One big factor—the biggest factor—is often forgotten.
I see from comments that many, if not most, of Townhall readers are familiar with the Old Testament. As such, I’ll take the liberty of recounting a well-known story from the Torah. Moses sent 12 “spies” to check out the Land of Israel. These individuals, a leader from each of the Twelve Tribes, were charged with reporting back on the land, its inhabitants, and the quality of its produce. The ostensible purpose of their 40-day sojourn was to plot out attack plans for the Jews as they entered the Promised Land.
As is well-known, upon their return with enormous specimens of local fruit, the spies fell into two camps. Ten said that the people were big and strong and the land difficult, “a land that eats its inhabitants,” whose Hebrew expression is heard when one talks about the challenges of living in the modern state of Israel. Two of the travelers came to a different conclusion and said that the Jewish tribes could enter the land and conquer. The people latched onto the view of the 10 “doomers,” and the Jewish people were punished for 40 years in the desert—one year for each day of the spies’ sojourn.
A question comes up: if they all saw and experienced the same things, how did Joshua and Caleb come to diametrically opposite conclusions? While they too agreed that the people they saw looked like strong warriors and that the land had its challenges, they added one factor that the other 10 disregarded: God. When they added the Boss to the equation and the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the mix, the final conclusion was that it was possible to successfully enter the land. The 10 spies did not lie: every word they told the people was the truth. They simply looked at the world as it appeared to human eyes and saw a disaster awaiting entry of the Jews into the Land of Israel. The other two members of the party said that yes, it looks tough, but you know, when God is in the mix, then it’s game over for the other side.
I thought about this story when looking at how much hatred there is toward the Jewish people. Two guys speaking Hebrew outside a restaurant in San Jose got pummeled by some foreign trash brought into the United States. According to Grok, the Muslim population in Europe is up about 10 million from 2000, being driven primarily by immigration. Many have brought their Jew and Israel hatred, even if they appear to come with nothing but the shirts on their backs. They have infected an already antisemitic Left and given it purpose: to make wildly false claims against Israel that have no basis in reality. Israel let in thousands of aid trucks, which Hamas stole. Israel is starving Gazans! Israel sends phone and text messages as well as drone calls to move prior to an attack. Israel is doing a genocide! If I hate the Yankees, even if they donate $20 million to my favorite charity, I will find some reason to fault them on the donation. They did it for tax reasons! They could have given 10 times the amount, but they pocketed the rest! Jew hatred from Muslims, the Left, and now from the weirdo Right is ever-present and growing.
The ones on the Right who formerly expressed no antisemitic comments and seemed to support Israel are high-paid losers. Many of them are afraid of attacking Jews directly, because you know, that’s kind of like a Hitler thing. So it’s those nasty “Zionists” and Epstein (who was Jewish, but not his fat friend Bannon, who is prominent in the “I liked Israel and now I hate it” crowd), or “pedophiles controlled by Israel” from Candace Owens. Tucker Carlson claims that Mark Levin is using some type of Jewish witchcraft to control U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand how the ambassador levitated from his chair to the door of his office. Now I understand!
And just as God was with the Jews in the desert and after the destruction of the first and second Temples and after the fires of Auschwitz, God will be with the Jews and all those who have stood steadfast by us today. Yes, on a purely observational level, things look awful. Former friends attack Israel nonstop. We have social failures coming out of their parents’ basements to tell us that Hitler was cool. Jews are harassed or threatened for the crime of being Jewish. Shots are fired at synagogues in Toronto, Jews were stabbed in Manchester, and shot dead on the beach in Sydney. All for being Jewish. Yet, God is still with His people. Tucker doesn’t think so; he’s sure that God dropped the Jews once Titus finished with the Second Temple, and his recent guest, Carrie Prejean, said that Jews have been replaced: “The Catholic Church is the true Israel. Christians are the spiritual Semites. We are the new people of God.”
So, today one has a choice. He can be like the 10 spies who saw the world as it objectively was and throw up his hands and say that all is lost. Israel is isolated and under threat from the lunatics in Iran, Jews in the West no longer enjoy being like their neighbors but are once again being singled out as being different and unwanted. My father told me that his best friend in Germany told him that he could no longer play with him as they threatened his father with a loss of work if they continued to be seen together. Or one can say, okay, things look bad, but God hasn’t moved. Now, it is dark, but soon it will be light. Things will get better. Whoever was an optimist after the Holocaust must have been considered nuts, but those who lived through the hell of the camps and today see the modern state of Israel—with all of its problems and challenges—would not believe that such could be true. I know one fellow who witnessed his father shot dead by the Nazis in Lublin for refusing to work with them in rounding up the Jews. The fellow himself went through multiple camps as a child before coming to the U.S. with his mother. He is a successful doctor and has grandchildren flying back and forth to Iran and working SIGINT in the top IDF electronics unit. Statistically, he should have died in the camps or given up on Judaism when he arrived in New York. We have statistics, while by God, everything is either 0 or 100 percent.
One of my boys told me a joke. A fellow came home to tell his mother that he was engaged and that they were making an engagement party. The mother saw a group of 20 young women together and walked straight up to the betrothed and wished her a hearty mazal tov. Her son was in shock. “Mother, there were so many young women there. How did you know instantly who my fiancé was?” “It was easy. From the first moment I saw her, I couldn’t stand her.” And that is the status of Jews today. The Jews in San Jose did not wave an Israeli flag or express their views on Gaza or Iran. Nope—you speak Hebrew, you’re a Jew, and so we are going to beat you up, so thought the imported Assyrian bullies who have since been identified. The Jewish future is bright; those who have turned against the Jews will be the ones who will have to explain to God their treachery. They will fall like all those before them.