Pagers: The 11th Plague
By
Leonard Zwelling
This is a completely biased column. This blog has never hidden its extreme pro-Israel position. I am a proud Jew AND a proud Zionist.
Why?
Because for 2000 years we Jews had nowhere to go when the powers that be in any country in which we lived decided that they had had enough of us and wanted us gone. Anti-Semitism has a long an illustrious history in the Christian world including in America. The only hope for a future for the Jewish people is a reclaiming of our ancestral home in the land that is now called Israel. Whether or not you believe that the land also known as Palestine was given to the Jews by God, Jews have inhabited the area for centuries. So have Arabs. I get it, but in 1948 and 1967 there were wars to see who controlled the land and the Jews won. That’s history.
You may remember we were in a real pickle about 3500 years ago in Egypt where the pharaoh enslaved us according to the Bible which, I understand, may or may not have historical veracity, particularly in the first five books. Nonetheless, the story goes that a new Jewish leader arose in Egypt who had a close relationship with God. That was Moses and he gave pharaoh an ultimatum. “Let my people go or else.”
Pharaoh said no and Moses and God teamed up to rain down the ten plagues on Egypt:
Water to blood
Frogs
Lice
Swarms of wild beasts
Pestilence
Boils
Hail and Fire
Locusts
Darkness
Death of the First Born
As I have been taught, the first nine were nothing new for the area, but that last one really got to pharaoh when his son died and he finally let the Hebrews go. The rest is in Exodus—the flight across the desert, the Egyptian pursuit, the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments, and eventually Canaan.
What happened in Lebanon over the past two days when exploding pagers and walkie-talkies killed and maimed the enemies of Israel appears to be the 11th plague. This technological wizardry does indeed seem to be inspired by God. How Mossad (I assume) managed to get explosives in thousands of communication devices is the stuff of a great book or a Steven Spielberg movie.
What the exploding devices were really is a warning. Israel has had enough of Hezbollah’s war on the border and the need to evacuate tens of thousands of Israelis to keep them out of harm’s way. The warning is also for all the proxies of Iran. Israel is gearing up for combat beyond Hamas in Gaza.
Whether or not this is the culmination of an existential struggle with the mullahs in Tehran has yet to be determined, but that struggle seems to be getting more inevitable. The world had better sit up and pay attention. Israel will not, cannot, and never has waited for the world to do the right thing. Israel will do what is good for Israel. The one thing it will not do, is leave the land it crossed into all those years ago after Egypt.
Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran itself have pledged the destruction of Israel. Therefore, it should be no surprise to the United States and its allies that when the Iranian proxies seek to fulfill that pledge, the Israelis fight back.
I understand that President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken seek a diplomatic solution. That is the stuff of dreams. Iran and its proxies show no interest in diplomacy. Quite the opposite. They seek war and the violent destruction of Israel. Don’t be surprised if the time for diplomacy has long passed.
