They Must Go

At the end of the Book of Bamidbar, we are given the borders of the Land of Israel. We are commanded to go up and inherit the land. In other words, settle in Israel.

There is a very stern warning given in this section of the Torah. Rav Meir Kahane made this particular verse famous. And because he simply taught what was written in the Torah, he was labeled as a racist.

The Torah makes it clear that the inhabitants of the land will pose a great threat in being able to settle the land, and live there in peace. Therefore, there is a clear command to drive out all of the inhabitants of the land.

The warning is that if we are unable or unwilling to drive out those dwelling in the land, they will be “thorns in our eyes, and a pain in our sides.” Their very presence will give us no rest. They will claim that they have rights to the land, and they will torment us. This is why Rav Kahane almost prophetically wrote his controversial book titled, “They Must Go.”

It would be nice to think that if we only treated the inhabitants of the land kindly, they would behave and become model citizens. The Torah predicted what the outcome of such kindness would be. It doesn’t matter how nice we are to them. They will inevitably be, “thorns in our eyes and a pain in our side.”

This is the reality that we are learning through pain and suffering. But it is a reality that will not change. Eretz Yisrael was given only to the Jewish people. It will be settled peacefully when all of the dictates of the Torah are followed.