A Birthday to Remember

This year I am celebrating my eightieth birthday. At the time of my birth, in Europe the Holocaust was grinding away six million Jews. President Roosevelt had ordered thousands of American bombers to attack positions throughout the continent, but not the railroad lines leading to Nazi death camps.

Three years later, while I was riding a three-wheeler, the United Nations passed Resolution 181 by a vote of 33-13 calling for a partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab State. By my fourth birthday, the nascent Israel – the “valley of dry bones” miracle – declared her independence and was fighting for her survival. She would succeed.

My earliest awareness of sovereign Israel were sepia-colored Jewish National Fund posters of burly, suntanned Israelis working their fields. Each week at our synagogue’s Hebrew school, I dropped my quarters into the JNF Blue Box. My parents proudly bought and peeled for me Israeli produced Jaffa oranges.

Around 1960, in high school, I read Leon Uris’s powerful novel Exodus. I also followed news reports about the Israelis capturing Adolf Eichmann on Garibaldi Street in Buenos Aires and transporting him to Jerusalem, Israel to be tried for his crimes. In 1967, returning home from my first job, I would watch on TV Israel fighting off the surrounding Arab armies and somehow emerging victorious. The descendants of David again defeated Goliath, and I and much of the world applauded.

Now, nearly six decades later, I am now old, but not yet very old. Our children are grown and raising the next generation. My wife and I belong to multiple pro-Israel organizations including a vibrant Chabad. We have been to Israel two dozen times and have returned with remembrances of the golden hues of Jerusalem, with pride in Israel’s multifaceted goodness, and with relationships we have with many Israelis we know and love. Since the massacre of October 7, we have twice visited Israel to show our solidarity. We walked through the charred homes of Kibbutz Nir Oz, commiserated with distraught hostage parents, and watched IDF soldiers ponder the catastrophe of the Nova Music Festival.

During these years of last hurrahs, time seems to have gone backwards. In shocked disbelief, I find the world has once again turned on the Jews and Israel. This reversal is a nightmarish retreat towards the still unimaginable Holocaust that was occurring coincident with my infancy. The news is now of a barbaric Hamas pogrom on Israel’s Gaza border, of a music festival turned into a killing field, of barrages of Hezbollah rockets raining down on Israel’s north, of hostages shot at point-blank range or used as bargaining chips. Israel remains strong but is wounded.

Bizarrely, however, the progressive Americans who in 1967 applauded Israel now condemn its self-defense, and they march wearing keffiyehs supporting its attackers. The leaders of America’s great universities that allowed vitriolic campus unrest, testify before congress splitting hairs over the definition of antisemitism. A squad of Congressional Israel haters have been elected and garner too many headlines.

A United Nations that helped Jews return to their ancestral homeland now denies their very history and passes outrageous resolutions threatening to shrink Israel’s borders and to ultimately eliminate the Jewish State. The UN condemns Israel in wild disproportion to the rest of a very contentious world. Countries that witnessed the Holocaust first-hand vote against Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu, this week, spoke before a nearly empty General Assembly, and he indignantly called out the underlying antisemitism infecting the organization.

Like Jews trapped in ghettos throughout Europe, Israel hears “death to the Jews” screams on its borders. These threats are made even more real by soon-to-be-built nuclear weapons like those that caused our grade school classrooms to practice “duck and cover” atomic bomb drills.

When I was a child, President Harry Truman stood with Israel in her earliest hours. Despite pressure from his antagonistic State Department, Truman began America’s official alliance with Israel. It was the principled thing to do, and with the Judeo-Christian tradition embedded deep in the American psyche, Americans respected Israelis for their Western values and unmistakable toughness.

What once felt like America’s united support for Israel is now an extremely divisive issue, with the Republican Party and conservatives clearly the most outspoken in her defense. Many in the progressive Democratic Party Americans which last century championed Israel and the Jews seem to have decided we’re the oppressor and Israel’s margin of military advantage can be compromised. I was a Democrat for decades, largely because of their commitment to the underdog, including Israel. Over the past few election cycles, I voted Republican because I clearly see a woke, liberal philosophy that has mutated hideously into one that fits an intersectional, critical race theory model.

I watched President Obama abandon Israel over UN Resolution 2334 and obsessively pursue the ill-conceived JCPOA nuclear Iran deal that so clearly disadvantaged Israel and the West. Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris Administration eliminated all the crippling Iran sanctions former President Donald Trump had so effectively installed. What followed as a price for their weak foreign policy were the bloody events of last October.

When I came into the world The New York Times was printing only limited coverage of the Holocaust. Laurel Leff’s book Buried by The Times, outed the Gray Lady’s obscene behavior. Now, almost a century later mainstream media seems to have perfected biased reporting with coded antisemitism and anti-Zionism that dovetails with progressive, far-Left dogma.

Rounding life’s clubhouse turn into my eighth decade, I look sadly upon these tragic developments. As Jewish American baby boomers, we have enjoyed the “golden years” with an unprecedented run of societal opportunity and economic comfort. But with these turns of events, I cannot tune out distressing news and I feel less privileged and secure. I am sorely disappointed by the apathy and naivety of some fellow Jews and wonder just what headlines would wake them up.

In the upcoming 2024 presidential race between former President Trump and Vice President Harris, the Middle East conflict is a point of contention. Yes, there are other important issues separating them, but once again this year I prioritize to reflect the existential danger facing Israel and the Jewish people. I can choose the imperfect Republican Donald Trump, the candidate who delivered four years of relative peace globally, relocation of the American embassy to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights, and the Abraham Accords. Or I can choose the unproven Democrat Kamala Harris who has surrounded herself with anti-Israel advisors, has equivocated during the Gaza War about ceasefires and weapons shipments, is known for her far-Left policies, and is likely to follow the dangerous Obama geopolitical mindset. It is an easy choice.

The often-quoted wisdom of George Santayana, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” feels painfully relevant for the octogenarians who have witnessed this repetition of history. It may not be as easy as it once was, but on this birthday I still remember.

I pray with all my heart that all Jews and non-Jews, young and old, think clearly and on November 5 vote wisely.