Road Map to Where?

by Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski

The Not-So-Secret War Against the Jew

Why is it the number one item on the international agenda to force Jews to compromise on a Palestinian State? We could understand where the Arabs are coming from, but why the sense of missionary zeal from the Europeans, the state of frenzy at the UN, the sense of urgency at the State Department and the shameless bias of the majority of the world media against Israel.

No nation on earth ever gave back land that it legitimately conquered in war. Russia until today refuses to return a few islands it conquered from the Japanese in Kamachatka during World War Two, because "Russian blood is not cheap." Why the insistent demand that Israel relinquish huge portions of Israel to its sworn enemies, to proven and unrepentant terrorists, who still refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist? How do you give a State to the same people who dedicated their lives to burn Jewish children alive?

How dare the Arabs demand land that they miraculously lost in five wars meant to annihilate Israel and create another Auschwitz? Who is at peace and who is at war? The Jewish people have been at peace for the past 55 years while the Arabs have been waging a relentless, brutal and merciless campaign of terror and aggression against us.

If all the Arab armies took a years vacation, does anyone doubt what would happen? Absolutely nothing! The Arabs would sleep like babies at night. The great "terrorist" Arik Sharon would gladly go back to his famous farm in the Negev to cultivate his cucumbers and tomatoes. During the Yom Kippur war, when Israel could have, should have and had every right to conquer Cairo and Damascus, incredibly, it did not invade Egypt and Syria.

Does anyone doubt what would happen if the IDF took a day off, how swiftly the Arab armies, including the Egyptian and Jordanian armies would overrun Israel?

How dare the world try to make the Jew feel guilty for miraculously winning every war? What kind of mind could so twist and distort reality to make Jews look like the bad guys, the occupiers?

We crave peace with the Arabs. We detest war and violence with every fiber of our being. But it is clear that peace will not happen by giving the Arabs a Palestinian State when their leaders don't even try to fake that they want peace with Israel; when all of their schools are filled with hate education toward Israel and its people, with praises for suicide bombers. Oslo created a blood bath; can you imagine what a Palestinian State would create?

The timing of the road map plan is astonishing. At the moment of victory when America has miraculously concluded 'operation chemotherapy,' successfully cutting out a large chunk of the 'terrorist cancer,' the very same cowardly voices that were opposed to the war, are at the forefront pressuring Israel to coddle, accommodate, appease and reward terror!

Obviously, there is something deeper going on.

Amalak's war

I believe that it is the ancient, perennial battle of Amalek vs. the Jew, recorded in the book of Exodus. When the Jews left Egypt just before they reached Mt. Sinai the Amalekite nation traveled over a hundred miles to wage war against the Jews. Why? The Amalekites were the world's first pluralists and moral relativists. It was the Jewish belief in an absolute truth that greatly disturbed Amalek. What troubled the nation of Amalak was that the Jewish people were about to rendezvous with an absolute G-d who was to reveal to them His absolute truth.

Amalek is very tolerant. If Judaism makes you feel good and it works for you that's ok, but why the passion, the fervor, the absolute certainty that this is the Truth. Amalek attempted to nip absolutism in the bud, throw some cold water on the superheated commitment of the Jew and to inject a little doubt, a healthy dose of cynicism.

Amalek was shocked by the ferociousness of the Jewish counterattack that routed him and cleared the road to Mt. Sinai. What Amalek did not realize was that to the Jewish people, the giving of the Ten Commandments was more than a matter of law; it was a marriage. The event that took place at Sinai exactly 3, 315 years ago, celebrated during the holiday of Shvous, was the union of love between the Jewish people and G-d.

What is marriage?

Marriage is an absolute relationship. It's not ninety percent, not even ninety-nine point nine percent. It is one hundred percent. An open marriage is no marriage at all; even if someone were unfaithful to his spouse for a split second it would indelibly harm the marriage. Marriage is all encompassing, engaging the person totally both, mentally and emotionally, physically and spiritually. Each spouse gives of himself totally without reservation and nothing is held back.

There is nothing more appalling to the Jew than moral relativism. The Jew is married to morality and its Divine creator. If you are married and you "tolerate" another man to enter into the relationship, you are not considered tolerant, you are deemed a weak. gutless traitor. That is what moral relativism is for the Jew -- a betrayal of his marriage with G-d.

What kept us going for thousands of years was the inner knowledge that we have an intimate relationship with G-d, and that our groom would ultimately never let us down. Even when the biting winds were howling fiercely on the outside and the entire world seemed ready to cave in on us, our relationship with G-d was the internal flame that warmed us from within.

Destroying the absolute relationship

Amalek is alive and well. His insidious philosophy and belief that there are no truths, has conquered the world, and has certainly taken the Universities by storm. We have seen its ugly face in the embarrassing outbreak of anti war protests especially by the "elite's". While US soldiers were ridding the world from a monster who fed living human beings to wild dogs, they were busy protesting the "cycle of violence."

Amalek's argument: For thousands of years people believed in truth, good and evil, caring enough about their beliefs to go to war over them. The belief of so many people in one truth filled the world with blood. The obvious conclusion would be that there is no truth, and if only we would be smart enough to admit it and would stop taking the whole notion of truth and good and evil seriously than we could all get along! Let each individual act as their own G-d, creating their own version of the truth.

Hence the new religion: pluralism.

You can't get more cynical than that. For thousands of years people instinctively knew with every fiber of their being and with every bone in their body that there is an objective truth that's worth searching for, living for and even dying for, a truth that is greater than ourselves, and that we could sincerely worship. All the evidence points to the fact that there is a truth that is greater than all of us put together.

If there is no absolute truth, there is no bases for universal morality. If everybody is entitled to decide their own truth, there is no basis to call Adalf Hitler evil, and Mother Teresa good.

There is something very false, sly, insidious and inhumane about a philosophy that educates bright young people to abandon idealism, that teaches our youth not to take beliefs and ideals seriously. Amalek's greatest victory is that in a very short time he has vanquished thousands of years of idealism, substituting it with cynical pragmatism. The nihilistic Nietzsche philosophy that allowed for a Hitler, now reigns supreme. Although we won the battle in World War Two, we have lost the cultural war. German thinking has triumphed!

Who is the absolutist?

The irony is that Amalek is the greatest absolutist of all, believing absolutely that there is no truth, that there is no soul. He is tolerant of everyone except for the true believer!

The Jew is the one obstacle who stands in the way of Amalek's total victory in this titanic and global battle of ideas. It is the stubborn Jew, who is unreasonable, stiff-necked, unyielding and who refuses to compromise on even one iota of his core beliefs. The Jew is married to G-d, and he does not tolerate the slightest break in the absolute morality of G-d, sanctifying life and abhorring murder.

The real agenda

This, in my opinion, is the secret agenda behind Oslo and behind the media's (led by the New York Times) crusade to establish a Palestinian State in Israel. The entire Oslo is premised on getting the Jew to relinquish his Biblical claim to the land of Israel forever. After all peace is forever. This means that the world wants Israel to claim that its rights to the whole of Israel is gone forever.

The frenzy behind a Palestinian State has nothing to do with the Arabs - the world couldn't care less about the Arabs, allowing them suffer for over 50 years at the hands of the world's most brutal dictators, but has everything to do with the Jew! If only the world could get the Jews to join their ranks, to compromise their soul and their beliefs by acknowledging that there is no absolute truth, that the Torah is our 'myth,' our version of reality, while the Arabs have their legitimate version of reality, then Amalek will have totally triumphed.

The Torah, however, states emphatically, that the entire world belongs to the creator of heaven and earth and that he has chosen the Holy Land as the place He calls home, where He will live forever with His bride, the Jewish people. The Jewish response to the world has to be crystal clear and unequivocal: The Torah is our roadmap for peace and it is not negotiable!

It's time to tell the truth: There never were a Palestinian people and there never will be a Palestinian State, not in G-d's lifetime. No one is doing the Arabs any favors by turning them into thieves, by helping them to steal land that never has and never will belong to them.

Chutzpah

Amalek represents pure chutzpah. Chutzpah must be fought with Chutzpah, Amalek should not be negotiated with, instead he must be treated with the disrespect he so richly deserves and thrown out the door. Jews must remain firm, unyielding on even one inch! We should not sacrifice our 3300 year old marriage, and prostitute ourselves for the illusory comforts of political pragmatism, that will only lead to more blood for Jews and Arabs.

The road map is a farce. Moral and intelligent people should not fall prey to a plan that will bring blood to the world. You defeat terrorists through strength and moral clarity, not through buckling under and surrendering your very soul and heart.

Our own 9-11

Then, alas, the tragedy came to pass. On Sunday, May 25th, 2003, at midday. The Jewish people watched in horror as a group of Israeli politicians crashed into the symbol of the Jewish people and Jewish Civilization, our own Twin Towers. It was a brazen and audacious frontal attack catching us off guard. In utter dismay, we stared as a few individuals brazenly attacked and put aflame the Two Tablets, the Torah. The acceptance of the Road Map by Israel was an act of suicide.

For the first time in 3800 years, Jews have exiled themselves, publicly denying their right to the Land of Israel. Six Billion Gentiles watched, some with indifference, some with dismay and others with undisguised glee, as Jews lynched Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. The beating was merciless. On May 26th the Prime Minister upped the ante by repeating four times, slowing down for emphasis, that the Jewish people have historically, illegally and immorally occupied the Land of Israel. The cabinet voted to reduce the Torah to the dustbin of history, inviting the Europeans, the Russians, the Arabs and the Americans to the summit at Aqaba to witness the bonfire, in which 3800 years of faith and blood would go up in flames.

In the aftermath of 5-25, although more than a week has gone by, many Jews can't sleep at night. It's still hard to digest but it's official, Israel surrendered its life on Sunday, May 25th.

What's even more unbearable is that not a single cabinet member resigned or gave up his Volvo! At the same time, tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews organized huge protests and international letter writing campaigns, no, not to protest against perhaps the greatest desecration in Jewish history, but against cuts in the budget! Major Rabbinic and Jewish organizations, went about their business as usual, without registering even a whisper, not even a murmur of protest against this titanic tragedy.

Gone mad

It's hard to get angry because it's obvious that these Jews who embraced the reality of a Palestinian State are unhinged, stark mad. Could you reason with someone who went stark crazy? Apparently the relentless pressure of living in a non-Jewish and hostile world for two millennia became too much to bear and so of our brothers simple snapped. Perhaps it's G-d's fault. After two thousand years of wife abuse and child abuse, of merciless torture, pogroms and Holocausts and tearing away the last genuine Jewish leader from our midst, what does G-d expect? Does G-d truly expect Jews to be normal!

Thousands of years of anti-Semitism have caused many Jews to start believing the haters that we are indeed an evil and immoral people. We began to loath and despise ourselves, including our unequivocal right to the Holy Land, from the Jordanian to the Mediterranean, a gift from G-d to the house of Israel, clearly articulated in the Book of Books.

It's hard to say which is worse, 5-25, or the debacle of the Golden Calf. There's no way to minimize the magnitude of the tragedy or to pretend that what happened on 5-25 is anything less than the roadmap to Auschwitz. The Prime Minister has now willingly boarded the train and is trying to convince himself and others to trust the Arabs and the Arabic State Department with five million Jewish lives!

When a Jew is unhinged it has a trickle effect on the whole world. The United States has just spent 100 Billion dollars taking out a terrorist state, and incredibly it is now directing all of its resources to set up another one! President Bush has caught the megalomania bug; his miraculous successes have perhaps gotten to his head. He truly believes that he will succeed where everyone else has failed. On the foolish urging of a few of his advisers, he is willing to put his hard earned prestige behind a mythic quest.

What his advisors forgot to mention to him was that for the past 3800 years, anyone who has assisted a nation to murder Jews, has found himself on the wrong side of history. One guaranteed outcome of the Road Map: any politician who is personally involved in this dirty business, will travel down the road of political oblivion.

Amalak's joy

It must be music to the ear of Amalek to hear Jewish politicians publicly proclaiming that there will be a Palestinian State in the Holy Land, in Biblical Israel. All the forces of evil must be rejoicing, they must be dancing with glee now that the Jew, the last stubborn holdout, the world's last true believer, he who takes G-d and his Torah seriously has finally been vanquished.

The rejoicing, however, is premature. The nations of the world are forgetting their history. The archenemies of the Jewish people from Pharaoh to Hitler and Stalin have always met their well-deserved and bitter end. Many Prime Ministers and Presidents came and went, many of them in disgrace, while Israel remains standing. Make no mistake, he who advocates a Palestinian State declares war against the G-d of Israel.

World leaders should keenly heed the message of Saddam Hussein's early retirement: Starting up with Israel and with the Jewish people could be hazardous to your health.

The Jewish impact on the world

One immediate consequence of a Jew becoming unhinged and committing spiritual suicide is that it causes the Arabs to become even more unhinged. The architects of Oslo helped introduce to the world the grotesque phenomenon of suicide bombers. Even the Nazis didn't blow themselves up. It was an Arab invention of the 90's. When the Jew goes crazy, the world follows.

One could only shudder to imagine what kind of new human plagues Israel's acceptance of the Road Map will unleash on the world. Who knows how many untold innocent people both in Israel and in the USA are going to pay the price for the self-destructive lunacy of 5-25.

The Good News

G-d created the world to be evenly balanced. Every minus is balanced by a positive. At the moment of the Jew's greatest betrayal and treachery, during the sin of the Golden Calf, the Jewish people also experienced their greatest and most exalted moment, ever. It was the first and last time that G-d revealed Himself to humanity, presenting it with an eternal blueprint for life. At precisely the very moment that the Jew reached his nadir, at that very same moment the Jew also experienced his highest peak!

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 97:1) discusses the coming of Moshiach, quoting the verse in the Torah (Leviticus 13:13): "All of it has turned white, it is pure." The Torah says that if a person's skin turns white he is impure, but if he turns all white than he is pure! Rabbi Yitzchak states that this comes to teach us: The son of David will not come until the entire kingdom has turned into heresy. Now that the right wing in Israel has officially and shamelessly adopted the most radical fringe, the extreme left wing ideology, as their very own, we know that Moshiach is a heartbeat away.

Now that the Jew has reached his lowest point, experiencing a most degrading moment yet and the unthinkable has come to pass, we know with certainty that our moment of glory is at hand. It only affirms the repeated pronouncement of my master, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Mencahem Mendel Schnneerson, zt"l, that we are living at the threshold of the highest peak in Jewish history. At any moment, Moshiach will literally walk through the door, take charge in Israel and usher in the dawn of our redemption. The Jewish sun will shine in all its glory, brilliantly illuminating the bitter and palpable darkness that has engulfed us all. Jewish pride and dignity will resurface and emerge in its full splendor, as the truth of the Torah will triumph.

(Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski is director of Chabad of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He may be e-mailed at Chabadues@aol.com.)