Sunday, August 11, 2002

Don’t want to be Israeli! Go figure.
The Jerusalem Post has picked up the story about those 45 British Jews who would rather not be Israelis and has the reaction of Neville Nagler, director-general of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who hopes “that they never have cause to regret the renunciation of their right to live in Israel.”

You know, I wonder about these people. They seem to be living in a time warp. Maybe they’re right to “disagree with the notion that Zionist emigration to Israel is any kind of 'solution' for Diaspora Jews, anti-Semitism, or racism.” After all, Jews were doing just great beforehand, especially in the wonderfully enlightened Western Europe. But that’s all water under the bridge.

Right now there are over five million Jewish “victims” of that mistaken notion, living in Israel, seeing it as their home, many of them third and fourth generation Israelis, many of them speaking no other language but Hebrew. A large percentage of these “victims” of that mistaken notion were forced to escape their homes in Arab countries. Together these “victims” of that mistaken notion, no matter which country they were forced out of (call me strange but I also see Holocaust survivors as having been forced out), have built a home and a life, without having to apologize for being different, for the first time in two thousand years (and you know, whatever they say, Jews in Arab countries had to keep their heads down too).

So what next? Oops, sorry! Mistaken notion! It’s back to Libya, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Poland (Poland??? Motti, what did you do with that Polish dictionary, your Great-Great-Uncle Yankel gave your father?) and so on, for you lot. Oh, and girls, make sure to exchange that belly-button ring for a nice big piece of black material, covering everything but your eyes (it could prove helpful if you’re lucky enough to miss the massacre at Teheran Airport).