On course for Holocaust II…..?
He went on to say that as a Jew he, like many of his co-religionists, didn’t feel safe in his own city (London). And he insisted that “the hatred being indiscriminately hurled in our direction today” was not a response to Israel’s military action.
Other gems from his article included the following.
“The Jewish people have never insisted that whichever country they inhabit becomes kosher, Jewish people have never insisted that their fellow non-Jewish citizens keep the laws of the Jewish Sabbath, Jewish people have never insisted that their Synagogues dominate the skyline of towns across the diaspora. We mean no harm, we come in peace, please stop threatening to kill us… Sometimes, world, I wonder if your plan is to make Jewish people feel so uncomfortable in the countries they inhabit that they all move to Israel, all the Jews in one place would certainly make it easier for a fanatical group to wipe us all out in one fell swoop. Are you really working towards this mass International ghettoization?… World, I’m still desperately trying to decipher what we could have done differently, in order to avoid this deep-seated hatred that is seemingly coming to the fore this year… Can we EVER do enough to be accepted by you? World, I ask you in the hope that one day I’ll understand… What do you want from us?”
The answer to that question ought to be obvious to all but those who are suffering from paranoia and can be simply stated.
What the world wants from Israel’s Jews and Jews everywhere is an acknowledgement that a terrible wrong was done to the Palestinians by Zionism in the name of all Jews and that the wrong must be righted.
Without such an acknowledgement I can see no hope for peace based on an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians and security for all and, if Israel remains on its present course, not much hope for preventing the transformation of anti-Israelism/anti-Zionism into anti-Semitism on a scale that could lead, in a foreseeable future, to another great turning against the Jews.
In my analysis the key to preventing Holocaust II at some point in a foreseeable future is in the hands of the Jews of the world themselves, European and American Jews in particular. What I mean is that it’s in their own best interests to distance themselves from the Zionist state in order in order to rob accusations of their complicity in its crimes of any credible substance. In addition to acknowledging the wrong done to the Palestinians and the need for that wrong to be righted, they could say, publicly, that they cannot and will not support an Israel that demonstrates contempt for international law and Jewish moral values.
It is true that a growing but still smallish number of European and American Jews are speaking out, not only in support of some justice for the Palestinians but also to condemn Israel’s policies and actions. Those who speaking out have taken Harkabi’s advice. Here is what he wrote on the need for open and honest debate.
QUOTE
What we need in Israel is not a united front behind a wrong policy, but searching self-criticism and a careful examination of our goals and means, so that we can differentiate between realistic vision and adventurist fantasy.
Jews in the West, particularly in the United States, should participate in this debate. They should not be squeamish and discouraged by the fear that the arguments they air may help their enemies and those of Israel. The choice facing them, as well as Israel, is not between good and bad but between bad and worse. Criticising Israeli policies may be harmfully divisive, but refraining from criticism and allowing Israel to maintain its wrong policy is incomparably worse. If the state of Israel comes to grief (God forbid), it will not be because of a lack of weaponry or money, but because of skewed political thinking and because the Jews who understood the situation did not exert themselves to convince the Israelis to change that thinking.
What is at stake is the survival of Israel and the status of Judaism. Israel will soon face its moment of truth. The crisis that faces the nation will be all-consuming. It will be bitter because many will have to acknowledge that they have lived in a world of fantasy; they will have to shed conceptions and beliefs they have held dear.
UNQUOTE
One implication of that part of Harkabi’s analysis is that if the Jews of the Western world who understand the situation exerted themselves, they could convince Israelis to change their thinking. In theory that might be so but in reality it can’t happen as things are
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