Labels: stone throwers
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:32 PM
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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2 Comments:
Wow! Were I an Israeli, not a neo-con, "Christofascist" goy American Air Force Vietnam War vet who knows how to shoot, rocks thrown at me or mine would be met by bullets from me, carefully, deliberately-aimed bullets.
A dead Pali of whatever age throweth rocks no more!
Apparently, your muslim neighbors only understand when their actions are made cost-prohibitive. Dead terrorists, bulldozed houses, whatever it takes to make their barbarism cost-prohibitive.
Your benighted neighbors should be glad that my Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel aren't anywhere near the schweinhundts they claim you are. I believe the psychologists call this "projection" and "transferred".]
I'm a wannabe amateur historian. I remember at the end of WW1, General John Pershing, the American CinC, was absolutely opposed to an "Armistice". The war-weary French and British just wanted it ended.
Pershing wanted to refuse an Armistice and had his staff making tentative plans for a Spring 1919 offensive into Germany itself. Consequently, many American soldiers died on the very last day, the very last hours.
After the war, the unrepentant General Pershing was called before Congressional hearings. When asked about this, his response was that the Allies had finally gotten the Huns out of the trenches and in full retreat for Germany. He wanted to destroy the German Army, on German soil, in front of the German people, who'd also get a better taste of what they'd inflicted on all their neighbors.
He said, with profound prescience, "otherwise, they're going to start this phony myth that 'we weren't really defeated' and so in ten or twenty years, we're going to have to come back and do this all over again."
"We learn from History that we don't learn from History." Spanish historian Georges Santayana
A final thought...I remember (and this shows my age...) watching Billy Graham once on the Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson.
In Graham's opinion, Hitler was satanically possessed. Maybe so, but human beings seem capable of unbelievable evil, as well as unbelievable saintliness, without the help of humanity's ultimate enemy.
"Am I my brother's keeper?", asked Cain, after killing his brother Abel. ...The Lord said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground."
And then there's the German nation...and the Holocaust. Nobody knew anything, everybody was just following orders, "my best friend...", etc., ad. nauseum.
Notwithstanding that the concentration camps and their necessary support systems - transport, equipment suppliers like Topf & Suns, who supplied the ovens; whatever company manufactured the Zyklon B; the railroad corporations that provided the transportation; etc., etc. were a vast, complex enterprise, akin to General Motors.
Here's a "best friend" story: When I was a teenager, my best friend was the son of the Jewish family who lived next door. This was when we lived in New Jersey. I will NEVER forget the hot summer Friday evening I went over to visit them, and for some reason, went downstairs, where my friend's self-employed dad had his showroom. His dad and some friends were playing cards. One of his friends had a tattooed number on his forearm.
I just stood there, looking at that man, absolutely stunned. That picture is as clear in my 63 year old mind today as it was 45 years ago.
One can watch historical programs on TV, read books, look at photos...But for me, the Holocaust was a very ordinary-looking man who physically kind of reminded me of one my uncles and see the tattooed number on his arm.
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