My wife and I attended a bar-mitzvah yesterday.
Beautiful service, with the traditional prayers all in place. Love God, recognize that there is just one God, praise God for what we have, Pray for peace.
By contrast…
This morning, I clicked onto Scott Morefield’s article at dailycaller.com, and saw a month-old video – translated by the invaluable MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) of Muslim children, which was recorded not in Gaza or Syria or Yemen but in Philadelphia, at the city’s Muslim American Society center.
The subject matter? Children, celebrating Ummah Day (“community” day) by promising to chop people’s heads off and subject them to eternal torture.
If you’ve got the stomach to watch children being indoctrinated this way, here’s the video:
Are you impressed? Thrilled with what these children are being taught? Do you think the call to annihilate and mutilate non-Islamists holds any promise for peaceful solutions to anything?
Let me end with something I’ve blogged about several times in the past – but given what you just saw, bears repeating.
Here, in English, are the first and last verses of “Hatikvah” (the hope), Israel’s national anthem (you can read the entire nine verses by clicking here)…
As long as within our hearts the Jewish soul sings,
As long as forward to the East, to Zion, looks the eye –
Our hope is not yet lost.
It is 2,000 years old, to be a free people in our land.
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
Go, my people, return in peace to your land
The balm in Gilead, your healer in Jerusalem,
Your healer is God, the wisdom of His heart,
Go my people in peace, healing is imminent.
And here is the national anthem of “Palestine”, titled “Fida’i” (“warrior):
Warrior, warrior, warrior,
Oh my land, the land of the ancestors
Warrior, warrior, warrior,
Oh my people, people of eternity
With my determination, my fire and the volcano of my vendetta
With the longing in my blood for my land and my home
I have climbed the mountains and fought the wars
I have conquered the impossible, and crossed the frontiers
With the resolve of the winds and the fire of the weapons
And the determination of my nation in the land of struggle
Palestine is my home, and the path of my triumphal
(Palestine is my home, Palestine is my fire,)
Palestine is my vendetta and the land of withstanding
By the oath under the shade of the flag
By my land and nation, and the fire of pain
I will live as a warrior, I will remain a warrior,
I will die as a warrior – until my country returns
Notice any difference?
