ISRAEL: Its origins and its consequences

Derek Davis writes: "Regarding Steven Margulies comment --that "I have never understood why, after 3000 years of continuous persecution, the House of Israel would turn around and visit on the indigenous population exactly the same atrocities they were trying to escape from. Maybe this is not an indictment of Jews or Judaism in as much as it is an indication of the nature of Mankind" Derek says: "I share Steve's sense of disappointment that Jews generally would deliver the same kind of persecution against Palestinians that was exacted on them for so long. My own sense is that Jews have never really had political power, at least since the dispersions against Israel brought on by assaults from the Assyrian and Babylonian empires in the 7th and 8th centuries, BCE. Since then, had they enjoyed any real power in any location, I think they would have used it to protect themselves and establish their own political regimes, culture, traditions, religion, etc. But they never did. Now that they have real political power as a sovereign nation, backed by the world s only superpower, they seem bent on never relinquishing it. Thus, it might be the deep-set fear of again being a dispersed people without a home that drives them to commit incredible atrocities. So, Like Steve, I think it is not really their Jewish blood that fuels their meanness; probably any people, given a similar history, would do the same thing".

RH: This avoids the issue of assimilation. The Jews of Germany were completely assimilated, but those of Eastern Europe were not. Protestantism was strongly influenced by Judaism, but the Orthodox church was not. Pogrom is an East European word and phenomenon. I lived in Nazi Germany, and there was an obsessive fear of a Jewish-controlled USSR. In one of the great injustices of history, this fear was taken out on the German Jews. Likewise in Arab countries like Iraq the Jews were generally assimilated and respected, until the creation of Israel set in motion a similar reaction, and once again innocent Jews suffered. The great exception was Algeria, then part of France, where the French government gave citizenship to Jews but not generally to Arabs, who viewed themselves as victims. They revolted and killed the Jews of Constantine. I was there shortly afterwards.

Ronald Hilton - 5/12/03