Israel
As Israel prepares to celebrate its 62nd year of independence festivities, its neighbour Iran boasts that it is prepared to see that the Jewish nation whose presence is such a dire irritant in the neighbourhood of Islamic theocracies, tyrannies, oil-kingdoms and monarchies will not celebrate another year of straddling Muslim land.For the diaspora, those Jews who live in other lands to which they were born and are citizens of, the presence of Israel on the world stage as a welcoming home for world Jewry is a comfort and a blessing.
There are few Jews, wherever they happen to live, who haven't been aware of, or haven't suffered from some level of anti-Semitism. Knowing their history as a people, the presence of Israel as the sole country in the world where Jews are valued for being Jews, and where the government's sole real purpose is to defend the rights of Jews to live as normal, productive members of the world community remains a hope for the future of all Jews.
Israel is the one country where Jews are welcomed, not threatened, celebrated, not reviled, absorbed not persecuted, accepted not oppressed. How could it be any other way, since the state was conceived and planned and legalized as a sovereign country with that sole purpose in mind; becoming a homeland for all Jews who wished to settle there, absorbing those Jews whose home countries had dispossessed them, encouraging Jews everywhere to return home.
Independence was hard won. And once it became fact it was even harder to sustain. With one collective neighbourly attack after another, the nascent army of defence successfully fought off its neighbours' intention to grind it into the soil and then establish its own upon that blood-soaked geography. Just as the al-Aqsa mosque sits proudly in all its glory upon the Judaic-sacred site of the two Temples of Solomon, on the Temple Mount.
Jewish determination to survive yet another attempt at annihilation from yet another source prevailed. From the 1948 war that took six thousand Jewish lives, after the loss a few mere years earlier of six million Jewish lives, to the succeeding wars of 1967 and 1973. And the tiny country whose citizens demonstrate that they are prepared to live in peace with their neighbours yet continue to be rebuffed, will remain steadfast in its determination to survive.
Decades of suicidal terrorist attacks resulting in the deaths of yet more Jews, military and civilian alike, have not resulted in a population that is demoralized but one that retains its will to reside there, where their ancestors settled and where ancient law and history made the Land of Israel their own.
The country has prospered, with its scientists and its business people, its educators and its agricultural component having made it a country to be reckoned with. Its human capital has resulted in a thriving modern culture, cutting edge technology, and enterprising companies making wealth for the country.
And Israel keeps on absorbing Jews coming from every corner of the world. There to stay.
Labels: Human Relations, Israel, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Monday, April 19, 2010
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