I just read the current Torah portion, Beshalach. As all Torah chapters are, it’s about ... everything. But this one includes God leading our people out of slavery in Egypt; describing my people complaining each step of the way—like children, like slaves, without spiritual or moral strength. The phrase is kotzer ruach.
They’ve had the very breath knocked out of them. The complaints are almost funny, but they are also embarrassing. And, by the way: God also splits the sea, allows our people to walk across it on dry land, then drowns the Egyptians in that very sea, provides a pillar by day and by night to lead us across vast desert spaces, feeds us rather magically, and on and on.
This was my beloved son’s parshah reading for his bar mitzvah, oh so long ago.
Is it entirely a coincidence? This year, this very week, we read this chapter. We read it at the same time that U.S. President Donald Trump has dared to open the world’s imagination, dared to risk the world’s hard heart and dared to risk the hot ire of billions by simply stating that the emperor is truly naked.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understand that there are no Palestinian people; there are only Arabs who are living and dying in Gaza. There was never an ancient, or even a long-standing country, homeland or a state called Palestine.
And that it would be a humanitarian act to help those Arabs who have been under the boot of Iran’s terrorist organization, Hamas, to leave for another, nearby Arab Muslim country, like Egypt or Jordan—countries their ancestors came from no more than 100 years ago. And that under a Trump presidency, America could turn the Gaza Strip into the Riviera of the Middle East, a Las Vegas on the Mediterranean or Mar-a-Lago on the Med—a vacation destination that will employ many thousands of people. (This is not entirely my cup of tea but no matter. I’m not a businesswoman or a real estate broker. It might actually accomplish something good).
I don’t know what even a master dealmaker and bit of a bloviator will be allowed to accomplish. Will Trump be able to offer a deal to Egypt and Jordan that they will not be able to refuse?
The world is so invested in Jew-hatred and so determined to exterminate the State of Israel. The West and Muslim world deeply believe in the existence of a Palestinian people and a Palestinian homeland, and their propaganda battle has been hugely and dangerously effective. Most such true believers still refuse to recognize that Palestinianism is merely a relatively new incarnation of ancient antisemitism.
The formidable sea we now face is that of a major, roiling, mass delusion. Hot hatred. Prejudice disguised as righteousness. While I believe in humanity’s ability, even obligation, to try to right such hatreds, in this instance, I also believe that only God has the power to free the Jews from the mass delusion of Palestinianism.
Already, the wokesters, the so-called human-rights organizations, the legacy media are lashing out, demonizing Trump as a war criminal, a despoiler of sacred Palestinian land. What will finally open their eyes? The only ethnic cleansing that has gone on in the Middle East is that of Jews having been exiled from Arab and Asian Muslim lands; and Christians exiled or still being persecuted and murdered in Arab and Asian Muslim lands. The only ethnic cleansing is that of Jews in Judea and Samaria, more commonly called the “West Bank.” The Jews who try to live there are considered criminals and have endured sanctions, even recently from the United States itself.
Does anyone out there even know that Afghanistan was once primarily a Buddhist country? Or that Islam is a colonialist, imperialist power that has conquered and converted via the sword? That Islam is the largest practitioner of gender and religious apartheid? And slavery, too?
People: Open your eyes and your minds. Arab Muslims, Arab Christians, Druze, and other ethnicities and religions live under Israeli sovereignty in Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Beersheva. Why do Sunni Arab Muslims need a 23rd state?
If the world’s eyes can be opened, I will promise almost anything. Though not my firstborn.
