The Danger of a Double Standard
The Torah begins with the basic information that G-d created the world rather than with the first command given to the Jewish People as we would expect from a book of laws. The reason for this, explains Rashi in the Torah portion we will be reading this Shabbat, is to provide a response to the charge which the nations of the world will make that we are aggressors who occupied Eretz Yisrael after taking it away from its inhabitants. The message is a simple one - G-d created the world and He gave the land which belongs to Him to the people that He chose to inherit it.
In our own generation Israel has come under attack from many elements outside the Arab world for occupying territory belonging to the Palestinians. These same bleeding hearts who so vociferously champion a Palestinian state are never heard clamoring for the establishment of an independent state for the millions of other peoples whose lands have been occupied. This is how their double standard was recently described by Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard in a Jerusalem Post column:
They pretend to care about the Palestinians only because it is Israel that is accused of oppressing them. They dont give a collective darn about the Kurds because they are being oppressed by Arab and Muslim nations, just as they dont seem to care about the Tibetans, who are being occupied and oppressed by China, and the Chechens, who are being abused by the Russians.
This double standard is as old as time and so is the Torah response to it that Israel is ours forever.
