Why Must The Choice Be Sympathy For Dead Jews Or Empathy With Imperfect Live Ones?
Gerald A. Honigman | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
Another Yom HaShoah came and left.
One out of every three Jews on Planet Earth were slaughtered by Nazis and their various collaborators in the Holocaust. While there were unfortunately many other victims, Jews and Roma (“Gypsies”) were targeted for total extinction. Of the six million Jews who perished, a million and a half were babies and children. The Nazis were proud of their work and took many pictures…
There were many worthy commemorative articles by esteemed authors regarding this somber annual event, but two especially come to mind that should be read. The first one by Meir Jolovitz gave me yet another reason to like the actor Morgan Freeman. Ruthie Blum honored the martyrs beautifully as well.
I stayed away from the Yom HaShoah community-wide commemoration last year, and this year, due to the current pandemic, we all recalled these tragic events at home. Since the Hebrew calendar is both solar and lunar, the corresponding dates on the Western calendar change yearly.
I’ve attended most Shoah programs in the past, so obviously agree that it’s good to have a day set aside to recall the Holocaust and its lessonstry.
Indeed, I’ve worked most of my life trying to assure that “Never Again ! ” will be a truism forever by defending Israel, its right to thrive–not just survive–in relatively secure, far more defensible, real borders than those imposed upon the reborn Jewish State by the United Nations armistice lines in 1949. The latter made Israel smaller in width (9-15 miles) at its strategic waist than the size of some Texas driveways, at least according to President George W. Bush. Additionally, I’ve fought for relative justice for all peoples– Jew and non-Jew alike–with my pen, via other media, and additional means of communication and education for well over half century now. That’s also what http://q4j-middle-east.com is all about.
But, last year, I stayed away from this public display of sympathy for dead Jews.
Putting it bluntly, too many people attending annual Yom HaShoah commemorations leave the program and then, either consciously or unconsciously, aid and abet those who claim that Arabs are now allegedly the new stateless, oppressed Jews; Gaza is the new Warsaw Ghetto; Jews are the new Nazis; and so forth.
If that above paragraph had even an iota of truth to it, Israel would have solved its Gaza terror problem long ago.
Instead of wasting bombs and missiles on empty buildings, carefully trying to target the exact Arab perpetrators of assorted atrocities, and playing a tit-for-tat game with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and so forth, Israel could have easily done what Nazis did in the real Warsaw Ghetto to end the Jews’ month long Passover 1943 uprising: level the whole area, exterminate all the people, and so forth. Once again, every Jew alive was targeted for extinction–both there and wherever else the Nazis and their willing collaborators operated. As just one example, the “enlightened” Vichy French themselves rounded up their Jewish neighbors to send to Auschwitz. The ghettos were the collection points where Jews from surrounding areas were often herded prior to being sent to the extermination camps.
For a useful comparison, consult the Kurds and other non-Arab peoples in the region to find out who the real new Nazis are: over two hundred thousand Kurds massacred by Arabs in the Anfal Campaign in Iraq in the 1980s–over 5,000 men, women, and children poison gassed to death just in Halabja alone, with many other Kurds killed by Iraqi Arabs both before and after as well. A similar story can be told in “Arab” Syria. Check out Professor Ismet Cherif Vanly’s book, The Syrian ‘Mein Kampf’ Against the Kurds (Amsterdam, 1968), for starters. And who do you think has been committing genocide for decades in Darfur and against other black Africans in the Sudan? Hint: It wasn’t Jews.
You see, there’s no doubt that among folks attending Yom HaShoah events and services are some rabbis and congregants who’ve repeatedly, as just one example, attacked an admittedly imperfect President Trump for such things as his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving America’s embassy there; de-funding Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah/PLO/Palestinian Authority as long as it continues to reward murderers of Jews in the “pay to slay” program; closing the latter’s Washington office; de-funding anti-Israel United Nations hate organizations such as UNRWA; and supporting Israel’s claim to what UNSC Resolution 242 called for at the end of the 1967 Six Day War–it’s right to a fair territorial compromise in the disputed territories, giving it more secure, defensible, and real borders rather than forcing it to return to the suicidal armistice lines of 1949, which made it a forever vulnerable, 9-15 mile-wide, compacted sardine can of a state. That’s what the settlement and partial annexation issues are mostly all about–and what President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” also addresses, and the arguments between Netanyahu and many of those who oppose him in Israel itself include.
Honestly, dear readers, does the American President really deserve the hatred he gets from most American Hebrews for the above–despite his imperfections, some which are indeed troublesome? Show me the leader who comes without them…
More disturbing, I also have no doubt that at least some J-Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other Hebrew Arabs’ Useful Idiots attend these Holocaust memorials. They’re best buddies with such organizations as Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Students Organization, Arab Student Union, other Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front groups, and overt or covert antisemitic Left of Lenin organizations.
While I want Israel to strive, as much as possible (without grossly endangering itself), to be a “light unto the nations” as the Bible expects, and not emulate the intolerant mess which surrounds it, such “Progressive” folks as those above hold the Jew of the Nations up to impossible expectations and double standards that are not demanded of anyone else. They join the United Nations, like-minded professors on campus (often products of their own Hebrew temples), and numerous others who routinely use one set of lenses to scrutinize, dissect, and judge Israel, and a completely different set to study the rest of the nasty, repressive, oppressive neighborhood in which it lives. The chief rabbinical honcho of America’s largest Jewish denomination has been among those who have led the attack on President Trump…And, as an avid fisherman, I can tell you that a fish starts to stink from the head down.
I’ve sat at the same tables over the years at events hearing or participating in discussions of too many of these same Jews attending Yom HaShoah commemorations. Even before the days of Trump, they didn’t think twice about voting for people in high office who had no problem with grossly endangering the sole, minuscule, resurrected risen Phoenix of the Jewish nation. They’d vote for Obama, Hillary, or a clone repeatedly if possible. Read about Trump’s new presidential opponent, Joe Biden, here:
But, those same folks come out yearly to show solidarity for the memory of the slaughtered six million… “There! We’ve done our Jewish duty ! ”
As for the new post-Holocaust six million or so Jews in Israel (half of whose families fled from “Arab”/Muslim lands)?
Well, if they don’t cave in to all that Arabs and their supporters have for the creation of the Arabs’ 22nd state–second, not first, in the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine (Jordan sits on 80% of the original land since 1922)–then whatever happens to that new six million, I guess, would thus have been brought on by themselves.
Not to mention that these same comfortable, secure Jews from abroad likely travel further on shopping trips to the mall than the 9-15 mile width that Israel was made by those ’49 armistice lines mentioned earlier that they insist Israel return to. A crazy, unreasonable thought, right? Judeans–Jews–living in Judea…Expansionist Zionists!
To sum things up, I’ve seen this very disturbing pattern for decades now in which Jews and non-Jews alike prefer too often to shed phony crocodile tears of sympathy for dead Jews a la the Holocaust, but find it difficult to empathize with the imperfect live variety, trying to survive in Israel. I mean, after all, the rest of the neighborhood in which Israel exists has so many models of ethical perfection.
Sure…and I was also this year’s earlier Passover Bunny.
Thus, while I still encourage others to attend Shoah Memorials, I also ask that people living far from the dangers Israelis face (in a nation which requires a magnifying glass to locate on a world globe) here in America and elsewhere to give serious thought before insisting that Israelis further expose the necks of their children to those who actually do behead them in their sleep–and then next get rewarded for “heroism” with a lifetime pension by Israel’s “moderate” peace partners of Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah and the PA.
I hope future Yom HaShoah Memorials occur, but that they not only honor our innocent martyrs, but also address what’s needed to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. Never again must be more than a mere slogan…
Too often Shoah commemorative events have not supported this, and it’s also frequently not covered adequately enough in the soon-following Israel Independence Day celebrations on the calendar either–also pathetically and probably to not disturb the comfort level of the folks discussed above–the current counterparts to those mentioned in this next well-documented article which also provides important but less known facts about the Shoah which have too many parallels today.
Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral studies in Middle Eastern Affairs. He has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites all around the world. You can visit his website at geraldahonigman.com Gerald A. Honigman is a longtime senior contributing writer, from 2007, and columnist for Ekurd.net. Honigman has published a major book, “The Quest For Justice In The Middle East–The Arab-Israeli Conflict In Greater Perspective.” For more see below.
The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Ekurd.net or its editors.
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