“Blessed Is The Match That Is Consumed In Kindling Flame”

How do we define normal? When Jack Kennedy faced down the Russians in October, 1962, with the threat of military action, and forced them to withdraw their missiles from Cuba, was that normal?

We were the ones facing the possibility of a nuclear conflagration. Many would have lost their lives to back up that threat. We would have been the tinder kindling the flame of freedom for all of us in North America. It would not have been normal.

On September 11, 2001, 19 hijackers crashed four commercial airliners, bringing down the World Trade Center Towers in New York and damaging the Pentagon in Washington. Passengers on the fourth plane saved the Capitol by forcing it down in Pennsylvania. Hundreds raced into the burning building hoping to save lives, and perished. Many who answered the call died from the aftereffects. The Jihadists involved who surrendered their lives, believed they were kindling a flame of Islamic revolt, ended up initiating a US involvement in the Middle East, and death plus chaos for many of its inhabitants.

Ever since some Jews made the decision to rekindle Jewish sovereignty in their homeland, around the river Jordan, by direct action, they have faced Islamic intolerance of the recapture of lands ever under Islamic control. Religious hostility from Islam against Judaism is present in Islamic history, and in its writings and sermons, chapter and verse.

The effort to rekindle that statehood has been unceasing for almost two hundred years. Jihadist sentiment that was brought home to American living rooms in 9/11, has been the Jewish reality during their struggle in that territory, and in every place where Jews have lived in theocratic Moslem countries. We are seeing it now in every place where Islamic extremists are present. Even in the U.S. Congress.