Don't make a wrong turn

Last night I was driving back from the Jerusalem Zoo and made a wrong turn. It didn't take long but the view went from the Jerusalem that tourists extrapolate to be all of Israel to barbed wire, tall concrete  walls, and guard towers. They went on and on. I couldn't figure out where it was safe to turn around. I drove and drove past the dreariness. I felt as though I had entered a war zone. Indeed I had, and it's not hard to do in Israel, that tiny little land which is half desert and half Arab.

I kept thinking, geulah? The Modern Orthodox people want to claim that this is geulah? We have been redeemed? Has Hershel Schachter seen the barbed wires and concrete walls? Or does he know only the express lane at the airport and the chauffeured ride to the upscale neighborhoods of Jerusalem where live the wealthy donors who earned their fortunes in chutzeh l'aretz? 

He is not the only one. I meet many Modern Orthodox--let's call them Israel Orthodox--people who declare that redemption arrived here decades ago, even as their sons suffer three years in the military, some not surviving, even as the different groups of Israelis fight with one another, oftentimes even with punches to the face. That's geulah? One nation, one God. Oh, I didn't mention that most of the land that isn't desert or inhabited by Gentiles, is inhabited by anti-religious people whose mothers were born to mothers who were Jewish. As for the descendants, you wouldn't know that they were Jewish by looking at them, at least not their attire or conduct. That's geulah?

No, it's a land that was taken by force, hence the guard towers and a generation of youth in goyish military fatigues. You can be a genius, but if you don't see that the Israel project is a fraud and a joke, then where it counts you are a dope.