Annapolis and... America Has Fallen
Sunday, December 02, 2007

Some good links:

Pajamas Media: Peace Fatigue: Israelis Watch Annapolis and Yawn

"For the first time, it looks like that the leaders attending a Middle East peace conference want – really, really want, truly, truly need this diplomatic process more than their people do," wrote another Yediot commentator, Sima Kadmon. "They certainly believe in it more than the millions of Middle East residents who sat there yesterday skeptically, if not indifferently in front of the television. As far as the Israeli and Palestinians are concerned its another fancy festival for leaders who are happy and relieved to get away from the burning realities in their countries for a couple of days. It's called escapism."

Caroline Glick in the JPost: Column One: Apartheid, Not Peace

Evident everywhere, the discrimination against Israel received its starkest expression at the main assembly of the Annapolis conference on Tuesday. There, in accordance with Saudi demands, the Americans prohibited Israeli representatives from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs.

At the meeting of foreign ministers on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called her Arab counterparts to task for their discriminatory treatment. "Why doesn't anyone want to shake my hand? Why doesn't anyone want to be seen speaking to me?" she asked pointedly.

...as far as Rice is concerned, the Palestinians are the innocent victims. They are the ones who are discriminated against and humiliated, not Livni, who was forced - by Rice - to enter the conference through the service entrance.

Israpundit: The US is Selling its Soul to the Islamic Devil

The United Arab Emirates, a tiny enclave of a half million natives and no rule of law has purchased significant chunks of American banks (including Citibank), ports, and airport facilities.

Kuwait, the country we saved from Saddam’s clutch, is deploying a war chest of $300 billion as its Neanderthal Parliament strives to reinstate flogging and decapitation and to annul the recently granted right of women to vote.

Qatar, the proprietor of the anti-Semitic, anti-American Al-Jazeera network, is piling up $300 billion, buying stakes in Europe’s third-largest stock market, the London Stock Exchange, and pumping money into Carnegie Mellon, Cornell Medical College, Texas A&M, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

And the mother of Islamofascism, Saudi Arabia, where 200 senior royals of the ruling family are playing with several billion each and buying up stakes in strategic companies such as Disney and Apple, and Citibank, too, and using the rest of the oil bonanza to fund madrassas, militant mosques, and theological institutes across America and Europe.

Yesterday, it finally hit me: Why I'd been feeling so detached and out of it all week long. Even though I knew this had been coming for a long time, and I had prepared for it in a lot of ways, it was still a shock to my system to be required to let go of any vestige of my American identity. Gone. It's all gone now. Not by my choice, but by the choices of others. I cannot identify with a government or a people who seek to put Jerusalem on the carving table and Israel on the chopping block. Can't. Won't. I am a stranger in a strange land.

Is this how it felt to be Jewish in Europe in 1936? Is this what it felt like to read the newspaper and understand that my government leaders were taking glorious trips abroad, only to come back with false declarations of "peace in our time" while my cousins, brothers, and sisters were being shuffled around like sheep being readied for slaughter? Is this what it felt like to wonder, "Will I be next?" knowing that the question was not going to be answered with "yes" or "no" but simply, "when"?

If anything should make us re-think who we are, whether we are Ashkenazis in New York or Mizrahim in Beer Sheva, it is the clear and undeniable truths brought forth by the events of Annapolis. America does not give a whit about Israel, period. Not only do they not care, the government of the United States has made it perfectly clear in both policy and lack of propriety, that Israel (read: "the Jeeeeewwwws") is the slave, not the light of the world. And, like a slave, we are the scapegoats and whipping boys of the so-called masters at hand, a.k.a. the Arab nations who are acquiring control of the western economy at a rapid rate.

Of course, at this point I could dive into the cliches of apocalypse-ready mystics, hell-bent on half-witted exegesis and the preaching of self-important clerics who use the Word of G-d to fatten their own bellies and line their own pockets. What never ceases to amaze me is the Messianic believer's ability to fall long and hard for those Hollywood-esque approaches to daily horror. Perhaps that is why one Israeli documentarian I once saw interviewed cringed at the sound of Israel being called "The Holy Land." It wasn't that he denied the uniqueness of the place as much as he understood how unrealistic such an ethreal title is for a State so visceral that its daily life is nothing less than an expression of the very real battles of this very real world. Believers in America like to think of Israel as a nation whose point and purpose was fulfilled and recorded in the ancient past. Now that they are on the cusp of facing the same daily struggles, perhaps it is time for those who proclaim faith in the Jewish Messiah to do more than pay lip service to the idea that blessing Israel is a "good thing." Maybe it is time for these believers to put their heart, and not just their tongues into the harvest.

And, speaking of hearts, perhaps now would be a good time for Jewish Americans to stop approaching their inherited culture as marketable kitsch. Seinfeld may finally be making Israel laugh but, in this country, we've already had more than our share of the fun. We have to live our identity proudly, not just throw money at it out of guilt, if we want to survive and if we want our nation to survive. "The Word is close to you. It is in your mouth, it is even in your hearts, therefore, you can do it!" Being Jewish isn't about costuming for or pandering to the crowds: Being Jewish is about being who you were made and called out to be.

Sadly, it will take a war of G-dly proportions for us as a people to accept and embrace this fact. Right now, we have no right to petition governments or protest treaties. We have no right to seek any outsider support, because there is none to be found. And we certainly have no right to demand from G-d answers of salvation that our government is ready to negotiate away for promises more vague than thin air.

In six days in 1967, our G-d gave our city back to us. He gave us that contentious mountain, with its offensive domes and concreted gates erected to prevent the happening of an event that the whole world, both Jew and gentile, know to be true: the return and reign of Messiah Yeshua. In six days in 1967, our G-d sent us one magnificent calling card that read, "I'm coming sooner-- sooner than anyone thinks, and I'm telling you about it first, because I want you to be there when I arrive." And what did we do with that calling card? We stuck it in a scrapbook, stuck the scrapbook in the attic, and now we're debating on throwing it out with the spring cleaning.

No, we have no right to do anything but fall on our face in humiliation for what we have done to Him and His promises. We are a horrible, stiff-necked people and we should be filled with shame.

At the same time, we should also understand our responsibility to Him, to make things right. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves now--except, that is, to trust in His salvation. That's it. Because we have disarmed ourselves and we have no one in this world to turn to. It doesn't get anymore Biblical than this. Don't believe me? Just read Psalm 2 or Isaiah 63, or Zechariah 9, or the entirety of Jeremiah for starters.

As for the Messianic Jewish people, we have a responsibility to:

Stand up and speak out against the crimes of Annapolis.

We must demand a unified Jerusalem in the hands of the nation of Israel.

We must demand an Israel that includes the territories of YESHA--Judea and Samaria--as well as the reclamation of Gush Katif, the Sinai penninsula, and the ceded lands of southern Lebanon, along with the retention of the Golan Heights.

We must decry the United States Government's gross attacks against our nation, our people, and our very selves.

And, most importantly of all, we must beg, with our faces to the ground, for the mercy and action of Messiah that we may be saved for the sake of His throne in Jerusalem.

The prophet Amos ends with a promise from HaShem that we would be uprooted no more. In this, the 60th anniversary year of our modern re-establishment I pray for all of my Jewish people: THIS YEAR, AND EVERY YEAR, IN THE UNIFIED JERUSALEM, ISRAEL!