The last sections of the book of Numbers deal with the local tribes, themselves fighting and displacing each other, refusing to grant the Israelite refugees safe passage through their lands.  As a consequence of this moral failing, they lose the right to keep the land --an important message of Torah.  In fact, coupled with their denials of safe passage, they hire the famous Near-Eastern Bilaam to magically curse the Israelites with fraught words justifying violence against them.  It's like this entire section was relived in the years approaching 1948, when local Arab populations opposed Jewish refugees buying land and living peacefully in British Mandate Palestine, and instead attacked them.  Ever since they resort to Bilaam curses, the use of factually incorrect curse words of "Genocide," "Apartheid," "Settler Colonialism," "Ethnic Cleansing," "Daily Massacres of Children," and "Not Indigenous" to scapegoat Jews and justify violence against them, not just in Israel but in intimidation and harrassment on the campuses in the U.S.  In this Yom Kippur morning sermon, I name this reenactment of the end of Numbers and propose that Jews respond not with compaints about anti-Semitism, but with a campaign of history, along with a renewed consciousness that is not a victim consciousness but is a creator consciousness that is inclusive of Arabs, so we don't lose our moral authority in the Land.

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