We Jews are the recipients of "Hate Without a Cause" - Why?

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, ISIS and their ilk collectively are the face of pure evil. The atrocities that they commit around the world are beyond description. In light of their boastful assertions as “lovers of death”, if they ever had a golden rule, it would seem that their golden rule would be something like 

“We do to you what we would like to be done to us.”

As Golda Meir, a former Prime Minister of Israel, once sagaciously stated, “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.” We Jews don't want to “do to them”. We want peace. Personally, for me, nothing would give me more joy than the actualization of Isaiah's prophecy...

When “swords are turned into plowshares, when the Law of G-d is proclaimed from Zion to the nations of the world and when peace reigns on earth.
(Isaiah 2:2)

Despite the world's incessant slander of the Jewish people and of Israel, there is no doubt that Israel has produced the most compassionate military in the history of the World. The IDF preemptively warns people to get out of harms way when it bombs a facility so as to spare fatalities, It feeds it's prisoners, and does whatever it can to preserve life. Those who cannot distinguish between the pure evil of Hamas and the benevolence of Israel, I believe, will face the wrath of G-d. Accordingly, I believe that G-d has begun to and will continue to use Israel to judge the nations.

Nevertheless, Israel lacks one thing. It will not see the actualization of that prophecy of Isaiah 2 until one thing takes place which I shall elucidate at the end of this little essay.

The day that I write this essay is t'sha B'Av... the commemoration of the destruction of both the first and second Temples.

Concerning the destruction of the Temples, the Babylonian Talmud says in Yoma 9B...

“Why was the First Temple destroyed? Because of three evils in it: idolatry, sexual immorality and bloodshed . . . But why was the Second Temple destroyed, seeing that during the time it stood people occupied themselves with Torah, with observance of precepts, and with the practice of charity? Because during the time it stood, hatred without rightful cause prevailed. This is to teach you that hatred without rightful cause is deemed as grave as all the three sins of idolatry, sexual immorality and bloodshed together”.

The Babylonian Talmud, itself, bares witness to the reality that despite the apparent piety of our people, in our levim... our hearts, we hated without a cause. In Psalm 69 we read...

“Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head; Those who would destroy me are powerful, being wrongfully my enemies; What I did not steal, I then have to restore.”
(Psalm 69:4)

I would hold that this is the Messiah uttering, at the time of King David, how He will be treated at some time in the future. One might dispute my exegesis of that psalm, but coupling the interpretation that I proposed with the timing of the destruction of the Second Temple, 40 years after the death sentence that was carried out on Y'shua haNatzree – Jesus of Nazareth, plus the Talmud's own self-indictment of our people as “haters without cause”, the notion that we have rejected our own Messiah, to me at least, is compelling.

There is absolutely no doubt that the Jewish people have, for the past 2000 years, been the recipients of hatred without a cause. Could this not be the consequences of our corporate attitude towards our own Messiah? Is not G-d, perhaps, giving us a taste of our own medicine? The taste is beyond bitter!

I thank G-d for Iron dome and for the most benevolent army in the history of the world. My prayer is always for the safety of our soldiers. Every loss is a tragedy beyond words. A whole nation mourns for each life lost. I do bear some good news... Am Yisroel Chai. Jeremeiah haNavi told us that we would survive history. Furthermore, I'm also pretty convinced that Israel will, in the near future, not only be victorious but dramatically enlarge her boundaries. Nevertheless, I also have bad news. I'm certain that tragic loss of life will continue. Loved ones will die. Furthermore, we will continue to be an object of hate and we as well as the entire world will not see peace until we Jews come to love the one that we hated and continue to hate without a cause.

We need to practice true t'shuva and recognize that the one whom the Gentiles worship, is in fact the Messiah whom we hated but whom we've been called upon to love.