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ee no evil hear no evil speak no evil. This admonition of the three wise monkeys is part of the daily vocabulary — even if not the behavior — of all civilized people. But there is one people concerning whom these three monkeys are stood on their heads. About that people there is just the reverse: See only evil hear only evil speak only evil. Which people? Who else?

Examples abound:

• A popular writer for Ha’aretz the so-called “New York Times ofIsrael” calls the State of Israel evil.

• A fringe Orthodox anti-Israel group even more extreme than Neturei Karta callsIsraelevil.

• The virulent BDS movement (boycott divest sanction) calls the State of Israel racist.

• InAmerica the Black Lives Matter movement calls the State of Israel racist.

I am confused. I live inJerusalem. People are helpful considerate kind-hearted. Evil? Ethiopians attend the same schools as other Israelis. They receive identical social services are admitted to yeshivos and schools with no regard to their color. Racist?

In Jerusalem alone there are 100 organizations from whom you can borrow anything from baby food to medicine to linens to wedding dresses to diapers — and even money —all without cost. Plus Israelis give more charity per capita than any people in the world. Evil? In Israeli hospitals Arab patients are treated by Israeli doctors and nurses just as are native Israelis and Arab doctors and nurses treat Israeli patients as well as Arab patients. Racist?

All the breathtaking contributions of Israel — in technology medicine the arts economics agriculture science not to mention Torah and general scholarship — are so obvious they are clichés. But all this is ignored by the Israel-bashers. What concerns them is not the hundreds of thousands killed in the Syrian civil war or the threats to the world from militant terrorist groups; their chief concerns are the roadblocks between Arab villages and the main Israeli highways and that Arab cars are often searched for explosives and weapons — which are often discovered. To cause inconvenience to a population that is sworn to kill Jews — and often does — is to these bleeding hearts unadulterated racism.

The hideous atrocities committed by ISIS matter not nor does the Arab glorification of murderers and criminals; what matters is that Jews build homes in historically Jewish land like Judea andSamaria. That Arabs serve in the “racist” and “evil” Israeli Knesset does not impress them but they are unable to point to a single Jew who serves in any Arab legislature. ForIsraeland the Jews the slogan is: See no good hear no good speak no good.

Of course that anti-Semites can find nothing positive to say about Jews is not new. We are accustomed to that grotesquery and have to live with it ( and often to die because of it). What is more hurtful is that some Jews regurgitate the same tired bromides. For them it is the Jews who are the new Nazis while the truly evil corrupt and racist regimes in the world are given their kosher hechsher.

Certainly Israelis not a perfect society; it has its faults and failings. And certainly Jews have a right to point out these failings. But the Ha’aretz writer and his Jewish self-hating cohorts are not shy about broadcasting their hostility to an already hostile world. They are the Jewish poster children for what Natan Sharansky calls the three Ds: delegitimization demonization double standards.

Such Jews are far more pitiful than the garden variety non-Jewish anti-Semites. These Jews no doubt think of themselves as fearless truth-speaking trail-blazers. How disappointed they would be to learn that the prophet Isaiah foresaw them some 2500 years ago when he said: “Meharsayich u’macharivayich mimeich yeitzei’u — those who would destroy you and decimate you will emerge from among you”(see 49:17 with commentary of Metzudas Dovid).

As to what creates a Jewish anti-Semite: This is a subject for a psychology journal rather than a family magazine. But if any Jewish anti-Semite should feel the need for personal atonement on Yom Kippur he might want to emphasize some of these al cheit’s: “We have sinned before Thee with arrogance… baseless hatred… careless speech… confusion of the heart….”

And while Judaism does not offer the three monkeys (but see the very similar Psalm 15) we have another even more powerful triad. The Mishnah in Avos 2:1 contains a sobering reminder: “Ayin roeh ozen shomaas — an Eye sees an Ear hears and all your deeds are recorded in the Divine Book.” Someone is watching and listening.

May we all merit a year in which we see only good hear only good and speak only good — even about fellow Jews.

lso left with a heightened awareness of the Hashgachah pratisinvolved in such “chance” encounters and with a firm resolve to fulfill the man’s wish that I publicize his story.

 

Which I just did.

Dr. Meir Wikler is a psychotherapist and family counselor in full-time private practice with offices in Brooklyn and Lakewood.