Just My Two Cents...

בס''ד
I am by any means not a political blogger. I usually blog about family, health matters, recipes, special activities and day to day happenings, but the constant reading about all the terrorism happening to Jews worldwide, I just had to post my two cents.

First thing I want to make clear is that men and women who do terror attacks anywhere are not freedom fighters or insurgents, they are TERRORISTS. Plain and simple!

Merriam-Webster defines terrorism as: the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal, the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.

Merriam-Webster

Being anti-Israel and saying I have nothing against Jews, it is Israel I don’t like is being anti-Semitic, and anti-semitism is alive and well, flourishing around the world at an all time high. Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism

The Anti-Defamation League has posted a very lengthy list of terror attacks to Jews and Jewish institutions around the world from A to Z.

Their Global Anti-Semitism Selected Incidents Around the World in 2014 lists attacks in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela, New Zealand.
  
ADL terror list

We are only at the end of February and already there have been several serious terror attacks against Jews in Paris, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen and this is just the tip of the iceberg. This morning Israel National News web site posted this terrifying video. Have a look!  

Israel Nation News Arutz 7 

To put it bluntly, Jews are not safe anywhere in the world.

Yidden come home! Israel is our G-d given land. Out of the ashes of the holocaust The State of Israel was declared in the United Nations and recognized as the Jewish homeland. 

I know you are thinking “what about all the terror attacks in Israel over the years and what about all the thousands of missiles fired at Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah.  Isn't that terror”? And the answer is yes. I know this fact first hand living 9kms. from Gaza and being on the receiving end of many Grad missiles. 

But I still say… you are still safer in Israel than anywhere else.

I would like to tell you this little story about our experiences with anti-semitism. 

Twenty-one years ago, my family and I lived in a hi-rise apartment building in Hamilton, Ontario Canada.

One morning, my then 11 year old son opened our front door to leave to go to school and promptly stepped into a puddle of rotten eggs that had been dumped on the carpet at our front door. Scribbled on the door and walls were swastikas. 

We called the police and building janitor who called the building manager who notified the owner of the building, a holocaust survivor.  

Photos were taken, and the carpet and walls were cleaned. Four days later, [a day after Rosh Hashana] swastikas were once again plastered all over the walls and on our front door in bold black paint ‘die jew’.

Once again we called the police and more photos were taken. The building manager once again had everything cleaned up. He then set up a security camera in the hallway fixed at our apartment.

My son was very scared. He told the police that he was afraid that someone would come in the middle of the night and kill us. The police were terrific. They had their hate crime officer speak to my son. 

The police told us that the sign ‘die jew’ was a death threat that they were taking seriously. We told the police that Yom Kippur was in a couple of days and we were afraid of trouble.

They agreed to give us protection. On Yom Kippur, every 15 minutes a patrol car passed our building, we were given a direct phone number if we needed help and the police checked our apartment door several times during the day and night.

As far as I know, no one was ever caught or prosecuted.

It was our family’s dream to make Aliyah. Our two married daughters and three grandchildren were already living in Israel. We had one excuse after another why this year wasn't the right time to make Aliyah.

Our experience with anti-semitism gave us the kick we needed to make our dream come true. Seven months later, May 1994 we arrived home.

Making Aliyah and living in Israel [with all the mishagus [nonsense] that goes on here] was the smartest decision we ever made.

That’s all for now. Feel free to share and comment.

Miriam