The Lerner story made me think of something I wrote the other day.

The biggest problem facing the Jewish people is not Islamic Fundamentalism or intermarriage or even antisemitism in general.

It is disunity and baseless hatred amongst the people. We are taught that this was the cause of the loss of the Second commonwealth and the second Temple.

Islamic Fundamentalism is only a secondary issue. It may be the secondary issue but, it is the external manifestation of our inner division.

Consider this, if someone kidnapped your brother, you would stop at nothing to get him back. There would be no questions of politicking. There would be no questions of the feelings of the kidnapper. You would get him back and not sleep until he was back. We are commanded to love one another as brothers.

If we loved our own as much as our dearest ones, nothing would deter us in taking whatever steps were needed to defend our people. We would face the world united. Not that we would ever agree on all things, but we would keep disagreements in the family.

If we really felt for Gilad Shalit as our brother and really felt the suffering of his family, there would be no question as to our actions. Water and power to Gaza go down until he comes home safely and world opinion be damned. We would simply say, “we are Jews, if you harm one of us, you contend with all of us and we will not break our resolve.”

No power would try such antics if they knew we would all, everywhere in the world, stand as one on the issue to protect our own. But we do not love our own as ourselves really.

Sderot… if you were being rocketed personally, you would shoot back until it stopped. If Israel and the world Jewish community said rocket us and we will automatically respond with artillery - no apologies, to mess with one of us, is to mess with all of us the attacks on Sderot would have ended years ago. We are taught that if Jews want to fight each other, Hashem hates it so much that He will send someone else to give us what we want. We are one people. We need to act like it.