The general public has no idea how badly the Jewish diaspora has been traumatized - or, more accurately, retraumatized - by the events of this past October.
First, one nightmare came true: a genocidal terrorist attack in which hundreds of Jewish families and young people were subjected to the worst possible iterations of rape, torture and murder. Then, a second nightmare came true: the people we thought were our friends turned against us.
After eighty years of hearing somber condemnation of the Holocaust, thirty years of watching people cry at movies like "Schindler's List," and ten years of listening to politicians call each other Nazis as though the worst possible thing to be was a Jew-hater, we discovered that, in the darkest hour Jews have endured since 1945, we stood alone.
In school, many of us had classmates who, after learning about Anne Frank, turned to us and said, "I would hide you from Nazis." Those classmates grew up to be friends who see us mourning Jewish victims of terror on social media, and leave comments telling us that if Jewish colonizers hadn't stolen Palestinian land, all of this could have been avoided. Or that, while Hamas is terrible, Israel has been engaged in genocidal apartheid against Palestinians for decades. And that, in any case, there's no possible justification for military action that results in dead children in Gaza.
Of course, there are exceptions. There are plenty of non-Jews whose genuine horror at Hamas's atrocities has been accompanied by recognition that Israel must take forceful action to neutralize the threat of further terror attacks. They acknowledge the sad truth that innocents die in every war, but that when Israel is forced to fight, it makes more of an effort to minimize civilian casualties than any other country, including the USA. And they realize that it is the political and religious leaders of Gaza and the West Bank who keep their citizens impoverished, oppressed, and dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the extermination of Jews.
Those allies deserve our gratitude.
But, for the most part, their support has not been public. Our most vocal defenders, it seems, are only those who stand to profit in one way or another from Israel's suffering: the weapons manufacturers who hope to make billions by arming both sides of a long and bloody war; the politicians who calculate that their investment of vocal support for Israel today will yield Jewish campaign contributions tomorrow; and the evangelical Christians who believe that war in the Holy Land is a prerequisite for the End of Days.
In the emotional crucible of the last five weeks, Diaspora Jews have relearned what our brothers and sisters in Israel never forgot: nobody is coming to save us unless they expect something in return. Our existence, collectively and individually, depends upon supporting each other and on supporting Israel. At the end of the day, it is all we have.
There is a name for this idea. It is called Zionism. And for the three generations of Jews born since the Holocaust, it is a radical departure from the way we've always viewed the world around us. But now ... Now we understand why our grandparents and great-grandparents sweated and fought and bled and died to preserve their traditions, to maintain their communities, and to return to the land of Israel. It wasn't vanity, it wasn't a lust for territory, and it certainly wasn't a desire to oppress anyone else. It was a matter of survival.
Through newly-opened eyes, we see as our ancestors saw. We see what it's like to wonder which of the people we pass on the street or in the grocery store hate us for who we are. We see that antisemitism is not a fringe ideology, but rather the default mode in which much of the world operates. We see that our lives and the lives of our families depend on our ability to protect ourselves through alliances, influence, and, if necessary, physical force.
Most importantly, we see that "never again" is not a promise from the world never again to turn on us. It is our promise to the world that we will never again be defenseless when it does.
It is interesting to compare the world's reaction to the events in Israel with the events in Armenia with Azerbaijan. There are a lot of parallels. Armenia is a small country, like Israel, surrounded by hostile Islamic neighbors, engaged in a current war with them, and Armenians were also genocided a couple generations ago. Yet the world reaction to Azerbaijan seizing a third of Armenia and ethnically cleansing it in the past month, along with new demands (in the past couple days) for even more territory, is a collective shrug and complete silence, including from most Christians worldwide (who have lost their sense of collective identity). And Russia, nominally Armenia's protector, is AWOL because it, despite presenting themselves publicly as nominally pro-Christian, is controlled by the central bank owners. No one is coming to their aid and no one cares. Is that worse than having a media microscope and tremendous amount of worldwide hatred?
This raises a bunch of other questions -- what is the price to pay for survival? What is the frame a people must adopt for such survival? Because the Armenians clearly lack at -- but at the end of the day no one is going to watch out for you but yourself.
Blessin's lansman fer bravely sharin' this! I dunno how but I'm fer savin' Israel--now I fully an' finally git why my grannie collected fer Hadassa (I put the pennies in the paper tubes!). As a young'un I had little interest it all... My things've changed! Havin' left NYShitty, I'm in a strange land with no "passover aisle" at the grocery... an alien! (menorah placed "not" near the winda' neither...) Back in NYSeize where I once figgered I wuz "home"--I got friends whose kids on the UWS are in skools (I'm notta fan of skools btw) with private security due ta threats against KIDS. Kids. WHod'a thunk?! An' tho' I'm no fan've NetAn'Yahoo (I've written 'bout 'im...) like many fellow "chews," an' tho' I'm madder than a hornet trapped in an attic learnin' (of recent vintage) how many've us were handed a dangerous "gift" by the British (Balfour et all were no friends of us "chews," the move wuz strategic an' came with some nasty apron strings attached....)--Beyond all the freemasons an' schnooks--the IDEA behind it wuz righter than rain. They could'a used a lil' more Ben Franklin in their gubbamint--but all in all, it's the closest thing we got..."if we kin keep it."
Nowdaze, I'm seein' folks I thought were decent humans an' fellow "freedom fighters" cheerin' on Hitler (agreein' with Patton that we defended the wrong side!), erasin' the Holocaust (callin' Vera Sharav controlled opposition?! OY!) an' blamin' all us "chews" fer just 'bout every ill in the world (includin' painful hangnails). One day Jane Ruby is a "hero"--next somebuddy mentions she's a "Rubenstein" an' she's the ennemy (gevalt agin'!)
Few speak up--iffin they do it t'ain't much. (Jon Rappoport "hinted"--re the Havard bruhaha but not much...) Sigh. Rest've us gotta wear our verbal armor proudly an' not shrink--"Times is Hard" as Mrs. Lovett would say...