And the lingering effects of anti-war
sentiment had a baleful affect on the conduct of the war itself, and the
fate of the Jews. Politicians like Roosevelt could not allow themselves to
be seen as actively intervening to turn the military machine to aid Jews
in particular - because the anti-war activists had worked so hard and so
successfully to discredit any Jewish complaint as a self-interested and selfish
attempt to plunge the world into war merely to save their own cowardly hides.
Could FDR have done more to rescue the Jews? Whether or not he could have
done so militarily, the peaceniks of the 1930s had made it impossible for
him to do so politically.
So it is now - only worse. The forces aligned with the anti-war, pro-Saddam
movement - the interests guiding the anti-war, pro-Sadaam movement - and
most of all, the strength the anti-war, pro-Saddam movement derives from
Jewish supporters - including, it would seem, most of Hollywood's Jews, the
editors of The Forward, the readers of The New York Times - are objectively
if not intentionally supporting the people who wish them harm, death, and
total elimination.
Language itself has changed its meaning. Three years ago, those who said
they were anti-Israel but not anti-Semitic meant that they opposed the particular
measures the Government of Israel was taking to defend its civilians from
terrorists. Now, to say that one is anti-Israel but not ant-Semitic means
generally that - if one is a moderate - one is opposed to the existence of
Israel as a self-governing Jewish State where it has existed for the better
part of a century. But if one is really progressive, it means that one is
opposed to the notion that Jews might be permitted to live as individuals
in Palestine, where they have lived and come and gone freely and continuously
for over two millennia, and that, instead, they should be uprooted and
dispossessed by force.
Now one could argue that these propositions might be true - and if you were
to approach any of the leaders of the anti-war movement, you will hear such
an argument - as you would from any of the leading clergymen and clergywomen
of the mainstream Protestant denominations - but one can hardly suggest that
either the moderate or progressive versions should not be regarded as
anti-Semitic. Progressive, peaceful, conscientious, well-meaning - and a
policy that will, if it were allowed to win sway, result in dispossession
and slaughter for the Jews - and sooner rather than later.
So let us make room in the exhibit space
of the Holocaust Museums scattered around the world some of the names that,
no doubt, are now enrolled on the list of donors. The 1930s ancestors of
today's peace protestors lovingly allowed the Nazis (and their evil opposite
the Communists) to flourish and begin a meticulously crafted program of murder.
Under the peace program we see today,
Ba'athism, the murderous direct offspring of Nazism, has been given vital
breathing space, and would, if the peace marchers had their way, continue
to grow in strength until it can safely strike out at Israel, Turkey, and
arm the terrorist cells among us, all the time driving its own intellectuals,
Shi'ites, Assyrian Christians, Kurds, and others of proscribed faith, race,
or political views, into prisons, hospitals, and grave.
As Orwell pointed out long ago, pacifism in the face of armed evil is equivalent
to a blind worship of force. For those of our race - the historic victims
of so many causes - it would be disastrous to make the same mistake twice,
and entrust our children's fate to the hands of these sad and complicitous
pacifists.
JWR contributor Sam Schulman is a New
York writer whose work appears in New York Press, the Spectator (London),
and elsewhere, and was formerly publisher of Wigwag and a professor of English
at Boston University.You may contact him by clicking
TopdrawrSS@aol.com,
bljolkov@jewishworldreview.com?subject=Sam's
column |
