Historical Perspective
B. Yemini reminds us that the horrors of October 7 are not without historical precedent.
Accounts of the massacre in Hebron in 1929 are similar to what the residents near Gaza experienced 7 months ago. At the time there was no occupation. The Jews in Hebron had lived there for generations.
There is no need for an occupation or colonialism to bring about a massacre. All that is needed is copious amounts of hate. That is what results in the events of Hebrew in 1929 or those in Kibbutz Be'eri in 2023... or on the campuses of universities across America.
Yemini recalls the alliance between Arabs and the Moslem Brotherhood and German Nazis. There was a plan for dividing the spoils of murdering Jews. A survey in 1941 of Arab opinion done by the American consulate found that 88 percent supported the German Nazis and only 9 percent support the Allies.
Yemini concludes: "Scholars around the world know of the long history of Arab anti-Semitism. It is the past and it is the present. But they repress this knowledge. They know that there is a direct line from the Arab support for the Nazis in the past and the support for Hamas in the present. They know that what they did to the Jews of Hebrew in 1929, they did to Jews of Baghdad in 1941 and Hamas did to the Jews near Gaza in 2023.
"But they not only remain silent about the history, the praise the horrors of the present. We thought, "Never again." The reality is "Always again."
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Rav Moshe Sheinfeld's Remarks
We, too, have what to say about the State which rebelled not only against its citizens but against Judaism in general. Here are the words written by the renown scribe-writer, fully trusted by the Torah leaders of his time, R' Moshe Sheinfeld, zt"l, fifty years ago, when the State commemorated its twenty-fifth year.
In an acerbic article, he explained the apt and succinct qualitative definition of the Chazon Ish regarding the State of Israel vis-a-vis the Zionist viewpoint, as follows: "The State of Israel is not the 'beginning of the Redemption' but the 'end of the exile.' The words written at that time, when the false god of Zionism was still in its prime — even though the signs of a sad awakening were already appearing — are all the more relevant in our times, when not a smattering remains of that idol at this time. Here, then, is a short excerpt from his extensive article:
"The State is celebrating its half-jubilee. It is the legal and unequivocal offspring of Zionism. The sole goal of Zionism was not the return to Zion, and even when the Zionist Congress agreed to exchange Zion for Uganda, it did not forsake its title of Zionism.
"The end-all destination of Zionism was the 'normalization' of the Jewish People. It was an undermining of the prayer of the master prophet, "and we shall be disjoined, I and Your people, from every nation upon the face of the earth,' a renunciation of the prophecy 'This nation which I created for Myself shall declare My praise.'
"This was a blatant revolt against the warning reproof (Yechezkel 20:32-33): 'And that which comes into your mind shall never come about that you say 'We will be like the nations, like the families of the countrie? [for] surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath will I be king over you.'
"Zionism stretched out its arm [with a blow] to a fundamental, to the very uniqueness of the Jewish people in being different from all other nations. It revolted against the very secret of our survival. It denied and refuted the very reason behind its suffering and tribulation. Not only did it disregard the Messianic Redemption but it sought to disqualify it altogether. As HaRav Chaim of Brisk said: "Zionism 'succeeded' in impairing the very innermost point."
"The very historic path of the Jewish people from the exodus from Egypt is paved with a hidden battle between Judaism's preservation of its qualitative uniqueness and the self-destructive cry of 'We shall also be like all the nations.' This is the eternal struggle between the two drives within Jewry. Dr. Yitzchok Breuer aptly defined Zionism as the embodiment of the national evil inclination.
"There was an important difference between the movement for assimilation and Zionism. While the first offered individual assimilation as a solution to the personal challenge [of being a Jew], Zionism proposed a collective solution for the nation as a whole, which did not suggest to assimilate among the gentiles which rejected this totally, but suggested separately emulating and being equalized to them. Thus did Herzl write in his diary: 'Zionism does not purport to abolish religion altogether but to assign it a ritual and ceremonial role alone,' as he wrote in his work, The State of the Jews: 'We will incarcerate the rabbis in the synagogues, in a like manner that we detain the army in their barracks.'
"Zionism placed everything on the card of the State, and sought to expose the eternal nature of Judaism to the danger of oblivion which is the fate of all the nations of the world, which disappear from the stage of history as their state disintegrates. In this manner, Zionism became the most lethal spiritual enemy which Judaism had ever known in its history."
Perhaps now, when it is clear that Zionism has failed in its central goal to transform the Jewish people as 'just another nation like unto all others of the family of nations' and its major treachery towards us is apparent, hopefully there will come a spiritual reawakening and an exposure of the 'feeble supporting cane' of statehood and Zionism.
There will be a realization that we have a mighty base, the one and only reliable base for Jewish continuity, which is our cleaving to the Torah, its commandments, to the scholars of Torah and the ongoing clinging to the tradition of generations, for they are the ones in whose merit we survive and only through them can the Jewish people continue to endure for evermore.
