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In recent days, many New Zealand editors and commentators have reared up onto their hind legs, baying for Israel's "blood". Some have even had the temerity to patronise the Jewish State, suggesting "cute, little" New Zealand can teach Israelis a thing or two about being citizens of the world. (It is extraordinary the complete destruction of vision and rationality that results from journalists having their heads firmly wedged in their own fundamentals!)
Late last year, I wrote in the concluding chapter of "A Great Sign": "Today, while Israel has been for a few brief years (especially during the 1950s and 60s) the 'darling' of the international community, the black stormclouds of prejudice, double-standards and rank hatred are piling up again on every horizon.
"In the end, there will really be only one 'nation' left capable or willing to stand against the tide of destruction which 'the serpent' will spew out 'like a river' (Rev 12.15) against Israel...People, Land and State."
And that "nation" is? Well, it is supposed to be the Church!
In the meantime, as controversy inevitably intensifies and swirls like smog around Israel, we need to take seriously such sentiments as have been plainly expressed by Rabbi Chaim Potok, in his 1978 book, "Wanderings". He there explains that Israel "is a warmth for Jews everywhere".
This is the case "despite the failures and disappointments felt when dreams are soiled by the muck of reality and the weaknesses of human beings.
"What a price we have paid for that land: seven thousand killed in the War of Independence; another thousand killed in the 1956 Sinai Campaign and the 1967 Six-Day War; three thousand killed in the October 1973 war; hundreds killed by terrorist raids.
"We offer ourselves grim consolation: all the wars have cost us less than three days at Auschwitz (Nazi death camp)...The Jew sees all his contemporary history refracted through the ocean of blood that is the Holocaust."
No brazen re-write of Middle East history, nor trendy pursuit of partisan "social justice", will ever diminish the depth of that "ocean"...not even by so much as a fraction of one millimetre. Nor should it!
