I have to confess that I don't know what to do with the horrific tragedy that ended Erev Shabbat with the announcement that all of the Jews in Mumbai's Bet Chabad had been slaughtered, and its sacra desecrated with their blood. I've lived through three wars and hundreds of terror attacks.
Yet, I can't assimilate a reality wherein sixty-three years after the end of the Shoah Jewish blood still flows freely through streets throughout the world.
I can't understand the obtuse evil of the world media, which won't say the magic words. We hear about Pakistani militants, unknown militants, God only knows what kind of militants. What we don't hear is the truth: Muslims did this. Muslims did this because that is what their religion teaches them to do. It doesn't matter that there might be other Muslim voices. This school of Islamic thought rules the mosques and the madrasas, the schools and the street. Muslims throughout the world today are able to justify and applaud, the slaughter of 200 people, ad majorem Allahi gloriam.
This has nothing to do, moreover, with realpolitik. It's not business, it's personal. Otherwise, why did these murderers deviate from the center of their activity to seek out the Chabad house and murder its occupants. Why did they shoot a man sitting quietly over a Gemora? Why did they slay another person who was immersed in his prayers, leaving both Talmud and Siddur drenched in blood? Why did they take a young couple and mow them down in cold blood? They did it because they were doing Allah's Will. They did it because the Jew is the Devil. They did it in line with the notorious hadith:
Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.
Hazal, it would appear, only got it half right.
It's not just that הלכה בידוע שעשו שונא ליעקב . It's also הלכה בידוע שישמעאל שונא ליעקב. (Or all the descendants of Isaac, for that matter).
God Save Us.
ד' יקום דמם.
3 comments:
They certainly targeted Jews, the attack on the Chabad House clearly demonstrates that. But they also indiscriminately killed many others who were Hindi, Muslim, and Christian. I read a survivor's account at the Taj and she told of how a large group of survivors from the initial attack were trying to make their way out to safety in groups of 10. Suddenly the terrorists appeared in the hallway and surrounded the group ahead of hers. She watched in horror as one of the terrorists, smiling, shot a 6 year old child in front of her parents before killing the others in the group. The child and her family were Muslim. The terrorists didn't care. They executed a little child and smiled.
As Elie Wiesel once said: Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.
As Elie Wiesel once said: Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.
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