Shalom Pollack: foot notes

 I was sitting on the bus the other day in Yerushalayim when I  overheard a conversation behind me.

They were an older Israeli couple. One asked the other about the origin of the term "Religious Zionist". After all, she told her husband, we secular Israelis are Zionists too. Why do they appropriate the name Zionists?
He explained that since all secular Israelis are Zionists, religious Zionists must set themselves apart from other religious people who are non Zionists.

A bit complicated, but there was logic that might have described  Israel when he was a young man, not today.
Today,  clearly not all secular Israelis are Zionists.

I turned around (yes, that is still an accepted bus experience in Israel) and asked the man if he was sure that all secular Israelis are Zionists by definition?
Would he include prominent secular Israeli "leaders" who spread blood libels about the Jewish state?
Are the heads of Israeli political parties running in the upcoming elections who tell the world that the IDF kills Arab babies for sport  Zionist?
Is it Zionism when "Zionist leaders" assert that religious "hilltop youth" are a bigger threat to Israel than Hamas?

At this point, she responded with certainty;  indeed, they were a greater threat than Hamas.
I asked her, " Who wants to kill you, Hamas or the religious hilltop youth?"
The conversation ended.

The elder couple is typical of a certain profile of the Israeli population.
From their youth, they were indoctrinated by  Socialist, secular elites who told them that  Israel's success lies in its distancing from traditional Jewish identity,
the real enemy.

The challenge to their self-image of the all-knowing,  born-to-lead elites is more unsettling  than Hamas. That is why they built a coalition with Hamas-supporting  Israeli Arabs to defeat the Jews they despise and do so again in the coming election.
The Arabs are her only hope to continue her hegemony over the annoying Jews.  They need their numbers against a growing pro-Torah population.

There are many like her, though a shrinking demographic, which only adds to their insecurity and intolerance.

This group self-identifies as the true  Zionists; the  "original" smug  Zionists, before the growing numbers of religious Jews became hard to ignore.

Then there are the outright self-hating, self-loathing Jews who hate the word Zionism.
The circumstance, geography, and dates change, but the self-loathing, tortured, warped souls follow the same pattern.

In their quest for acceptance by the Gentile anti-Semite, these fallen souls commit any moral crime to separate themselves from their Nation and people.
On campuses, in the media, etc., these weary spirits are the vanguard of hatred for Israel.
They are lost to their people, themselves, and ultimately scorned by those they try to impress.

This pathetic tragedy repeats itself throughout our history.

What seems to be a rather new phenomenon is the  "very (the only?) Jewish" anti zionists, the "Neturei Karta." They and the classic self-haters share a life mission.
(A scene is seared in my memory: Anti-Israel Hasidic-clad Neturei Karta shared a stage with anti-Semites in Germany. The Germans were whooping it up, having a hilarious time watching the "Jews" denounce and curse the Jewish state while the Jews glowed, showered by the encouragement of the whooping, drunken  Germans.)
The Jews on that shameful stage will tell you that is just what the Torah demands.
I heard them say it.
Both groups of traitors are a part of our world.
One speaks in the name of Torah. The other speaks in the name of morality and caring.
Both are a disgrace.


Both publicly support our enemies, serve as their mouthpieces, and are always scorned by them.
Both care little for the lives of eight million Jews.

They are a small,  dark footnote to a glorious Jewish story that surges forward without them.

shalompollack613@gmail.com