The First Target of Tyranny

The following is an excerpt from a sermon given by Rabbi Shalom Lewis in Atlanta:

Israel is the laboratory – the test market.  Every death, every explosion, every grisly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy.  It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West.

In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy.  Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank.  Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psychopathic, loathesome evil.

As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel’s galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt.  Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel’s galling plight ultimately will be ours.  Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew.  We are the trial balloon.  The canary in the coal mine.  If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from “good guys” then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda.