It may be a dangerous and difficult neighborhood but have you seen my neighbors?

...These are our neighbors, our husbands, fathers, brothers and sisters but even this is a very incomplete image. The protectors of Israel, our heroes are most often, everyday people. They are the grey people you would never look twice at. They are not necessarily men, or strong, or even Jewish. Israel does not divide by religion, race or gender but by values. By people who stand for what is right and people who do not.

Stranger shields father and newborn
with his own body
(Operation Protective Edge 2014)

Forest Rain..
Inspiration from Zion..
First Posted 25 October '15..

There is a parable that says:

When God created the world he decided that Israel would be the land of the chosen people, the land of the Jews. The angels approached God, saying: “You are giving the Jews a land flowing with milk and honey in the heart of the world. Don’t you think it will make the other nations of the earth feel you are playing favorites?”

And God answered: “Yes, that is true… But have you seen the neighborhood?”

In reality, Israel was not “flowing with milk and honey” until Israelis made it so. We were not blessed with a land rich in any of what would normally be considered natural resources. What we have are human resources, the creativity and the drive to make something out of nothing. To solve problems and improve the world, for ourselves and for others.

On the other hand our “neighborhood” could easily be considered awful. We are surround by hostile countries. Blessed with similar (and often better) resources than Israel, our neighbors not only strive to destroy us but do very little to improve life for their own people. Continuing the neighborhood allegory, it is like living in a gang-riddled neighborhood where the neighbors not only break in to your home to steal your things (and possibly rape or murder your family on the way), they also leave their own homes to rot, neglecting their own children so that they too become criminals and even murderers.

It would be easy to look at Israel and conclude that this is a land of opportunity, of beauty and miracles plagued with the violence of the terrible neighborhood we are living in. Watching wave after wave of terror attack batter the people of Israel, it would be easy to think that this is a frightening place to live, that anyone in their right mind would do everything possible to escape the danger.

You could… however that would be missing the important point entirely.

(Continue to Full Post)

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