Commentary
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Commentary |
All We Learn from History is That We Learn Nothing from History Recently
President Donald Trump greeted the Jewish New Year by congratulating the
American Jewish community, who are largely ungrateful for his efforts to
reconcile the Muslim states with Israel in
order to support Israel’s security. Trump recalled that he moved the American
embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move which several previous presidents
promised to do as long as they were candidates for the position of president,
but which they did not care to remember once elected. Trump also told the Jewish
community that he induced several Arab states to recognize Israel’s right to
exist and to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. In addition,
Trump persuaded the Saudi government to allow Israeli planes to fly over Saudi
territory. Pew
Research then found that Orthodox Jews who vote mainly Republican were
most positive in their reaction to Trump’s efforts in behalf of Israel, while
the vast majority of American Jews who vote for Democrats gave Trump no credit
for his support of Israel and even went so far as to call him an anti-Semite,
a phrase associated with the son of Noah. Evidently,
most Jews do not care much for the survival of Israel and are willing to vote
for politicians who have done nothing for the Jewish people as long as they are
Democrats. To
those of us who are survivors of the mass murders of European Jews between 1933
and 1945, it appears horrible that American Jews have no sympathy for their
brethren living under precarious conditions in Israel any more than American
Jews had any interest in the slaughter of six million Jews by the European
Christian community during the so-called Holocaust, a word which is indeed an
opprobrium in America. It
has now been over ninety years since Hitler was appointed dictator of Germany,
and therefore only a few Jewish Holocaust survivors are
still alive. Those of us who have been favored by nature and “Shem Yisborach”
to live that long can assure all who were not there that we would have done
anything if we could have had the
good fortune of emigrating to a
Jewish state. Israel did not exist then, and therefore, to us, the last of the
survivors, the existence of a Jewish country is a miracle of immense
proportions. We view with amazement the willingness of American Jews to denounce
our friends. Obviously,
no politician will find it expedient to support Israel in the future after
noticing the refusal of most
American Jews to acknowledge all that Donald Trump has done for Israel. Part
2 Many
years ago I had the good fortune of being allowed to enter this country. For
that I thank God each day. When old enough, I joined the U.S. Army, and having
been discharged with a fifty percent disability, I took advantage of the
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, also known as the GI Bill of Rights. After
earning two degrees at Western Reserve University, I succeeded in also gaining a
doctor’s degree, leading to an academic career. In the course of time, I wrote
thirty books and numerous journal articles and was rewarded with a number of
academic distinctions. During all the years I spent in my profession, I had no
choice but to see with sadness that today American universities are mainly
infested with anti-Jewish hate. Now, Jewish students are excluded from student
activities and professors rant anti-Jewish hate in their classrooms while Arab
foreigners who study here are allowed to assault American Jewish students in a
manner reminiscent of the Nazi assault on German Jews. The
American Jewish community could defend our Jewish students but hardly bother to
do so. Once more we bow before our enemies on the campuses of our colleges and
universities . Once more we fail to help ourselves by supporting those in the
American political establishment willing and
able to be on our side. Once more we act like the German Jews who, on the
ascendancy of Hitler, congratulated "den Führer" on ordering the
German army to invade the Saarland in France.
Indeed, we prove over and over again “that all we learn from history is
that we learn nothing from history.” Shalom u'vracha. |
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