Monday, June 14, 2010

Who Wants To Be a Jew? - an Epilog

On May 18, 2010, two days after I submitted the book Who Wants To Be a Jew? for publication, I went to Israel. I decided to go through Warsaw, Poland, where my late mother was born and raised because it was important to me to absorb, as much as I could, the Jewish experience. While in Warsaw I visited the Jewish ghetto, the railway station from which my grandmother and her son (my uncle), whom I never met, were sent to their death. I also visited the bunker from which Mordechai Anilevitch, one of my heroes, fought the Nazis, and the grave of Janusz Korczak (of whom I knew since childhood) who chose to join the Jewish children in his orphanage in their travel to their death. I also visited Wolska Street, where my late mother used to live before she, thank God, emigrated to Palestine at the last moment (1936).
Soon after my arrival in Israel the "Marmara" affair in which terrorists under the cover of a humanitarian mission tried to break the blockade on Ghaza. They were stopped by the Israeli navy and nine of those terrorists were killed during the operation. That was the opportunity for which all the haters of Israel were waiting - it gave them the ammunition they needed to attack Israel and make outrageous demands of her. It was then that I fully understood the significance of being a Jew.
Being a Jew, even now, more than sixty years after the establishment of Israel, means being a minority in this world which is not willing to allow us the basic right to defend ourselves even when the threat to our existence is clear. It also means being constantly suspected and accused of any crime or wrongdoing, whether true or false, be it the crucifying of Jesus, the killing of gentile children for Passover or the poisoning of Palestinians.
We are used to this treatment and do not take those accusations too seriously because we believe that the truth is bound to come out and then all our enemies will have to swallow their own venom with which they try to poison us.