A CALL TO WORLD JEWRY
by Leona Golembiewski
It's all well and good to write eloquent and magnanimous words and gestures and phrases explaining the many virtues that maintaining the Jewish State of Israel brings. Yes! We Jews are worthy of a homeland but our Government doesn't see it the same way we do.
Yes! We Jews have suffered and died to gain every inch of soil we occupy and that term is not used as if we had to usurp another people from the land to live on it. The term occupy simply means that we Jews inhabit the area. It is ours, we occupy that space. It's sometimes hard to understand what the sacrifices were but looking back at them in a time frame that is current, lets start with the actual fight for the right of a Jewish Homeland. Lets start with our fight for our independence from British rule.
"We Are Forever Grateful That We May Die For Our Homeland."
In 1947, the British were continuing their Nazi policy of hanging young Jewish freedom fighters in the Land of Israel. One of the freedom fighters, Avshalom Chaviv, had this to say before being sentenced to death by hanging:
You British tyrants:
Standing before you is a people that has been liberated completely from fear. Before what shall we fear? Shall we fear death knowing that we are sons of a people, millions of whom were annihilated without end? In remembering our exterminated brothers -- and we always remember them -- we are prisoners of gratitude in that we have been given the chance to fight on behalf of our land and to leave a legacy for the coming generations not of cowardice and slaughter but of courage and a war of liberation.
You British tyrants will never understand the spirit of free people who walk toward death with a song that bursts from a heart filled with love and belief. You will also not understand that in my standing before the threat of death, I carry in my heart to my G-d in heaven a prayer of thankful praise on the right that has been given to me to suffer for my people and land. Every bone in my body says:
"Blessed art Thou, O L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe, Who gave us life and sustained us and brought us to this time."
Yes, this time when I will hang from a rope as a totally free Jew, free of fear, fear of cowardly compromise, free of foreign oppression, free to believe and to dream and to bequeath to future generations a legacy of resistance for the sake of truth and justice and right.
Avshalom was hanged together with other Jewish freedom fighters singing the song of Jewish national liberation, Hatikva (The Hope). When the sadistic British Nazi military officers came to their death cells to read before them their death sentences, Avshalom and his friends immediately began singing this song. Hundreds of their fellow Jewish prisoners heard their powerful singing and immediately began singing as well. The singing continued until each of the three was executed. On the wall of the death cell, the following was inscribed:
Not easily and not with hangings do you frighten the Hebrew youth in the homeland. In our place will come thousands more.
Each of the three Jewish prisoners to be executed signed his name under this inscription just before they were taken out to be murdered.
The London Sunday Times would later write the following: "If any one event forced us to leave Israel and permit the Jews to create a Jewish State, it was the defiant resistance of these young Jews who were led to the gallows. It may be said that after two thousand years, the Jewish State rose again on the broken necks of those who mounted the gallows."
It took uncompromising Jewish resistance and limitless Jewish selflessness and sacrifice to resurrect the Biblical dream of a return to Zion. Only such sacrifice, idealism and commitment can bring redemption. That is the lesson of our history.
The above can be found in many texts memorializing and documenting the beginning of our fight for a right to our Homeland. The most recent inscription can be found as a permanent feature to the JTF website,
Yet, what do we come away with when we read of the absolute sacrifice of the young men and women who fought and died to bring the State of Israel to this point in history? Are we filled with joy at the mere thought that HaShem created such a people as this? Do we feel the quiver in our hearts of National pride and connection? Do we honor these men and women by not just mouthing words that we remember them but emulate in whatever small way we can their vision, their hope and their honor?
In looking at the events of late in the State of Israel, one would think that the people living there perpetrated such a great evil as to literally demand that to atone for that great evil they beg to eviscerate themselves! However, that is not the real reality!
The Jewish people of the State of Israel did not perpetrate a great evil, instead a great evil has been perpetrated on them! First, the number of Jews was reduced by six million throughout Europe while the whole world watched, doing nothing. 6,000,000. Frightening to look at in number form. The rag tag refugees who were freed from the camps wound up back in the camps, albeit refurbished, as no one welcomed them home. They had no home. No one wanted the grim reminder of the blood lust they just celebrated, and lost. Send them to the region in the Middle East called Palestine! Send them where they belong anyway. Get them out of my sight, we wish for no reminders of our own evilness.
So, why are we sitting idly by while the Government of Israel is responsible for finishing the task set upon by so many before it? Why do we allow the Government of Israel, in a supposed Jewish State, inflict more pain and blood lust on the Jewish people in their own country? This cannot be and it cannot continue.
Petitioning this Government and any of its officials is pointless as long ago, this Government ceased to be one of honor. This Government follows not the will of the people for the will of the people is to live, in peace and in totality throughout its homeland, from border to border to border to border!
This Government has become an enemy of the people and like all enemies of the people it must be defeated. To simply say, yes, we are writing a constitution while no revolution is taking place is a futile act. Looking for redress from a Court system corrupt in its failings and bankrupt in its laws will not save the people from the deaths they are about to have visited on them.
Write your constitution and make it egalitarian and incorporate all levels of Jews. While you write your constitution prepare your Declaration of Independence FIRST. Declare that the Jewish people of Israel are free of the monopolies of foreign entities. Declare that the Jewish people are free to pursue their lives in happiness and contentment without the fear of arrest, persecution or death for speaking their own mind.
Declare that the Jewish people have a right to live looking at the sun, and not groveling before some foreign entity for life. Declare that those Jews who do harm to the Jewish people thinking they can do so with impunity, because after all, they are the power, declare them to be dead to the Jewish people. No longer are they part of the tribe, and since they are not, declare them as enemies of the people. Enemies of the people must go. Enemies of the people must be treated in kind.
For, the words were spoken long ago and a new generation faces a new enemy, the enemy from within but no less is the demand for selflessness and courage.
"Yes, this time when I will hang from a rope as a totally free Jew, free of fear, fear of cowardly compromise, free of foreign oppression, free to believe and to dream and to bequeath to future generations a legacy of resistance for the sake of truth and justice and right."
Ladies and Gentlemen, we ARE that generation.