"You chose an ally, Cain. To them you turned over your brothers -- into hands stained with the blood of millions thrown back from the gates of the homeland into the ovens of Maidanek....
"Cars chase cars. Telephones ring. Signals are given and detectives appear. Tommyguns are raised. 'Halt!' -- the foreign rulers command. 'Out of the cars,' the enslavers order. 'Which one?' the detectives -- your allies -- ask. And you, Cain, walk over, raise your hand, and point. 'That's him. Take him!'
"Your mouth brims with socialist rhetoric, Cain, but you are an exploiter. You incite, inform, betray, abduct, and hand men over, Cain.
"And we, the soldiers of Zion, are commanded not to repay you. Though our blood boils, it is blood that is totally dedicated to the nation and the homeland. Our eyes are directed, even today -- especially today! -- toward love of our brothers, toward the redemption of our nation.
"But a day of reckoning will come. And it is not far off. The nation will rise up, its anger will burst forth. And for your treachery and crimes, for your informing and libel; in the name of the maligned nation, in the name of the enslaved homeland, in the name of its martyrs, in the name of our imprisoned brothers, in the name of our bereaved mothers and deserted children, in the name of our sacred war and in the name of our spilled blood -- we shall repay you, Cain!"
This text was aimed at David Ben Gurion and the Jewish Establishment of the day, which was turning Jews over to the British for the crime of fighting for the Jewish homeland. In 1945, it was a cowardly thing to do -- the kind of "Please like me" attitude that allowed for the Holocaust that was still happening in Europe. Fifty years later, we know that the "day of reckoning" never really came for Ben Gurion.
One of the features of Ben Gurion's cowardly, reactionary leadership, was the June 1948 attack on the Altalena, an arms bearing ship with enough materiel to fully equip the Israeli army for three months. That attack was ordered by a young Hagannah operative who had earlier deserted a unit he was leading in the effort to break the Arab blockade of the Bab-el-Wad ravine approaching Jerusalem. That operative's name was Yitzchak Rabin.
Today, the ovens of Maidanek are a distant memory, revisited by pilgrimage and film, memory and museum. But the legacy of Maidanek is still alive and well in the world. Throughout Europe and North America, the view is gaining popularity that the Holocaust is a hoax, perpetrated by the Jewish people to pry the concession of a Jewish state from the world. Anti-Semitism has not diminished much since the 1940's. It has only changed its appearance. Now, it exists under the banner of anti-Zionism.
Yet, the legacy of Maidanek is perhaps most apparent in Arab societies, where the horrors of the Holocaust did not take place, and which escaped the ravages of war for the most part. Most Arab societies boast educational curricula which include such unabashedly anti-semitic works as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". No Arab society, save for Egypt, has allowed that Israel exists, and even in Egypt, classroom maps and geography classes omit Israel. Israel is subject to an economic and trade boycott which has cost Israel forty-nine billion American dollars in the period 1948-1993. To this boycott, all Arab societies are party, with Egypt participating only partially.
Palestinian Arabs are subject to the leadership of a number of organizations. By far the most moderate of these is the PLO, with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah also claiming their share of adherents. All of these organizations, including the PLO and all of its constituent organizations, have constitutions and policies that call for the total destruction of Israel. The PLO pledged, in the agreements surrounding the Declaration of Principles, to remove those clauses calling for Israel's annihilation from its covenant. This has not been done.
In the 1940's Begin's Irgun fought the British occupation of Israel on the grounds that the British were preventing the Jewish homeland from being a home for Jews. Britain, an enemy of Germany, was not allowing any refugees from German slaughter to enter Israel. Begin and his followers felt that they could not allow this to happen, and that it was within their power to effect change. Ben Gurion and his followers decided to go along with British policy -- a policy that resulted in the deaths of countless thousands of Jews.
In the 1990's Ben Gurion's heir is following in the footsteps of the master. He has decided to place the future of Israel in the hands of a master anti-semite, the person responsible for more Jewish death and suffering than anyone since Hitler.
Yasser Arafat has no interest in keeping Jews alive, or in hindering their demise. He has revelled in the attacks on Israeli citizens which now number over one thousand since the signing of the Declaration of Principles. He has condemned none of them, and his own faction has been responsible for over fifty such attacks in that time period.
I saw an interesting picture recently. It was a doctored photograph of the famous handshake on the White House lawn, showing Rabin handing Arafat a gun. In the 1940's, Ben Gurion was prepared to hand the British the only land in the world where Jews were welcome, and ensure that the Jews already living there would not be too upset that the British were not allowing more Jews to flee annihilation and settle in Israel. Now, fifty years later, Rabin is prepared to hand over those Jews who did flee and settle in Israel and their offspring to the next Hitler.
"Though our blood boils, it is blood that is totally dedicated to the nation and the homeland. Our eyes are directed, even today -- especially today! -- toward love of our brothers, toward the redemption of our nation." Begin saw in the 1940's what Ben Gurion's policies were contributing to, and he expressed the anger and frustration of the Jewish people through his wall posters. Unfortunately, the vision still rings true today. It is incumbent upon us to continue voicing that anger and frustration against the Rabin government and its policies: to direct our eyes --especially today -- toward love of our brothers, toward the redemption of our nation from those who are leading it toward destruction.
Arafat is prepared to do what Hitler could not finish. It is a shame that Rabin is prepared to allow him the opportunity.
Copyright 1994. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
