IN PRAISE OF "HATE"

Are you 110% sick of and fed up with people who have hated and slammed America their whole lives lecturing to people who have loved America their whole lives that we "need to watch out how we criticize the President"? I know I am. With that in mind, a few words on "hate" from one of the great men of the last century, Menachem Begin, from the introduction to his stirring 1952 memoir, "The Revolt":

“It is only natural, therefore, that many English readers will ask [about me, “Terrorist Number One”] quite sincerely: What can such a man have to tell us; what message can come from him except a message of hate?

Let us try, without fear, favour, or prejudice, to understand the meaning of the awful word "hate" in this connection. You may ask me: Was there "hate" in our actions, in our revolt against British rule of our country, and is that emotion expressed in this book written by the man who bore the burden of responsibility and subsequently wrote about the facts of the revolt?

To such a question the sincere answer is "Yes."

But was it hatred of the British people as such? The sincere answer is "No."

It is axiomatic that those who fight have to hate -- something or somebody. And we fought. We had to hate first and foremost, the horrifying, age-old, inexcusable utter DEFENSELESSNESS of our Jewish people, wandering through millennia, through a cruel world to the majority whose inhabitants the defenselessness of the Jews was a standing invitation to massacre them. We had to hate the humiliating disgrace of homelessness of our people. We had to hate -- as any nation worthy of the name must and always must hate -- the rule of the foreigner, rule, unjust and unjustifiable, per se, foreign rule in the land of our ancestors, in our own country. We had to hate the barring of the gates of our own country to our brethren, trampled and bleeding and crying out for help in a world morally deaf.

And, naturally, we had to hate all those who, equipped with modern arms and the ancient machinery of the gallows, barred the way of our people to physical salvation, denied them the means of individual defense, frustrated their efforts for national independence, and ruthlessly withstood their efforts to regain their national honor and restore their self-respect.

Who will condemn the hatred of evil that springs from the love of what is good and just? Such hatred has been the driving force of progress in the world's history -- "not peace but a sword" in the cause of mankind's advancement. And in our case, such hate has been nothing more and nothing less than a manifestation of that highest human feeling: love. For if you love Freedom, you must hate Slavery; if you love your people, you cannot but hate the foreign enemies that compass their destruction; if you love your country, you cannot but hate those who seek to annex it. Simply put: if you love your mother, would you not hate the man who sought to kill her: would you not hate him and fight him at the cost, if needs be, of your own life?

This is a fundamental human question in the violent and stormy world of today. Let every decent man search his soul and decently answer. Because ultimately the hope of every people lies in the readiness of its sons to stake their lives "for their mothers," for freedom which man loves, against serfdom which man hates and should hate in the name of his love."