Zionists vs Un-Zionists, the Struggle of Our Time

(Israeli paratroopers put up an Israeli flag on a fence as they stand on a wall in the Temple Mount after capturing the area during the Six Day War June, 1967)







We have just finished Parshas Shelach which tells the story of the spies sent to scout out Israel, the majority of whom returned to spread fear and doubt, claiming that the land was uninhabitable and unconquerable. Instead they want to choose a new leader and return to slavery in Egypt, which some were always eager to remind everyone, had fleshpots with plentiful fish and meat and vegetables.

This follows a week in which in our present time former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg issued a tirade stating that Israel was doomed as a Jewish state and it was time for everyone to get their foreign passports and get going. Avraham Burg had himself left his Jewish wife and moved to Europe and intermarried, leading the way back to Egypt and the fleshpots.

Burg is hardly alone. Sharon's son Omri was caught on tape talking about grabbing as much money as possible before getting out. Olmert's own sons have left Israel. So has sizable portions of Rabin's family. The same political elite which has worked overtime to sell out Israel have long since taken Burg's advice.

In this same week, Shas endorsed Peres, divider of Yerushalayim, for President. Much like UTJ and Shas's own willingness to keep Olmert in power so long as shekels come rolling in to their own schools, this too is symptomatic of the same selfish and callous mentality as the Burg's and Olmert's. UTJ and Shas may wrap themselves in the mantle of religion but their religious politicians are no different than the secularist politicians corruptly selling out the country and its citizens for some spare change.

The real struggle in Israel is between the Zionists and the Un-Zionists. Not Anti-Zionists for Anti-Zionism implies a genuine opposition to the idea of Israel. Un-Zionists are not so much opposed as they don't care. They're eager and willing to live in Israel and exploit Israel while refusing to recognize that the country has any value as a Jewish state or show any willingness to sacrifice for its survival or to even restrain their greediest impulses in order for it to survive.

The Spies were not so much Anti-Zionists. They were willing to go and look around Israel and if it had been a cushy place they could have just walked into and lived just the way they did back in Egypt, they would have gone for it. But once they realized that there would be difficulties and that they would have to fight for it, in no time at all, they began searching for the exit back to Egypt.

Yet why choose slavery in Egypt? Because even in Egypt there are slaves and there are masters and life can be comfortable for those who know how the system works. Consider that when the second temple was rebuilt, only a small minority of Jews returned. Today the majority of the Jewish people may live in Israel but that is as much by immigration as by default as the Jews of Europe, Russia and America have been wiping themselves out through generations of assimilation and intermarriage. Today millions of Jews continue to choose exile but millions of secular and religious Jews not merely choose exile but proclaim the superiority of exile, whether it be in Paris or Williamsburg. The fleshpots of Egypt come in many forms.

As terrible as exile is, the Un-Zionists choose it every time because it's what they know best and because it demands so little from them. Exile may persecute them and slavery may break them but they will have their meat and fish and their leeks. They will have their Western European Urban Bohemia or Eastern European Americanized Shtetl lifestyle. In Israel they will grab what they can, looters in the garden of G-d, clutching their ill-gotten gains to themselves and arrogantly meeting your eyes when you dare to condemn them. And when the damage is properly done, they can elect themselves a leader who will lead them back into exile from the land they never wanted for it is not they who will inherit the land.