They Are Trying to Kill Me

by Naomi Ragen

June 15, 2003

I feel like a Jew in Berlin in 1938. They are trying to kill me, 
to kill my family. This is not figurative, but literal. I was in 
the Park Hotel Seder night last year. I was in the center of 
Jerusalem last Wednesday. I took a cab there, but I took a bus 
home because I'm tired of being afraid. And when I walked through 
the door, the phone was already ringing, my husband calling from 
Tel Aviv, anxious to know if I was all right. I hadn't even heard 
yet. I had just walked through the door. So I called my son, to see 
if he was all right. And the phone lines were busy. So I waited, 
and when I got through, he told me he'd gone to pick up his wife 
in the center of Jerusalem. That she'd been there when the bomb 
went off; a few streets away.

My son and daughter-in-law, who had walked through the rubble of 
the Park Hotel Seder night, to safety. And now, once again....

They were on there way home, he told me.

We founded the State of Israel so that we could stop our enemies 
from killing us. So that we could have an army and air force, 
a government that would protect the lives of Jews, when people 
around the world looked on in indifference at their slaughter. 
Instead, we have allowed our leadership to neutralize those forces, 
permitting the slaughter to continue. I don't expect anything from 
the world. The idiots in Europe believed all Hitler wanted was 
"living space" when he took over neighboring countries, they
believed that the Jews in Germany and the world had it coming, 
the way they now promote the idea that Jewish "settlers" have 
it coming. And every Jew in Israel is a settler. And every Jew 
in the world has it coming, because they are Zionists, who 
support settlers. It's a page from Mein Kampf.

Our own media is just as sickening."After the attack on Rantisi, 
all the rules have changed," some idiot on Israeli TV news 
actually said about the bombing. Rantisi has said: "We will not 
stop until every man, woman and child in Israel is dead. When 
Palestine is wiped clean of the Jews." He's been saying this 
for years. What rules, idiot, are you talking about?

Our ineffectual, fumbling, mumbling government is just as bad. 
And our people are so brave, so brave. I saw them in the streets 
of Jerusalem yesterday, and I thought, looking at the hustle and 
bustle: nothing can stop us. If there is another bomb, they will 
just clean it up, bury the dead, and go on. I thought this with 
pride. But now I don't know. Is it something to be proud of, 
or something to be ashamed of - this willingness to bury and 
rebuild and go on in the same direction until the next bomb?

We are being targeted for slaughter, my family , the family of 
Israel in our homeland that we didn't take from anyone, that 
belongs to us, and only to us. The same way they targeted us 
in Europe when there was no Jewish state, no settlers. Only 
this time, we have the ability to fight back, if only our 
leadership would have the courage to lead us not down the road
mapped out by others, but by the map we drew for ourselves when 
we came back to Zion.

God save us from our enemies. God save us from our "friends." 
God save us from ourselves. 

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Naomi Ragen is a best-selling novelist and columnist who has 
lived in Israel since 1971. More of her writings can be seen 
at www.naomiragen.com