I'll give you a few excerpts that tell a story all their own - and please pay attention to what themes are juxtaposed:
Example Number One, compiled by Rabbi Grossman and published in The Jewish Press, July 9, 1999:
About a month ago while riding through Warsaw, I saw the Star of David encasing the word "Jude" and next to it "Kill Jews" on many of its walls. In this "new Polish democracy, which barely has a thousand identifiable Jews left, graffiti artists had no other target to attack. Jew hatred is endemic in any culture exposed to the worst of all diseases, hate. Our Jewish state was created as a refuge, a place where we could be the majority, strong and armed, but more significantly, a role model nation whose people suffered most from the virus of hate but now should now (sic) be a modality of tolerance and respect for all.
Israel came to the aid of the Kosovar refugees, virtually all non-Jews, but Moslems, the dominant religion in the Arab world. And as President Clinton spoke from a refugee camp, an Israeli flag waved behind him, as that place was under Israeli jurisdiction and responsibility.
Pious and devout Jews are incarcerated in Iran, falsely accused of espionage, but the world press has made scant note of it. Whether or not public protest will help save them remains to be determined. But failure to report this event can only be attributed to a simple fact - these men are Jews, and why bother to create tumult on behalf of them? Doesn't everyone hate Jews? Why then should not the Iranians?
The American Civil Liberties Union faces a great challenge. Defending the rights of all Americans to enjoy full freedom of speech is essential, but even this great democratic institution has its limits. (...) In Canada, a democracy such as ours, a man was rightfully imprisoned for Holocaust revisionist talk when he argued, "There was no Holocaust." In fact, libel and slander are illegal, and telling lies about Jews has absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment. Is it conceivable that, for the love of freedom, one should be permitted to cry "fire" in a crowded theater?
This fire is not in the theater. . . it's in the mouths and word processors of would-be Hitlers. They are not ghosts. They might be sitting next to you on a flight or they might even be your neighbor, across the street. Our greatest contribution to this beloved Land of Liberty would be diminution of the "antis." Let freedom ring everywhere, but for the sake of all of us, define it properly.
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Example Number Two, as it appeared in The Jewish Press, July 2, 1999 in an article titled "Veering off Course? Anglo-Jewish Media Outlets Present Strange Reportage":
Two local religious weekly newspapers avoid putting the tragic anti-Semitic firebombing of three California shuls on their front pages...while a Federation supported weekly which boasts of winning journalistic awards justifies its critical reporting on the incarcerated Jews in Iran by claiming that perhaps Jews shouldn't go overboard in trying to rescue other Jews who may not want to be rescued after all.
Two Reform synagogues and an Orthodox shul were gutted. Members of the Reform synagogues were particularly incensed at, and frightened by, the incident, while a prominent member of the Orthodox shul was seeminly nonchalant about the whole episode, since he almost "expected" it to happen. (...)
During the past few years, the Jews of Israel have pasted stickers on car bumpers and in windows claiming ". . . we have no other country."
Example Number Three, from an article titled "Informed Sources", also in The Jewish Press, July 2, 1999:
We are thankful that these United States of America have given Jews the right to pray, rebuild their lives, and become some of the most prominent business, medical and entertainment luminaries on the planet, but these United States are less than 300 years old. The Jews of Persia were successful businessmen, doctors, spiritual and cultural luminaries for nearly 1,000 years, but that did not stop the forces of radical Islam from making their lives a living hell today.
Would the Publisher of the Jewish Week and other prominent Jewish community leaders urge their followers to leave this country if, G-d forbid, their offices were ransacked or burned out while local rabbis, journalists and businessmen etc. were rounded up and arrested on trumped up charges, threatened with long jail terms, or even worse? The German Jews, the Iranian Jews, and the Polish Jews all thought it would never happen to them. Should we be so naive about what the future may hold in America, "di goldene medina?"
Remember - "Ein lanu eretz acheret" . . . and yes, it can happen here. Anti-Semites do not differentiate between Orthodox and Reform Jews. We are all in this together. The minute we forget it, another Holocaust emerges on the horizon."
One learns a lot about the mental make-up of our opposition by reading what occupies them. Now wouldn't it be time to clear up ambiguities about the "Holocaust" that was?
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"We are one people despite the ostensible rifts, cracks and differences between the American and Soviet democracies. We are one people, and it is not in our interest that the West should liberate the East, for in doing this and in liberating the enslaved nations, the West would inevitably deprive Jewry of the Eastern half of its world power."
(Chaim Weitzmann in World Conquerors, p. 227)
Back to Table of Contents of the Sept. 1999 ZGrams