Wake Up!!!

Dear Friends,

I am turning to you, dear friend and reader, with the urgent call: WAKE UP!!!

I am calling on you to shake yourself loose of your stupor, apathy, indifference and “gemutlichkeit” (lassitude) that hold us in their iron grip of doing the same thing, of thinking the same way, today as we did yesterday, because the future and destiny of our nation and people depend on our finally waking up.

I am calling on you to WAKE UP, and to wake up urgently.

WAKE UP to the greatest threat facing the State of Israel and the Jewish People at least since the Shoa. And if you think that I am a Jewish alarmist, let me call to your attention a caption from the “Washington Post” from the middle of July :“Fighting the Economic War On Israel”. The prominent paper calls to its readers’ attention a significant hearing that is to be held by a special committee on Capitol Hill on the issue that threatens one of the closest Allies of the USA.

Indeed, the meeting of the “Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform” took place on Capitol Hill on July 28, 2015. The Committee invited four witnesses to testify: (1) Prof. Eugene Kantorowich, lecturer at Northwestern University, School of Law, frequent witness in Congressional proceedings; (2) Mark Dubowitz. Executive Director Of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington D.C., Senior Research Fellow at the University of Toronto, lawyer, Advisor to U.S. Administrations and Congress; (3) Matthew Duss, who seems to be a senior representative of BDS; (4) Daniel Birnbaum, CEO Sodastream, representing the State of Israel.

Daniel Birnbaum has been invited as the sole representative of Israel not only because he has repeatedly proven a good spokesman, but because from the very start Sodastream was designated by BDS as its main target. When other Israeli products are demonstratively swept off shelves In consumer outlets throughout the globe, BDS outcries of joy cannot be compared to their triumphant celebrations when they succeed paralyzing a Sodastream outlet in Brighton, England, Rome, or Trieste in Italy, Oslo, Norway, Ahlen, Sweden, and more (Denmark, Canada, London, France, Seattle USA, and much more)

We should switch to Sodastream not only to begin shaking our fist back at BDS and show them that we Jews shall back up our product against all antagonistic and competitive elements. We also MUST begin seeing and internalizing the overall alarming threat that BDS and its eager sympathizers pose to the WHOLE Israeli economy. One of the top economic analysts of Israel, Sever Plotzker, stated in yesterday’s Hebrew press: “In the course of the last two years Israel declined from FIRST place in productivity among the OECD countries to one of the last, If not actually to the very LAST place (אם לא האחרון ממש)”.

The reason for this sudden and dangerous decline to the Israeli economy is due to the slippage of Israeli exports in manufactured goods and services in the first half-year of 2015 by 8.6% as compared to 2.7% in the preceding half-year. In agricultural products Israeli exports fell in the last half a year by 10.9%. In diamonds exports fell by 26.7% in the same period. This is quite alarming. We do not have to be experienced economists to realize that as exports fall, productivity declines and the country faces a crisis of substantial proportions in employment, in the value of the Shekel, and in the status of the nation – all that due to the success of BDS.

So I am now calling on you, ladies and gentlemen, WAKE UP !!! No. we cannot help the one and only Jewish State on the globe in 2,000 years by producing better and more effective missiles. No, we cannot help the Jewish State by mounting satellites that will help you and me to colonize the moon, or Mars, or Jupiter and plant the blue-white flag there. No, we cannot help Israel by a combined valiant effort to slow the icebergs from melting in the Antarctic or on the North Pole.

But YES, we COULD definitely help Israel by switching from habitual products of old standing to which we got used to in the course of many years and decades, and learn to develop new tastes and likes so as to help Israel – even if it entails initially some sacrifice.

When you give up on something that you learnt to like in the course of many years and do or try something new and Israeli, raise your fist heaven-ward and whisper (or shout): To hell with you BDS and all your fanatical cohorts!!! You will not defeat us with all your lies and misrepresentations. We, Jews, shall stand united on the economic battlefield as our sons and daughters stand on the ground. We shall face your legions in all countries, as our children face them on our beleaguered borders. It took us a long time to get where we are. But you may as well know, that we shall stand united against all your underhanded efforts to defeat and destroy us economically.

Together we shall stand – STAND WITH US, each one of you.

With warmest best wishes,
Rabbi Ervin Birnbaum