The Real Target.
Rabbi Mendel Kaplan, Spiritual Leader, Chabad @ Flamingo, Thornhill, Ontario
The travesty of the biased verdict rendered by the ICJ, declaring that Israel’s security fence is illegal, and must be dismantled in order to satisfy “humanitarian rights” was matched only by the fact that its reading was carried out by a judge representing China. A country where “human rights” are too often casually overlooked, and whose government ordered the massacre of its own citizens who were demonstrating peacefully in Tiananmen Square
That the entire panel of the court, with the sole exception of the American Justice, voted in favour of the ruling, and the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that Israel comply with it. This once again underscores the severity of the anti-Semitism and prejudice towards the State of Israel that have become all-too-commonplace.
While it is true that the fence causes very regrettable hardships to some of the Arab population living in the disputed territories, simple moral clarity dictates that saving lives is a more demanding imperative. Are we certain that the fence actually save lives? Look at the statistics: Two Israelis have been murdered in the past 4 months, compared with 166 killed in the same time-frame at the height of the terror attacks. Yet the fence is only 25% complete! Clearly, bigotry and misinformation must be at play for any objective, intelligent person to suggest that Israel not be allowed to defend the lives of its citizens if doing so comes at the expense of humanitarian rights of the some of the Arab population.
While this all points to an unmistakable pattern, I posit that this is not just an attack against Israel but also rather an attack against Judaism and G‑d Himself. Does this sound fanatical? Then consider that regarding the relationship between the Holy Land, the Jewish people and the Bible is unequivocal. Countless times it is stated that the Land shall be given to the Children of Israel as an eternal inheritance. In fact, the Torah primarily uses the term “inheritance” and not “given, gifted, divided or apportioned.” This is a strange concept when you consider that the word inheritance usually refers to an estate passing from the deceased owner to the heir. Who died? And whose estate are we referring to? The idea becomes even stranger when Israel is explicitly called Nachlat Hashem (freely translated, the inheritance or estate of G‑d). How can a nation “inherit” G‑d?
My beloved mentor, the saintly Lubavitcher Rebbe of righteous memory, once explained the unique connotation of the terminology “inheritance” regarding Eretz Yisrael by highlighting its meaning in the realm of Halachic jurisprudence. Thus, when one legally buys an item, Halacha dictates that the object must first “leave” the original jurisdiction for it to be acquired. By contrast however, when one receives possessions via an inheritance, the Halacha maintains that the object never “moves.” Instead, the Talmud insists that “yoresh bimakom hamorish omaid,” meaning that the individual who inherits becomes the owner by virtue of the fact that he evolves into the place of the original owner. The item doesn’t “change hands” in order to legally belong to its new owner, instead it remains in its previous legal jurisdiction. Unlike the possessive shift affected by a sale or gift, the change here comes through the evolution of the original jurisdiction.
Simply stated this means that when the Jewish people occupy Israel, in a sense they do so on behalf of G‑d Himself. The Midrash (Tanchuma, Parshat Pinchus chap. 8) eloquently says it in the following soliloquy: “The-Holy-One-Blessed-be-He said, “Let the [people of] Israel who have become my lot, come and inherit the land which has become my lot.”
It is often said that history repeats itself, and this is often all too true. At the dawn of civilization, humankind’s great evil and selfishness resulted in the Mabul, the terrible flood that destroyed most of the world’s life (Genesis, chap 9-10). The scriptures then tell us (ibid, chap. 11) that the generation that followed “spoke one language, and had conforming ideas,” they united in a “global village” (ironically in the land that is modern day Iraq) with a singular intent, namely: “Let us ascend to the sky and wage war against Him [G‑d],”(ibid, Rashi’s commentary). In fact, the scriptures tell us that the great tower that was erected in Babel had that very purpose.
The Rebbe, who himself narrowly escaped the clutches of the Nazi inferno, would often refer to WWII in general (60 million dead), and in particular the Holocaust (6 million Jews murdered), as the modern day Mabul (genocidal flood). Eerily enough, the number of victims the war claimed closely resembles the probable number of the world’s population during Noah’s days.
Assuming the Mabul metaphor is appropriate, history should have repeated itself. I would like to suggest that indeed it has. Out of WW II’s genocide, the U.N. was born with an unprecedented unification of the world’s governments. And yet, despite great hopes, the U.N. and its related institutions have too often served the purposes of evil and immorality. In the name of righteousness and equality, the forces of hate and intolerance have consistently hijacked the U.N., and instead it has become a vortex of hate and discrimination directed primarily against the Jewish people and the State of Israel. It has failed miserably in protecting the global victims of brutality and oppression. By creating moral equivalence between terrorists and those who seek to preserve law and order, the U.N. has stained its spirit and succeeded in debasing the very meaning of human rights.
The notion that ethos, ethics and morality are G‑d based comprises the very essence of a Divine involvement with earth and G‑d’s relationship with humankind. The respect for the intrinsic value and virtue of human life, which is at the root of “humanitarian rights,” is important because we, the human race, specifically were created in His image. And finally, the concept of maintaining justice and a lawful orderly society represents much more than a more comfortable way of life, its foundation is based within the divinely inspired Noahide laws. In contrast, the new moral relativism undermines the concept of the divinely ordained and therefore precludes the possibility of absolute ethics, thereby coddling those who worship a cult of suicide, death and murder. This obviously challenges the very rudiments of the biblically prescribed sanctity of human life. Moreover it perverts justice and undermines the Divine origin of that lofty principle.
It also represents an attack against the most basic notion of G‑dliness and the presence of the Divine. This is a battle being fought about the very essence of religion, which maintains that humankind can and should have a relationship with G‑d. It is a declaration of war on the idea that every human being has a sacred mission and purpose in life. History has indeed repeated itself, the “Tower of Babel” generation has once again returned.
To end on an optimistic note, I can only hope and pray that just as heaven induced the unraveling of the ancient world’s unholy and blasphemous alliance at Babel in days of old, that the U.N. will continue to evolve into irrelevance, and that an age of true unity and peace will soon be ushered in by our righteous Redeemer very speedily in our days, Amen!