The Geek was touched deeply but indirectly by war's devastation through the death of his father in early combat, but he came of age a close friend of people whose lives had been blighted by the hideously effective machinery of death assembled by the Nazis. They had sat safe in the far away land of safety, the US, as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and grandparents were forced onto the thousands of Murder Expresses and ended "up the chimney" in the camps of Germany, Poland, and other places under the swastika. He came to know and understand deeply the power held by the creation and survival of Israel for these people.
The Geek also came to know and believe that the existence of Israel held profound significance for non-Jews, the goyim. Israel is not only a symbol of Jewish survival against the implacable forces of hatred, dehumanization, and the constant need for an "other" on whom all ills and misfortunes can be blamed. Beyond that potent reality, Israel is a symbol to all humans that places of refuge and sources of protection must exist as any of us can become the dreaded "other," the next target of hate and dehumanization.
Israel also exists to remind us that a good can result from the most repulsive evil. Israel was founded in the ancient land of the Hebrews in large part due to the recognition on the part of peoples and leaders that they shared a degree of culpability for the Slaughter of the Innocents perpetrated by the Nazis with the eager assistance of many who were not Nazis, whose land was occupied by Nazis, who labored under the whips and guns of the Nazis but sympathized not with those marched into the gas chambers, but rather with their fellow haters of all things Jewish and all Jews.
It was an act of penance for the moral sins of the Nazi period when Western nations generally, including the US ignored the many warning signs of what was happening under the Hitlerites. Shamefully, the governments and many people throughout Europe and North America had refused to hear the cries of warning and shrieks of anguish alike until it was far too late.
Only after the evidence of the Slaughter, the Holocaust, the Shoah, was shown around the world, time after nauseating time, did the West, the US, act. The act was the creation of the state of Israel.
The act of Israel's birth was accompanied by blood, pain, and a degree of injustice to be sure, but that is often the case with birth, of individuals and nations alike. Perhaps the most important thing to recall about the birth of Israel is not the ministrations of the West, of the US, or even the Soviet Union in bringing the birth to pass but the utter, complete, total, and quite unjustifiable efforts by the governments of the surrounding Arab Muslim states to kill the infant before it had fully emerged from the womb.
Arguably, the actions of the Arab governments constituted an attempt to finish the job started by the Nazis or, failing that, to assure that Jews in the Mideast and elsewhere would be left without a refuge or protector. While any number of exculpatory glosses have been and continue to be placed upon the Arab attack on Israel-the-borning, the underlying fact is that the movement of tanks and troops was motivated by hatred, dehumanization, and a view of Jews as the ever-evil "Other."
As the years have rolled by since Israel was created from the ashes of the Holocaust nothing has shifted the hostility, the hatred felt and constantly expressed by various and sundry Arab and Muslim states. If anything the hatred has grown, the hostility increased, and the potential for war both conventional and otherwise has increased in capitals across the Mideast and throughout Northwest Asia.
The reason for this escalation in hate, threat, and menace usually invoked is the bad treatment of the "Palestinians" by the Israelis. End the "occupation," restore the "borders" extant before June 1967, compensate or allow the return of any and all Arabs (or their descendants) "forced out" of their homes way back at the beginning and all will be peace, harmony and goodwill. Or so runs the Arab-Muslim narrative.
Right. All the problems diplomatic, political, and military, all the rebirths of ancient blood libels, emerge from the sincere concern on the part of the assorted Arab and Muslim leaders for the fate of their "Palestinian brothers."
That constant theme, that undying plaint is a crock. Pure and simple, none of the many advocates on behalf of the "Palestinians" gives a tinker's dam about the "Palestinian people" now or in the past. Arab and Muslim regimes, dictators, kings, and elected presidents alike have used the "plight of the Palestinians" time and time again for their own subjectively defined self-interest. The "Palestinians" have been pawns or less in the Mideast Game of Nations. They have been expendable assets used for purposes of state. They have been pliable and easily exploited puppets dancing on strings controlled by distant and quite indifferent political and military figures.
Behind the screen of a nonexistent Israeli threat, the mullahs of Tehran pursue a nuclear capability with zealous determination not to protect the "Palestinians" but to enhance the power held by Iran in and beyond the region. The Turkish government has turned on their one time ally, Israel, not because the Islamist leaning government is worried over the repression of the residents of Gaza but because of desire bordering on need to diminish Israel.
The real deal behind all of the recent expressions of antipathy directed toward Israel and solidarity with the "Palestinian people" is based on a very mundane consideration. The assorted regimes are scared to death of the Islamist jihadists in their own populations.
The ever hardening line espoused by Arab and Muslim states most recently aimed at the Israeli nuclear arsenal is based on the palpable fear that appearing to give in in the slightest would be to excite the Islamist jihadi to strap on their suicide vests and "bring the war home." Given the deeply rooted antisemitism in Islam per se, stoked year after year by clerics and others and considering the explosive growth of Islamist based and directed violence, the anxiety permeating the governments of Arab and Muslim states is understandable.
Equally understandable is the Israeli reaction of hardening intransigence. Without excusing the land grab nature of the Six Day War, the current view of the Israeli government and people is well founded. The only wall around Israel, the only way of assuring that Jews not only in that country but around the world have a refuge and protector is the strength of the Israeli military. That strength includes the nuclear weapons resident in assorted bunkers.
It is quite true that Israel faces both external and internal problems, even large problems such as demographic, economic, and educational trends. Yet a more fundamental truth is that Israel must survive as a viable state if those are to be solved.
Survival relies in very large measure on the capabilities of the Israeli clandestine services as well as its defense forces. It relies at least to an important degree on those warheads presumed to exist on Israeli bases.
Israeli survival also rests in part upon the understanding and support of us who are non-Jews, the goyim of the US and Europe. Our predecessors not only did the wrong thing in the long dark years from 1933 to 1945, they did the right thing three years later when they midwifed the birth of Israel.
We do not need to support Israel without question. Not every decision or action by the government of Israel is correct, nor does it merit agreement simply by virtue of having been made in Israel.
However, without Israel as both a reality and a symbol, it will be only a matter of time before the Extermination Expresses take to the rails again. The next time those on board may be Jews.
Then, again, those who ride the next trains may be some other "Other." They could be any of us.
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