April 12th, 2010

Today at 10:00 Israel stood still.

The sirens wailed, not to warn of incoming missiles – this time, like every year, it was the gut wrenching cry: “Remember the 6 million murdered in the Holocaust. Know that you have risen from their ashes.”

Every year sirens across the country go off at the same time. Everyone, no matter where they are, does the same thing – stands, silently, until the sirens stop (2 minutes).

This year was the first time I was in a car when the sirens began. All cars stop, everyone gets out and stands, wherever they are. The traffic lights go from green to red and back again. No one moves. Birds fly overhead; the sun shines and the people are silent.

There is no way to sufficiently encompass the horrors that were, the traumas that burden the first, second and third generations.

It is next to impossible to comprehend the enormity of the miracle that is the State of Israel.

Today Jews in Israel can drive freely, in their nice cars, go where they please. It was their parents and grandparents who were evicted from their homes, stuffed into cattle cars and taken to starve, freeze or be burned to death in concentration camps.

In Israel this Memorial Day is called the “Day of Remembering the Holocaust and Heroism”. There were heroes who fought the Nazi’s, leading revolution against the oppressors. There were those who saved the lives of friends, family and strangers. All these we admire and commemorate.

There is one more kind of heroism. It is silent and modest. And it is the backbone of this country. As I stood, listening to the sirens, I reflected on this heroism and as the siren wail washed over me I felt tears brim in my eyes, read to spill over.

People whose entire families were wiped of the face of the earth – parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters tortured and murdered – came to Israel and created new families.

And had lots of children.

People whose babies were ripped from their arms knew their hearts could never be mended but they did their best to patch them, creating new children that they loved with a ferocity that matched the horrors that were pitted against them in Nazi Europe.

They who suffered unimaginable misery strove to create happiness. And they succeeded.

This is their revenge.

Today their grandchildren walk proudly through the gates of Auschwitz as participants in the March of the Living.

Israeli soldiers stand in that place of horrors and fly the Israeli flag, their uniforms a testament to the power of the Jewish people – no longer helpless. The flag the symbol of the Jewish homeland, rebuilt.

This is more than heroism – it is a miracle.

Am Yisrael Hai – the Nation of Israel Lives!

Take a look.

“One night a father was relaxing with his newspaper after a long day at the office. His son, who wanted to play, kept on pestering him. Finally, fed up, the father ripped out a picture of the globe that was in the paper and tore it into a hundred tiny pieces.
‘Here son, go ahead and try to put this back together,’ he said, hoping that this would keep the little boy busy long enough for him to finish reading his paper.
To his amazement, his son returned after only one minute with the globe perfectly back together.
When the startled father asked how he achieved this feat, the son smiled gently and replied ‘Dad, on the other side of the globe there was a picture of a person, and once I got the person together, the world was okay.’”
~excerpt from, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin S. Sharma

Every single day in Sderot begins like this…

Want to know the facts? Take a look at Kassam statistics and details here!

Nothing could be more clear that this presentation. Click on the link below – take a look and see for yourself.

PS If you are too serious to think that was amusing you need to apply to have a humor implant!

Israel haters think we deserve punishment for our “terrible” behavior. They may even succeed, for a time, in getting a massive boycott rolling… I don’t expect that would last very long, even with a well greased propaganda machine. You see the bottom line is this – who would they really be punishing?

Before you to read the words below I invite you to ask yourself: when was the last time you felt you were forced to do something? That you had no choice?

“We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.

They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded in to the form of the typical inmate.”  (from ”Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl).