ALGEMEINER
by Shmuley Boteach
July 24, 2014
We Jews know what a blood libel is. It captures false accusations that Jews are culpable for deaths they did not commit or are in no way responsible for. So how should we view Slate’s publication of Allison Benedikt’s piece that holds Birthright responsible for the death of heroic Israeli soldier Max Steinberg, an American who selflessly served in the IDF and was murdered by Hamas terrorists last Sunday?…….
No one denies that Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Hamas are evil, right? I mean, they target babies for murder, they beat women and murder them in honor killings, and they believe they’re going to have sex with tons of women if they kill enough American or Israeli babies on earth. If that isn’t evil, then the word has no meaning.
So, a young American man or woman has a career choice. They can earn a degree from a great university and get a job making tons of money on Wall Street. They can go into media, host TV shows, and see their by-lines in top newspapers. They can become sports heroes and enjoy the thrall of the masses. Each of these things will give them a great life: money to spend on vacations, cool homes, fast cars, the latest gadgets. Maybe even lots of sex. Or, they can see the world for what it is……Max Steinberg is the apogee of their heroism. His name and Benedikt’s do not belong in the same sentence.
Israel, an America-style democracy in the world’s most dangerous region, seeks to live free amid being surrounded by an ocean of tyranny. And young Jewish men and women are prepared to fight so that a tiny country built around America’s ideas of freedom of religious practice, freedom of press, respect for women, and economic opportunity can succeed in the most tyrannical neighborhood on earth. Benedikt would inflict upon a fallen soldier of the American and the Jewish people the ultimate insult: after being robbed of his life to rob him even of his status as a hero and portray him as a tool, a stooge, instead. Would she say the same of, say, the Marquis de Lafayette?
American independence would never have come about without the assistance of foreign fighters who helped a fledgling democracy achieve its freedom. In 1780 alone, more than 5,000 French soldiers landed in Rhode Island to help the Americans fight the British in New York. More famously, the decisive victory of Washington over Cornwallis at Yorktown on October, 19 1781, would have been impossible without the assistance of the French Army and Navy led by the Comte de Rochambeau. To be sure, the French had many motivations in assisting the Americans, among which were countering the surging global influence of their English archrivals. But a great many French patriots, inspired by the spirit of the coming revolution, were motivated by the simple desire to uphold human liberty. Were they simply tools of people like Thomas Paine – the Birthright propagandists of their time?…..
ArchitectGuy on Israel 