We got this email recently from Daniel, a yeshuva student in Jerusalem. A quick check confirms that NRO also had it a few days ago. It seems almost too amazing to be true, but it seems to be totally legitimate. This is apparently an article by Eric Hoffer published in the LA Times on May 26, 1968. It demonstrates that anti-Semitism is not just the world’s oldest hatred – it’s also one of the most stable and consistent in its symptoms:
The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese – and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.
Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.
Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June, he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.
No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.
The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts and Jewish resources.
Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general. I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us.
Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
Some things do change though: there’s no way that the Los Angeles Times would ever print something this pro-Israel today.
UPDATE: We just checked Lexis. Their database doesn’t go back far enough to get the original article – but on April 26, 2002 the Jerusalem Post printed this article and confirmed its authenticity. They described Hoffer as “an American social philosopher who wrote nine books and won the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic.”
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