It isn\’t often that I compliment someone for being unwise (actually, in this case, un-Wise). But today\’s the day.
As you may be aware, Israel\’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has invited Jews in Europe to come “home” to Israel – and by so doing, has enraged European leaders (along with, no doubt, President Obama – who doesn\’t seem to think Jews are having any problems there, it\’s only random acts of murder and mayhem which just happen to keep being directed in places where Jews are).
Excerpted from yesterday\’s article at Agence France Presse (AFP):
IsraeliPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged European Jews tomove to Israel after a Jewish man was killed in an attack outsideCopenhagen\’s main synagogue.
“Israelis your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of massimmigration from Europe,” Netanyahu said in a statement,repeating a similar call after attacks by jihadists in Paris lastmonth when four Jews were among the dead.
“ExtremistIslamic terrorism has struck Europe again… Jews have been murderedagain on European soil only because they were Jews,” Netanyahusaid in the statement.
TheIsraeli prime minister said his government was to adopt a $45 million(39.5 million euro) plan “to encourage the absorption ofimmigrants from France, Belgium and Ukraine”.
Why do I call Mr. Netanyahu\’s statement un-Wise?
Because of this reminder, excerpted from a statement by Mort Klein, – President of The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA):
Themost prominent Jewish leader of the WW II era, Reform Rabbi StephenS. Wise, and his colleagues urged the Roosevelt administration andCongress not to listen to brave Jewish leaders such as distinguishedscreenwriter Ben Hecht and activist Peter Bergson (a/k/a Hillel Kook)and their Bergson group, who were trying to publicize and stop theNazi massacres of European Jews.
RabbiWise demonized Bergson and Hecht, demanded that Bergson and Hechtstop their activities on behalf of European Jews, demanded that Jewsshould “not make an issue” out of the Nazi massacres, anddemonized Bergson and Hecht. Rabbi Wise and Nahum Goldmannstated that the Bergson group “did not represent the Jews” andtold the U.S. State Department that Bergson and Hecht were as “biga threat as Hitler to the well-being of American Jewry.”
Theparallels to the certain Jewish leaders\’ statements today in theface of the Iranian nuclear threat are downright eerie.
As you can see, Mr. Klein feels that he is watching the 1930\’s repeat itself today. Is he right?
Well, what happened in the 1930\’s? Europe, and the FDR-led USA, watched and did little or nothing as anti-Semitism flourished, and anti-Semitic acts, increasingly violent in nature, became commonplace. This culminated, you may recall, in the holocaust.
Today, Jews – some of them, anyway – say “Never Again”. But are we not watching a repeat performance in today\’s Europe of what we saw during the 1930\’s – complete with a President of the United States desperately trying to look the other way by claiming the acts of terrorism against Jews are “random”? and, other than a few perfunctory, template-quality words, is the carnage directed against Jews truly being addressed? The answer is no. just as it was then.
I can\’t help thinking of that ominous scene in the movie of Katherine Ann Porter\’s “Ship Of Fools”, in which a German laughs off the impending nazi takeover, saying “There are a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do? Kill all of us?”.
To answer that character: they certainly tried, didn\’t they? And Europe has no shortage of people who would be happy to try again now.
But there is a difference between the 1930\’s and today. A huge one.
The difference is the existence of Israel; a strong, independent, Jewish state where alienated, endangered Jews can go.
Its Prime Minister urges that they do so now – before Europe reverts to what it was in the 1930\’s (and, truth be told, before then as well). In other words, he is telling the European Jews of 2015 to ignore Stephen S. Wise, as Mr. Bergson, Mr. Hecht and others did so in the \’30s.
Should European Jews heed this warning and immigrate to the Jewish state? That, of course, is for each individual to decide.
But no one can deny that suggesting they do so makes Benjamin Netanyahu un-Wise.
And whether or not they take him up on it, European Jews owe Mr. Netanyahu a debt of gratitude for plainly stating his offer, and explaining why.
