Can't Let it Go: I have listened and am often critical of two supposedly left wing Sirius radio talk show hosts, Alex Bennet and Lynn Samuels. Most particularly Lynn Samuels is vitriolic in her hatred of Israel and often waxes nauseatingly anti Jewish EVEN THOUGH both of them ARE, in fact, Jews. Who would have thought it? I decided yesterday and today I had had enough and thought it imperative to address their views which I adamantly oppose.
Yes, I'm still listening to both Alex and Lynn at times. Often, your shows go on unconsciously to me in the background of my home. Occasionally I catch a clip that propels me to respond. The Holocaust is one such issue that does. It never ceases to amaze me when Jews themselves like you, Alex, or like Lynn Samuels MOST ESPECIALLY, speak about the Holocaust and will often say well we should not forget the others who were killed. OF COURSE, we should not forget the others who were the targets of the Nazi killing machine. How could one who has sensitivity about depriving anyone of the right to live not include in remembrance other groups among those who suffered the Nazi onslaught? We SHOULD and we DO. BUT and it is a big qualification: The Jew stands alone as the PRIMARY recipient of the horrors of the Holocaust. That does NOT ... let me repeat .. does NOT mean that one is insensitive to inhumanities directed against others even in our own time.
Often, when one says that the Jew should not claim the Holocaust's exclusivity, it is an EXCUSE to minimize that slaughter against the Jewish people singularly. It demeans it and makes Jews just another part of it like everyone else. I would even venture to say many who really are anti-Semites use a similar tactic as well as if it could somehow absolve them or maybe their relatives of anti-Semitic complicity in that horrific event or at least neutralize the slaughter against the Jew by making it universal and not specific.
Yes, it is the slaughter of the six million during the Holocaust that looms larger and more distinct for the Jew than any other group. The Holocaust did NOT come out of nowhere. You sit in your air conditioned offices, lead I am sure a relatively prosperous lives and thank God or fate or something that YOU, as Jews, did not live among the unlucky eleven million then who were targeted for extinction having committed no sin other than that of being Jewish. A Catholic, a homosexual or even a Gypsy could camouflage their being and did. Even some Poles were omitted from the Final Solution because they "looked" too Aryan. Others took up arms to fight against the Nazi menace. In Europe of that era a Jew could do none of those things. He had no weapons with which to fight and he could not cover up his identity by looking too Aryan. The Jew was always, without exception, ultimately condemned to death in the gas chambers and to the ovens of Auschwitz and camps like it. There was no get out of jail card for him. There was literally no way out.
Moreover, from Babylon to Greece and Rome, from western Europe to the Eastern European states and to the pale of settlement including Russia and, in modernity, in nearly all Arab states, the Jew was and is still hunted like a dog. He was historically killed when it served the political purpose of certain states. When it did not that state USED the Jew for his intellectual prowess, his financial expertise and his labor BUT we remained a separate entity and a world apart. The Holocaust did not simply magically appear. It appeared for a reason and you will have to look to Jewish history and even to New Testament text to find out why this was and is so to better understand how the monstrosity of the Holocaust against the Jew could ever have happened as well as why the Jewish experience is unique and different from all other groups.
Israel exists because of the historicity of these facts over millennium. Israel fights for its life EVERY day. Would Gazans care about the Jew? Of course, the answer is NO. Would they care about YOU? The answer is, again, NO. The Jew is NEVER free from attack and that includes you, Alex and Lynn who rail and pontificate against State of Israel. Lynn, in particular, uses the most disgusting bilious stereotypical epithets against the Jew as IF she is not one. She does not care WHAT she says and HOW mean spirited she says it and what credence it gives to anti-Semites everywhere. They love it when even a Jew is against Jews. It is shameful and SHE is shameless.
Israel will NOT die UNLESS every Jew there is wiped off the face of the earth. Apparently some surely do not care if Hamas prevails. Guess what? Both you AND Lynn could be swept up by such a horrendous possibility as well. You may deny it and with vituperative invective indict Israel all you want and worry about the poor Gazans whose Hamas they elected so they could lob thousands of rockets into Israel daily and kill Jews. You are FREE to say what you want but listen well: Jews fight for Israel's existential survival. The enemy of Israel is your enemy too as they surely would, IF they could, target you simply because you are a Jew. Gazans are NO different NO different from any other people during 5000 years of Jewish history of those who have tried to rid themselves of the Jew.
You, Alex, Lynn and I are among about ONLY 14 million others who are Jews. We will remain so as long as we live and there is NOTHING you can do about it. You should kiss the ground of the State of Israel because if its enemies have their way any who have a drop of Jewish blood flowing through their veins could feel their wrath no matter where we live. The hatred of the Jew is out there. It is all pervasive and it threatens all of us. Ask not for whom the state of Israel exists. It exists for you and for me and for all Jews if we need it because for centuries the world wanted us to cease to exist and it surpassed even its own wildest expectations by doing everything it could to ensure that fact. They got six million of us. Next time we may not be so lucky!
