Nadene Goldfoot
Golda Meir's words have never rung more true: "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children."Golda Meir served as Israel's fourth prime minister from 1969 to 1974. She was the first and only female head of government in Israel and the Middle East.
Anybody that relies on "KNOWING JEWISH HISTORY" by only studying its history and political science at Yale College, does not know as much as they should about Judaism and Israel. This is the position that I find a fellow Jew Peter Beinart, who has come out with a damming book called Being Jewish After The Destruction Of Gaza. Since Peter was born in 1971, he was only 3 when Golda said the words above. He only sees one level of facts that Hamas wants him to see, and that also goes for most of the world population, unfortunately. In 1969, Golda was faced with the same problem of IDF having to kill Arabs, and no one wanted to, then or now.
By the way, According to available information, the best college to study Jewish history at is New York University (NYU), with its Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies offering one of the most comprehensive Jewish studies programs in North America, covering all aspects of Jewish history and culture across different eras.
A people who have waited patiently for 2,000 years to regain their homeland because the world jealousy and hatefulness toward them; who have had the highest of moral expectations for themselves and have been the icon for Christianity and Islam, with an army trained in defense; not offense; known for their high standards, does not suddenly change with the horrible challenges that Gaza has presented to them. The Palestinians, who never had an empire or even a country called Palestine, cannot wait for any length of time, but began attacking Jews in the 1920s who were fleeing from pogroms in eastern Europe and Russia, knowing they needed their land back if won back by the West in WWI.
Only the USA has stood by, till Biden doubted, holding back arms; which changed the IDF planning; with the rest of the world not seeing a thing but what Terrorists wanted them to see.
I've been studying this since 2004, and know that Israel has offered them the sun, moon and stars to get them to be peaceful and they have resisted; especially in 1967 in Sudan in a big meeting where they swore NO NO NO to every possibility to be peaceful with Israel; our FOREVER ENEMY. I remember our leftist government then ready to give away all we cherished to get some cooperation, and they WOULD REFUSE!
Peter Beinart has a commonality with me: he was born in South Africa with ancestors from Lithuania while I was born in the USA with our relatives being from Lithuania and then South Africa. He's orthodox, which makes me even angrier in that I feel he should know more of our history and how we have been the only ones defending the land with caution for our enemy.
In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. Now he sounds like Elon Musk who told the Germans the same thing in that they should end that feeling with Jews.
It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition (that which has held us together for the past 3,000 years?)and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, (Oh my G-d !) Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story.
(Israel is fighting for her very existence after 77 years that includes offering the world much good, more than this bad attack of today forcing them to a point where other countries would go for the jugular and bomb the heck out of the terrorists and put a quick end to all of this. Can you imagine the Nazis putting up with such terrorism? The only reason Israelis have a lower death rate than the terrorists is because of LIFE being the most important goal, and have bomb shelters for their people.
"After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew?" We are aware of what it means to be a Jew, the self expectations we've put on ourselves. We know our history of a people of monotheism living among polytheism for starters and all that prevailed there to reach the Holocaust, finding out that we're still not the favored people even though the Diary of Anne Frank was popular. What gets me is that all should know our struggle to arrive in 2025 alive and that our ethics are still meaningful !!!
Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations’ efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life.
