Proudly Israeli as a Jew

Last year at Yafiz, we had a variety of little boy sports outfits for sale.  They are faux soccer team uniforms kiddie size for all sorts of international teams.  As soon as the "end of season sale" had started, I quickly bought one to fit my grandson this year.  It's funny.  I doubt if he would have wanted to wear it last year, since then he wasn't very interested in sporty things. But this year I've seen him in it a number of times.  Kids grow up and change.

For some reason, it isn't very "in" in some Israeli circles to be patriotic.  Of course, we ought to define "patriotic."  On the Left of the Israeli political spectrum, the concept of "patriotic" is very different from on the Right.  The Left wants to see Israel is a state for all its residents, stressing multiculturalism. They worry that Arabs aren't comfortable living in a country established as a refuge for Jews to be a Jewish State for the Jewish People.  So they are trying to dilute the Jewishness of Israel.  The Israeli singer Ahinoam "Noa" Nini is one of those, so there were many complaints that she had been hired as a featured singer at the Jerusalem Day celebrations.

Gabay said that Nini has, on several times in the past, voiced her support for the Arabs and the Palestinian Authority, saying that their claims were more valid than Israel's. Nini, a radical leftist, does not belong on a Jerusalem stage, Gabay told Arutz Sheva. “Jerusalem Day is a national holiday that represents the unity and sovereignty of of the city. A singer who makes speeches and expresses support for a Palestinian state, with its capital in Jerusalem, cannot sing on this day. She can participate in other events, but not this one,” he added.

The point of Jerusalem Day is to celebrate the fact that the parts of Jerusalem, which had been illegally occupied by Jordan from 1948-1967, were liberated by the IDF on the third day of the 1967 Six Days War.  Someone who thinks that our victory harmed the enemy-Jordan, Syria and Egypt had planned on destroying Israel- and identifies with the enemy isn't much of a patriot.

I listened to Israeli President Shimon Peres's Jerusalem Day speech and he too, another extreme Leftist, stressed that Jerusalem should be for all its residents, not primarily Jewish ones.  This is very troubling and dangerous for our continued existence.

I'm not advocating banishing all Jews from Israel.  I just consider it of the utmost importance to make it clear de facto and de jure that Israel is to always be a Jewish country, not a multinational, multicultural one.