Israel Is Beyond Logic

There’s only one place in the world where history, archaeology, empirical science, psychology and journalistic integrity don’t apply: Israel.

Consider that we live in a world that recognizes the claim of Palestinian Arabs to what they consider their homeland (which can be backed and documented for at best several hundred years — for the small percentage of those Arabs that didn’t arrive throughout the 19th and 20th centuries as transient Bedouins or marauding tribes), while ignoring the Jewish people’s documented connection to Israel that’s almost four millennia old. If the Torah were taken by the world merely as a historical document, and history supposedly mattered to the world, then the Jews of Israel should be considered the oldest landowners alive. But history doesn’t matter in Israel.

Consider that the world recognizes the antiquity of Haram al-Sharif — the al-Aqsa Mosque (Temple Mount) — as the third-holiest site for Muslims and its centrality to Palestinian nationalistic yearning. And yet, this same world readily overlooks the archaeological digs that unearthed pieces of pottery and scrolls that prove absolutely the ancient and continuous connection between the Land of Israel and the Jewish People. With a world so passive to practical proof, the Palestinians (since Arafat and the mufti before him) have audaciously claimed that there’s no connection between the Jews and Yerushalayim, specifically the Temple Mount. As if the al-Aqsa mosque isn’t very clearly sitting atop the Western Wall that archaeologists have “scientifically proven” (through carbon dating) to belong to the ancient Israelite temple as originally mentioned — where else? — in the Torah. So the world believes in archaeology that dates back to the 7th century C.E. but not as far as the 9th century B.C.E.? Archaeology, it seems, is meaningless when the digs prove too Jewish.

Consider that a world that ascribes to Western philosophies and notions of the laws of physics, the ones that dictate trajectories, suddenly suspends all logic the moment it involves Palestinians and Israelis. Specifically, if a bullet was found to be shot by Palestinians, but a video looked inconclusive, suddenly Israel is the only place in the world where critical scientific review is meaningless. The old Mohammed al-Dura case was the one that set the standard. Then we saw a small helpless boy, first in his father’s arms, and then left to fend for himself, suddenly shot and killed before viewers’ eyes. It didn’t matter that every review of the incident proved without doubt that the bullets could not have physically hit the child from Israeli positions; the world instead suspended its belief in science, in trajectories, laws of causality — and Israel would be to blame. This tactic is commonplace today, and even after the facts are established, the original lie is what stays in people’s minds — because, in Israel, “empirical science” is optional.

Everywhere in the world, when a man comes charging at you with a knife, and screams, “G-d is great!” you would be wise to either get out of the way or fight back to disarm the maniac. The murderous maniac would be considered insane, and the consequences, tragic. If the man was killed in the process, the one who stopped the rampage would be hailed as a hero. In Israel, if you kill the person who is trying to kill you, you’ll most likely use “excessive force” and the stabber’s motive stems from “settlements,” and yet has no connection to the open incitement on display, preached by imams in mosques. In the West they call it “blaming the victim,” but in Israel, somehow, there’s no human psychology that’s applicable.

The world over, journalists are expected to deliver the news in an unbiased manner. In September, a BBC headline read “Germany Police Shoot Berlin Islamist After Knife Attack” — very matter-of-fact. Concerning Israel, the BBC headline for a similar incident read “Palestinian Shot Dead, After Jerusalem Attack Kills Two.” Clearly these headlines were not produced at the same journalistic standard. But who needs standards when journalistic integrity need not be applied to Israel?

Either there’s some inexplicable force over the Land of Israel where suddenly the bedrock of global civilizations — namely, the sciences and critical thinking — cease to exist or matter or, very simply, there’s a double standard.

The final question, then, is: What good is it trying to reconcile with a world that looks you in the face and tells you that you have a right to exist and no right in the same breath?

Luckily for the ancient Israelites, of whom we are millennial continuations, they never relied on mass acceptance to feel chosen. The world can continue to ignore its right hand to spite its left, but that won’t change the truth. The world can continue to deny Israel its rightful place in the order of things. In a world of stolen narratives, we have to ensure that those who would deny our existence to our face are not the ones who dictate our storylines. For that, Israel doesn’t believe in the superiority of science, which changes with the times, but rather only in Hashem, Who is eternal and unchanging. Beyond logic.

This article appeared in print in the October 28th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.