After
reading Jan Gross’s “Golden Harvest,” the Polish historian’s ground
breaking study of the Holocaust, I began to understand what for so long
had perplexed me — how it is that so many people feel impelled to weigh
in on the affairs of Israel and the Jews. While murder and mayhem
remains a constant in the world, no other nation attracts so much
critical attention. (The United Nations has passed far more resolutions
with respect to the state of Israel than the rest of the world
combined.) And in a remarkable display of moral hubris, the heirs and
descendants of those who extinguished their Jewish populations in the
forties have felt themselves entitled to render moral judgment on the
survivors and their progeny.
Jews
for millennia were spurned as Christ-killers and heretics by Church and
Mosque respectively and denied standing in the communities where they
lived. While rejecting Judaism itself, the Christian Church laid claim
to the Jewish Bible, which it annexed, abridged,
and renamed the “Old Testament.” And over time the Christian world
came to regard as patrimony whatever else the Jews possessed. (Islam in
its ascendance picked up where Christianity left off.) To this day the
mainstream Protestant churches in America stand foursquare with Fatah
and Hamas, averring the Palestinian cause and condemning Israel. Jew
killing has never been a moral problem for them, but the Jewish claim to
the land of Israel disturbs them deeply.
Landless
for two thousand years, dependant on the reticence of peoples
ill-disposed toward them, Jews survived precariously, lorded over by
gentile “hosts” in societies that were variously hostile. When so
inclined, their hosts would confiscate their property, issuing and
enforcing decrees against them. Subject to the will and whim of others,
Jews remained dependant on their sufferance and largesse. As tenant
farmers and as tradesmen, they owned only what was allotted them,
allotments that could be reduced or removed, dispossessing them at
will. At times dispossession would encompass their very existence –
witness the Crusades, the Inquisition, innumerable pogroms, and,
ultimately, the Shoah. A sense of entitlement seems to have passed
into the DNA of formerly host societies, and continues in altered form
until this day – e.g., the violent hostility of the Arab/Persian world
which remains at war with Israel and the turpitude of Western nations
who support or excuse it. Even in our own time, Europeans afford
themselves a privileged position with respect to Jewish interests,
threatening and cajoling Israel to redistribute its property to its
enemies.
Financially
reliant on petro-dollars, the West in its cupidity has chosen to
appease the Arabs and support them in their conflict with Israel, no
matter that Arab hatred of the Christian West runs second only to their
Jew hatred. Islam’s jihadist ambitions and its utter rejection of a
Jewish or Christian presence in the Middle East are inconvenient truths
suppressed to win favor with the Arabs for their oil money.
But
in spite of their great wealth, Arab societies are in a shambles, and,
who better to blame for it than Jews? At the heart of the Arab-Israeli
conflict are generations of impoverished refugees living shiftless lives
on United Nations handouts for more than sixty years. They are
portrayed as victims, no more responsible for themselves than children.
(A comparable number of Middle Eastern Jews fled persecution in their
home countries and found refuge in Israel where they were absorbed and
integrated into the fabric of the country.) The wealthy Arabs states,
without the least diminution in their lavish lifestyle, could have
transformed the condition of their poor relations but chose instead to
“drive the Jews into the sea.” Oil rich Arabia dwarfs Israel physically
and economically, but it is Israel that is held responsible for Arab
poverty, just as Jews for centuries were held responsible for crises in
the West. The “Zionist Entity” with its “settlements” is the moral
culprit, and justice demands that, “like a cancer,” it be cut out. The
benighted ways and terroristic activities of the Arabs are excused or
rationalized away. Israel’s refusal to cede its heartland is “the main
obstacle to peace.”
A
nomadic people, Arabs for centuries moved hither and yon throughout the
Middle East. Only with the arrival of the British and the development
of a Jewish homeland did some claim an identity related to the sparsely
populated area called “Palestine,” originally a Roman appellation. The
wealthy Arab states, which deflect dissent by inveighing against Israel,
decry the suggestion that a place for their brethren could be found
elsewhere in the vast land mass of the Middle East.
From
his research, Gross learned that the nations (primarily Poland in his
work but all of Europe by implication) regarded the existential
situation of the Jews as theirs to determine. Those to whom Jews were
required to answer, be they German or Pole or Russian or Ukrainian or
Italian or Greek or Spanish or Turk (to name some of the more
significant actors in their long and tragic history), could deny them
acceptance and remove whatever security they enjoyed. Indeed, their
status could be altered at will, even when they had been living in a
locale for centuries. Whatever the Jews possessed could be taken and
they themselves sent packing. Without moral or legal standing, their
possessions could be absorbed as common property. The host giveth, the
host taketh.
Gross
illustrates this point with examples from the war years in Poland where
Jews were often blackmailed by their so called protectors – Poles who,
for their own reasons, hid them. According to his research, extortion
for safe keeping was not at all exceptional. The major motivation of
“benefactors” was to gain access to the hidden property of Jewish
victims. (It was an axiom of belief that even the most impoverished of
Jews had hidden away riches.) And when Jews resisted their demands,
their Polish protectors took umbrage — threatened them with violence or
betrayal to the Germans. Since the Jews were doomed and defenseless,
their stubborn hold out was denying Poles their due. Polish Jews were
favoring the Germans over their fellow countrymen. And, for many
Europeans, Jewish “intransigence” is a source of consternation to this
day. They are much displeased when “shitty little Israel” will not jump
at their command.
Of
course, not all Europeans are hostile and certainly the majority of the
American people hold Israel in high esteem — a loyal friend who shares
their deepest values. But Europeans generally, as well as Arab
sympathizers in this country, demand that Judea (from which the Jews
derive their name) and Samaria — lands documented in the holy books of
both Judaism and Christianity, and recorded in the annals of history as
theirs for three thousand years — be surrendered to their enemy. For its
recalcitrance, Israel is threatened with economic reprisals and
denounced in international forums. Some Europeans regard the very
existence of Israel as an injustice — an insult to their moral
sensibilities. They embrace the Arab narrative with respect to
“Palestine,” a narrative that denies the historic connection of Jews to
their ancient land. Wars and mass murders committed by the Arabs give
them no pause. Like Poles, Ukrainians, and Baltic people in the
forties, so-called peace organizers support these self-confessed killers
and organize public protests on their behalf. Jews must surrender the
land, i.e. the real property of their people. Refusal, their critics
claim, is pointless. Surrender is inevitable. Israel will perish if it
does not give way. (They know what’s best for Jews. They always
have.) The land in question, including much of Jerusalem and its
environs, will be redistributed to “displaced Arabs” who have been dealt
a perceived injustice. Under certain circumstances, Jews might be
permitted to retain a small portion of their ill-gotten gain. (When a
gain is Jewish, it is ill-gotten by definition.)
In
the star chamber of world politics, the privileges of ownership are
available to some and not others — Israel in particular. Its
de-legitimization by the Left, abetted often by Jewish leftists, fits
well with the Left’s disparagement of property rights in general. Arab
failure, in repeated attempts, to destroy Israel and rid the region of
its Jewish presence elicits their sympathy. Immersed in relativism and
empathetic to all forms of failure, they accept Palestinian Arab claims ipso facto and
dismiss those of the Israelis. Israel’s improbable success and
contributions to the world at large make it all the more troubling in
their eyes. Though the existential threat to it from Iran grows by the
day, it fails to arouse their concern. Jewish tragic history has been
relegated to a footnote and deemed no longer relevant, Jewish survival a
parochial anomaly with no place on their “universal” agenda. The
success of capitalist Israel, thriving in the face of worldwide
opposition, adds insult to the injury suffered by the Arabs. For the
Left, pacifism, gay marriage and unlimited abortion occupy the moral
high ground. Jewish land is an oxymoron, a Zionist pipedream,
internationally condemned to requisition and redistribution by the
United Nations. Alas, the “holy land” belongs neither to Jew nor Arab,
but is the common property of any and all people.
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