Last week I wrote about senseless anti-Semitism packaged as anti-Zionism. Once again I was naïve enough to believe that in our time something like the Holocaust would never again be tolerated; that the nations of the world would be ashamed to once again perpetrate or permit it.
I did not delude myself into believing anti-Semitism would be eradicated; I’m well aware of the ancient maxim “Eisav soneh es Yaakov – Esau [the representative of the non-Jewish world] hates Jacob.” But surely after the Holocaust some of the evil should have been mitigated. Sadly, just the contrary holds true. But I did hope that after the death camps, the crematoria, the gas chambers, etc., there would at least be a lengthy respite from the millennia-old torment of our people.
My expectations were not built on “Pollyannaish” hopes. Holocaust museums were established throughout the world – even in Berlin, the city where the barbaric evil was choreographed. That being said, I always maintained that more than building museums, the non-Jewish world should have committed itself to revamping its educational systems and making Holocaust study compulsory so that a new generation would be repulsed by – and repudiate – such evil.
Things didn’t quite turn out that way. Today there are countries where Holocaust studies are not permitted and there are movements that deny the Holocaust ever occurred. But it does not stop there. Many of the same people who deny the Holocaust also unabashedly declare their plans to execute a new Holocaust, this time substituting “Israel” for “Jews.”
Despite the fact that Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East and that its army is the most moral and that Israel extends the finest medical help to countries all over the world and even to terrorists who have killed Israelis, all too many nations have, in one way or another, signaled their support for the Arabs’ nefarious goal of annihilating Israel.
As I noted last week, the war cry of the Nazis – “Death to the Jews!” – is today’s jungle sound that emanates from Iran – “Death to Israel; death to America!” Even as yesterday there was no one to silence the Nazis, today there is no one to silence their heirs – Iran and the others who share Iran’s agenda.
I concluded last week’s column by asking, “How do we present our case? How do we explain our right to the land of Israel?”
Israel is one of the smallest countries in the world – no more then a dot on the map – yet the nations are always busy with it. A major part of that stems from sheer jealousy of Jews for being the Nation of the Covenant, the people who brought G-d’s teachings to all of humanity. Jealousy is intrinsic to human nature and throughout the millennia we have suffered because of it. But still there must be more.
The early Zionists were convinced that if only the Jews had their own country, anti-Semitism would cease. Theodor Herzl came to this conclusion when as a reporter he covered the Dreyfus case in France. He was baffled that Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish man of valor who gave his very best and sacrificed himself for France, was accused of betrayal. The fabricated charges against Dreyfus had no basis and yet they stood as undisputed truth. The reason was obviously anti-Semitism.
But lo and behold, we now have the Jewish state that Herzl and others were convinced would be the antidote to anti-Semitism – and that state has become the very cause of contemporary anti-Semitism!
We have a teaching that whenever we are confronted by a dilemma we need not be dismayed; the answer stands before us. The formula has been given: “Hafachto boh hafachto boh d’kulah boh – turn the pages, turn the pages, everything is therein.” Yes we must only search the pages of our Torah and we will discover the answers to all our questions.