The “Palestinians” and the Pirates

By Rob Muchnick

G-d works in many different ways. Sometimes he let’s us know in advance what he has in store for us, and sometimes he gives us a present which emanates from a most unexpected source.

In Parsha Haazinu, G-d, through Moses, warns us to stay on the straight and narrow path or we will feel his wrath measure for measure. In particular, we are warned not to fall prey to false gods or else G-d will let us be defeated by a “non-people, a vile nation”. The current leaders of Israel have refused to infuse Israel with anything but token yiddishkeit, and now those that call themselves “Palestinians” are like thorns in our eyes - theoretically until we put our faith in G-d instead of the sham Oslo “peace” process which has brought us nothing but death, destruction and a loss of the belief in the justness of our cause by Jews worldwide.

What do the “palestinians” themselves say? They agree with me. On March 31, 1977 - in the Dutch magazine Trouw - PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said: "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people.”

Yasser Arafat himself asserted that “the Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel". He continued, “We shall never stop until we can go back home and Israel is destroyed. Peace for us means Israel's destruction and nothing else." And, of course, nothing has changed with the so-called moderate Mahmoud Abbas, who will only recognize Israel after it has a Muslim majority. These people teach their children from birth that killing Jews - and dying while doing it - is the greatest thing they can do on this earth. They freely admit that they are a “non-nation”. They are obviously sent to us to remind us to get back onto the right path. There can be no doubting this. Our leaders just need to get the message. Or they must be replaced with those who understand what is being said to us. Sometimes the messages are more unexpected or even seemingly miraculous. Take, for example, the case of the now infamous Somalian pirates who recently hijacked an American freighter. Of course the media forgets to say that these pirates belong to the same religion of peace as our palestinian” tormentors, but that’s just a footnote. These maritime marauders are pure evil, just like their “palestinian” brethren, but G-d has found ways to spread Torah and give us miracles through them.

About 1,000 years ago, four of the greatest Rabbinic scholars of their time all left the port of Bari, Italy together in order to sail to the wedding of a daughter of another sage. The same Muslim pirates as today captured their ship. Knowing that Jewish communities paid great sums to redeem their captives, these pirates sold one sage to the Jewish community of Alexandria, Egypt, another to Kairwan, Tunisia, and a third to Cordoba, Spain. It is not known what happened to the fourth sage. After being redeemed, each of the sages were asked to remain in the communities who redeemed them as their leaders. They all remained, and they all started great and famous centers of Jewish learning in their new homes. As such, the pirates were at least partially responsible for the spread of tremendous Jewish learning throughout the Sephardic world.

But I do not just count a deed done a millennia before to make my case. Only 7 months ago, on August 21st, the Somalian pirates hijacked an Iranian tanker - the MV Iran Deyanat - off the coast of Yemen. It was on its way to go through the Suez Canal, which would then put it near the coast of Israel. After the pirates took the ship to port in Somalia, 16 of them died of symptoms akin to radiation poisoning. The Iranians paid a ransom to retrieve their ship, and Israel requested of the US to commence a naval blockade of Iran. So what happened? Piecing together information gleaned from multiple news sites, here goes: the Iranians bought 100 million pounds of radioactive nuclear-contaminated sand from China. The Iranians had planned to sail the ship off the coast of Israel and then remotely blow up the ship. They wished to take advantage of the prevailing winds that blow off the Mediterranean to spread the deadly sand - in cloud form - all over Israel, potentially killing millions of Jews.

Israel has been preparing for a high-tech nuclear-tipped missile being shot at it from Iran, and has spent untold millions of dollars on attempting to develop an anti-missile defense system. But when the anticipated attack actually came, it was from a low-tech dirty bomb. But it was still an attack with a true weapon of mass destruction. The only thing that saved Am Yisrael from this catastrophe is G-d. That’s all. He used these pirates to wake up his children. He used these pirates to save his children. We must do nothing less than praise Him for saving so many of us from the next Holocaust. G-d wants us to open our eyes and start holding up our end of the bargain. We must put our faith in Him and not in any of the false gods of the various “peace” processes. We have no other choice.