Are You a Jew with Trembling Knees? by Gideon Drucker January 2016 http://bit.ly/jew-with-trembling-knees It would be nice if all those "Nice American Jews" who seem to show support every day on Facebook for "Black Lives Matter" or against the evils of Global Warming and who decry every possible (real or imagined) account of racism, sexism, or homophobia would one time, just one time, show some outrage when one of their Jewish brothers and sisters are innocently murdered walking the streets of Tel Aviv. We can't expect the world to overtly care about murdered Jews (they never have before, why start now) but is it too much to ask that liberal American Jews show some compassion for their own people, the way they profess to, for literally everyone else. 2 innocent Jews were murdered at a cafe in Tel Aviv on Friday (with a dozen more injured). This happened two blocks from my apartment as I was resting in bed after returning home from two tough weeks training in the field with my Paratrooper battalion. This was not an aberration. Murdered Jews is again becoming the norm. It is again becoming acceptable. "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" And as was true 70 years ago, we, American Jews, are failing miserably. We are letting the world murder Jews with impunity. We are, again, letting the world become a miserable place to be a Jew. And we are nary making a sound. "Only after they had been reduced to dust in their lifetimes were Jews in their millions slaughtered and converted into ashes (Begin, Revolt)." The world's callous indifference towards Jewish life precipitates their murder and their sheer barbarism towards our people. To be sure, the evil is a stain upon their souls, not ours. But I don't care about assigning blame. I care about Jewish life and Jewish dignity, and our own timidity in calling a spade a spade fuels their ignorance. 70 years ago they put us in ovens. Pogroms. Expulsions. Forced Conversions. Blood libels. Quite frankly, I don't expect the "civilized" world to suddenly reverse 2,000 years of anti-semitism. It is our responsibility, as Jews, to be the most outraged that the status quo finds a Jew's life from Gush Etzion or Tel Aviv cheaper than that of a Frenchman. If we don't, why should they? My dad sometimes asks rhetorically, would you rather go into a Black, Jewish, or Hispanic neighborhood and hurl racist epithets? 100% of people would venture into the Jewish neighborhood. This is a problem. A scary number of American Jews need to wake up from their delusion that "Never Again" couldn't possibly happen today. Jewish history is cyclical. It is not progressive. The sad irony inherent to the optimism of our people is that it often times leads to our destruction. In every generation there are too many of us that believe our fellow man has risen above their hatred and that what happened yesterday couldn't possibly happen today. That a new, more peaceful and equitable dawn is upon us. In every generation, calamity befalls our people as some among us gaze wistfully at the misery around them, asking themselves how they missed the signs. For the love of God, lets wake up in time for once. Too many American Jews are distancing themselves from the Jewish nation either out of malaise about their own Jewishness or because they prefer to blame their people than face the truth about the nature of the current wave of unvarnished anti-Semitism. (Jew-hatred never manifests itself boldly or honestly as ignorant hate; it is always justified as warranted in some capacity. For centuries we were hated for our religion (Medieval-Church Jew hatred), than for our "inferior racial makeup" (`19th-20th century right-wing fascism), and now for our nation-state (leftist/Islamist convergence.) These Jews are merely the latest in the long history of the Jewish people to throw other Jews under the bus in the hopes that in doing so, the word will accept them. The latest to believe the delusion that if only they remove enough of the "Jew" from themselves, they won't be targeted or persecuted. The latest to embrace the surrounding society's indictment of their own people. So that they will be "normalized". Because, after all, it's not them, it's "those other Jews" the world don't like. To wit, their predecessors: The Hellenized Jews in the time of the Macabees. Flavias Josephus in the era of the Romans. The Jews of the enlightenment who belittled our tribe into merely a religion to appease the fascist progressives of their time. The Jewish Maskilim who worked with the Tzar's government to subtly assimilate and erase the Jew from within. The German Jews who blamed anti-semitism on the more traditional and religious Jews of Poland, "those other Jews" of that period. The Jewish SS liaisons of the ghettos and concentration camps. The list goes on. Thus, I've compiled a list of thoughts to help you figure out If you are one of these "Jews with trembling knees" (Begin used the term ‘Zionists with trembling knees' against timid zionists of his generation). In effect whether you are a self-hating ghetto Jew (from the ghetto in spirit, not in circumstance). - If the only time you acknowledge your "Jewishness" is when you say "As a Jew" before attacking Israel and/or the Jewish People… - If you cite Jewish history and Jewish values to proclaim your own nefarious agenda but ignore it when it comes to protecting Jewish lives and proclaiming Jewish national rights… - If you care more about gaining acceptance than Jewish survival and continuity… - If every shooting around the world elicits a #prayfor hashtag and demonstrated grief yet the almost daily borage of cold blooded murders against the Jews of Israel for the past 3 months warrants not even a f-cking word… - If you are on the front lines against "Islamaphobia" yet ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of religious hate crimes come against your fellow Jews… - If global warming, black lives matter, and income equality consume all of your Facebook outrage but you can't be bothered to react to the murder of Jews in Tel Aviv… - If you react differently to a terrorist attack against innocent civilians in Paris than you do in Ranaana… - If the Israeli-Arab conflict began for you after "the occupation" (ignoring that the Arabs launched 3 unprovoked wars of annihilation against the Jews and hundreds of terrorist attacks while they controlled the West Bank for 19 years)… - 11 million Muslims have been killed in the Middle East since Israel's founding. 99.7% of the casualties over that period have nothing to do with Israel or Jews yet you care only about the other 0.3%… - If Palestinian national rights are unassailable to you yet Jewish national rights are sinful and acceptable to be debated upon… - If a Jewish state in which 1.2 million Arabs live free and equal screams "apartheid!" to you but your support for the the creation of a Muslim State that by its own definition must be 100 percent Jew-Free seems totally appropriate… - If you yearn for a Palestinian state and are unaware of their rejection of statehood in 1937,1948, 2000, and 2008 because it ruins your blame-the-Jew narrative… - If you call "Syrian Muslim Refugees the New Jews while ignoring when actual Muslims murder actual Jews in Paris, Tel aviv, Jerusalem" (Ben Shapiro)… - If you hold the IDF to an impossible standard that no other army in world history has upheld while ignoring that Israel is the only country in the world routinely denied its right to exist by entire nations and threatened with daily calls of its annihilation by those amassed on its borders… - If you loudly denounce ISIS and Al-Queda yet offer a "Well, but" when talking about the Hamas and Hezbollah version of an Islamic Death Cult… - If you claim that by supporting Israel's right to exist you are somehow advocating a Pro-Israel position…(I support Australia's right to exist…I am not a Australia advocate)… - If you ignored Hamas' thousands of rockets fired indiscriminately at Israeli cities for years and only began paying attention when Israel finally had enough and responded to the aggression… - There were roughly 800,000 Jewish and Arab refugees from Israel's war of independence, if you have never heard or cared about the first group yet you demonstrate proudly for the second… - If the idea of a proudly Jewish state makes you uncomfortable but you have no problem with the existence of 24 countries self-identifying as Muslim… - If women's rights and gay rights are of the utmost importance to you except in the Middle East in which case you can't be bothered to protest Muslim countries that hang gays from cranes and treat women like cattle. Instead you would rather spend your time bashing the only place in the Middle East in which your outrage wouldn't land you dead or in prison… - If Jewish biblical attachment to the land of Israel is irrelevant and unnerving to you while you have no problem proclaiming the Muslim attachment to Al-Aksa and decrying Jews' alleged "desecration" of Muslim holy places… - If a Jew building a home in Judea is more worthy of your scorn, or is somehow the cause of an Arab knifing a 70 year old grandpa in Netanya… - If you have a problem that Israel democratically elected a right wing government while ignoring that the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is in his 12 year of a 4 year term and that Hamas is a totalitarian theocracy… - If the plight of the Palestinians upsets you but only if the story can somehow be blamed on the Jews. The Palestinians suffering at the hands of their fellow Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan are irrelevant to you… - "As a Jew", the persecution of Coptic Christians, Yazidis, and Kurds in the Middle East doesn't bleed your heart, because No Jews, No problem… - If the pity derived from Jewish Holocaust victims are more palatable to you than the power and respect of Jewish IDF soldiers with the means to defend themselves… - If you try to dictate to Jews in Israel how to deal with daily threats against their children lives and their country's existence safely from your NYC apartment… Let me finish by saying that what's ironic if you fall into this category is that the very history that you Jews ignore and misunderstand is the same that would show you the folly of your attempts to castigate your own people. For Jewish history has, in each instance, moved above and beyond such attempts to trivialize our history and weaken our peoplehood. We remain, now and ever, Jews. 70 years ago the majority of American Jewry failed. To Speak Up. To Speak out. In 50 years when your grandchildren ask you what you did in this critical hour to support and defend our people in Israel, what will you tell them? Our people are under attack. Today. Now. It is time for American Jews to wake up. Maybe this time we'll fire the alarm in time.