Parshas Vayechi

Good Shabbos!  The portion is called Vayechi which means, “And, He lived.”  However, the vast majority of the portion does not talk about Jacob’s life at all. Instead, it talks of the life of his children.  The reason for this is an essential lesson for all of us to know and remember. 

Jewish life is not marked by personal accomplishments.  Jewish life means providing for the safe and secure continuation of life for our children and future generations. 

Which brings me to the state of affairs facing our brethren in Israel today.  First let me share with you the gist of the 6 Letters to the Editor published this past Thursday in our local Courier Journal.

• Letter 1: “I strongly disagree with the actions of Israel. I don’t want children’s blood on my hands.”
• Letter 2: “Hundreds of innocent lives have been lost. The entire region faces a crisis. Both sides are wrong.”
• Letter 3: “Thank you for printing pictures of bombed Palestinian children and civilians. This helps present the whole story, not just the Israeli side.”
• Letter 4: was most similar to letter 3.
• Letter 5: “Palestinians have the right to resist the illegal occupation of its territory and Israel has no right to defend that occupation.”

Under these 5 letters was a 6^th letter which, at first, I thought might be a response to the 5 one-sided hateful anti-Israel letters I just shared with you.  But, I was wrong.  The 6^th letter was the most appalling letter of all. 

It was written by the president of an organization called the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee based in Crestwood, Kentucky. In it, the writer had the gall to compare the so called “Palestinian” community of Gaza to the surviving Jews of those killed in the Holocaust.  He portrayed “Palestinians” with having only 2 choices - die of hunger or fight for their freedom.  What utter nonsense! How sad to see our Courier Journal choose to publish such drivel without even having the decency of publishing the true facts of this issue alongside those letters. 

So, although I feel confident that the vast majority of you of are well aware of the facts regarding Israel today, I will highlight just a few of them to refresh your memories.  Israel became a nation in the year 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam.  There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel from that time till today. In 1948 Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the entire country of all Jews.  Over two-thirds left Israel before ever seeing an Israeli soldier.  The total number of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 is approximately 630,000 which is the same number of Jewish refugees from surrounding Arab countries.

There are 24 Arab countries with land over twice the size of the United States, including all of Alaska. Israel is approximately the size of the state of New Jersey. 

The word Palestinian is a new term which Arabs starting using after they initiated and lost the war in 1967, a full two decades after the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948.  Why? Because there are no “Palestinian” people.  They are Arabs who, even by U.N. decree, belong outside of the state of Israel. 

The Arabs initiated 5 wars to destroy the State of Israel and kill every Jewish man, woman and child.  With the help of G-d, Israel was victorious in those wars and, to this day, still seeks only to live alongside their Arab neighbors in peace. 

In 2004 Israel unilaterally retreated from Gaza, effectively giving the Arabs full control of their destiny, except they did want to prevent them from bringing weapons to prevent further attacks.  The United States helped these Arabs set up a democratic election with the choice to vote for Fatah or Hamas.  Fatah, who refused to remove a call for the destruction of Israel from their charter, were at least committed to peaceful negotiations with Israel.   Hamas campaigned on a platform of a military solution to the issue with the murder by any means of every Israeli, highlighted by murderous terror attacks on Israeli civilians and cities. 

These so called “Palestinians” chose to vote for Hamas and they got exactly what they voted for. Fatah was expelled and Hamas remains in total control of Gaza.  There is no Bank of Gaza providing loans for business and growth.  There is no infrastructure in Gaza to build jobs and skills and a future for their people.  Instead there are schools where Jews and Christians are portrayed as monkeys and enemies of Islam who must be destroyed.  There are summer camps where children as young as 7 years old are taught the virtues of becoming suicide bombers and actually make models of a vest with dynamite as arts and crafts projects. 

They spend their time and money building tunnels and smuggling weapons and shooting thousands of deadly missiles to hurt, scare, maim and kill as many Jews as possible.

Each week there are parades with as many as 100,000 of these so-called Palestinian Arabs all marching and promising death to Israel, death to America, death to all who are not Islamist. 

It seems that their greatest goal, right after killing Jews, is showing dead Arabs and especially dead Arab children to try to sway public opinion against Israel.  So they place bomb making facilities in the basement of schools, hoping that they will be bombed so that they might succeed in getting great pictures of bloodied children or maybe even pictures of some who are dead. 

Allow me to tell you the truth of how Israel fights in Gaza.  Israel began the war by bombing Gaza.  Yet they used different bombs than ever used before in the history of warfare.  What they dropped over the Palestinians civilian centers were leaflets warning of an upcoming war and asking all civilians to leave the area so that the staging area for deadly rocket launches into Israel could be destroyed without causing any civilian loss of life.

The Israelis gave up the advantage of surprise and sent out thousands of emails and text messages warning the schools and the hospitals and every Arab that they were able to reach to remove themselves from harms way.  Israel is the most moral and compassionate people in the history of the world.  They reply to calls of destruction from their enemies with phonecalls hoping to save lives of those very enemies.  They wait and wait and expend every possible venue before using force to protect their citizens. 

The portion teaches us today:  The life of Israel, our forefather, meant providing for the lives and the future of his children.  Israel had NO CHOICE but to go into Gaza to at least stop the daily barrage of deadly rockets aimed at their civilian centers. 

While visiting Israel in July, President Elect Barack Obama said, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing.”  The State of Israel is charged with protecting its citizens.  They are doing so in the kindest and most compassionate manner possible even though this is costing them loss of life and much more danger to its armed forces. 

May G-d protect the defenders of our Holy Land.  May He bring them success and safety.  May we very soon merit the fulfillment of the Divine promise of peace for all mankind.    As we concluded the portion today, Chazak Chazak Venizchazake - May we each be strong and may we all strengthen one another, and let us say Amen.