Big lie technique era during Arab-Israel conflict: Part 4. Reflections

November 30, 9:38 AMNY Israel Conflict ExaminerRichard Shulman

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We’ve discussed the confusion besetting people over which sources to believe, in an era when there are more sources but fewer honest and informed ones.

To some extent, this is generational.  People would be wiser to respect the older and the younger generations for what they have and can contribute to society.  Generational rivalry or contempt hampers society.  Both generations think they know everything.  The older one can develop wisdom from experience.  The younger one can bring to bear newer technology.  I’ve seen older people naïve about the veracity of news sources, but younger people have less behind them, with which to evaluate.  Educational institutions have not and do not educate enough.  Hence so much floundering and repeated historical mistakes.

I’ve seen naivete about major threats to civilization repeated.  I gained political consciousness during the Nazi era.  Shortly before it, Nazism enjoyed some popularity in the West.  European and American pacifism outside of Germany prompted appeasement of Germany.

Did the result, WWII, teach us the lesson that’s appeasement fails?  No.  I remember objecting to Pres. Roosevelt’s appeasement of the Soviets. 

Did the Cold War and hot proxy wars by the Communist International teach us that appeasement is dangerous?  No.  Now we appease Radical Islam so much, that our political leaders are afraid to mention it as the current international enemy of civilization.

Now the old Nazis and successors, and the old Communists and successors, many liberals, and Radical Muslims and allied Muslim governments are working with their customers and independent rogue states in what I see is a ganging up on the Jewish state, because it is a Jewish state.  That is the “international community” that sides with the Arab aggressors against Israel.

I’ve seen ganging up on individual Jews.  I’ve seen ganging up on blacks, and rescued one black boy by driving him home.  Internationally, it is similar.  Many Muslims either deny the Holocaust or express intent to complete it.  Facts are irrelevant to them. 

I just saw photos of a monument and thousands of shoes that the Nazi S.S. had robbed from Jews in Lithuania.  Holocaust denial presumes that Jewish public relations deceived all of Europe into thinking there was a Holocaust that tons of documentary and thousands of eye-witnesses confirm, and which Europeans do not deny.  Denial is not rational.  It is psychotic.  It is mob behavior driven by bigoted ideology and the need for a scapegoat for frightening or puzzling modern society. 

When my grandparents’ generation fled the persecutions abroad, and found sanctuary in the United States of America, they called this country, in their native Yiddish, if I recall the spelling, the “goldene medina,” the golden state.  They meant the relative freedom and tolerance more than the economic opportunities, which they also valued.

Considering the growing intolerance and chaos abroad, all my Jewish friends express deep gratitude for living here and now.  My generation was nurtured during and shortly after WWII, a time of patriotism.  For example, in elementary school, we heard of Patrick Henry, who said, “Give me liberty or give me death.”  Sometimes I pass by the Manhattan monument to Nathan Hale who, about to be hanged for spying on the British during the American Revolution, says, “I regret that I have but one life to live for my country.”  That is just what my uncle did, in the Pacific theater of WWII.  Nor have I forgotten the forlorn sentiment expressed in “The Man Without a Country,” during his loss of U.S. citizenship. 

I regret to see that esprit de corps waning, especially when young people are attracted to an alien spirit of intolerance.  Seeing America’s warts, they don’t realize its overall and growing decency; they do not know how much they have to be thankful for.  I think that our young soldiers do know, and so I am thankful for them.

(To see Part 1, click here    To see the next Part, click here    )