This may be Bill Whittle’s finest summation yet. He certainly covers the themes that have been at the center of many private meditations, prayers and ponderings for those familiar with the Jewish scriptural references Mr. Whittle highlights. Thousands of years later and the same old argument continues:
Mr. Whittle names chapter and verse, or rather, he names one of them. The Scriptures limn the many fractures of the human heart, the myriad ways we fail ourselves and each other:
Genesis 26
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines.
The LORD appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I shall tell you. “Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; 5because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.”
So Isaac lived in Gerar. …
Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the LORD blessed him, and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy; for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.
Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth. Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are too powerful for us.” And Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar, and settled there.
Quarrel over the Wells
Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names which his father had given them.
But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they contended with him.
Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over it too, so he named it Sitnah.
He moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rehoboth, for he said, “At last the LORD has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”
But he not only points out the sad and tedious repetitions — the Philistines filling in the wells three thousand years ago vs. the Palestinians’ deliberate destruction of the tremendous wealth handed to them in the form of those greenhouses — he goes further to ask American Jews why they voted in, why they support a man so dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Now, with the stunning news of the multitude of tunnels dug from Gaza into Israel, the hinge of history has closed another door. Slammed it quite loudly.
Those tunnels were — are, but shortly will be were — changing the rules of this elaborate game the world has played at Israel’s expense. Who donated the dollars (actually, mostly euros) that made the tunnels possible? Who sold Hamas the concrete? Who helped them engineer and build those tunnels? They did it themselves you say? You live in a dream world.
This a culture created to play the role of underdog. Their job is to exist and to suffer and to make demands. Suffering, the right kind of suffering, bestows the right of entitlement, the right to stand eternally with one’s hand out, demanding more.
The PoorPalis can’t design tunnels; they don’t build bridges; they have no desire, nor the memory of any such desire, to see the embodiment of Beauty or Truth or Goodness. Music to soothe and restore? Art to change perceptions? Research to satisfy curiosity (however momentarily)? Such concepts are now beyond a people raised from infancy to hate a group of people they don’t know beyond the cartoon primers they read in school. This is not the hatred of close encounters, it is the deep, abiding misery that arrives on the tails of an inbred sense of entitlement with no hope of fulfillment. Not ever. Normal human desire to achieve has been replaced by an evil simulacrum of a deeply perverted need to destroy.
Continue reading →