I was in a taxi from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, with a young couple sitting next to me. We got to talking and they asked me what I was doing in Israel. “I’ve been studying here for the past two years, I’m going into the army soon, and as a hobby I try to be a journalist.”
“We’re both journalists,” they said, “what do you write about?”
“I write about what’s going on in Israel, I try to put a face behind the headlines.”
“Have you had anything published?”
“Only in local Jewish publications in my hometown. A mainstream newspaper wouldn’t publish what I have to write.”
“Why not?”
“Because what I write is too controversial.”
“Like what?”
“Like how a ‘Palestinian’ state would be an absolute disaster.” After giving them the rundown on why I believe that is so, the woman asked me, “Have you ever been to the ‘West Bank’?”
“The ‘Wild West’ Bank? Yeah, I’ve been there.”
“Where?”
“All over: Kochav Yaakov, Beit El, Revava, Bethlehem, Hebro-”
“You’ve been to Hebron?”
“Yeah.” I said
“Why should there be Jews there? Six hundred Jews in the middle of tens of thousands of ‘Palestinians’?”
“Well there was actually a much larger Jewish population there until the Netanyahu administration drove them from their houses and gave ninety-seven percent of Hebron to the ‘Palestinians’,” I answered.
“What about the fact that there are streets that the ‘Palestinians’ can’t walk on?”
“There is one hundred-meter stretch of one street that ‘Palestinians’ can’t walk on, and that’s because it’s right in front of the “Jewish side” of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where thousands of pilgrims visit regularly.” I replied, starting to get annoyed.
“You know in the Jewish Ghetto there was a street that the Jews couldn’t walk on, but at least they made a bridge across it.”
Suddenly, a gentleman sitting in the row in front of us turned around. “I’ll give you each a candy to change the topic,” he said. It was good timing, because at that point my blood was boiling.
How can an Israeli, or for that matter any Jew, honestly compare Hebron to the Warsaw Ghetto? What he was referring to was that the Warsaw Ghetto had two parts: the Big Ghetto and the Small Ghetto. They were connected by a pedestrian bridge. They were also surrounded by barbed wire walls, overpopulated and the population inside diseased and starved. The Warsaw Ghetto was about 4.5% of the city of Warsaw.
The “Palestinians”, on the other hand, occupy 97% of Hebron and are not surrounded by barbed wire fences. The “Palestinians” are allowed to work, they are not starved nor diseased. They are given full access to Isaac’s Tomb, which Jews are only permitted to visit ten days a year. In fact, Jews are only allowed to visit one quarter of the Tomb of Patriarchs.
If anything the Jewish residence in Hebron is much more “ghetto-like” than the Arab, as much as I absolutely hate to use the term. Jews are only allowed to walk within three percent of the municipal area of Hebron. Thousands of Arabs continue to live in this “Jewish Zone.” Jews are prevented from buying and building houses, even as the community grows naturally. In the past twenty years, building permits have only been issued for three Jewish buildings. The police have admitted to officially sanctioned discrimination in Hebron, enforcing the laws much more strictly against the Jews than the Arabs.
All of this is only on a practical level. But in Israel things run much deeper than the surface. Hebron was the city that Abraham chose to bury Sarah in, her burial plot being the first Jewish property ever owned in Israel. All of the Patriarchs were there at some point. For the first seven years of his reign, Hebron served as the capitol of King David’s kingdom. It had a vibrant Jewish community throughout the ages, up until the Massacre of 1929, in which Arab mobs mutilated, raped and murdered dozens of the peaceful Jewish residents of Hebron. Isn’t Israel supposed to be the Jewish state? Then how can she forsake Hebron, the city where her forefathers lived and are buried? Much less how could an Israeli compare Hebron to the Warsaw Ghetto?
I am tired of the abuse of Holocaust terms in “Palestinian” propaganda. To think that they deny our Holocaust, then claim that one is being staged in Gaza. How ridiculous is that? Didn’t the “Palestinian” people want all the Israelis to leave Gaza? So they got what they wanted. But when we don’t provide them with water, electricity and “humanitarian” aid as they fire rockets on our civilians, suddenly we are perpetrating a holocaust? By not feeding and supporting people dedicated to our destruction?
Meanwhile, on the Israeli side of the Gaza border they have now developed an “armored tractor”. Basically, it is a bullet-proof, kassam-proof farm tractor. So in order for Israelis to farm their fields, they now need to do so in a tank so that they’re not murdered. The Negev communities have used the “ceasefire” (Gaza has fired over 45 rockets during this time) as an opportunity to build up more shelters, and wait in fearful anticipation during the calm before the storm. Hamas is arming itself to the teeth on the other side of the fence and the Negev residents know that it’s only a matter of time until their life goes back to being a living hell.
There is no point in using the Holocaust as a comparison, because if you do it goes both ways. Last summer, as a volunteer in Sderot I was assigned to help a kindergarten in a bomb shelter. The shelter was two floors underground, with peeling walls. When I walked in the kindergarten teacher asked me if it was hot or cold outside. Upon seeing the look of astonishment on my face, she said, “Welcome to the Warsaw Ghetto.” I looked around me, at children playing two floors underground in a shabby shelter, and I realized that it didn’t look too different from the Warsaw Ghetto. But I was still uncomfortable with the analogy.
I am tired of Jews calling me and saying, “The Israeli army obeying orders and driving Jews out of their houses is like the Nazis, just ‘following orders’” or “Hey, I just saw a documentary about how the treatment of ‘Palestinians’ by the Israeli army is like how the Nazis treated the Jews.” Israel’s conduct with “Palestinians” is in no way comparable to the Holocaust. Six million martyrs would probably turn over in their grave if they heard this. The “Palestinians” are not corralled, diseased, starved, murdered in mass, or gassed. Unless that happens, G-d forbid, I don’t want to hear anymore comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany. Where Israel was left with no other choice, she put walls around the “Palestinian” towns with soldiers guarding the entrances. But this was a last resort-never did we want it to come down to this. Yes, there are checkpoints that “Palestinians” have to wait in long lines for. This is unfortunate, but it’s also part of the reason for the drastic drop of suicide bombings in the past few years. There is a small minority of Israeli soldiers whose behavior with the “Palestinians” is disgraceful. There needs to be some reform and enforcement of the rules in this regard. But never has this behavior stooped to the level of Nazis. Comparing the Holocaust and “Palestinians” is an abuse and cheapening of the genocide and torture of our people to a mere catchphrase.
1 Comment
October 19, 2008 at 8:48 am
This is my first visit to your blog, and I’m very happy I found you via Jpost. May Hashem give you many opportunities to write and give the perspective you do on The Land.
Warm greetings from Kiwiland.