Moser against Israel? Time For God To Do It Again?

Traditionally the Hebrew Diaspora had such a horrific time with the Gentile cultures that for anyone to speak against any other Jew to the Gentile authorities was a special kind of treason, a Moser.

Back in 1968, I was sitting on the porch of the Baptist Student Union, at the University Of Oklahoma. I was an Army Security Agency dude then on a TDY and then leave from Ethiopia on my way to Vietnam. I was here because I was staying with my wife who was in college there before I went on to SE Asia. Sitting with me was a friend. She was a "Christian Sabra" from Israel. We were talking about the 1967 war with Egypt in which many friends of hers had fought , some dying, for Israel. I was asking about the intentional attack by Israel on the U.S.S. Liberty and the rumored massacre of thousands of Egyptian Army prisoners by Israeli forces in the Sinai. As a young American warrior then, I found all of that to be incomprehensible( I hadn't fought in Nam yet at that time). I thought maybe she could help me understand.

She did enlighten me, but not exactly as I had hoped. She relaid me to a passage in the Talmud that says (paraphrased), if it were not for the sins of the Jewish people the Bible would have mostly never been written (Nedarim 22).

That did not satisfy me at that time, after all Israel had murdered 30 plus Naval Security Group sailors from my sister agency. But the thought stayed with me. (I confess however I have to look it up every time I try to quote it) Now and again, I think to myself, surely this or that particular Israeli sin will cause God to set them straight. After all they are often as screwed up as their enemies and each new generation seem to aid and abet the hatred against themselves. Now I know the politics and theology of this is terribly complicated, and madly emotional, but it does seem at this time as these predominantly Muslim nations around Israel seem to be seeking new just and democratic ways of life, that it might well be time for God to send a new Prophet to speak to Israel and her supporters and lead her and the rest of us into a more peaceful future.

Naive of me. Yes. But down in what might be my soul (if not indigestion) there is still a glimmer of hope for things like this.