My Israel. Is there such a thing? Is Israel one thing for some people, and another thing for others? Or is the concept of My Israel just another way of recreating Israel in one’s own image, a conceit?
I vote for the latter.
One of the things that damages Israel the most are the people who pretend to love Israel while hurting Israel. Often, these people are Jews. Their falsely professed love of Israel gives them cover for spreading their poison. They use the concept of My Israel as a cudgel against the Jewish State. They use charisma to build a following through which they can spread their narrative and watch it take hold.
A good example of the My Israel technique is embodied by this speech delivered at a BBYO convention by Sarah Tuttle Singer, social media director of the Times of Israel.
Tuttle-Singer has the Midas touch when it comes to social media and making friends. She blogs, and seemingly every piece she writes goes viral. Some of her work is well-written, and other pieces, not so much. But it doesn’t seem to make a difference. She is so popular, that when she posts a blog, no matter the subject matter, and no matter whether it is well-written, or not, her stuff takes off, VRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOM.
It’s kind of like a reverse Donald Trump–a left instead of right-wing populist. It no longer matters what Tuttle-Singer says or does. Her loyal minions flock to adore her every word and deed.
That would be okay if she were neutral about Israel or pro-Israel. But she is neither.
Extreme Left
Tuttle-Singer is on the extreme left when it comes to Israel. She boycotts settlements. She feels that both sides have their “truth,” which is, of course, simply not possible. The two sides have opposing goals and narratives.The Jews believe they’ve returned to their rightful homeland while the Arabs are bent on destroying Israel and on annihilating the Jewish people. It’s in their charters.
Exhibit A:
The Palestinian National Charter:
Article 1:
Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.
Article 2:
Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.
(In other words, they are saying that all of Israel and Jordan belongs to them.)
Article 9:
Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it . They also assert their right to normal life in Palestine and to exercise their right to self-determination and sovereignty over it.
(In other words, they won’t stop killing Jews until they have all of the land, Judenrein.)
Exhibit B:
The Hamas Covenant
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).
Article Seven:
. . .The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after.
Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
Article Thirteen:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. “Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know.”
Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?
“But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah.” (The Cow – verse 120).
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with. As in said in the honourable Hadith:
“The people of Syria are Allah’s lash in His land. He wreaks His vengeance through them against whomsoever He wishes among His slaves It is unthinkable that those who are double-faced among them should prosper over the faithful. They will certainly die out of grief and desperation.”
Pledged And Sworn
In short, neither the PA/PLO or Hamas, the two ruling powers of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza, are peacefully disposed toward Israel and the Jews, nor will they ever be so. They are pledged and sworn to obliterate all traces of Jewish life from the Jewish State, indeed, from the world. If they speak of peace, it is a lie, to cover their overweening and true ambition: the destruction of Israel and the eradication of the Jews as a people.
But their lies are honey-coated and dripping with sweetness and false sincerity. And people like Sarah Tuttle-Singer love their honey. She loves it like a bee. Tell her anything with feeling, even false feeling, and she will lap it up.
She’s a patsy. A sucker for a sob story. And she’s bought into the notion that Israel is occupying and oppressing the Arabs. Her “My Israel” concept is of an Israel where Jews are oppressors and the Arabs, oppressed.
It’s A Choice
Unfortunately, that’s a choice. It’s a choice she’s made to choose the Arab narrative over that of her own people. She chose her Israel. She thinks it makes her open-minded. But instead her My Israel concept has made her blind to the truth of Our Israel: that Jewish Israelis have a right to their tiny sliver of land.
Our Israel is the only place where Jews can live their culture and religion in the open. Our Israel is the only place where we can speak Hebrew in the streets. It’s the place where Jews aren’t bombarded by a foreign culture, by Christmas, by Easter. Where Chanuka is king.
What about the Arabs? Don’t they have rights? Certainly. There are 22 extant, sovereign Arab states where Islam is the majority religion, Arab culture the prevailing culture, and Arabic, the spoken language.
Besides, the Jewish people lived in the land of Israel before there was an Arab people or Islam. Documented. Proven by archaeology and history.
There is no reason that we should cede an inch of our land, Our Israel. And when we do, we show weakness, and the result is always an upswing in Arab terror and more dead Jews.
We Must Remember
It’s important to keep all this in mind when watching the social media phenomenon that is Sarah Tuttle-Singer. Whatever she says will be eagerly lapped up by her fans and followers. We need to call her out on the lies and supply the facts. Because if you leave the playing field, you lose.
To this end, I experimented today with the Genius Web Annotator to take apart Tuttle-Singer’s speech at the BBYO convention, where she spoke to young Jewish malleable minds to press home her narrative. Taking her speech apart was made easy since she published the transcript of her speech as a blog on the Times of Israel. You can see my annotations here:
http://genius.com/blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-want-to-tell-you-about-my-israel
Just click on the highlighted text to see my annotations.
My Israel
Tuttle-Singer uses the word “my” 79 times in her piece. She uses this concept of “My” Israel as cover for the false narrative she plugs, the narrative of the enemies of Israel: those who are pledged to Israel’s demise. Her protestations of love for and identification with “her” country (My Israel) are designed to make you agree with whatever she says about Israel and the Jewish people. It’s similar to making statements “as a Jew,” a technique that has been popularized by, for instance, JStreet, an enemy pretending to be a friend.
Genius Is Pure Genius
If you want to comment on my annotations, or write your own, all you have to do is open a free account with Genius, here: genius.com/signup and log in.
Imagine what you can do with this great little tool! That is until someone reports us because they don’t like what we say and we lose our freedom of speech. In other words, who knows? Someone may report you to the people at Genius and you might lose your account. Just a guess, based on what happens on Facebook and on Twitter. Meantime, we can take apart all their lies for all the world to see.
I’m loving it!
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