What did we do to deserve this dubious honor? Evidently Kerry views us as the problem in the world. We are responsible for all the ills of mankind. Indeed his speech was not only provokingly biased in favor of the Palestinians from beginning to end (with a few lines of lip service to the condemnation of terrorism) it was also repellent full of falsehoods and purposely oblivious of the facts on the ground. It was a repugnant speech for it tried once again to sell the moldy old message that the whole world order has been undermined by the “illegal settlements” in Judea and Samaria.

According to Kerry the slaughter of half a million civilians men women and children in Syria’s bloody civil war is all due to… you guessed it: the settlements. ISIS is rampaging all over the world and can you guess why? Name the problem and Kerry will name the cause apparently the only word he knows: the settlements. In his exasperating speech he demanded that Israel retreat to its 1967 borders. We are to abandon “occupied” East Jerusalem and return it to the Palestinians including the Western Wall which also belongs to them. Prime Minister Netanyahu wryly commented that apparently when Yehudah HaMaccabi took Jerusalem and purified the Temple he was actually taking over Palestinian territory.

Such is the astounding ignorance of Jewish history and the history of Jerusalem in particular that Mr. Kerry displayed. It was a speech full of falsehood for it deliberately ignored the fact that generations of Jews lived in Hebron until one Shabbos morning in August 1929 when the Palestinians got up and massacred them. It deliberately ignored the fact that there have been periods in Jerusalem’s history when Jews formed the majority of the Old City’s population until 1948 when the Jordanian Legion conquered the Jewish Quarter exiled the inhabitants and destroyed the synagogues. Gush Etzion suffered a similar fate when its flourishing settlements were cut down by Arab rioters with the aid of the Jordanian Legion which took over all of Judea and Samaria and held it for the 19 years between 1948 and 1967. So who in this scenario is the occupier?

But these facts didn’t interest Mr. Kerry because as Netanyahu aptly summed up Kerry’s whole approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict can be consolidated into one word: obsession.

Obsession is a mental condition characterized by excessive preoccupation with a particular thought or subject often accompanied by a compulsion to respond to the thought with irrational action. The sufferer may be quite unaware of the reason for his obsession.

Regarding John Kerry’s fixation with blaming Israel many explanations have been offered. Some have even claimed it is due to the influence of his Muslim son-in-law. Ralph Peters a retired US Army lieutenant-colonel and media commentator recently described the Obama-Kerry policy in six words: “Praise Muslims ignore Christians blame Jews.” This nicely sums up eight years of Obama’s political policy (for to give credit where it’s due he actually helped the detested Jewish state militarily). As for the commentators who have attempted to plumb the soul of the departing secretary of state they are both right and wrong. Not one of them — or even all of them put together — fully explains this obsession that causes such an intelligent and skilled person to distort reality as if he were mentally deficient.

The solution it’s clear lies in the spiritual plane. I well remember how after making a peace treaty with Jordan the late Yitzchak Rabin declared “No longer are we a nation that dwells alone.” But it didn’t work. It never does because the Torah has decreed otherwise. Likewise the obsession of John Kerry and his boss with blaming Israel stems on its deepest level from our Torah as well — as interpreted by the holy Ohr HaChaim.

Let us peruse the pesukim at the end of parshas Eikev (Devarim 11:24–25):

“Every place where the soles of your feet will tread will be yours: from the desert and the Lebanon from the Euphrates River and until the western sea will be your boundary. No man will stand up before you; Hashem your G-d will cast the fear and awe of you on all the land upon which you tread…”

These impressive pesukim tell of the Divine promise to eventually give us the entire expanse of the Semitic lands. The army of the Jewish nation would be strong and our enemies would be afraid to provoke it. What could be finer than this Divine promise?

And then comes the next pasuk which is the opening verse of parshas Re’eh:

“See I set before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing that you will heed the commandments of Hashem your G?d…”

According to the Ohr HaChaim’s reading these verses are saying “See the gift that I gave you in the preceding pesukim that you should conquer all the land can be either a blessing or chalilah a curse.” In the Ohr HaChaim’s words:

“Hashem precisely said ‘today’ for this blessing that He said to them ‘Every place etc.’ was not said to them until this day. And his words ‘blessing and curse ’ mean that this giving [i.e. the giving of Eretz Yisrael] contains a blessing and it contains a curse. He then goes back and explains the blessing: If you listen then this giving will be a blessing for you and if you do not listen it will be nothing but a curse by means of which the nations will be jealous of you and will destroy you with great vengeance.”

The Ohr HaChaim is saying that conquering the land is not in and of itself a guarantee of success even with stealth fighter jets in the air and submarines under the water. In fact being given the land could become chalilah v’chas the very pretext for driving us out of it.

Twice the Jewish People lost Eretz Yisrael completely and went into exile. G-d willing there will not be a third galus. But we will certain have our share of harassment and constant attempts to negate our right to our Divinely given inheritance. Twice in modern times we have retreated from Sinai we retreated from Gush Katif and now Amona’s fate hangs in the balance. And in the spirit of Kerry’s “vision” for Eretz Yisrael the hand of those who hate us is still stretched out to do us harm.

According to common political sense according to every parameter accepted among the nations of the world there is no logical explanation for this obsessive persecution. “Assyria is the rod of My wrath” says the navi in the name of Hashem. And Kerry too is a small rod of Hashem’s wrath. For the solution is found in the words of the Torah in the rationale of Scripture.

Heaven knows what awaits us over the next two weeks when 70 foreign ministers convene for a “peace” conference in Paris. This conference will take place before the end of Obama’s presidency and Kerry’s tenure as secretary of state so that this charming pair might still try to wreak havoc with another shameful resolution or platform. When that happens let’s remember about the blessing and the curse.