As Jews living in America, we strike a complicated balance. We exist in a compromise of lifestyles and identities. We are not only American, and we are not only Jewish. We are American Jews, who have been able to pride ourselves in the possession of both superior Western freedom, and a beautifully rich religious tradition.
One the one hand, we are American. Our minds and our bodies belong to these great United States. We were born here, raised here and trained here. We are one hundred percent American. Each morning we awake in America and go to our American jobs in our American cars, contributing to the American economy while our children attend American schools, studying American history. We pay American taxes and vote in American political elections. Some of us are even members of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the strongest democracy the World has ever known.
And yet, we are Jews. Our hearts and souls belong to our G-d, and to our Torah. We are born as Jews, circumcised as Jews, and given Jewish names. We are Children of Israel. Each morning we wake up and turn on our televisions to catch the latest Israeli news, to hear if terror has again struck our Israeli towns, and wonder about the status of our Israeli brethren. We practice Jewish law, study Jewish history, and pray facing our beloved Jerusalem, Israel's capital. Some of us even have family in Israel, and have visited the holiest land the World has ever known.
We have been able to successfully achieve this balance and compromise because our two halves do not exist in contradiction. America is friendly towards Jews, and invites us from all corners of the globe with open arms to live in safety and freedom, without persecution. So too, our religious tradition sustains itself through its ability to be practiced in any land, and in virtually every circumstance. Our Judaism is a religion that transcends both geography and time.
Jews have contributed peacefully to American culture in large numbers for nearly a century. In turn, the American government has developed a good rapport with the Jewish people. It was no surprise then that after the Holocaust-the greatest tragedy our people has ever known, in which six million innocent civilians were brutally tortured and murdered solely for their religious convictions-that the United States offered residence to thousands of refugees, and cast one of the deciding votes in favor of the United Nations resolution to create the State of Israel, a permanent nation for the Jewish people on the homeland of our ancestry.
Since Israel's inception in 1948, many countries have displayed extreme opposition to Israel's right to exist both physically and conceptually. Israel has been repeatedly attacked by her neighbors and chastised by the international community. Yet America with millions of Jews living peacefully within its midst, has consistently proven itself Israel's greatest friend and ally by continually offering monetary, political, and defensive assistance in times of need.
This friendship has not been one-sided. Israel is one of America's most formidable strategic allies. Israel offers America a model of Western democracy in the perpetually unstable Middle East, a region dominated by distrusted, oppressive dictators. Israel's prosperous financial system proves to the entire World the extent to which American foreign aid can grow when invested in a free-market economy, where consumers dictate fiscal policy rather than the governments of self-serving regimes.
On September 11, 2001, the friendship of Israel and America reached a unique, new level. The United States was attacked in precisely the same manner as Israel has been attacked for the past 18 months (and even for decades prior). A common bond was formed between the United States and Israel. American citizens died and feared for their lives in September just as Israeli citizens are killed and live in sheer terror every day. Americans empathized with Israelis, and Israelis identified with Americans. And when America announced a "War on Terror", Israel was one of the first and most ardent supporters.
Soon after the War on Terror began, Israel was beaten with the most brutal terror attack in her short statehood. Three bombs exploded in the heart of Jerusalem, just as three planes had crashed into the heart of American capitalism and security. As the Jewish nation bled, America supported Israel with the same intensity as Israel had stood by her friend the United States. George W. Bush proclaimed Israel's "right to defend itself" as any sovereign nation would protect itself against terrorism.
However, as the horrific violence against Jewish civilians continued daily amidst Israeli retaliation, aimed solely at halting the attacks, the United States abruptly wavered and shifted its foreign policy. Israel has now entered her own "War on Terror," as our wounded Jewish nation can no longer sustain attacks to its populace. Yet the United States has unexpectedly withdrawn support from Israel's offensive.
This reversal of policy, during a point in time when America is still conducting anti-terror operations in Afghanistan and diplomatically preparing for impending operations in Iraq, represents a blatant discrepancy in foreign strategy. How can one nation take the military initiative to prevent terror, by rooting out terrorists from their homes and toppling the supportive governmental regime, while another nation must sit by idly through continuous attacks and let terror decimate an already petrified population? How can one nation respond to terror by force, while another must respond by rewarding terror with concessions? Does this not represent hypocrisy?
The most appalling element of this backward duplicity is that the two nations in question are friends! Perhaps the United States might require a different set of standards for a bitter enemy, but not of Israel. If not corrected, this inconsistency will certainly damage both nations. The United States and particularly the Bush Administration will lose all semblance of credibility, and more importantly, Israel will continue to be battered as long as terror is rewarded with relevance and compromise.
Now the long-standing harmony of the American Jew is threatened as well. Our lifestyle balance has been achieved only because our American and Jewish halves did not operate in contradiction. Yet now, suddenly they do. As Americans, it is our obligation to fight terror, but as Jews we are pressured to concede to terror. This is a disparity that renders a successful balance impossible to maintain.
With this equilibrium removed from our lives, what can American Jews come to expect next. It is conceivable that other consistencies we have come to expect will be threatened as well. Perhaps Anti-Semitism will suddenly arise in the United States in the same manner it now suddenly stirs in Europe. Maybe the wealth and comfort we have grown accustomed to will instantly disappear as it has this year for Jews in Argentina.
If our American government does not reconsider the newly discovered policy of double standards, and remember Israel, our closest ally and friend in the Middle East in her time of greatest need-"Without Delay," then many serious new questions amongst American Jews will need to be pondered.
The most important question of all for American Jewry: Will we be able to practice our religion freely, safely, and without persecution here in the great United States of America in the near and distant future?