G-d bless you mighty Micronesia

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Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo. If you don’t know where to find these countries on the map, search for them right now.

Rabbi Chaim Ingram

Micronesia has 104,937 inhabitants.  Nauru and Palau, also part of what one might term the Greater Micronesian Empire, have a combined population of 34,552.  The Marshall Islands boast a population of 53,066. But in terms of spirit and tsedek, these nations are superpowers.

They are the only nation-states (along with the USA and Israel) to have stood up for the truth and voted in the UN against a resolution of perfidious deceit, treacherous deception and brazen duplicity.  A resolution of hate calling upon the world to condemn President Trump’s decision to actively recognise Jerusalem for what it is and what it has been since the reign of King David – the capital of Israel and of Am Yisrael.

These valorous member-nations had nothing to gain and everything to lose by going out on a limb, If they didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the USA while not running foul of the Arab bloc and its scores of acolytes, they could have abstained as 35 countries did (dismayingly including Australia of whom more was expected).

But they didn’t.  They voted for truth. Not because their Presidents had made election promises and had to keep them.  Nor because they were interested parties.  They voted for truth because they were contemptuous of lies.

How is it possible that not one European country stood up for the truth? Europe, the bedrock of the Judaeo-Christian heritage, founded on the Bible which makes it unmistakeably clear in innumerable citations just what Jerusalem is?

I reel from shock and shame that the land of my birth, “Great” Britain, the land which gave the Christian world the famed yuletide carol “Once in Royal David’s City” (and no, it wasn’t speaking of Tel Aviv), joined the bulk of her erstwhile European Union partners, notably France and Germany – yes, Germany! – in affirming the resolution denying Israel her right to determine her capital and its historical link to the aforementioned King David. In short, denying Israel her history and her heritage.

Scarcely more evidence is needed of these European and other nations’ post-Christian. godless status. They have been dismantling over the past half-century one after another of the planks of universal morality, the Noakhide laws – who after all cares any more about blasphemy? or traditional sexual morality? or the duty to preserve life as opposed to the right to die with dignity? And all this of course in the wake of the most bestial act of genocidal mass murder this planet has ever seen – on this same European continent. How then can these nations be expected to affirm Biblical teaching on Jerusalem?

However if we look more closely we see that it is once again a case of history repeating itself, a case of plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

 In this week’s Torah reading, Am Yisrael in Egypt pay their one and only visit back to Erets Yisrael prior to the Exodus.  That is when they accompany Jacob’s coffin in procession to the ancestral shrine, the Cave of Makhpela in Hebron for burial.  With them “went up all Pharaoh’s servants …and all the elders of Egypt ….. a very formidable gathering” (Gen 50:7-9).

At first sight it appears that the cream of Egyptian society is accompanying the Bnei Yisrael to Hebron purely as an honour guard for the burial of Jacob who was nationally respected and mourned. However when we read between the lines, the truth is more sinister.  The military-style guard is actually to ensure the Bnei Yisrael return to Egypt.  Even now, with a ‘benign’ Pharaoh ruling, enslavement was setting in. The men and women of Israel were not in the least free to choose to return to their native land.  Indeed the children were kept behind – ostensibly so as not to expose them to an arduous journey but in reality to ensure their parents and grandparents returned as dependents to their host country.

This is the very first instance in our history – but sadly not the last – which encapsulates the slogan made infamous 3,000 years later in Napoleonic France. To the Jews as a nation nothing; to the Jews as individuals, everything! (Count Stanislas de Clement-Tonnerre, Constituent Assembly Debate 23 Dec 1789).

This needs to be seen for what it is – a form of anti-Jewish subjugation, albeit political.   Not the most sinister form. That was to take root in ancient Egypt sixty short years after Jacob’s burial.

And just over 100 years after the French Revolution’s ideals of “liberty, fraternity and equality” emancipated France’s Jews as individuals provided they assimilated nicely into French society came the Dreyfus Affair in that same country which exposed the Jew-hatred which had been lurking just beneath the surface and led to the beginnings  of a solution: political Zionism.

Is France in 2017 such a different place from France in 1790? Add the rest of Western Europe too.  How dare you accuse us of antisemitism? they say!  We are not antisemitic, only anti-Zionist! For Jews as individuals everything; for Jews as a nation, nothing. We do not even recognise Israel’s right to determine its own capital!

Will it take as long as 100 or even sixty years until the next bout of hard-core anti-Jewish persecution rears its ugly head in Europe? Will we ever learn from history?

The West and Christendom (or perhaps we should now call it post-Christendom) is traditionally identified by Jewish scholars as the progeny of Edom. They have now openly joined forces en masse with the descendants of Ishmael, the noisy conglomerate of Arab nations (perhaps we should term them post-Islamic) whose opposition to Israel as the nation of G-D is clear and unambiguous.  The words from Psalms with which I headed this essay, words of King David, anointed of G-D, who purchased with money the parcel of land later to be known as Har HaBayit on Mount Moriah, site of the Akeda (II Chron. 3:1) and foundation-stone of Jerusalem,  are being played out in front of our very eyes!

Thank G-D not every nation has been sucked into the maelstrom.  The prophet Isaiah (2:3) tells us that at the end of days “many nations will go and they will say ‘Come, let’s go up to the mountain of G-D and let Him teach us of His ways and we shall walk in His paths’; for out of Zion shall go forth the Torah and the word of G-D from Jerusalem!”

As I write these words, I am gratified to learn that Guatemala’s President, Jimmy Morales (aptly named: he has morals) has pledged that his country will follow the lead of the USA and move its embassy to Jerusalem.  Hopefully it will not be at all long before  Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo follow suit.  Mighty superpowers all!  Equal with the USA!

And hopefully it’s not too late for other nations too, certainly those which abstained and thus showed a shred of decency, to decide to be on the right side of history and ultimate destiny.

And as one who until now has had good cause to be proud of my adopted land, I call upon Australia, the first country in the world to recognise Israel (UN Resolution 181, 1947,) to live up to its reputation as a true and faithful friend of Israel and to show itself to be a mighty nation the equal of Micronesia.