Can Jews Ever Really Be Accepted As Nationals in Any Country-Including America?
There were stories among my Holocaust surviving family that many chose not to flee Austria with the rise of Nazism in the 1930’s in Germany followed by the Anshluss in Austria. It was reported that when the Nazis started to separate Jews from “Aryans,” several of our relatives proudly reported to authorities with their service records of valor for having fought in World War I for the Germans and the Kaiser thinking they were the patriotic Germanic Jews and not the subject of the “Final Solution.” It raised the question that many Jews refuse to address, “Can Jews ever really be accepted at nationals in any country, including the United States? As Congressman Richie Torres of NY has correctly stated pointed out, October 7th in Israel was a proclamation of another “final solution” on the part of those objecting to the state of Israel and dare I add, Jews around the world as evidenced by the post Oct 7th rise in world wide Jew-hatred.
I raise the issue because as a committed American Jewish Democrat, I currently feel that neither the American electorate nor the Democrats or Republicans are in touch with my need to be a Jewish American or a Democrat and certainly not a Republican. To be honest, both parties have surrendered to the fundamentalist radical extremists in their party and are trying to cope with a “Jewish problem,” while appealing to Jews for money and votes while at the same time, in the name of forming a “big tent” allowing fundamentalist radical Jew haters inside that big tent, whether it be the Armageddonist fundamentalist right-wing Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis with their “Jews will not replace us,” to the radicalized Jew-haters who managed to work their way into the halls of Congress, our academic institutions, main-stream media and Main Street America and their self-righteous naive Jewish allies who are living in a delusional reality chanting “from the river to the sea…”, “Zionism is racism…” and claiming Jews are out to commit genocide against the Palestinians after the Palestinians have had a history of 70 years of declared war against Israel to make the fictitious state of Palestine Judenrein– Jew Free as many of Israel’s neighbors became after the state was founded.
The result of this is that Jews living in Western countries and have had no experiences with pogroms or the Shoah are having strong feelings of denial when the mounting chants against Jews and Israel are getting louder and louder and feel if they show that they identify with the shouters, they will be exempt from what invariably and historically has tried to turn into a “Final Solution.” Israelis have learned this lesson the hard way and have, on a daily basis fought to keep a Jewish state safe for Jews escaping various iterations of “Final Solutions” around the world. But when Israel defends its, it is held to a double standard, demonized and delegitimatized as a Jewish state or even a state at all. In fact they are blamed as colonizers and committing genocide as indigenous people returning to their ancient homeland. They are not even Israelis in the minds of their enemies, they are simply “Jews!” and hated as such.
With this in mind, our enemies have defined us and the best we can do is try to be “good Jews” so as not to be seen as “bad Jews” or to try to abandon our Judaism to “fit in,” always fearing that we may be found out by those seeking to finish the “Final Solution.” The late eminent Hebrew University scholar, Robert Wistrich referred to antisemitism as “The Longest Hatred,” and whether we accept it or not, it is ongoing, never far from the surface and is frequently triggered into mass Jew-hatred as we are experiencing now because Jews existing in Israel somehow or another deserve this eradication attempt. It is the ever-presented twisted and demented rationalization of perverted antisemitism.
As a Jew living in America, it pains me that those soliciting for my vote and support are also pandering to those who want us out of their way and hurling age-old antisemitic canards at us as if we were are the enemy. So let’s be clear, as history has also shown, when we are united and strong, unapologetic and determined against those who hate us we have survived and have contributes inordinately given our numbers and history of persecution to the betterment of the world as Jews and will continue to do so. Jews have no choice…