Why Us? Series

“Why me?” Have you ever sung that song? The refrain goes something like this: “Why do bad things always happen to me?” I was singing that song one day when a man came up to me and said, “Why not you? Are you special?”

Yep. I am special. And so are you … which is why bad things happen to us sometimes. Sometimes life just happens and there is no particular reason for the bad things that happen to us. Maybe we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe there is no other reason for what happened other than, well … life happens and we happen to get in its way. Sometimes bad things happen because we make bad decisions. But sometimes …

Unless you’ve been living in a cave recently and have no electricity, a TV, a radio, or a cell phone then you know what’s been happening in Afghanistan the last few weeks, amen? We’ve heard a lot about our 20-year involvement in Afghanistan … we’ve heard a lot about how Afghanistan earned the reputation of being the “graveyard of nations.” “Afghanistan is a notoriously difficult country to govern,” explains Afghani journalist Rafiq Tschannen. “Empire after empire, nation after nation have failed to pacify what is today the modern territory of Afghanistan … Afghanistan has had a reputation for destroying ambitious military ventures for centuries. … Starting from Alexander the Great, the region remained deeply problematic for invaders like Genghis Khan, Taimoor and Babar. … The British lost a nasty war in 1842 that ended when fierce tribesmen notoriously destroyed an army of thousands which compelled them to retreat from Kabul, and the Soviets, after a decade of war in Afghanistan, had to give up in 1989” (Afghanistan: A graveyard of empires? The Muslim Times, October 21, 2020).

While all eyes are on us and all thoughts are on the future of Afghanistan, there is one country that has its eyes and its mind on both the U.S. and Afghanistan … and that’s Israel. According to Israeli Journalist Arie Egozi, “Israeli officials are nervously watching the situation in Afghanistan, with a belief that the collapse of the government … will enable Al-Qaida to renew its efforts to perform terror attacks against both American and Israeli targets around the world” (Israel Braces for Renewed Terrorism Coming from Taliban-Led Afghanistan. Breaking Defense, August 16, 2021.) He goes on to say that the “feeling among the Taliban and Al-Qaida is that after defeating the U.S. in Afghanistan the ‘gate is wide open’ to launch attacks from inside Afghanistan (Ibid.).

The Taliban, which is a Sunni group, and the Shiite government of Iran have had a long history of fighting with each other but one Israeli official warned that “certain Islamic groups in both countries may find common ground in targeting non-Islamic nations” (Ibid.). In other words, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Israeli Journalist Yossi Aloni fears that the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan will not only erode American credibility and deterrence but that Israel may have to “propose a military alliance with the moderate Arab countries, in order to produce an effective front even without the United States” (Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan is a Problem for Israel. Israel Today, August 17, 2021).

Let’s put ourselves in Israel’s place for a moment. Israel is located on the Southwest shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The nation of Israel is tiny … only 9,000 square miles … surrounded by 5 million square miles of countries that “do not recognize its right to exist and openly vow to annihilate it” (Jeremiah, D. Is This the End? Nashville: W. Publishing Group, 2015, p. 148).

I’ve been to the Golan heights and it’s an eerie feeling to stand in a bunker and look over at Syria, Iraq, and Jordan and know that there are people over there in bunkers looking down on us and realize that the people of Israel live with this reality every day. One Israeli described what life was like in Israel on his Facebook page: “Everywhere in Israel we can feel the terror tension, by rockets, stones, riots, or Molotov cocktail” (Jeremiah, p. 148). Over 4,000 rockets and mortars were fired at heavily populated areas of Israel last May. Ten Israelis were killed. The number would have been much, much higher if it hadn’t been for Israel’s anti-missile defense system (Rocket & Mortar Attacks By Date – 2001 to Present. Jewishvirtuallibrary.org). Air-raid sirens go off practically every day and it is not uncommon for the people to have to crowd into bomb shelters that are located on just about every block of every city in Israel.

“Why us?” is a centuries old song or lament for the Israelis. For 400 years they sang this song as slaves in Egypt. After establishing a nation in the Promised Land, they were constantly attacked by the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Philistines and many more. In 772 B.C., the Northern Kingdom of Israel was attacked and destroyed by the Assyrians and in 586 B.C., the southern kingdom of Judah was attacked and destroyed by Babylon. They were able to return and rebuild their homeland … and then the Romans came along, conquered them, and then destroyed them. They lived in exile for over 1,800 years … until May 14, 1948, when the holocaust survivors and Jews from around the world cried out “Never again” and re-established the current nation-state of Israel.