Why G-d chose the Jews

THERE IS ONE good thing about anti-Semitism: It lets you know who the bad guys are...

If it were only a matter of hating Jews, we could say: "Feel free, hate everyone, knock yourself out." The trouble is the suffering, the slaughter of innocents and indeed the destruction of entire nations that seems inevitably to follow when anti-Semitism is allowed to spread beyond the cesspool of the mind that contains it.

Andrew Klavan's commentary is quite perceptive. Read it all.

Then ponder this question: Is the life of a Jew-hater to be valued the same as that of a Jew? Suppose I'm surrounded by twenty Jew-haters who want to kill me and all I've got is a machine gun: Am I entitled to gun them down?

If you say yes, then my question is, doesn't Israel have the right to do the same to its enemies? If you say no, then my question is, why do we keep violent criminals in prisons? If you support the prison system, then consider what Israel is doing by isolating the Palestinian Arabs: is it really different?

Why G-d chose the Jews. Do you recall Sodom and Gemorrah and how Abraham was tested?

Why G-d chose the Jews. Back then, only G-d possessed the ability to turn wicked cities into seas of ash. With mankind's increased power comes a communsurate increase in responsibility. The current Iranian régime will soon match its overmastering desire to wipe out Israel with the ability to do so. What is Israel supposed to do? [Nuke 'em?] What is the United States supposed to do? What is the world supposed to do?

Why G-d chose the Jews. From the Passover Haggadah: "Not one alone has arisen against us to destroy us. Rather in each generation, there are those that rise up against us to destroy us, in every generation we must seek our freedom."

Why G-d chose the Jews. It is this writer's conceit that the primary purpose of choosing the Jews to follow the Torah was to give them the ability - and set upon them the responsibility - to make and carry out difficult moral choices.

What do my readers say to that?