Like
\nmany people these days, I am a busy man. But that did not stop me from
\ntaking off several weeks of my professional life to fight Muammar
\nKaddafi’s plan to take up residence directly next door to me this past
\nAugust and September. Together with my friend and Mayor, Michael
\nWildes, and the support of the entire Englewood, New Jersey, community,
\nwe pushed Kaddafi out. Sad to say, it was a pyrrhic victory. Last
\nmonth, with great stealth and with the cooperation of the State
\nDepartment, our otherwise brilliant police force, and the silent
\nacquiescence of our elected leaders, his Ambassador to the United
\nNations, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgham, moved in and took up residence
\nas my immediate next door neighbor. Every time my kids hit a baseball a
\nbit too far, it goes into Libyan territory and on to the lawn of a man
\nwho last week disgraced the UN Security Council by showing a gruesome
\nslide show featuring images of mutilated Palestinians with Israeli
\nsoldiers as the culprits. His condemnation of Israel in Gaza made no
\nmention of the thousands of Hamas rockets that had been fired without
\nprovocation at Israeli children.<\/p>\n
\nThese are the same Libyans who
\nin August welcomed a mass murderer – Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi,
\nthe Lockerbie bomber – with great fanfare into Tripoli (Megrahi, who
\nwas released by Scottish authorities on humanitarian grounds because he
\nonly had three months to live, is miraculously still alive.). They are
\nthe same Libyans whose leader called in October for the Palestinians to
\nbe given nuclear weapons. And they are the same Libyans who have shown
\nour city undisguised contempt by refusing over a quarter century to pay
\neven a single dollar in taxes and who cut down my fence and trees that
\nseparate my property from theirs without so much as a courtesy phone
\ncall, thereby forcing me to sue them in Federal court.<\/p>\n
From the age of sixteen all I ever wanted to be was a Rabbi, someone
\nwho brings healing to broken lives and values to a needy culture. But
\nfor the first time in my life I find myself contemplating a run for
\nelective office. The reason is simple. The Talmud declares, “In a place
\nwhere there are no men stand up and become one.” The fact that our
\nelected officials allow the representative of state-sponsors of
\nterrorism to live in our community is scandalous. When I read that my
\nown Congressman and friend Steve Rothman, who fought so hard against
\nKaddafi, had now told the New Jersey Jewish Standard that an agreement
\nhad been reached 25 years ago allowing the Ambassador to take up
\nresidence and that therefore “I hope everyone will be appropriately
\ngood neighbors,” I was beside myself. Is he seriously asking me to
\nborrow a cup of sugar from a man whose government murdered American
\nservicemen while they danced at a disco?<\/p>\n
Without sounding paranoid it’s time that we in the Jewish community
\nface some facts. Across the globe it’s open season on the Jews. Few of
\nus would have believed that a country like Britain that gave the world
\nparliamentary democracy would be guilty of attempting to ban Israeli
\nprofessors from academic conferences, would have a magistrate issue an
\narrest warrant against Israel’s former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni,
\nwould require a label on products from the West Bank as being made by
\nJewish settlers, and would have its Supreme Court dictate to the Jewish
\ncommunity who its members are.<\/p>\n
Then came the news, reported in the New York Times, that Pope
\nBenedict XVI is moving ahead with plans to canonize Piux XII, the man
\nknown as Hitler’s Pope who made a Concordat with the Fuhrer and who, as
\nthe world’s foremost spiritual figure refused even once to condemn the
\nholocaust. This is the same infallible leader who on 16 October, 1943,
\nwatched quite literally as more than a thousand Jews of Rome were
\nrounded up in trucks, within 300 feet of the his Vatican Window, to be
\ndeported to Auschwitz where they were gassed within a few days. Even
\nthen the Holy Father remained utterly silent. The Church’s allegations
\nthat Pius helped Jews in secret is as cowardly as Pius’s actions. When
\nit comes to stopping abortion the Church blasts its global megaphone.
\nBut when it came to saving Jews it could only be done when noone was
\nlooking? Many righteous Catholics saved Jews in plane sight and were
\nmartyred for their courage. But Pius, who even after the war ordered
\nthe mass kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of Jewish children by
\nrefusing to hand them back to their rightful Jewish guardians,
\ndisgraced a great world religion.<\/p>\n
Here in the United States we have had to contend with the Obama
\nAdministration’s canard that Israeli settlements, rather than
\nPalestinian terrorism and Arab political oppression, are the main
\nobstacles to Middle East peace. And it’s more than a little
\ndisappointing that the Netanyahu government has endorsed this fraud by
\ninstituting a ten month freeze on settlements, thereby unjustly
\nidentifying some of Israel’s most patriotic citizens as its most
\nintransigent.<\/p>\n
Why is all this happening? Some would say that antipathy toward Jews
\nis a law of physics. I disagree. It is happening because we allow it.
\nCan anyone imagine the same British Supreme Court dictating to the
\nAnglo-Islamic community whom a Muslim is? President Obama received
\nnearly eighty percent of the Jewish vote. When you have numbers that
\noverwhelming, you can be forgiven if you take the constituency for
\ngranted.<\/p>\n
Our community must make its voice heard. We are a powerful global
\neconomic market and we must seriously consider boycotting the products
\nof countries whose shameful behavior mistreats Jews. Britain is out of
\ncontrol and a serious conversation about whether or not to vacation
\nthere or buy its products should now occur. And our community must make
\nit clear to our Catholic brothers and sisters that calling a man who
\nlost his voice while six million Jews died a saint will irreparably
\nharm Catholic-Jewish relations.<\/p>\n
More committed Jews must begin considering running for office.
\nRather than merely relying on friends to represent us, we must also
\nbegin representing ourselves. I wish to remain a Rabbi who informs and
\ninfluences politics from the outside. But if Kaddafi’s envoy remains my
\nnext-door neighbor with the tacit blessing of my elected leaders, I
\nwill do my best to unseat them by every legal means necessary.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nRabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Values Network.
\nHis most recent book is ‘The Blessing of Enough’ and ‘The Michael
\nJackson Tapes.’ Follow him on Twitter (RabbiShmuley) and on his website
\nShmuley.com.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like many people these days, I am a busy man. But that did not stop me from taking off several weeks of my professional life to fight Muammar Kaddafi’s plan to take up residence directly next door to me this past August and September. Together with my friend and Mayor, Michael Wildes, and the support…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":203,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n