Terezin’s Jews scaled the heights of the human spirit. But it took an army to save their lives.
Last week, the Israel Festival featured one of the most gripping productions I’ve ever seen. “Defiant Requiem” tells the story of the Terezin concentration camp, where in the midst of death, Jewish inmates clung to their humanity through an outpouring of artistic endeavor, including a full choral production of Verdi’s “Requiem.”
This is a truth most Israelis understand deep in their bones. But it’s one a growing number of American Jews seem increasingly uncomfortable with. And this has been a crucial factor in making many of them increasingly uncomfortable with Israel as well.
The reason for their discomfort is obvious: Military power may save lives, but it can’t be wielded without violating other cherished moral principles. It’s unquestionably wrong to kill an innocent person, yet war inevitably produces civilian casualties, however hard armies may try to minimize them. It’s unquestionably wrong to punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty, yet checkpoints set up to catch the few bent on sowing deadly terror inevitably cause hardship to thousands of innocents. And the list could go on.
There’s no happy medium whereby power can somehow be wielded without these negative consequences; it’s a head-on collision of values that forces everyone to choose sides. And increasingly, Israeli and American Jews are choosing opposite sides.
Growing numbers of American Jews no longer believe the security benefits of military operations like Cast Lead in Gaza three years ago can justify the civilian casualties they cause. And they are even less convinced that security considerations can justify the hardships “the occupation” causes many innocent Palestinians, from restrictions on the movement of people and goods to arrest operations that sometimes end in casualties. To put it more starkly, they are uncomfortable with the image of Jews as “perpetrators” rather than victims: If power cannot be wielded without wronging others, they believe, then Jews should choose morality over power.
Israelis, too, are uncomfortable with many of the consequences of wielding power. That’s one reason why polls consistently show that most favor a two-state solution: They would happily be rid of the “occupation” tomorrow, provided they could do so without endangering Israeli lives. That’s also why their army makesextraordinary efforts – more “than any other army in the history of warfare,” according to British Col. Richard Kemp – to prevent civilian casualties.
But to Israelis, saving Jewish lives is also a moral imperative. While it’s a gross distortion to view Israel as nothing more than a response to the Holocaust, it’s an equally gross distortion to view it solely as a vehicle for the flourishing of the Jewish spirit: “Never again” was and remains one of Israel’s raisons d’etre. And the very applications of power most deplored by many American Jews are precisely those that consistently save Israeli lives.
Ugly as the “occupation” is, for instance, the consequences of withdrawal have thus far proved even uglier. Israel tried it three times: from parts of the West Bank under the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, from south Lebanon in 2000, and from Gaza in 2005. The results, respectively, were the second intifada (which caused more Israeli casualties than all the terror attacks of the previous 53 years), the Second Lebanon War, and 8,000 rockets launched at southern Israel. That’s why today, even Israelis who favor further withdrawals often say that for now, only settlers should leave; the army should remain.
Similarly, while smaller-scale military operations did nothing to reduce the rocket fire, the far more extensive Cast Lead slashed rocket launches by 75 percent, from 3,278 in 2008 to 774 in 2009. And even now, when the West Bank is relatively quiet, checkpoints routinely thwart terror attacks.
To understand just how deeply this Israeli consensus runs, consider something published two years ago by the man who is now editor-in-chief of Israel’s far-left newspaper, Haaretz. Describing his army service in Lebanon years ago, Aluf Benn wrote: “We learned one lesson: Regardless of politics, it’s better to be the guard than the prisoner. Even those who dream of a permanent settlement and a Palestinian state and want to see the settlements gone prefer to tie on the cuffs than be cuffed … The occupation did not transform us into law-breaking criminals, it only taught us that it’s best to be on the stronger side.”
In Israel, even the Left understands this stark truth: Power may be ugly, but powerlessness is worse.
However hard you try to minimize the dirt, there’s no way to keep your hands clean while wielding power. Dirt stains even the most justified conceivable uses of force: The fighting that followed the D-Day landings in World War II, for instance, exacted a horrific toll in civilian lives.
But American Jews repelled by this uncomfortable truth should remember one thing: The alternative to Jewish power isn’t the shining Jewish spirit so movingly captured by “Defiant Requiem.” It’s the gas chambers where most of those Jews ended their lives.
The writer is a journalist and commentator
yamit82 Said:
dear yamit,
are there any rabbis in israel that are actually DEMANDING such a ‘melhemet mitzvah’ or are they muzzled a la kahane, and should they demand such an implementation of the commandment, this would be comsidered ‘hate speech and incitement’ yada yada yada…
in another thread you have explained that the make up of the ‘settlers’ is quite heterogeneous (actually i thought that, with the exclusion of ariel, most would be religious/halachic jews etc)having said that, and bringing back a comment from yet ANOTHER thread, regarding a second jewish state i was wondering about the CHARACTER of that state.
to tie up the highlited portion from this thread, it seems to me that such a ‘melhemet mitzvah’ where there would be NO PRISONERS taken, could ONLY happen, should such a ‘jewish israel’ be born…
the ‘current israel’ wants to be NICE to its enemies so obviously this commandment ain’t gonna happen under this administration….
i look forward to your reply.
@ bernard ross:
Not yet. It’s much easier to take the Jew from the exile than to take the exile out of the Jew.
The American Jews are no different from what use to be the German Jews. More catholic than the Pope.
They dishonestly refuse to admit that their comfort and quality of life (5000 miles from the war front) is totally dependent on the existence of Israel and they feel that by, for some of them, contributing financially they pay their dues to the Jews. That is not enough. What has been going on in Europe for the past 2000 years, with the increasing Muslim population in this country, will very likely start to happen here. Suffice to see what is going on in the “high education campuses” who beg for oil money. Harvard is a prime example that happens in many other campuses. The Jews of Europe and USA are comfortable in their dhimmi status. Shame on them.
No one will give to the Jews what is theirs. J & S is theirs and they should take it. This problem was an intentional creation of the West against the Jews. Only the Jews can undo this injustice.
yamit82 Said:
yamit82 Said:
yamit82 Said:
yamit82 Said:
Hear! Hear! Perhaps I am prejudiced but I find especially repugnant the habits of the former European Ghetto Jews who cling to the images reminiscent of the exile. I do not like the black hats and coats that remind me of a slave clinging to his master, a monkey to his organ grinder. The Jewish European experience is replete with the brainwashing of the Jew into being subservient and guilty. This survives today in Jewish mea culpa where the only people on earth feel the necessity to beg their former killers for legitimacy when instead they should be thinking of ways to destroy these arch serial killers. At the very least they should slap their faces. The return to Israel is a return to the roots of the time before the exile.
In a melhemet mitzvah, the commandment of war. Halacha unconditionally requires us to fight, even if the enemy demands only straw and hay, and under no circumstances are we allowed to relinquish Eretz Yisrael. On that, we have the precedent of Judge Yiphtah, who led Hebrews into battle when our enemies offered a land-for-peace deal. In obligatory wars, Jewish lives are subordinated to Jewish values.
In such a war, everyone goes out, including newlywed husbands and—according to some opinions—wives, young and old, laypersons and Torah scholars. When Rabbi Akiva authorized obligatory war against the Romans who sought to extinguish Jewishness, he sent all his students to fight in Bar Kochba’s ranks. That is rabbinical responsibility: you authorize it, you fight in it.
The Torah prescribes a code of obligatory war: no enemy should be left alive, women and babies included. The logic here is if we left babies alive, they would grow up and avenge their slain parents; that we cannot afford. When an enemy attacks Jews in the land of Israel such a defensive war is without doubt a war of obligation, but once our enemies took up arms, there was no mercy. Actually, there was: what the rabbis called, “the mercy of fools,” mercy to the merciless. G-d cares about Jews. When he sends us to fight be it over hay or desert, he protects us. Not only through his direct involvement, but also by releasing us of constraints. When he sends us to fight, surely he does not endanger us beyond necessity. G-d does not tie our hands with politically correct rules of engagement, nor would he make us leave our enemies alive to resume fighting as soon as the shock is over.
The real lessons of the Holocaust are ignored not only by American Jews but Israeli Jews as well.
Thousands of Jews marched to annihilation who were barely guarded by stupid and hapless German police and drunk Ukrainians. The Diaspora Jews have lost not only pride and common sense, but the will to live. The Jewish establishment is bent on presenting the Jews as victims and does not allow the ugly side out: we allowed ourselves to be slaughtered like sheep, not killed like humans.
Jewish warrior tradition is rich and long and I refuse to be identified with the victims who went like sheep as do Most American Jews who still identify as Jews. The Holocaust is the wrong symbolism and an inadequate replacement for Judaism. American Judaism or what passes for Judaism is more Christian than Jewish, such has Judaism been corrupted in the exile.
U.S. Jews, like the rest of American society have been carried away by the wave of liberalism, secular humanism, multiculturalism and like ideologically based group think since WWII and that wave gathered much momentum leading up to the close of the Viet Nam War.
Times before that were so simple and uncomplicated. Good and evil, right and wrong, moral and immoral, enemy, and victory were all easily understood concepts that admitted no uncertainty.
In WWII, no thought of concern for innocents was given by the allies as they turned the war to their advantage and bombing the hell out of Berlin, Dreden, Cologne, etc. That far more so called innocent Germans died than members of the German heirarchy and their foot soldiers died, did not trouble the American government, military or U.S. citizens in the least.
American attitudes today are very different than that earlier uncomplicated time. Jews are very much a part of the fabric of American society and they are proud of that. It is no wonder that American Jews mirror the views, if not lead many such views of the American people that while understanding there are some evil Palestinian leaders, they need to feel that Palestinian citizens, like the vast majority of American citizens are good and decent people, even if some of them may be misguided.
In the case of the Palestinians, while Arafat and thereafter Abbas and their crews gained power in J & S in a fashion that could barely be described as democratic, the fact is that the vast majority of the Palestinians shared their leaders hatred and rejection of Jews and Israel and their dreams for Israel’s ultimate destruction. The same can be said of the Palestinians of Gaza in their support of Hamas. Indeed the Palestinians were given a vote and they voted their leadership in.
One pithy bit of truth that is usually forgotten in all this, is bound up in the expression that people get the government they deserve. The further pithy truth that flows from that is that in getting the government they deserve, the people should not be spared the consequences of that.
Palestinians however, apart from the question of which are good and evil, guilty or innocent are being spared the consequences of having the governments that they deserve.
These truths were understood and accepted as a fact of life back during WWII. Not so now.
As to Gordon’s observation that Jews cannot stand seeing themselves as perpetrators, it should be noted that Jews are emulating the group think of their fellow Americans. To try to soften that accusation against Israel that they feel reflects on them, American Jews are moved to join in the chorus of voices that condemn Israel as the perpetrator against the obviously militarily, economically and socially weaker Palestinians.
Good and evil, right and wrong, moral and immoral, enemy and victory are no longer easily grasped concepts that admit no uncertainty, as they once were.
I’m perfectly comfortable with Israel wielding power.
bernard ross Said:
dear bernard,
excellent post!
i would not be surprised (lately, nothing surprises me anymore…)should petitions and demonstration be held by these INSANE so called ‘jews’ to demolish the monument of mordechai anielewicz…and these pathetic american ‘jews’ STILL support the bastard (literally and figuratively) that has usurped the oval office!!! this is absurdity on steroids!
on a slightly different note, i prefer mozart’s requiem to verdi’s
🙂
Here is another example of jewish suididal and perversely vain impulses. It is no accident that the image of jews heroically singing a christian requiem appears to be an image creating more pride than jews killing their enemies to preserve their own lives. The following commment is no accident and flows naturally from deranged thoughts: “To put it more starkly, they are uncomfortable with the image of Jews as “perpetrators” rather than victims: ” or more to the point they are more comfortable with jews as victims than perpetrators. Furthermore, IMAGE is what is important to American Jews. “But American Jews repelled by this uncomfortable truth …” such Jews should be despised for the slovenly laziness of their minds as anyone who does the slightest objective research should see that it is the Jews who have been forced into the situation.
“It’s unquestionably wrong to punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty,..” An incredibly superficial postulation. Are those who subscribe to a cult which murders and desires to murder others innocent? Are those who freely elect leaders who desire and execute an agenda seeking to slaughter Jews innocent? Gazans, and others, freely elected their leaders fully aware of their genocidal intentions overtly stated. Is this not enough reason to fully liquidate those “innocents” or is it more dignified to sing a requiem mass? Even the Germans were not fully aware of Hitlers intentions when he was elected. I find many positions in this article to be distasteful, repugnant and obscene. Its reveling in the absurdity of Jews singing a requiem mass as a symbol of defiance and its apologetics for the Jew who defends himself by killing his enemy, or even causing his enemy discomfort. The extent of disconnect is beyond belief. It is difficult to find a more telling example of jewish mea culpa and the generations of european brainwashing that instilled it. It is almost a cartoon of Jewish handwringing in angst.
Jerry Said:
the guiding principles when dealing with musloids, libtards, and indeed any and all enemies should be the fable of the frog and the scorpion…
@ Laura:
Laura your right as usual and I hate repeating myself (my wife say if you hate it why do you repeat???).
Israel must not let world opinion or for that matter other anti-Semite world leaders to influence them in defending their nation.
Since the beginning of the year over 250 rockets were rained in on Israel from Gaza yet you don’t hear any outcry from the world.
During Cast Lead government officials tied the hands of the IDF and did not allow them to complete their task in destroying the enemy.
The US should stop all aid to the Arab world, they not only hate Israel, they hate us likewise.
Liberalism is truly a mental disorder which not only infects Leftists but also many right thinking Israelis. The stark reality of it is that Israel has simply no choice. It has to defend itself with all means possible or else face annihilation. That precludes kindness to the enemy and the enemy is not simply the terrorist Arab, but the entire Arab population. If Israel succumbs to the Arab threat it will be because of the mental aberration that enemies can be treated as friends.
To put it even more bluntly, these Jewish liberals prefer Israelis willingly die because Israeli power and self-defense makes them uncomfortable within their social circle. Liberals only like Jews who are pitiful victims.
As to the supposed “innocent” victims of Israeli military operations, the terrorist groups thrive because they have the support of the civilian population. Teachers and parents incite murderous hatred of the Jews to their children and tell them that being killed in the process of massacring Jews is the highest honor they can achieve. And “palestinian” society venerates jihadist mass murderers of Jews with ceremonies and naming streets and schools in their honor. Genocidal Jew-hatred is an indelible part of “palestinian” and islamic culture overall.
Its annoying that even writers who defend the use of Israeli military power have been conditioned to regard the fakestinian population that is not actually a member of a terror gang, as innocent.