“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you,” Leon Trotsky is popularly thought to have said.
Yes, Trotsky was a deeply evil man, but as most of us know, the evil aren’t necessarily stupid.
At the time, I was attending an extremely moving prayer session for Israel in Middle Tennessee, whose outdoor location I can’t disclose because its initiators were understandably concerned with safety and deliberately kept it at least somewhat secret.
That is, alas, the state of our world and our country today. The demonstrations in our big cities tilt to the ominous, not to mention the treatment of young Jews in our colleges and universities well detailed in the Tablet article “The Writing Is on the Wall for Jewish Students.”
By far the majority of the hundred or more people assembled for this event were Christians. There were only a handful of us Jews who were there as speakers.
The pledge of allegiance was made to the American flag—as is traditional at gatherings in Tennessee, not so much in California, where I lived for so long—followed by the singing of our national anthem by a woman who accompanied herself on a portable piano.
This was in turn followed by her leading us in the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikva” (“The Hope” in English) that not surprisingly few knew—but people tried.
To say I found that emotional in the Tennessee night is an understatement. I hardly ever cry, but found myself holding back tears.
The handful of Jews were then asked to speak. These included two men who were Israeli-American and had spent much of their lives in Israel, then a friend of mine, a Jew, who lives in the area.
Then I said a few words. I don’t think I was very good. I was too choked up, staring out in the darkness at all those wonderful Christians who, as they say, had our backs.
The evening concluded with an impassioned speech by a devout Christian man who, I can say, has become a friend. He leads trips to Israel and was once a significant politician in another state.
As people were leaving, an 85-year-old woman came up to thank me for coming. (It wasn’t a very big deal.) She explained, though Christian, she barely missed being shipped to the death camps as a little girl in Riga, Latvia, because her father had spoken out in defense of the Jews.
It struck home because Riga was where part of my family came from, fortunately for me before World War I.
This was a fitting ending to the evening during which many of us realized that the hardest part of this war is yet to come.
But in the eagerness to restrain the Israelis, no one wants to explain to them what will happen if they don’t “finish off Hamas,” because everyone knows—it’s too obvious.
Hamas will buckle down and, with the help of their friends in Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea, will rearm better than ever and prepare themselves for another, greater onslaught—or should I say slaughter—in a year or two.
It’s such an old, repeated pattern; almost anyone could see it coming if they bothered to look or had the stomach for it. But many don’t.
Which brings me back to the phrase, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
What then do we do?
I will be asking about that and other questions when I fly out to Las Vegas in a few days on behalf of The Epoch Times and NTD to the annual Republican Jewish Coalition leadership conference that promises, for obvious reasons, to be the most interesting and fraught in years.
All the GOP presidential candidates, including Donald Trump, will be there.
It has also been brought to my attention that there will be more public support here, a “Tennessee Rally for Israel,” at Nashville’s Legislative Plaza on Oct. 27, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., with politicians, religious, and community leaders in attendance.
