Like
many people these days, I am a busy man. But that did not stop me from
taking off several weeks of my professional life to fight Muammar
Kaddafi’s plan to take up residence directly next door to me this past
August and September. Together with my friend and Mayor, Michael
Wildes, and the support of the entire Englewood, New Jersey, community,
we pushed Kaddafi out. Sad to say, it was a pyrrhic victory. Last
month, with great stealth and with the cooperation of the State
Department, our otherwise brilliant police force, and the silent
acquiescence of our elected leaders, his Ambassador to the United
Nations, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgham, moved in and took up residence
as my immediate next door neighbor. Every time my kids hit a baseball a
bit too far, it goes into Libyan territory and on to the lawn of a man
who last week disgraced the UN Security Council by showing a gruesome
slide show featuring images of mutilated Palestinians with Israeli
soldiers as the culprits. His condemnation of Israel in Gaza made no
mention of the thousands of Hamas rockets that had been fired without
provocation at Israeli children.

These are the same Libyans who
in August welcomed a mass murderer – Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi,
the Lockerbie bomber – with great fanfare into Tripoli (Megrahi, who
was released by Scottish authorities on humanitarian grounds because he
only had three months to live, is miraculously still alive.). They are
the same Libyans whose leader called in October for the Palestinians to
be given nuclear weapons. And they are the same Libyans who have shown
our city undisguised contempt by refusing over a quarter century to pay
even a single dollar in taxes and who cut down my fence and trees that
separate my property from theirs without so much as a courtesy phone
call, thereby forcing me to sue them in Federal court.

From the age of sixteen all I ever wanted to be was a Rabbi, someone
who brings healing to broken lives and values to a needy culture. But
for the first time in my life I find myself contemplating a run for
elective office. The reason is simple. The Talmud declares, “In a place
where there are no men stand up and become one.” The fact that our
elected officials allow the representative of state-sponsors of
terrorism to live in our community is scandalous. When I read that my
own Congressman and friend Steve Rothman, who fought so hard against
Kaddafi, had now told the New Jersey Jewish Standard that an agreement
had been reached 25 years ago allowing the Ambassador to take up
residence and that therefore “I hope everyone will be appropriately
good neighbors,” I was beside myself. Is he seriously asking me to
borrow a cup of sugar from a man whose government murdered American
servicemen while they danced at a disco?

Without sounding paranoid it’s time that we in the Jewish community
face some facts. Across the globe it’s open season on the Jews. Few of
us would have believed that a country like Britain that gave the world
parliamentary democracy would be guilty of attempting to ban Israeli
professors from academic conferences, would have a magistrate issue an
arrest warrant against Israel’s former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni,
would require a label on products from the West Bank as being made by
Jewish settlers, and would have its Supreme Court dictate to the Jewish
community who its members are.

Then came the news, reported in the New York Times, that Pope
Benedict XVI is moving ahead with plans to canonize Piux XII, the man
known as Hitler’s Pope who made a Concordat with the Fuhrer and who, as
the world’s foremost spiritual figure refused even once to condemn the
holocaust. This is the same infallible leader who on 16 October, 1943,
watched quite literally as more than a thousand Jews of Rome were
rounded up in trucks, within 300 feet of the his Vatican Window, to be
deported to Auschwitz where they were gassed within a few days. Even
then the Holy Father remained utterly silent. The Church’s allegations
that Pius helped Jews in secret is as cowardly as Pius’s actions. When
it comes to stopping abortion the Church blasts its global megaphone.
But when it came to saving Jews it could only be done when noone was
looking? Many righteous Catholics saved Jews in plane sight and were
martyred for their courage. But Pius, who even after the war ordered
the mass kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of Jewish children by
refusing to hand them back to their rightful Jewish guardians,
disgraced a great world religion.

Here in the United States we have had to contend with the Obama
Administration’s canard that Israeli settlements, rather than
Palestinian terrorism and Arab political oppression, are the main
obstacles to Middle East peace. And it’s more than a little
disappointing that the Netanyahu government has endorsed this fraud by
instituting a ten month freeze on settlements, thereby unjustly
identifying some of Israel’s most patriotic citizens as its most
intransigent.

Why is all this happening? Some would say that antipathy toward Jews
is a law of physics. I disagree. It is happening because we allow it.
Can anyone imagine the same British Supreme Court dictating to the
Anglo-Islamic community whom a Muslim is? President Obama received
nearly eighty percent of the Jewish vote. When you have numbers that
overwhelming, you can be forgiven if you take the constituency for
granted.

Our community must make its voice heard. We are a powerful global
economic market and we must seriously consider boycotting the products
of countries whose shameful behavior mistreats Jews. Britain is out of
control and a serious conversation about whether or not to vacation
there or buy its products should now occur. And our community must make
it clear to our Catholic brothers and sisters that calling a man who
lost his voice while six million Jews died a saint will irreparably
harm Catholic-Jewish relations.

More committed Jews must begin considering running for office.
Rather than merely relying on friends to represent us, we must also
begin representing ourselves. I wish to remain a Rabbi who informs and
influences politics from the outside. But if Kaddafi’s envoy remains my
next-door neighbor with the tacit blessing of my elected leaders, I
will do my best to unseat them by every legal means necessary.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Values Network.
His most recent book is ‘The Blessing of Enough’ and ‘The Michael
Jackson Tapes.’ Follow him on Twitter (RabbiShmuley) and on his website
Shmuley.com.