Israel and the Diaspora: a war on two fronts
Before the eighteenth century, wars were mostly pitched battles between uniformed armies hacking and blasting each other to pieces at prearranged sites. However, this did not mean that civilians escaped unscathed. Most of the local populace were caught in the wake of the rampaging armies, but at least those viewing the bloodbath from a distance could breathe a sigh of relief that all they would have to worry about was the subsequent murder, rape, pillaging and starvation if their side didn’t win.
This neatly partitioned division between soldiers and civilians continued into the twentieth century, but as time went by the boundary became murkier, so that today, the distinction between gun-toting uniformed types and men, women and children of all ages hardly exists. If you are on the wrong side of the fence, regardless of age or gender, you are considered fair game for an advancing horde.
This development was accelerated by the advent of guerrilla warfare – or terrorism, as it was called by the other side. The way was open for sabotage and unbridled savagery perpetrated by those who didn’t believe in saluting and were fighting, not only for territory but against what they saw as oppression and cruelty of various shades, often fuelled by a mad ideology like religious extremism. Ironically, some of yesterday’s terrorists later morphed into heroes, statesmen or even, as in the case of Nelson Mandela, secular saints.
Jewish history is replete with accounts of soldier-heroes, mainly in or around the State of Israel. There are innumerable stories, dating back to biblical times, of mighty warriors who came to the rescue of the Jewish people – Joshua, Gideon, Deborah, Judah Maccabee and Bar Kochba, to mention but a few.
The rest of us, scattered around the world in what aptly became known as the Jewish Diaspora, are familiar with stories of persecution. This is merely another kind of war against the Jews, during which our ancestors spent much of their time hiding behind barricaded doors in the hope that lawless (but usually lawfully sanctioned) bands of thugs like Cossacks would gallop past and not trample them or beat them to death, or, as the twentieth century showed, herd them towards more convenient locations like synagogues and concentration camps where they could be murdered en masse. Crouching in fear and praying was their only recourse and naturally those devices didn’t work.
Unfortunately these days, the Jewish people are seeing an extension of the front line, recently held by Israel, into many other countries, where Jews rely on the protection of governments not always known for their sympathetic attitude towards their Jewish citizens. The massacre at Bondi beach and the killings of Jews gathered for prayer in Manchester are two striking examples of how antisemitic hatred has culminated in mass murder after riding on the back of sustained attempts to vilify Jews, Israel and Zionism.
In the United Kingdom, for example, I read of the abuse of Jewish patients attending hospitals, of Jewish doctors removing their name tags bearing conspicuously Jewish surnames, of the harrying of Jewish commuters on public transport and the vandalising of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and Jewish shops (a reminder of Krystalnacht).
A recent example of the ‘one-step-forward-two-steps-back’ policy towards the Jews was the attempt by a senior police officer, based on misinformation, to ban Israeli football fans from attending a match in the U.K. In the end, the officer in question was compelled to resign, but the whole affair has left a bitter taste, and Jewish communities are now reverting to the fearful and furtive behaviour once resorted to by their Marrano ancestors. I note, by the way, that with some admirable exceptions, Muslim communities in the U.K. have generally applauded these expressions of antisemitic hatred.
Admittedly, this kind of ‘front line’ is a long way from the forward positions which our battle-scarred comrades in the Israeli Defense Forces are facing on a daily basis, but the shadows are lengthening, prejudice is creeping along towards persecution and the quality of life in this diaspora, at any rate, is perceptibly wobbly.
I have lived my life in three countries: South Africa, Israel (briefly) and the United Kingdom (currently). The wars I have experienced in all three have only been by proxy and I am grateful, therefore, to have avoided combat, shootings, bombardment and captivity. Some of my Jewish friends and relatives, however, have not been so lucky, which makes me subliminally on the lookout, in typical Jewish fashion, for the lunging fanatic, the early morning hammering at the door, the air raid siren and the whistling bomb, even though I have never experienced any of them except in news items, books, TV documentaries and movies. The second front which has opened up for Diaspora Jews is becoming daily more discernible and less easy to ignore.
