Emalia (Nov 12, 2023)

The reason an heroic movie, an heroic character, attracts us is simple: vicariously, we become heroes. Whatever the scenario, we place ourselves in it - Ben Hur in the galley, the homesteaders on the high plains, or perhaps Schindler saving his workers at “Emalia.” At the same time, we know we’ll never have to actually do most of these things under any circumstance whatsoever. The Comanches are not raiding any towns in suburban America, none of us is likely to end up pulling an oar for the Roman Consul.

Strange, though… What about that Jewish thing?

There are currently a bit more than 15 million Jews world-wide. Almost 6 million are here in the US, about 8 million in Israel. There are perhaps 8 other countries that hold most of the rest: Canada, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, Brazil, Argentina, Australia. Beyond that, there are small communities scattered around the world, but they are small communities.

In the 1930s there were more than 9 million Jews in Europe. Hitler and the Nazis killed more than 6 million Jews. He wanted to kill all of them. In case anyone wonders what genocide looks like, that is genocide. There is ZERO chance that this is some hoax. There is, tragically, mountains of proof of this horror, not “evidence,” not something to be debated, proof. It happened, like “the sun came up yesterday.” There is no issue to debate. I bring this up because in a poll released this past week, some 23% of US citizens between the ages of 19 and 39 say the holocaust never took place. (Note: One in ten think the Jews perpetrated the Holocaust. The depth of incompetence to be found in American education is difficult to plumb.)

When World War II ended somewhere between 2/3rds and 3/4ths of the surviving Jews of Europe went to the Mid East, to land called Palestine, controlled by the British,  the Mandate of Palestine. They took it over after the Ottoman Empire collapsed. The Ottomans had ruled it - think “occupy,” think “absolute dictatorship,” for almost 500 years. Before that? A whole host of empires, ruled by a long string of absolute rulers, none of whom really gave a tinker’s damn about who lived anywhere, or what they called themselves. And that list stretches back into time as far as you care to go. 

But there was always a Jewish community in the area, back through at least 1,500 BC. Even during the Babylonian exile there still remained a small Jewish community.

And the Palestinians? Despite recent reworking of history, Palestine for more than 2,000 years was not much more than a place on the map. The closest thing to "Palestinians” were the Philistines, who are now believed to be mainly Greek in origin, immigrants from late Bronze Age Greece, about the time of the Trojan War. In the intervening millennia all sorts of armies and peoples flowed across the region, occupying, besieging, looting, burning, and moving on. About the only group that always remained was the small, tightly knit Jewish community. Very little else was constant.

As for the Palestinians, there are roughly the same number of Palestinians as Jews, world wide, some 15 million. Most of them are located in the immediate vicinity of Israel - in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. But, the rationale that they deserve their own country is lacking. Why do they, any more than any other tribe in the Arab world, deserve a nation?

It’s worth noting that they’ve identified as Palestinians since the early 1800s, a far shorter period time than most other tribes in the Arab world. Except for the fact that they represent a means to attack the Jewish state, there seems to be no reason to support a Palestinians state any more than providing a state to any of the scores of other - older - tribes and clans in the Arab world.

And speaking against it is the widespread support of the demonstrably barbarous political movement that is Hamas. But that does highlight something… It seems as if most major newspapers - with a few exceptions - has called for a ceasefire, and negotiations, and has argued some sort of moral equivalence between the actions of Hamas and the actions of the Israeli Defense Force. So, just ask yourself how many leaflets did Hamas drop before they crossed the border? How many announcements and public delays before they began raiding? How many Israeli civilians were provided medical care by Hamas? 

78 years ago the Allies liberated Germany and Poland and Czechoslovakia and found the remains of the Nazi death camps. The horror of those camps made it clear that there needed to be real change. The Allies, as the leaders of the Untied Nations, agreed  the nations of the world needed to provide European Jews a land to call their own. Never Again wasn’t and isn’t so much a message among the people of Israel, from one Jew to another, it’s a message to the rest of the world that all of us must ensure that this will not happen again.

Yet here were are, 78 years later, and we’re hearing calls for wiping Israel off the map, calls for killing Jews, calls for barbarism of the most extreme kind - on the streets of our cities. And while such calls always exist among extreme groups, these calls should receive virulent condemnation from every corner of the globe. But they have not. Instead, the press covers these “mostly peaceful demonstrations” without comment while printing death tolls from Gaza that are utter fiction, in an effort to shock the gullible into accepting some sort of moral equivalence.

What Hamas has done, what the progressive academicians have done, the left-leaning press, what the leaders of far too many countries across the planet have done, to include far too many politicians in the US and other Western countries, is to show why there must be an Israel. After the sheer evil and horror of the holocaust, just 3 generations have passed and among our “elites” “Never Forget” has become “Huh?” After such a display, there is no reason the Jewish people ought to trust anyone else to defend them.

Folks go to the movies and they like to think they might do what Mr. Schindler did. Now is the time to stand up and do your best imitation.