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.