05/14/2024
Sharing a note I wrote for Kol haKfar:
Today is יוֹם הָעַצְמָאוּת. Can we say "Happy Yom HaAtzmaut/Israeli Independence Day" in 2024?
It's easy to be pessimistic.
Jews and our allies are under physical and psychological attack across the world. Ostensibly educated people fetishize our enemies in bizarre revolutionary cosplay while they attend, literally, the most elite institutions in America to become tomorrow's elites.
Friends have betrayed us, the mainstream media is biased to the point of incoherence, allies have popped up whom we don't know we can or should trust.
Mostly, we note how horrible war is. The carnage of children is the thing of nightmares, our friends and families have fled their homes in the south and north, hostages are still living underground, so many are dead. Young Israelis serve in an uncertain war led by the worst government in our short history, but... we're still here.
Israel is the geopolitical center of the Jewish world with 7.2 million of us. Jews aren't accepted anywhere no matter what, at least not for very long, we now have our ancestral land, thriving modern cities, brilliant universities, a powerful military, a generally stable democracy with premier institutions. We now have a place to call home.
For that, I'm grateful. Happy Independence Day.
