This writer has been a student of the Holocaust since childhood, with my Poem/Plaque ” Never Again” in the Wiesenthal Holocaust museum in Los Angeles. I recently found out, through Ancestry, that I am 12.5% Jewish, but that should not matter at all. Basically, one’s sensitivity is either there or not. Another case in point regarding Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians is the fact that there are perhaps millions of Israelis and Jews worldwide who abhor the current policies of that nation. The widely read Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, is known by many to be a ‘ Voice in the wilderness’ opposing those policies and, more importantly, the Jewish supremacy mindset. If only we had such a daily print newspaper with progressive sentiments here in Amerika. We don’t!
In the Spring of 1988 I was a marketing manager for a manufacturing company based in NYC. Each week I took a three day trip to visit one of our sales reps throughout the nation. This one week I was off on a night flight to Phoenix on a wide body jet for the five hour flight. We were able to stand in a lounge area of the plane if we wished, perhaps having a drink or two. Next to me was this forty something guy, dressed in a casual style. He said he was an Israeli engineer on a business trip to Phoenix. During our conversation I asked him what his feelings were regarding the Israeli- Palestinian situation. This was 1988 and there were, as now, many problems between the two factions. The man spoke perfect English and said the following: ” You have to understand that we Israelis see the Palestinians the way you see the southern blacks here. The truth is that they ‘ breed like rabbits’ like your blacks here. If we don’t do something about it, pretty soon they will overwhelm us with their numbers. Suffice to say, and I say this with all candor, we have no choice for our survival as a nation but to drive them into the sea if possible, as sorry as that may sound.”
In my years as a Socialist anti war activist I have heard or read many opinions on blaming Israel ( and Jews ) for their ‘ Control’ of our USA foreign policy. Each and every time I face such talk I always turn the argument around. My point of view is this: The creation of Israel by the English and American powers that be was meant to place a ‘ Junkyard dog’ in the Middle East to keep tabs on the oil producing states there. Israel was allowed to even exist because of this intention. Obviously, the Zionists who resided there, or emigrated from mostly Europe and the USA, did all they could to create a ‘ Jewish State’ instead of an all encompassing Palestine, with multiple religions and peoples sharing it. Perhaps there should have been an East and West Palestine set up from the beginning if the main adversaries could not find a way to peacefully coexist. Sadly, if only those peoples who actually descended from natives of Palestine, whether Christian, Moslem or Jewish, could have remained as they had been for generations… basically getting along… who knows?
Let me offer this caveat as well: The German induced holocaust upon the Jews of Europe was as terrible as the other types of ethnic cleansing committed by many other factions throughout history. The Turkish genocide of the Armenians or the USA’s genocide of Native Americans to name just two. When an aggressive force like the Nazi regime, after capturing most of Europe, turned its sights on the Jews with such horrific vigor… who can blame any Jew, anywhere, for seeking safe refuge? Yet, once established in such a place if those same folks then look upon their neighbors in that region, the Palestinians, as how that engineer inferred… makes them lose any moral compass they may have had.
PA Farruggio
updated October, 2023 (orig. February, 2021)