The July 21st fatal stabbings of Yosef Salomon, 70, his daughter Chaya, 46, and his son Elad, 36 is one more tragedy added to a seemingly never-ending list. The dead and maimed keep piling up but the Zionist dream seems alive and well, impervious to truth’s brutal onslaught. Though Zionism’s basic intransigence means appeals to basic humanity will most likely fail, perhaps a look at how Zionism has affected Jews themselves will open someone’s eyes. Here are just a few of the numbers.
NOTE: The following statistics lean towards more conservative numbers. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all causalities and those wounded.
Between 1920 and 1948
– 685 Jewish residents of Mandatory Palestine were killed
Between 1948 and 1997
– 20,093 Israeli soldiers were killed in combat
– 75,000 Israelis were wounded
– nearly 100,000 Israelis were considered disabled army veterans
Between 2000 and 2005
– 1,194 Israelis were killed
– 7,520 Israelis were wounded
Ignoring all other prices that the Zionist project has demanded payment on and focusing purely on the cost of life it has exacted, we’re left with a question. Is it worth it?
For many, Zionism has hacked away at the very concept of what it means to be Jewish, transforming a purely religious concept into one of “national purity” patriotism. For many Israelis, desensitized after years of bloodshed, war is peace. In “Israel”, war has become an inescapable part of life, seemingly another branch of physics. “Israel” has long despaired of peace.
And they’re right.
Zionism and peace are two mutually-exclusive concepts. It’s rebellion against the Jewish spiritual mission, and the quietism inherent in that mission, has stripped away a meaningful identity, replacing it with a hollow shell. The shell’s emptiness becomes ever more apparent and rings ever hollower from year to year. Bellicose nationalism can never produce peace. It didn’t for Prussia. It didn’t for Japan. And it definitely won’t for “Israel”. The death toll mounts on both sides from day to day and “Israel’s” militaristic escapades inflame the world, driving many to desperate acts born of despair.
Many of Eretz Yisroel’s (the Land of Israel’s) Jewish residents accept Zionist identity theft as a fait accompli, zestfully defending this inversion of morals. Violence is strength, forbearance is weakness. Frightened into compliance by a saber-rattling, thinly disguised military junta, Israelis feel compelled to tow the thin. The specter of another Holocaust is raised daily to justify military hegemony in the region. Israelis feel they have no choice. So, they shout about “security” from the rooftops, coached along by their directors/politicians. It’s Stockholm Syndrome at its finest. Thus, the price of Zionism inflates from day to day.
For all of this, we mourn. And again, we ask. It is worth it?
As Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro once said:
At what time does the premium for this “insurance” (Israel) become too expensive?