h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

BEING A JEW: If you have begun to read this essay, finish it. It makes little sense unless fully read.
An essay by Shalom Rubenstein.

It is very hard for me to be Jewish.
I have concluded that, second only to the remotest, barrenest, remotest, most life-forsaken corner of the driest desert, my village is the most secular community on the face of the earth.
I am certain that I am the butt of some gigantic cosmic joke, by which G-d has selected me to observe how a Jew flounders and struggles when bombarded by the secular temptations of western society.
On top of all this, I have had the misfortune of being born in such a year that guarantees I hit adolescence at the very time when the world is at the peak of its insistence to stop me from being religious.
It is nigh on impossible for me to uphold half the laws my faith requires, and I resent society because of it.
But nevertheless, I am still Jewish.
I have not renounced the very foundations of my existence just because modern teenage culture required it.
I have refused to give up, just as many Jews have refused to in the past. The very fact that Judaism still exists, despite the incomprehensible horrors it has endured, is the greatest testimony and accolade it could receive.
Our tenacity is nothing short of incredible, and it has given seed to many triumphs of our culture, perhaps none more incredible than the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948.
Many men and women were pivotal in this wondrous event, but at the base of it all was one man; the father of modern Zionism; Theodore Herzl.
At a time when Israel is very much at the centre of the news, it is important to reflect on why it really exists.
The thousands who were mercilessly butchered in New York are the victims of a struggle in which both sides are wrong, yet both sides are too stubborn to admit it.
While I make no secret of being outwardly, conceptually at least, pro-Israel, a passionate Zionist even, I cannot condone many of Israel’s actions under Shiron in this war. (And it is a war.) But while I realise that we too have been stubborn, and in many of our actions downright wrong, I cannot believe anyone would deny we have had a pretty raw deal too.
Not only have hundreds of our innocent civilians been murdered, but everyone else in the world seems to be against us as well.
We hear of reports informing us of how ‘little Muhammad Al-Nissr will not be handing in his homework tomorrow…another victim of Zionist barbarism.’
They were obviously not this blunt, but essentially this message is being conveyed to an impressionable British public with a history for xenophobia.
When I was in Spain, I read posters raging against ‘Jewish Barbarians,’ and I recently learnt of how Arab schoolchildren in Israel are taught to chant ‘Kill the heathen Jews. The Jews must be killed.’
I assure you, those facts are quite true. (I do wish to add, however, that this right wing anti-Semitic view is obviously not apparent throughout the Islamic world. It resides within a tiny minority of Muslims, just as anti-Islamic feeling resides with in a tiny minority of Jews. I would be distraught if anyone were to think I was an Islamophobe.) I think it pivotal that we make the distinction between the genuine, freedom fighting Palestinians upon whom the British media focuses (with these I can easily sympathise, and, looking at Judaic history, even empathise), and the terrorists who are responsible for the suicide bombings. British media labels all Palestinians as freedom fighters who desire peace. While many are, it is important to realise that terrorist organisations like Hizbollah and Hamas do not want peace. They want to destroy Israel and ultimately Judaism.
One would not be far wrong in thinking that the world’s media is indeed against Israel, seemingly wishing to stop it existing in the same way secular temptations of society seem to want to stop me from being a Jew.
It is pivotal, therefore, now, more than ever, to look back, and concentrate on why Israel really exists, and to take a look at the dream of the man who started it.

France, 1894, and a young Hungarian Jewish journalist is dispatched to cover a case that is stirring up controversy in France.
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish soldier, has been scapegoated, and falsely accused of spying for German. He is given a puppet trial, and found guilty.
Anti-Jewish riots break out all over France, in areas where Jews had previously enjoyed equal rights.
The journalist took a moment to ponder his own Judaism; He had always taken it for granted before now, but upon seeing how easily anti-Semitic hatreds could surface, incited by nothing but one false trial, he recognised a problem.
He concluded that Jews would only ever be truly safe from this hatred when they had their own state; a state governed by Jews, inhabited by Jews, and a safe haven for Jews everywhere.
This state was Israel, and the young Hungarian was Theodore Herzl. He saw how easily the Jews could be used as scapegoats in Europe where they were in a minority, and he knew that this was dangerous.
It is a chilling thought when one contemplates that Herzl was indeed exactly right; Anti-Semitic feeling could easily be incited, as they were incited to almost apocalyptic effects forty five years after the Dreyfus case with the shocking events of the Shoa.
Herzl died in 1904, and never lived to see his dream become a reality, but in 1948, when my race was still in deep shock from the most catastrophic obscenity inflicted on any ethnicity in history, the state of Israel gained independence.
Its nationhood was instantly, literally instantly, thrown into the balance when war broke out.
Israel, newborn, weak, with an army using homemade weapons, Israel had to stand up to the unquestionable might of the Arab Coalition, which was essentially the rest of the Middle East.
In typical style, Israel won, but it has been fighting ever since.
I admire Theodore Herzl, and the state of Israel, because, in the face of bitter resistance from forces far stronger than itself, they fought on.
Herzl ultimately won his battle, and I pray nightly that Israel should win its.


‘If only you will it, it is no dream.’
T.Herzl