Commentary:
Last week I was startled that several people in their fifties to seventies seemed unaware of anti-Semitism in the U.S.
One asked me why people used to dislike Jews.
Well, most folks were fond of Jesus Christ. Their churches taught that the Jews had killed Jesus. Jews driven from their original homeland long ago, were a minority everywhere. Because Christians couldn’t lend money at interest, and people needed loans, some Jews became the moneylenders. Like Shylock. Which did not endear them to everyone.
A serious golfer noted that although I play many sports, I don’t golf. I explained that while my father loved tennis, he’d never learned golf, because Jews weren’t allowed in most country clubs. My friend was shocked.
While Hitler’s Germany took anti-Semitism to an extreme, Jews faced discrimination and even pogroms (mobs beating and even killing Jews) in many countries. In the U.S., covenants prohibited selling homes to Blacks or Jews. In the excellent 1947 film, Gentlemen’s Agreement, Gregory Peck plays a reporter who, when moving to New York City to work for a magazine, tells people he’s Jewish, to see how people treat him. (Rather shabbily.) He writes an expose on widespread anti-Semitism.
Particularly during the current violence in the Middle East, we should recall that.
But I’ve never had a clue how we could solve the Middle-East problem, or how British and U.S. leaders should have proceeded in 1915 or 1947.
I used to wonder if folks in countries where U.S. oil companies ruined the land or where United Fruit and our CIA supported vicious dictators, might come here and start killing a bunch of us as a reprisal. That’d be both tragic and understandable. We are not our international corporations; but we suffer them, and belittle the damage they do elsewhere.
In the Middle East, both peoples, Jews and Palestinians, are legitimately aggrieved, and have histories of suffering, and have been dispossessed of their lands and homes and societies. (They also have competing religious idols telling them the land is theirs, which complicates matters.)
Nothing justifies attacking civilians, as Hamas did. Even in war, that’s theoretically a crime, although nightly bombings of London or German cities all happened, as did Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Just as we are not our international corporations, or our Ku Klux Klan, the average Palestinian is not Hamas. S/he might hate Israel, understandably; but most Palestinians are not part of Hamas. I understand Israel’s desire to destroy Hamas forever. I understand Palestinians resenting Israel, and the U.S. Palestinians were treated like our tribes. Palestine was a country on the map, that no longer exists; and the nation where Palestine was treats Palestinians as second-class citizens. Even now, what lands Palestinians still have, on the West Bank, are being quietly taken by “settlements” the Israeli government supports and we wink at.
Of course you’d want to wipe out the folks who massacred more than a thousand people to make a political statement!
But, equally of course, if you grew up in refugee camps hearing about the homes your parents or grandparents had, or had been driven out by “settlements,” you’d resent Israel. U.S. politicians and college professors who point this out should not be censured, or censored!
Meanwhile, Israel’s righteous anger has probably killed 8,000 Gaza civilians, and is still killing. Fellow human beings.
All, ultimately, because of England’s imperialism and the disregard of British and U.S. leaders for others.
Peter Goodman’s opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.