American Jews and Israel: A divorce in the making?
For those readers who still believe that Israel’s Jews were in danger of being driven into the sea I recommend Chapter 1 of Volume Three of my book which is titled America Takes Sides, War With Nasser Act II and the Creation of Greater Israel.
In this chapter I quote a number of Israeli leaders who years after the events in most cases said on the record that they knew that Arabs were not intending to start a war. Here are just five examples.
In an interview with Le Monde on 28 February 1968, Yitzhak Rabin, who was Chief of Staff in the 1967 war, said:
“I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on 14 May would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”
On 14 April 1971, a report in the Israeli newspaper Al-Hamishmar contained the following statement by Mordecai Bentov, a member of Israel’s wartime national government.
“The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory.”
On 4 April 1972, General Bar-Lev, Rabin’s predecessor as Chief of Staff, was quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv as follows.
“We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the Six Days War and we never thought of such a possibility.”
In the same newspaper on the same day, General Ezer Weizman, who was Chief of Operations during the Six Days War, was quoted as saying:
“There was never any danger of annihilation. This hypothesis has never been considered in any serious meeting.”
In an unguarded public moment in 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin said this:
“The Egyptian army concentrations did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We decided to attack him.”
But the vast majority of the Jews of the world (probably 99 percent of them) believed Zionism’s pre-war propaganda. They were absolutely convinced that the Arabs were about to attack and that Israel’s existence was in real danger. In the absence of the truth, which was not on the mainstream media’s agenda, they were brainwashed by Zionist propaganda.
One result of Israel’s stunning military victory was that most Jews of the world were not only greatly relieved, they were proud like never before to be Jewish and campaigners for Israel. Some took Israel’s victory as indication of Divine Intervention, proof that the Jews were indeed the Chosen People and evidence that God would be with Israel whatever it did.
And that was the beginning of the real love affair between most Jews everywhere and Israel.
Now to my answer to the question of why, really, the overwhelming majority of the Jews of the world, American Jews especially, have supported Israel right or wrong and/or remained silent even when they were deeply troubled by its policies and actions.
For starters it has to be said that criticism of Israel can and does tear Jewish families apart. And that alone seems to be reason enough for some (many?) American and European Jews to remain silent.
But there’s much more to it.
The root cause of American and European Jewish support for Israel right or wrong and/or silence on the matter of its defiance of international law and denial of justice for the Palestinians is the unspeakable fear that Holocaust II may at some point be inevitable.
This fear is the product of persecution on and off down the centuries which climaxed with the Nazi holocaust and Zionism’s propaganda to the effect that the world has always hated Jews and always will. Zionism’s message to the Jews of the world is in effect, “You will need Israel one day so don’t question whatever it does to keep itself secure.”.
It is therefore not surprising that very many Jews of the world believe that in the event of another great turning against them Israel will be their refuge of last resort, so, they tell themselves, say nothing and do nothing that could assist Israel’s enemies and put this insurance policy at risk.
Despite all of that I think it’s not impossible that Weiss could be right and that time and events will see American (and European) Jews breaking with Zionism and all its represents. But in my view it won’t happen as a consequence of more and more Jews becoming “embarrassed” by Israel’s policies and actions. Embarrassment is not a strong enough motivation to cause the Jews of the world (American and European Jews especially) to do what they must if they are to best protect their own interests.
What is it that they must do?
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