[This was sent to Primerprez by Laura Gottlieb, a graduate student in Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut. As she points out, some things never change.]
Do you remember Eric Hoffer? He was a longshoreman who turned into a philosopher, wrote columns for newspapers and some books. He was a non-Jewish American social philosopher. He was born in 1902 and died in 1983, after writing nine books and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic. Here is one of his columns from 1968. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?? This article was written 40 years ago!! Some things never change...
*(In the part he writes about refugees, there were also 850,000 Jewish refugees from over 10 Middle Eastern nations between 1948 and 1967 ALONE (not counting other centuries of history where Muslims slaughtered thousands of Jews and other non-Muslims, or conferred them to "Dhimmi" status). If Jews were to count every relative ever connected to any of those refugees - as Middle Eastern Arabs do to "boost" the numbers - the number of Jews made into refugees by intolerant Arab nations would far surpass the "refugee problem" of the "palestinians" (a made-up nationality) - most of them came to Israel illegally in the first place from surrounding lands. The irony is, many people ignore that fact and pretend they've been there forever. If you look at history, Jews were also the first "real" Palestinians - named by Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century - by about 600 years! Arabs didn't arrive on the land that is Israel until 636 AD - 1800 years AFTER the Jews!)
Israel's Peculiar Position
By Eric Hoffer
LA Times 5/26/68
The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese-and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace.
Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. Other nations, when they are defeated, survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June [1967] he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.
No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Blacks are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment, Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer [1967] had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war, to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us all.
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