Column: Prisoners of Zion

A friend of mine said jokingly the other day that she needs to write a book, but never will, called “Prisoners of Zion.” Understanding what she meant, I laughed, but suggested, for the sake of clarity, that she add something to the title like, “Jews of Faith Trapped in a post-Zionist Nightmare.”

What’s so funny?

Good question. Now that I think of it, it’s not funny at all. Is there a rule of humor out there somewhere that says that if you have to explain a joke it's no good? I have to do some research. Anyway, suffice it to say that it’s not easy to keep your sense of humor living in Israel today unless you believe that the Arabs are utopian Europeans who are just disguising themselves as Hamasnikim and that all will be well if we only give up Judaism and adopt the faith of Shimon Peres in the “transvaluation” of the Middle East.

By the way, what is transvaluation? I don’t know. On the inside flap of his book “The New Middle East,” you can find that word: “Peres has called for nothing less than a total transvaluation of our thinking about the future of the Middle East. Peace, he has argued eloquently, is the only alternative for Jews and Arabs poised on the verge of a new century, and a new millennium.”

This is helpful. At least now I now what the Left is trying to do to me. They are trying to transvalue me. I knew something strange was going on. I guess the folks from Gush Katif and the Northern Shomron got a crash course in transvaluation. Does the burning down of shuls in Gaza represent a promising sign of reciprocal transvaluation on behalf of the Arabs? I might support transvaluation if it was reciprocal. That’s what we need, reciprocal transvalutation. How does that sound?

Still not funny? I didn’t think so, so back to the Prisoners of Zion.

It’s like this. You love the land of Israel, the Jewish people, the Torah, the Tzaddikim, and the blue, blue sky and so you don’t want to be anywhere else in the world. You know that here your prayers are heard like no place else in the world and believe that at any moment your prayers and those of your fellow Jews might break through and flip the whole situation around and that the redemption might really come. On the other hand, you recognize that Israel is controlled by people who are post-Zionists – people who want to destroy the state as a Jewish state and melt it somehow into Eurabia – a dhimmi utopia that exists only in the figment of the imagination of the transvaluationalists and the blood lust dreams of anti-Semites and modern day Hitlerites.

So, stuck between this and that, you are a Prisoner of Zion.

Some friends have tossed in the towel and are already Stateside. One buddy left a month ago, headed for what turned out to be the extremely unfortunate destination of New Orleans. He was missing for five days until we found out that he was shattered but doing ok in Mississippi -- say a prayer for Aryeh Leib ben Leah. Now his wife, who was going to join him there with their three kids, doesn’t want to leave. She’d rather deal with a familiar mess after seeing that.

Another friend is going back to Florida next week. He’ll be back at a good paying job and in his condo on the beach in no time. I can’t say I blame him but at the same time I have told him, and he agrees reluctantly, that as much as he will be relieved to escape the post-Zionists, he will sorely miss, sooner or later, the holiness of the Land of Israel.

One more comment before I go. I again encourage everyone to become familiar with Professor Paul Eidelberg. He is interviewed every week on Arutz 7 and you can find both audio and text archives. He makes the same argument that he has been making for decades – that there needs to be an overhaul of the entire political system here to ensure representative government if we are to get out of the viselike grip hold of the Left. He is right and has been right for a long time. Without a complete change in the political system we will just see more of the same -- regardless of who wins the next elections.