The Annihilation of Israel

(Last week I participated in an annual Christian-Jewish dialogue with several dozen Christian and Jewish leaders meeting here in Washington, D.C. I learned much about ongoing threats to the Jewish people here and around the world. And I met Rabbi Yehiel Poupko, Rabbinic Scholar at the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Chicago, who shared this timely piece.)

As you surely know, Elie Wiesel’s classic first-person chronicle of the destruction of European Jewry, the murder of six million Jewish people, is titled Night. What you may not be aware of is that the book was originally published in Yiddish. Its Yiddish title was And The World Silenced Itself.

According to Jewish tradition the clear indicator that a person or a community has repented their past sins is for the sinner to face the same situation again and to behave differently.

Israel’s theological enemies have been intellectually honest.

Iran stated that its religious obligation is to annihilate Israel. And the world silenced itself.

Hamas stated that its religious obligation is to annihilate Israel. And the world silenced itself.

Hezbollah stated that its religious obligation is to annihilate Israel. And the world silenced itself.

Iran placed the approximately 2.25 million Christians in Lebanon under the jackboot of Hezbollah. Israel liberated the Lebanese. And the world silenced itself. The world did not thank Israel.

Iran actively enabled Bashar Assad in his civil war assault to murder 600,000 Syrians and drive 5 million Syrians (one third of the population) into exile. And the world silenced itself.  The world did not thank Israel for enabling the downfall of Assad and the possibility of a free Syria.

Israel, a few months ago, significantly limited the capacity of Iran, the world’s foremost exporter of terrorism, to continue spreading its violence and bloodshed. The world silenced itself, and did not thank Israel.

Augustine said that the Jewish people continue to exist after their rejection of Jesus of Nazareth for only one reason, to serve as a Witness People. Meaning, that in the Jewish people’s abased, exilic, homeless, wandering state, they testify to the truth of what happens when someone rejects Christ. Luther’s most hateful statements about the Jewish people were not his vile call to destroy our synagogues and to imagine a Europe without Jews. Luther’s most evil statement about the Jewish people is that he said there is no such thing as a material, human, fleshy, carnal People Israel. Luther spiritualized the Jewish people. Augustine preserved us. Luther erased us.

The interesting question is, why is it, over more than two millennia, that so many imagine the disappearance and annihilation of the Jewish people? This is an enduring feature of Western civilization.

It is 80 years since the ovens were turned off. These statements of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people were once again largely met with silence.

And now, after 2,000 years of abject near fatal powerlessness, the Jewish people, through its imperfect democracy and sovereignty, have the capacity to secure our own material welfare against those who would annihilate us. The Jewish people have moved from powerlessness to power, from helplessness to the exercise of responsibility for our own welfare. We fulfill the God commanded mandate to each nation to secure its material welfare.

As Pope Benedict XVI taught at Auschwitz in May 2005, the desire to annihilate the Jewish People is the desire, if one dare say it, to murder God Who dwells in Israel’s midst, by murdering Israel.

May the Kaddosh Baruch Hu, the Holy One Blessed Be His Name, who under starry skies and upon sandy deserts, chose and blessed Abraham and Sarah protect Israel and its defenders and all those who pursue the normalcy of neighborliness, with the might and resolve to emerge victorious against those of evil religious designs that continue to imagine our annihilation.