JANUARY 27 IS NATIONAL HOLOCAUST DAY when we acknowledge the suffering of the Jews under German Nazism; not only to acknowledge the suffering: but make sure that such an event in human history is not erased from our conscience for fear of it being repeated. What happened to the Jews under Nazism was the monstrous culmination of 2000 years of persecution throughout the Middle East and latterly Europe; followed, at one time or another after seeking refuge at every other point of the compass.
The Jews were always the scapegoats for economic failure in every country where they settled in the Diaspora: the further you travelled into Europe toward the east the greater their persecution. Eastern Europe from Poland, Hungry, and into Russia: these at the time backward economies, ill managed and living in the past where their political leaders found it all too easy to blame Jewry. They blamed their Jewish communities for their economic failure due to their own incompetence as rulers. And used the much perceived Jewish Fagin-like greed to feed the, what we would call today, bigotry - in other words, Jews were always easy scapegoats for an already anti-Semitic population that flowered through the generations on anti-Semitism as a device to be exploited when ordinary intelligent middle-class people, as well as peasants, were attacking an unpopular government. Jew bashing and baiting known as pogroms were used to pacify a resentful population, indignant at the bad decisions of their leaders.
The Jews have had an uncomfortable (to say the very least) experience within the Diaspora. Told what not and what they could do to earn a living; they had a separate living space within cities, known as the Pale; thus the expression Beyond the Pale. The Pale of human settlement comprised a lockout at a certain time when the Jews had to return the part of cities in Europe where the Jews were corralled and locked in for the night and restricted in their professions and trading arrangements when trying to earn a livelihood. This restriction on Jews and what professions they may or may not choose to follow[1] became provisional upon the return to the Pale.
They were effectively banned from all the forms of earning a living open to the rest of the community; so they, over time, became proficient to the limited forms of earning a living allowed them, money-lending and the trade in diamonds; followed by finance as their lives were transformed by more tolerant societies that were eventually to be found in the West. But even in Western Europe where they had the freedom to earn a legal living in any way they wanted; their success was resented when it came to money. Those trades which the Jews have been historically associated with represents the icing on the cake for today's anti-Semite; and many, this time in the name of the Palestinian, causes them to feel free to attack the Jews of Israel shielded under the banner of 'anti-Zionism'.
THE JEWS have had much to put up with over the past 2000 years. I do not suggest that their suffering has been disproportionate to other minorities such as the African slaves: that is; until Holocaust. But then; even black slavery to America, however brutal it was, represented however cruel and brutal it undoubtedly was, a chapter in the history of the Afro-American people.
But the Jews have had two millennia of constant and brutal treatment[2] from those parts of the world they found themselves in during the Diaspora. No other such persecution of one people over such a timescale has been recorded. The Jew as the scapegoat; the punch-bag for all sorts of economic disappointments: but even the Jew as wheeler - dealer in high finance that, as the Rothschild family did to raise the money needed to fight Napoleon.
THE JEWISH PEOPLE are a great people, and if after two millennia of persecution culminating in the Holocaust, they then decide that there must be a Jewish homeland; where the Jews cannot feel exactly safe physically; but safe from the brutality and the taunts of the Diaspora; then they have found it in Israel. You might say they are not safe. But this time, when the Islamic variant of Fascism comes for them they will, this time, be able to fight back. They will not anymore be the victims of economic trends that throughout Jewish history tend to pep up the latent anti-Semitism within the Diaspora.
Israel is the Jews Thermopylae; they are surrounded by hostile neighbour's intent upon the Jewish nation's destruction. During the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War Israel managed to drive their Arab neighbours back. And the participating countries in both these wars against the Jewish state could, as defeated nations, live to fight another day. But for Israel if it is defeated; there is no other day: the Jewish state will be dead and buried: and the Jews will once again find themselves left to the vagaries of history as they had been throughout the Diaspora.
Israel is the Jewish people's safety from another Holocaust at some time in the future if the Jews are once more driven from their ancient homeland. This Holocaust Memorial Day should reflect of course upon the Holocaust but also, the plight of the Jews spent in the Diaspora over millennia that led to the Holocaust – Shalom.
[1] Due to the Anti-Semitism of the time; ancient prejudices founded upon the greed of Jewry kept Jews from the professions. Such anti-Semitism was also based upon the anti-Semitic folk law that blamed the Jews for the sacrificing of children as well as the crucifixion of Christ himself – a toxic mix for the devoutly Russian orthodox peasant.
[2] Of course, over such a vast time period when the skills of the Jews were appreciated by many rulers when they needed finance – but they were, even at such times, treated almost at arms length.
No comments:
Post a Comment