For Israel

Let's Concentrate on Real Issues, Please

From Commentary, October 2004, "Jewish Security & Jewish Interests" by Jack Wertheimer, p. 58-59:

"....the other-worldly quality that continues to affect the work of those Jewish community-relations organizations that remain committed to fighting yesterday's wars whatever the consequences. Synagogues and other Jewish institutions around the globe have already been targeted by terrorists, at a terrible cost in human life. More attacks are hardly inconceivable. In what sense is the physical safety of real people - Jews and others who happen to be in the vicinity - less important to Jews than an intractable belief in the separationist faith? France separated church and state nearly a centruy ago. That did nothing to protect the Jews of France from the Vichy government, any more than it has shielded young French Jewish children from Arab hooligans today. How long can American Jewish organizations continue to place their obsession with an impermeable wall of separation above the physical security of the Jews for whom they claim to speak?....

In the quieter decades of the late 20th century, mandates and ambitions began expanding as Jewish organizations embraced the causes of non-sectarian groups, often with greater fervor than those groups themselves and sometime to the detriment of palpable Jewish interest. Now, as threats to Jewish security have multiplied, the time for business as usual has long passed, and the time to reconsider is urgently at hand."

posted by ninelives @ 1:33 PM