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Staying Jewish after the Holocaust

Nov. 20 2015

Mordechai Ronen [né Markovits] survived Auschwitz, along with his two brothers. After the liberation, the three returned to their hometown in Romania and debated whether to remain Jews:

So there we were, we three brothers, in Dej, Romania, with a serious decision to make. We had just endured unspeakable horrors, all because of our religion. We discussed whether to keep our Jewish identity or abandon it. After all, if these tragedies happened once, they could happen again. There was only one reason why we were targeted for extermination: we were Jews. We knew anti-Semitism had been around for millennia, and in all likelihood, would continue well into the future. All it would take was another obsessed, manipulative dictator for us to be targets once again. . . .

As you might imagine, these were intense conversations for someone of my age. I was only thirteen years old and my brothers were barely into their twenties. We discussed it every day while staying in Dej. We tried to weigh all the pros and cons, considered the history, and our possible futures. We had just escaped from hell and shuddered at the thought that future generations of Markovitses would have to endure similar experiences.

But I could never get the words my father told me out of my head. “Go to Israel,” he said. I just couldn’t betray his trust, his love, and his hopes for me. I just couldn’t stop being Jewish.

So we three brothers decided to be loyal to our heritage, our parents, our religion, and our roots. We feared the risks could be high. But at the end of the day, there really wasn’t any other option. We simply couldn’t live with ourselves unless we were Jewish. And we figured the best place in the world to be Jewish was Israel.

Read more at National Post

More about: Auschwitz, History & Ideas, Holocaust, Israel, Romania

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic