Should one celebrate birthdays when storms loom on the horizon?
We contemplated this as Israel celebrated its 64th anniversary of modern existence this week, for it cannot be denied that the skies around Israel are threatening.
Iran remains stubbornly committed to its nuclear weapons program — we don’t even qualify its purpose as a weapons program at this point — and it cannot be credibly denied that this program is designed, more than anything else, for Israel’s destruction.
The international response to that threat remains scattered and half-hearted, in our view, and even the prospect of a direct Israeli or American military intervention is unlikely to bring any guarantees.
The Arab Spring has so far offered no reasons for Israeli optimism. In fact, quite the opposite, as the steadily chilling relations with Egypt — exemplified this week by its cancellation of a signed energy contract with Israel — and the increasingly militant rhetoric of the majority Muslim Brotherhood show all too clearly.
Violent instability in Syria offers Israel no reason to hope for better relations with its northern neighbor, regardless of who emerges as the ultimate victor.
Progress on the Palestinian front remains frozen in time, as both Hamas and the PA refuse to engage in a meaningful dialogue with Israel, retreating ever further into futile delusions of a “one-state solution.”
International activism against the Jewish state only continues to grow, adopting new slogans — “boycott, divest, sanction” and “apartheid” — in place of such old canards as “Zionism equals racism.”
Stormy skies indeed.
Yet, we ask, when has Israel known clear weather?
Certainly not in 1948, when virtually moments after its very birth, the new country had to brace itself for a multinational attack.
Not in 1956, or 1967, or 1973, or during the prolonged War of Attrition, two bloody intifadas, two wars in Lebanon — or ever.
Those threats to its existence were all met with Israeli courage, determination, sacrifice and even — yes, we proudly proclaim it in the face of every single Israel-hater in the world — a sense of patient morality that virtually no other besieged nation has ever demonstrated.
Those threats did not plunge Israel into terminal despair, nor dim its sense of right and wrong, nor extinguish its flame of hope, nor cause it to doubt the rightness and justification of its own existence.
Nor should the threats of today.
To Ahmadinejad, to Hamas, to Hezbollah, to the Muslim Brotherhood, to the BDS movement, we say: Israel shall remain standing long after you have fallen on your proverbial swords or extinguished your hatred. Like Israel’s enemies of the past, you too shall fail in your hateful and irrational quest.
To Israel, we say: Happy Birthday!
And may G-d continue to keep you safe.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
