It used to be that entire regions, even nations, were off limit to Jews. "No Jews allowed" was the rule. Discrimination, both official and unofficial, was common. Times have certainly changed. Jews today can live in London, Paris and New York. They can even live in Zimbabwe, Greenland and Peru. They can live anywhere in any gentile nation on earth. How, then, can they be denied the right to live in their own land? And by Jews! What nation on earth willingly discriminates against itself? After the Yitzchak Rabin government handed 20,000 automatic weapons to Israel's worst enemies, under the Oslo accords, I thought I had seen it all. I was wrong. Now that the Ariel Sharon government is preparing to carry out a racist transfer of nearly 10,000 Jews, and forbid all Jews from living in Gaza and northern Samaria, I suppose there is no limit to how twisted things can get. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the latest self-inflicted punishment, but I am. Even for those who reject God's promise of the Land of Israel to the Jewish people in the Bible and those who prefer to ignore the thousands of years of Jewish ownership of the Land, how can ethnic cleansing anywhere be justified? What would be the reaction if the mayor of New York City said that Jews were no longer allowed to live in Manhattan? What if Tony Blair said all Jews must leave England? How can the unthinkable in non-Jewish countries have become legitimate in the Land of Israel? In its decision against former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, the International Court in the Hague ruled that "the forceful expulsion of civilians from a specific ethnic group from their land and homes and the handing over of the land to a different ethnic group... is a crime against humanity and those who carry it out are criminals." How is it that such a crime against humanity is okay when the victims are Jewish? Italy expelled its Jews in 855. England expelled them 1290, France in 1306, Spain in 1492, the Ukraine in 1649, Germany expelled (permanently) most of the Jews from Europe in the 1940s. Now, the State of Israel is about to expel the Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria. How can we commit the same crime against ourselves as that perpetrated against us by our worst enemies throughout the ages? If the ethnic cleansing of Gaza's Jews goes through, it will be a stain on the Jewish people forever. Worse, how is it that the Jewish State can expel Jews when it could not even bring itself to expel Arabs? A decade ago, Yitzchak Rabin, at wit's end from Arab terror, expelled 400 Hamas terrorists to Lebanon - only to let them back in shortly thereafter. Arabs today can live anywhere they want in the Land of Israel - on both sides of the Green Line. They can live in Haifa and they can live in Ramallah, Jerusalem and Jenin. Not Jews. There are racial quotas for how many Jews can live in Hebron. No Jews at all are allowed to live in Shechem, Bethlehem, and many other towns that represent the cradle of Jewish civilization. The Supreme Court has forced Jewish communities across Israel to allow Arabs to buy homes wherever they want. No way you can prevent someone from living somewhere in Israel just because he is an Arab, even if he is hostile to the state. But the same Supreme Court is silent when racial discrimination is perpetrated against Israel's Jewish citizens. Last night, I went to a supermarket in Jewish western Jerusalem. Muslim men and women wearing full Muslim garb strolled about and did their shopping without anyone paying attention to them, let alone bothering them. If a Jew were to try and shop in an Arab store in nearby Bethlehem, he would be signing his own death warrant. It is especially hard to believe that left-wing Jews, who fought so hard for the civil rights of others, are willing to violate the rights of their own brothers and sisters. Jews were willing to go to jail for the rights of American Blacks to ride buses, to go to White schools and segregated universities. How can these same people willingly support kicking others out of their homes and expel them from their towns only because they are Jewish? I especially find it hard to believe those who try and justify this crime with claims that it will improve security. Even if this nonsense were true, the ends never justify the means. After 10 years of unimaginable terror resulting from the Oslo fiasco, how can we once again fall for more promises of a utopian peace if only we will surrender more land? How can we continue in the path that has already failed? How can we continue to make the same mistake over and over again? I have searched and searched for an answer. What is it that makes Israel the only country on earth to willingly surrender its territory and expel its own citizens? Maybe there is an explanation. After 2,000 years of exile and being treated like second-class citizens, perhaps its only natural that we should have internalized these feelings. As Hayim Bialik once noted. "It is easier to take the Jew out of the exile than the exile out of the Jew." After so many years of living as an oppressed people, we have come to believe that we do not deserve basic human rights. Physically, we have been redeemed, but mentally we remain crippled. But even this, I say, must one day end. How long will we go on punishing ourselves? When will we stop this self-hate? One thing is certain: until we begin respecting ourselves there is no way in heaven that our enemies will respect us.
