Human Beings are Capable of Good and Bad, Israeli Jews Included

Israel is put in a class by itself and has been since its creation. It has never accepted responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees that it created in 1948, refusing a penny (or shekel) to support them. Instead the UN had to come to the rescue and is still, 75 years later, providing health and education services to the over 50 camps still sitting on the sites where they were established using tents so long ago. Incredibly, Israel has asked that even this UN relief operation be stopped.

That Israel is a colony is undeniable. That Israel is not a democracy because it rules over people who have no vote is undeniable. That Israel has openly engaged in ethnic cleansing is undeniable. That the US has protected Israel from any censure by the UN is undeniable. The Palestinians have been referred to as the niggers of the Middle East. It's true for everyone to see - no civil rights, constant abuse, constant questioning over what they are doing and where they are going. Easy conviction and imprisonment can be expected. And something never suffered by African-Americans, a registry of every single Palestinian by the Israelis, a number assigned to each just as numbers were assigned to concentration camp inmates by the Nazis.

While all this might make sense to Israelis, what is going on with America? It can only be the holocaust that makes Israel exempt. The movie Exodus was a blockbuster in the US, telling the story that Israel wanted told of its creation with handsome Paul Newman in the starring role. The intro to the movie that became famous is of crossed human arms holding weapons against a backdrop of flames. The British, portrayed in the movie as antisemitic by Peter Lawford, had in fact gone to great lengths to keep a lid on the region, up to and including a brutal suppression of the quite understandable Arab Revolt of 1936-38 that rejected the Zionist takeover that by then was perfectly obvious to anyone paying attention.

The British conducted a survey of the population of Palestine in 1939 to try to find a way to settle things that would respect both the Jews and the Arabs. In the resulting white paper, which soon-to-be Israeli president David Ben Gurion rejected immediately but secretly, land was reserved for both sides. The Arabs, seeing what had been all theirs at the start of the 20th century rejected it for "offering" them 45% of Palestine though they made up 55% of the population. Ben Gurion vowed to fight WW2 with the Allies and then get serious about Palestine. So it would be.

In the movie and in the actual event, the British were despised because they called a halt to Jewish immigration after 250,000 had recently arrived from Europe, in line with the recommendation of the white paper resulting in the British boarding the ship Exodus, loaded with holocaust survivors, and forcing the refugees back to British controlled Germany. The world, including the US, unwilling to take the refugees as morality would dictate, instead denounced the British.

The fact that is not allowed to be expressed, and is something I have never, ever heard anyone in any American government say, is that Jews are no more or less human than anyone else. That they suffered a horror in Europe in no way justified their going to Palestine and forcing the Palestinians out. But this would not have won Harry Truman the vote of American Jews. Yet the movie Exodus would have us believe that Zionism was perfectly rational and even heroic as we see Paul Newman and Lee J. Cobb and a group of young Jewish kids deal with skulking Arabs hiding in the shadows, conniving with Nazis and murdering a beautiful white Jewish girl. Hollywood could have done no more for Zionism and Americans ate it up to our cost.

The US has thrown aside liberty and justice for all in favor of the Israeli exception. What makes this doubly strange is that American Jews would never ask for or be extended similar exceptionality here in the US where they are equal American citizens along with all the rest of us. There would be outrage if American Jews were excused when called before the justice system, if they were given a unique discount on home purchases, given land exclusively, from which they could pump sewage onto other land, etc., etc down the list of what Israelis do and have been doing to Palestinians openly and without apology for so many years.

Now we are allowing Israelis the ultimate: to kill and destroy without limit, to take more land, to determine what to do with all the money and weapons we give them while we stand by timidly and do not dare to intervene, our foolish Secretary of State running around the world trying to get other countries to join us! And this has been going at a lower level for decades with the US holding off all attempts at entirely peaceful sanctions from an outraged world via the UN, pressuring other countries economically to vote as the US and Israel wish them to vote.

The enormous irony of the holocaust is that it has so impressed the minds of Zionists and Americans that another holocaust is now underway perpetrated by those who believe that that victimhood 80 years ago makes them uniquely righteous, allowing any and all behavior on their part in the taking of land and the killing of people with the mighty US holding the world at bay with the immense armed force that is now truly doing the opposite of what that force is intended to do - PROTECT THE UNITED STATES, not a foreign outlaw country. Our Navy right now intimidates all for the sake of epic injustice to proceed without restraint. Need anyone wonder if this is ramping up hatred of the United States? HAMAS committed an act of terror, but in doing so it revealed, even to the most obtuse, the clear status of Israel as a unique oppressor that must not be stopped.

"Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

The masses are huddled in Gaza waiting to be killed and have not been free in their lifetimes.

The Statue of Liberty is now nothing but a relic and a joke.

And our blind President is ready to go to the wall to leave unrestrained a foreign country with less than 2% of our population.

There are many American Jews who see exactly what is going on and denounce it. If you support them, as I do and have done for over 25 years, check out the Jewish Voice for Peace website. Let it also be said that there are a dwindling number of Israelis who denounce what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians over decades. Check out the website of B'Tselem (bet SELL um).

The Holocaust as Learned PTSD

Many Jews after the holocaust, not just survivors, but Jews around the world including in the US, were subject to the ultimate PTSD that altered their outlook on the world and their fellow man. It was crystal clear that Jews had been marked for wholesale extermination, limited only by the fight against Nazism to spreading even further than it did. I know of one Jew in particular, now very elderly, who has a terrible case of misanthropy, can see no good in anyone, is the first to offer a harsh judgement on people that I know not to be what he sees in them. His entire family with the exception of his parents died in the holocaust and he is also a victim in a way that has him in a mental prison that has turned him against all but other Jews and even against them if they don't think, like he does, that the Palestinians are animals.

His example of this mega-PTSD has so warped the views of so many people that they cannot see themselves as anything but victims-in-waiting if not actual victims as was the case on Oct 7. In fact, for these people, Oct 7 was nothing but validation of their upside down view. The history of who did what and why amounts to nothing. Rational argument amounts to nothing. As Netanyahu has said "we will always live by the sword" never considering it is the sword that Israel wields that gives credence to his words. He repeatedly says "ask HAMAS" as he truly believes it is HAMAS that is responsible for all his killing of innocent people. His hand is forced, but it is a clean hand. Mega-PTSD.

Mega-PTSD fired up Zionism and drove the terrorism that was led by such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir who would both become Israeli Prime Ministers preceding Netanyahu (whose father was a rabid Zionist). Mega-PTSD drives the odd tunnel vision version of "never again" which means destroy before being destroyed (pre-emption) and the most perverted aspect of all which is that what one thinks is true, is true, and there can be no refutation of it by anyone, anyone who for the simple act of disputation is per se antisemitic. A Zionist cannot be questioned regarding any destruction or killing by Israel as it is, by definition if Israel is doing it, a necessity and only a pale shadow of what Jews suffered in the holocaust against which no tragedy, past, present or future is worthy of the name. Thus the slaughter without hesitation we are witnessing. Mega-PTSD.

Most Israelis suffer from this mental illness because of the holocaust though the problem is not limited to Israel. Israel promotes this mental illness, seeking to pass it on by sending public high school students to Auschwitz to be bathed in the horror and supplied with Israeli flags they are welcome to wrap around themselves as they contemplate what is clearly intended as a horror that is directed at them for which Israel is the one and only shelter.

This mental illness cannot be cured, short of some trauma that results in waking up, so the only hope of escape is the rise of new generations that can see clearly rather than down the dark holocaust tunnel with Israel a shining light at the end. Because of the indoctrination of Israeli youth, it is American Jews that offer real hope and that is evidenced by the outstanding actions of Jewish Voice for Peace, which I cannot praise too highly and with which I have been actively involved since before the turn of the century. These "kids" are inspired by their Judaism, using it as an escape from Zionism by which it has been hijacked.

If you hate what you see going on in Gaza, as I do, don't hesitate to not only give generously to JVP but to turn out for any event they sponsor near you. They welcome all, including Palestinians, Christians, atheists, you name it, because they understand so well the humanity we share and that they believe is not just valued but honored by their religion. They say "not in our name" and "never again for ANYONE!" from the heart and I say bless those hearts that have escaped the cruel grip of Zionism.