Sunday, May 11, 2008
Jeff Jacoby: A triumph of life and hope
Jeff Jacoby writes in today's Globe on the secular miracle that is modern Israel: A triumph of life and hope
...all the generations of dispersion that followed, the Jews never lost their self-awareness as a nation or their connection to the land of Israel. They expressed their longing for it in daily prayer and turned toward it when they worshiped. They collected charity to support the minority of Jews who had never left the land; and over the years others made their way back as well, often in response to Christian or Muslim persecution. By the 1860s, a majority of Jerusalem's population was Jewish once more. Zionism - an organized movement to renew Jewish independence in the Jewish homeland - was formally launched in 1897. Five decades later, against steep odds and every historical precedent, Israel was reborn.
It was an incredible achievement, made even more incredible by the fact that it occurred in the wake of a genocide that had wiped out one-third of the Jewish people...
Of course, this being the Globe, it's unacceptable to put in a piece that celebrates Israel without being equivocal about it, so they give equal space to an official of the smash-Israel anti-ADL, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, to talk about something called Nakba: For Palestians [sic], mourning. If Arabs spent 1/2 the energy actually building a state rather than lamenting the one they never had and trying to dismantle the one someone else built (jealous, jealous), they wouldn't need to keep writing these types of essays.
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