Israel Struggles

No one summed up the irony of our present situation better than Amos Oz. "in the 1930s our enemies said: Jews to Palestine. Now they say: Jews out of Palestine. They don't want us to be here. They don't want us to be there. They don't want us to be." Why?

	http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/Israel_Struggles.asp

Israel Struggles
by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

If there were justice in the world, Israel would be seen as a role model among the nations.

This is the text of the speech given by the British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Saks at the Finchley Road Synagogue on Yom Haatzmaut 5765/2005

Not lightly does the Torah give the name Israel to our people, for it means "you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed." To be a Jew, to be a member of the people Israel, has always been a struggle, sometimes with God, sometimes with our fellow human beings. But that is our destiny, our call, our task...

The American writer Milton Himmelfarb once said that we are a tiny people, but great things happen around us and to us. Already before the 20th century Jewish history was recognized as unique: by Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Tolstoy. Little could they have known that some of its most dramatic chapters were yet to be written:

The Shoah, the attempt once and for all to silence the Jewish voice and eliminate the Jewish presence. Yom Hazikaron, when we remember those who fell in Israel's defense as they discovered that the Jewish people still has to fight for the right to be, to exist, to have one place on earth where we can defend ourselves. Yet out of the depths of those very tragedies came two of the greatest moments in 2000 years of history, Yom Ha'atzmaut -- the restoration of Jewish sovereignty after 1900 years, and Yom Yerushalayim, the return to the ancient and holy city, home of the Jewish heart, focus of all our prayers, embodiment of all our hopes.

Yet once again Israel is under attack, after four years of a savage, ceaseless, brutal onslaught of terror. At the very moment that terror is being contained, Israel is facing a new attack -- a systematic campaign of delegitimization and demonization among the media, non-governmental organizations, university teachers, and perhaps even among the churches -- as if the cause of peace, or justice, or reconciliation, or coexistence were served by listening to only one voice in the conversation, one side in the conflict.  <a href="

http://www.aish.com/SSI/articleToPrint.asp?an=11514&PageURL=/jewishissues/jewishsociety/Israel_Struggles.xml&torahportion=&teaser=If+there+were+justice+in+the+world%2C+Israel+would+be+seen+as+a+role+model+among+the+nations.">read more </a>