we have convinced ourselves that this is the burden we must bear for the privilege of living in Israel, and so we endure these ignominies, these assaults on our lives and our dignity, and then even the calumnies of the “international community” when we finally defend ourselves.

The real problem is that we have too many people living here who do not want to be here. That is, too many people who do not accept Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel and wage holy war against that concept. No country on earth deals with such a antagonistic local population.

The simple response – simple in theory and common sense, less so in implementation – is that no one should be allowed to live here who does not want to be here, in the Jewish state. To flesh it out further, that means that no person should be allowed to live here who does not accept the seven Noachide laws – the basic tenets of a moral society – and refuses to accept Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel. Period.

That also includes members of Neturei Karta, the infinitesimally small group of quacks known for allying themselves with those who want to exterminate us, who are outliers (sort of like blacks who join the Ku Klux Klan). They should go live in Teheran.

For sure, there are many Arabs who want to live here and accept Israeli sovereignty – and who can blame them? It is a wonderful country, and they have more freedoms here than in any Arab country. And those Arabs have every right to live here, and many contribute enormously to Israeli society in a variety of spheres. But we must be cautious.

We are surrounded by enemies, although fortunately that there are peace treaties of varying degrees of stability with Jordan and Egypt and other Arab and Muslim countries. But we have tolerated antagonistic neighbors in Gaza and Lebanon who for years have shot rockets and missiles at us, live uneasily with them in Judea and Samaria where they stone and shoot at will, and 20% of our fellow citizens are Arabs who – if past is prologue – often seem to be a hairsbreadth away from exploding in rage and violence against us. (It should not be shocking how many Israeli-Arab doctors, lawyers, professors, and performers, who have all benefited from the freedoms and good life we have given them, have issued pro-Hamas statements in the last month, with only some of them paying a personal price for it.)

There is no moral or rational reason to allow them residence in this small, holy land. The next “raid” will be into Kfar Saba and Raanana, the Israeli Arabs of Lod and Ramla and Umm al-Fahm will someday soon again riot and plunder, and Jews will continue to be targets day after day after day. We have too many people living among us who hate us, want to murder and maim us, and categorically reject Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel. This problem will persist and exacerbate regardless of the conquest of Gaza, may it happen soon.

People who accept Jewish sovereignty in Israel and are law-abiding should be welcomed and embraced. People who reject Jewish sovereignty in Israel and wage an incessant and bloody war against us should not live here. No country would tolerate otherwise.

The question is how we reach that desired state, and I am open to suggestions that are rooted in the Torah’s morality, common sense, and reason. But at the very least, the time has come for us to acknowledge the question and the problem and propose real answers. That, too, would be a paradigm shift.

The Gazan invasion should have brought home to us the real dilemma we have going forward. We thought the days of Arabs wanting to drive us into the sea were ancient history. They are not. And we also enjoy the more pleasant reality that there are other Arab countries today that are more open and enlightened and see the value in good relations with Israel. Those relations should be nurtured.

People who do not want to live in the sovereign Jewish state of Israel should not live here. It is better for them, better for us, and better for the world. We should not have to drive on the roads, ride the buses, and walk the streets of our beautiful country fearing that someone might shoot us or blow us up. That is not normal. No country in the world accepts that for its citizens. What is normal is building a proud, robust, spiritual, and Jewish state, one whose morality reflects the Torah and no other system. That, too, will further the redemption of Israel and all mankind.