Dear Friend of Israel,
I am saddened but not surprised by the failure of the most recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and by the renewal of terrorist rocket fire. Hamas simply does not seek peace with Israel. It seeks her destruction.
This is apparent not just in Hamas’ actions, but in the words of the Hamas charter, the terrorist group’s founding document, which is full of strident calls for attacking and eliminating Israel (which it calls the “Zionist invaders”) and paranoid anti-Semitic delusions about Jews causing war and controlling the world banking system. The charter even flatly declares that “so-called peaceful solutions … are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” Certainly, a group that subscribes to this hateful ideology has no interest in peace – and if the world leaders and members of the liberal media who routinely criticize Israel for defending herself had taken the time to read the Hamas charter, they would know that. Israel understands perhaps better than any other country that the only way to survive in a world where terrorism seems to be gaining ground every day is to defeat terrorism, not compromise with it. Groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS (which just beheaded an American journalist and released the grisly, despicable video of the attack on the Internet) are not interested in compromise. Prime Minister Netanyahu summed it up well in a recent speech when he called groups like Hamas and ISIS “branches of the same tree” and said “they’re the enemies of peace, they’re the enemies of Israel, they’re the enemies of all civilized countries.” There cannot be compromise between civilized nations and the barbaric practices and the hateful ideology of terrorists.
In 2010 José María Aznar, the former Prime Minister of Spain, wrote in an op-ed in the London Times, “The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.” I fear, too, that if the free world does not come together and work as one to defeat terrorism our very civilization is at stake. But right now this unity is elusive. I hope that Israel will not bow to the pressure on her from European nations, the U.N., and even the U.S. to compromise with Hamas. Israel is the “canary in the coal mine,” on the front lines leading the battle for our western civilization, and we know it.
Please pray for protection and security for all Israelis – and for the day when God will bless us with his most precious gift ofshalom, peace.
http://www.ifcj.org/site/PageNavigator/eng/USENG_homenew
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein
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