Let Freedom Ring
July 4, 2008
Community | Israel
(1 comments)
By JanetheWriter
Every night when I was growing up, after I'd said goodnight to my father, my mother tucked me into bed. When she did so on this date 32 years ago, she said, "Today is a great day to be an American and it's a great day to be a Jew."
Earlier that day, my sister, my father and I had decked out the family car--an early 1970-something olive green hardtop Mercury Monterey--with red, white and blue streamers, transforming it into a showpiece to be driven in our small town's Bicentennial parade.
After the parade, we returned home for a traditional summertime meal--hot dogs and hamburgers, corn on the cob, watermelon and lemonade. Community-wide fireworks followed, made all the louder and brighter because it was the Bicentennial.
Yes, indeed, it was a great day to be an American.
While we were marching in the parade, eating hot dogs, and reveling in 200 years of freedom from British rule, halfway around the world a different fight for freedom was taking place at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda.
There, IDF soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu were raiding the airport to rescue 100 Air France passengers who were being held hostage after their Paris-bound flight on its first leg from Tel Aviv to Athens was hijacked by PLO terrorists and diverted to Uganda.
During the 35-minute battle in which nearly all the hostages were rescued, the Israelis gunned down 20 Ugandan soldiers and all seven hijackers. Sadly, three hostages and the raid's commander lost their lives. As events unfolded, the world was awed by Israel's determination and chutzpah.
Yes, indeed, it was a great day to be a Jew.
Since that day a generation ago, we Americans have learned firsthand what Israelis have long known about terrorist attacks, and what they mean for freedom. Today, as we acknowledge and celebrate our uniquely American freedoms, let us remember, too, to vigilantly defend all our liberties--both for ourselves and for those whose rights are quite often and quite easily trampled. Only then will freedom truly ring throughout our land.
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The Bible tells us in the book of Exodus that the Lord decided that the Hebrews leaving Egyptian slavery were unready to go to war against the indigenous people in Israel because they still had the servile mentality of slaves. So they were to wander for 40 years in the wilderness before invading Cannan.
Many of those who came to Israel after World War II not only had been abused as slaves but had been targeted for extinction. Yet they made a remarkably rapid transformation to live and fight as free people. They live in a very hostile neighborhood where they unwanted. Today they have the most powerful military force in the Middle East and one of the strongest in the world. Everyone knows they will not dither or appease while their enemies actively prepare once again to attack and try to destroy them.
We who live in security, friendship and comfort as respected citizens of the global superpower, America, can hardly imagine what it us like for the Jewish Israelis to face those constant, existential threats, now enhanced by nuclear proliferation joining with religious fanaticism.
We should count our blessings, not only on the 4th of July, but year around.