For the Honor of Israel

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
May 18, 2001

 

Let me ask a rhetorical question:

What do Bashar Assad, Paul Weyrich, the Associated Press and Charlie Ward have in common?

For clarification, Assad in the president of Syria for whom hope was held out that he might turn aside from his father's hateful path; Paul Weyrich is a prominent political conservative; the Associated Press in the singular news source for most newspapers in the United States and perhaps beyond; Charlie Ward is a basketball player, a point guard on the New York Knicks. What links all these four?

The answer is:

In the past two weeks ALL OF THEM have SLANDERED ISRAEL, THE JEWISH PEOPLE AND JUDAISM.

And they have done it with impunity.

Charlie Ward, in an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine section Sunday before last bluntly, forcefully and proudly proclaimed that the blame for the death of Jesus lies with the Jews. The quote: "They had his blood on their hands."

Paul Weyrich runs a web site in which his Easter essay said most directly: "Christ was crucified by the Jews."

Bashar Assad resurrected the worst of the blood libels in accusing Israel of aggression against Muslim and Christian holy sites, violating the sanctity of the Holy Mosque, the church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Nativity. He included in his diatribe the accusation that we killed Jesus and extended a new page of infamy with the accusation that we tried to killed Mohammed, too. We are the enemies of God conspiring against Islam and Christianity.

And the Associated Press, in today's feature article on Israel, using language that suggests being factual, that May 15 th, 1948, was the day "when Palestinians were uprooted and the State of Israel was created." At the end of the article it says that Arab states declared war and invaded Israel, equalizing the dead and only referring to the false number of 750,000 Palestinians, making it sound that they were driven out of their homes. No mention is made of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands who were indeed always persecuted, which was not the case for Palestinian Arabs.

I have two points to make: truth and silence.

TRUTH:

It took 1900 years for the Roman Catholic Church to admit that the Romans killed Jesus. The Second Vatican Council did that in 1965. It took another forty years for Pope John Paul II to declare that they and we are brothers in a covenant with God. On that he has recently waffled. Their own Catholic historians have led to Vatican proclamations and the rewriting of their teaching materials, based on the Gospels, to correctly teach their people that the Romans killed the Jew Jesus. They were the only ones able to inflict capitol punishment. It has taken them two millennia to finally understand his place in Jewish history. In the interim, we have paid for their misunderstanding with our blood. What good were all the decades of interfaith work here, in Rome and Jerusalem? Why did my colleagues and I go to churches to put on seders, teach about Judaism, why do I welcome them here into this sanctuary and show them our Torah, when it all returns to the accusation: "I killed Jesus?"

The Associated Press is one of the most biased to the point of anti-Semitic sources of Arab propaganda. It conveniently omits the pogroms and Arab attacks against civilian Jewish settlements from before the 1920's. It has amnesia about the infiltration of Arab terrorists in the 1940's. It expeditiously leaves out the fact that the Arab countries could bring in weapons and the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine was under boycott, with the British confiscating anything the could find in order to enable the Arab invasion to destroy the U.N. authorized Jewish area. How could they forget that the Arab countries told local Arabs to leave so that they would have an unhindered hand? Why does the AP almost always pit Jews against Arabs instead of saying Jews versus Muslims or Israelis versus Arabs? And by the way, until 1948, the Jews were the Palestinians.

Concerning Mohammed, one of his early biographies, the Sirah of Ibn-Ishaq, contains a story about a Jewish widow who tried to poison Mohammed after his forces killed her husband. The truth is that he lived several years after that, even if it was true. And even if it was, there is no context of the Muslim takeover of the Arabian peninsular and this was one person, which even the story says acted on her own. Assad's theological corruption adds flame to the Islamic fundamentalism that will not tolerate Judaism or Christianity in its domain.

SILENCE:

My point here is the silence.

The Pope was silent when Assad virtually cursed us in his presence.

All the partners in interfaith dialogue have disappeared.

The Cardinals are silent. And the Archbishops, too.

Why is it okay to have an "Open Season on the Jews?"

When my colleagues and I preach no one reports on our sermons. That I expect. I have submitted them to the Times-Dispatch and they have refused them for the op-ed page and say they are too long as letters to the editor.

But,

Where are the Jewish organizations that have regular access to the media?

Where are the Jewish defense organizations?

Where are the philanthropists that make a splash whenever they desire,

And the Spielberg's of the world?

Where are the CRC's?

Why doesn't anyone else write letters to the editor?

Are we not commanded, somewhere, somehow, to uphold the honor of Am Yisrael?

Is it not incumbent upon us to protect, defend, and shield the title JEW?

Does it not ascend from within our innermost parts to rise on behalf of our people?

Do we not have our self-respect and then demand it from others?

Do we not believe that our faith, our history, our people are honorable?

Do we not deem our integrity to be inviolate?

 

Then let us not be, as Elie Wiesel coined the term forty years ago, The Jews of Silence.

The Torah commands us: "Al ta'amod al dam rayecha – don't stand idly by your brothers blood."

That is the watchword of the moment.

All that is sacred,

All generations that died for Kiddush HaShem,

All who had died defending our people,

Have obligated us to full that mitzvah.

May we redeem honor of Judaism, God and Israel.