As the World Churns

Periods in history seem to repeat themselves over and over.

Sunday was on the Jewish calendar, the 9^th day of the month of Av. It is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. Both temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on that day, one by Nebuchadnezzar and 500 years later by Titus and his Roman Legion. Many tragedies befell the Jewish people on this day, and other horrific events are tied to it. A group of distinguished rabbis in the early 1950s came to the top rabbinic authority in Israel to suggest a new fast day for the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. He said to include it in the litany of horrible events of Jewish history remembered on the 9^th day of Av.

The day is a 24-hour fast, and most people who can do so don’t go to work. Besides the services that include many special prayers about the destruction of the temples and the Jewish homeland, there is plenty of time to think about disasters, from the destruction of the temples long ago to the pogrom on the 7^th of October nearly two years ago. There are many parallels in the stories from southern Israel to similar events during the holocaust and the Roman conquest. A rabbi once related that the Nazis captured a cousin of his who lived in Vilnius. He and his wife were dragged behind a car until they were dead; he noted stories of Jews being killed by Romans riding horses and dragging them along until they were lifeless. We have all seen pictures of nearly dead Jews being dragged along by Hamas terrorists as they made their way back to Gaza on motorcycles. The more things change….

During the day, I watched a documentary about the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile SS forces that killed Jews wherever the Wehrmacht reached in the east. The video noted that which is well-known: when the Nazis arrived and the Russians either fled or were killed, the locals did not take much motivation to beat and kill the local Jews. There are many stories and even contemporaneous videos of Ukrainians, Estonians, and others beating or hacking local Jews to death. German soldiers can be seen standing around watching and filming the mini-pogroms that they unleashed. Later, the high command demanded that the SS do a more complete and efficient job of Jew erasure than the locals were doing. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Israelis were cool on sending aid to Ukraine, specifically because of these events, which are well-known in the country.

While watching the video, I heard reports of tens of thousands of people in Sydney gathering to protest Israel. “Death to the IDF” was heard, and of course, the protesters had all of the necessary Hamas accouterments—keffiyehs, PLO flags, green head coverings, ISIS flags, etc. There were other protests worldwide, but the one in Sydney stuck with me. My father and his parents fled Germany a month before the war and were on the high seas when Hitler invaded Poland. My father remembered the impassioned speech of the British captain to the crew that while the travelers on the freighter were Germans, they too were enemies of the Nazis and should be treated well. My father’s uncle, who sponsored their travel to Sydney, had told my grandfather to learn how to weld, as it would help him get into the country. So my grandfather—whom I never knew—went to Berlin, took a welding course, and went home with a certificate of his proficiency. Sydney took in Jews then; now Sydney hates Jews.

Someone at the protests would say that I am wrong! The Palestinians are today’s Jews—chased, killed, and supposedly starved. But the comparison is deceitful. The Jews did nothing against the German government or people. They were proud to be Germans, and many served in the army during World War I. The Palestinians started a war by murdering 1,200 people, and are upset that the war is not going well for them. They could have stayed home on the 7^th of October, but instead chose to send 6,000 people into Israel to murder, rape, torture, and kidnap. Israel should have dropped an atomic bomb, but instead decided to grind out a war in which Hamas terrorists still act against the IDF. There is no starvation in Gaza, except for the hostages, as seen by those in the horrific propaganda films put out by Hamas. Why aren’t the people of Sydney upset about a skeletal hostage being forced to dig his own grave? He’s a Jew and, as such, he doesn’t count. As in Eastern Europe in the early 1940s, the locals can express their Jew hatred in a kosher manner. We’re not antisemites! We’re for the Palestinians. That the latter are rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and supporters of the same is no biggie. IDF soldiers have found many copies of Mein Kampf translated into Arabic in many Gaza homes. The hostages look like the Jews found by the Allies in the concentration camps. The more things change….

Israel has been promising to destroy Hamas since the original pogrom. Israel once again says that it will destroy Hamas if they don’t release all of the hostages, disarm, and sing the Israeli national anthem while standing on one leg…. Israel definitely wants Hamas gone, but it has no idea what comes next. People have suggested the US run the place, or maybe the UAE, or maybe Egypt, or possibly the corrupt Palestinian Authority. The people of Gaza are no less Hamas than Hamas. They hate Jews and Israel and want both gone forever. So if you technically destroy Hamas, what comes next? Hamas II—the Sequel? I believe that is the reason that Israel’s slo-mo fighting in Gaza does not match its rhetoric of planning to destroy Hamas. They definitely want it gone or minimally defanged. But they have no plan on how to run the place the day after Hamas is supposedly finished. Nobody does.

My concern—and I hope that I am wrong—is that antisemitism will only get worse after the war is over. Many news crews will go into Gaza and show endless destruction and report back sob stories from the locals. They will not add the part that Gaza started the war, and everything could have been lovely and in order had they not. The world, now obsessed with Gaza children with genetic defects that make them look starved, will go crazy over the endless piles of debris where buildings once stood. The Gazans got everything that they deserved, but when the antisemites apply the “Jew discount”, it will seem incomprehensible that so much of Gaza was turned to dust. For the world, the Hamas-caused destruction does not matter: it is simply one more reason to hate the Jews. And that’s okay by them. As during World War II, the world has approved of Jew hating. No, the crowds in Sydney did not kill like their counterparts in Lviv in 1942. But they are only one step away from that course of action.