I AM A JEW (Part II)

Comments about Part I:

At the end of my last post entitled "I AM A JEW (Part I)" I concluded with “Please hold your comments, if any, until the end of this exposition, unless you feel that you have something to add to a particular portion, rather than to the whole.”

This prompted some comments, which did, to a large extend, address the first part.

George Garver of Fort Lee, NJ, objected to my taking pride in my ethnicity, writing:

Pride comes from a sense of accomplishment and not happenstance. You had no choice regarding your unchosen heritage. 


To which I responded:

Your point is well taken, at least in theory. But the fact is that all (or at least most) people take pride in their heritage. That is why so many people spend countless amounts of money tracing their ancestors. And our heritage has a lot to do with who we are. 

I am proud to be an American is a common refrain.  

When an American landed on the moon, we all felt proud. That is the way things work in the real world. 

We take pride even in our adopted associations. I am proud to be a Yankee fan. I am glad “my team” won, even though I had nothing to with it. 

Our heritage is a large part of what and who we are, and what we are, if it is positive, is a perfectly natural reason for pride. 

Ideally, maybe it should be as you say, but that isn’t the real world. People take pride in who their father was. The Kennedy clan takes pride in being Kennedys and the public accepts that.

Robert Malchman of Brooklyn, NY, called to my attention an error that I made:

Not to nit-pick, but as Jews, should we not be referring to Jesus as "Christ," which implies that he was the Messiah?   

I'll be interested to see where this is going.  I think there is plenty of blame to go around.

My response recognized my error. Accordingly I wrote:

Your point is well taken.

I should not have referred to Christ, I should have referred to Jesus.

Hal Wolkoff of Montclair, NJ, expressed this view:

I look forward to your further comments.  I am a Jew, probably very similar in my beliefs and political views to you. I strongly support Israel but have a great deal of sympathy for the Palestinian people. When it comes to who is responsible for the continuous violence and deaths of innocents there is no doubt in my mind. The blame belongs entirely to the Palestinian/Arab leadership who continue to reject Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State.

To which I did not respond since it goes to the heart of the issue and my posts are the only way that I know how to respond.

I AM A Jew (Part II)

The early Jewish settlers to Palestine came from Europe. They were the true refugees for whom the state was founded. They are known as Ashkenazi. Many of them, possibly most were, what is known in Europe as Social Democrats. In the terminology of the US they were something akin to New Dealers. They formed the many Kibbutzim, using modern irrigation, to “make the desert bloom” and their organization was strictly socialist, with all sharing equally in the produce of the settlement. 

They were strong supporters of the Labor Party.

But the founding of Israel, while it had a profound impact on Jews fleeing Nazi persecution and even after when the survivors needed to escape from the scenes of the horrors, it had a negative effect on Jews who had lived in peace and prosperity for generations in Arab lands. They suddenly faced anti-Semitism and persecution from their host nations, and as a result they fled in large numbers to Israel, greatly embittered against the Arabs. They flocked to what had until then been a minority party, i.e. Likud. The final wave of immigrants were the Russian, who having lived under an oppressive socialist dictatorship, found themselves with little sympathy for Socialist, or even Social Democratic ideas. They too flocked to Likud.

But even at a very early stage of the founding of Israel, there were three factions, One organized the Haganah, which later became the Labor party, the second was Irgun, which later became Herut under the leadership of Menachim Begin, who later became Prime Minister, and eventually became Likud and a very small group known as the Stern gang. What followed was a series of terrorist attacks. That included in 1948 the assassination of Count Bernadotte, a Swedish mediator, but also included a whole series of terrorist attacks by the Irgun and Stern gangs, which included the famous bombing of the King David Hotel, but many others as well. See here. Relations between Irgun and the Haganah became so bad that there was an armed stand off between the two Jewish armed organizations, which came to be known as the Atelena affair. 

There has long been a debate about whether Arabs left Israel out of their own free will, at the urgings of their leaders or were driven out by Israeli forces conducting ethnic cleansing. After extensive research I have concluded that both are true. What has come to be known as the Deir Yassin massacre is instructive.

I quote from Wikipedia:

The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian Arab village of roughly 600 people. The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem by Palestinian forces during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine.

Around 107 villagers were killed during and after the battle for the village, including women and children—some were shot, while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes. Several villagers were taken prisoner and may have been killed after being paraded through the streets of West Jerusalem, though accounts vary. Four of the attackers died, with around 35 injured. The killings were condemned by the leadership of the Haganah—the Jewish community's main paramilitary force—and by the area's two chief rabbis. The Jewish Agency for Israel sent Jordan's King Abdullah a letter of apology, which he rebuffed.

The deaths became a pivotal event in the Arab–Israeli conflict for their demographic and military consequences. The narrative was embellished and used by various parties to attack each other—by the Palestinians against Israel; by the Haganah to play down their own role in the affair; and by the Israeli Left to accuse the Irgun and Lehi of violating the Jewish principle of purity of arms, thus blackening Israel's name around the world. News of the killings sparked terror within the Palestinian community, encouraging them to flee from their towns and villages in the face of Jewish troop advances, and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later. (Emphasis added)

I don’t want to quote more, but it gets worse. Those who are interested can read the rest of the entry.

All this might be dismissed as ancient history, but it is relevant for two reasons. It shows that terrorism is the inevitable method for the weak who feel they cannot succeed without resort to it (The Irish Republican Army, which many Americans sympathized with is another example) and it is relevant because the ruling party of Israel, Likud, is the successor to these terrorists. It’s founding rejects the very idea of a Palestinian state. I quote from the document.

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting…. The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River.

And so we find the frequent criticism of Hamas in so far its founding charter reads,

Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.

But is that so different from Likud’s claim to all of Palestine including the whole West Bank and Gaza. To expect Hamas to drop this demand can only be the end result of negotiations, not a pre-condition.

The PLO used to have a similar provision in its charter. It provided under Article 17:

The Partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are illegal and false regardless of the loss of time, because they were contrary to the wish of the Palestine people and its natural right to its homeland, and in violation of the basic principles embodied in the charter of the United Nations, foremost among which is the right to self-determination.

But as long ago as 1988 it accepted Israel’s right to exist. 

After a two-day meeting with five prominent American Jews here, a P.L.O. delegation led by Mr. Arafat said in a joint statement that the Palestinian parliament in exile last month had ''accepted the existence of Israel as a state in the region'' and ''declared its rejection and condemnation of terrorism in all its forms.''

Where did it get them? Has Israel reciprocated by recognizing the right of a Palestinian Sate? Did this prompt the cessation of Israel’s endless encroachment of Palestinian territory? Has it stopped the creeping annexation of the West Bank? Or for that matter the military occupation of the whole West Bank? To all intents and purposes the P.L.O. has been turned into the Vichy government of the West Bank, and then the Likud government of Israel claims the PLO is too weak to be a negotiating partner.

I AM A JEW (Part I)

I have announced my retirement from blogging time and time again. This results from my frustration from the lack of feedback from my assumed readers. This lack of feedback makes me feel that I am talking to myself and that I have, at best, a dwindling audience, if any. When I started my blog many years ago, I had hoped for an ever-increasing one.  

But as I return to writing again and again and I realize that I write because I must. The thoughts swirl! The indignation increases. I have things to say! They need to be said.

And so let me say that I am a Jew! I am proud to be a Jew! We are a tribe that, small as it is, has survived persecution for 5,774 years. That alone is an achievement that few other cultures have achieved. I say cultures, because Judaism is at least as much a culture as it is a religion, and to me it is primarily a culture, for I am not a believer.

But I am proud to be a Jew!

Long ago, not long after the death of Christ, who was a Jewish priest, Jews gave up having priests. Instead, Jews substituted Rabbis for priests. For the uninitiated, that is a significant difference, for Priests preach. Rabbis read and study and teach. The Ten Commandments were handed down by Moses in writing and the holy scroll, the Torah, has been read by Jews for millennia, and thus Jews have often been described as the people of the book.

That is of vital importance for it means that Jews value education above all. It is what, in my opinions, makes them what they are. The people of the book.

Every time I see some prominent person, who I never knew was Jewish, described as Jewish I swell with pride. Sometimes I exclaim, “Is everybody Jewish?” Most recently I felt that way when Lauren Bacall died. I never knew she too was Jewish.

I suffered, like so many others for being a Jew. My father saw the insides of Dachau and Buchenwald and I and my brother fled for our lives, to find a haven here in the US, as eventually did my parents.

But there is another aspect of being a Jew. We have been called: “ The Chosen People”. Chosen for what? I believe to bring to the world righteousness and charity. We may often be oppressed, but are never, never to be the oppressors.

“The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed”. (Emphasis added) - Psalm 103. See here.

I used to be a Zionist as was my father. After so many Jews died who could have been saved, not because Hitler wouldn’t let them flee, but because the world turned its back on them, (just as most of the world doesn’t want to open its doors to the oppressed today) I, and countless others, concluded that we, the Jews, needed a homeland where we would always be welcome, a country that would never turn its back on the Jewish diaspora. That country was and is Israel.

But I never had any illusions. When Theodore Herzl in 1903 founded Zionism, he advocated for a Jewish homeland, but Palestine, was only one of many locations. He even talked of Africa as a possible place for the new Zion. See here.

But does anybody think that the people of that region, with there own aspirations for statehood, would have welcomed a Jewish state carved out of their entity? Would the US have been willing to cede part of its territory for such a state? Would any of the colonies of the British Empire have been willing to welcome such a state as part of their liberation from their colonists?

Why would anybody have expected the Arab colonies to react any different from any other colony or state. When Israel was founded in 1948, by a vote of the UN in 1947 by a vote of 33 in favor to 13 opposed, with 10 abstentions  “the Arab leaders and governments rejected the plan of partition in the resolution, and indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial division. Their reason was that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny." Was that a surprise? Should it have been? Is there any other nation, territory or political entity that would have reacted differently?

This is very important, because there has been a tendency to paint the Arabs as evil anti-Semites. Were they? Many were. Famously, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem established himself in Italy and Germany. During World War II he collaborated with both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy by making propagandistic radio broadcasts and by helping Germans recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS. But even this has to be understood by the axiom, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and he hated the colonials, and he hated the Jews, who he saw as people who wanted a piece of the Arab homeland.

But while Jews paid huge sums to buy land in Palestine, and the Arabs gladly sold it to them, that does not mean that they concurred with the idea that these settlers, instead of becoming citizens of the new Arab states to be created with the end of colonialism, would carve out an alien non-Arab entity. In other Arab countries after all, Jews lived in their midst as citizens of those countries and they did not agitate for independence.

Thus their unwillingness to accept the new Jewish state in their midst, should not be seen as something evil or surprising, but the natural reaction of any people and particularly aspirational people just coming out of the oppression of colonialism.

Two wrong don’t make a right. But neither do two rights make a wrong.

The Arabs attacked, as the Jews knew they would. But the Jews were ready. They defeated all the Arab armies combined, and with the playing of the Hatikvah, declared the new nation into being.

The Jewish state was a fait accompli under the biblical name Israel. But it was a very small country.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library:

“…the Jewish State was to be comprised of roughly 5,500 square miles and the population was to be 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs. The Arab State was to be 4,500 square miles with a population of 804,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews. Though the Jews were allotted more total land, the majority of that land was in the desert. 

“Further complicating the situation was the UN majority's insistence that Jerusalem remain apart from both states and be administered as an international zone. This arrangement left more than 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem isolated from their country and circumscribed by the Arab state.” 

A map of the Israel mandated by the UN is shown below:

I write this because without a clear understanding of the facts, no valid opinion is possible. And at least for me, a clear an understanding of the history, the rights and the wrongs, and above all the facts must be established and understood.

To my readers I suggest that they read each installment, and then the whole. Whether it changes any opinions or not, I trust that a clear understandings of the dynamics and the facts, the facts and the FACTS, will make whatever opinions my readers, or for that matter me, may have, to be based on the history and a true understanding of the underling conflicts and myths.

Please hold your comments, if any, until the end of this exposition, unless you feel that you have something to add to a particular portion, rather than to the whole.