The world’s goodwill toward Israel was the exception, not the rule - opinion
Zionism began because antisemitism would not dissolve. For two thousand years, millions of Jews absorbed hatred and exile as a condition of life and waited for gentile mercy to improve.
When I was 19, my father and I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington with Rabbi Sinai Adler. The rabbi was a survivor, and he insisted on seeing the museum's admission that the American government could have intervened during the Holocaust but chose not to. The museum displayed a US War Department letter and a reconnaissance photograph of Auschwitz taken days after the rabbi was taken through the gates.
As we left, my father attempted to help the rabbi, surrounded by school groups of non-Jewish children. Rabbi Adler rebutted that the children were simply studying history and learning from their mistakes. Years later, at an academic institution in Israel, a student informed Rabbi Adler that German visitors were at the back of the room, seeking the "miracle" of the Jewish state.
The students argued that these Germans were not alive during the war and that the six-decade gap had diminished the trauma. Rabbi Adler had them removed from the campus. These two scenes can be categorized as trauma, but Rabbi Adler drew a different conclusion based on Talmudic teachings, reminding us that Esau hates Jacob. He taught that Jewish people must prepare for persecution, and those who forget this fact are unprepared for history.
The world's goodwill toward Israel has always been the exception rather than the rule. In the museum, Rabbi Adler and the sages were correct in their understanding of the ground beneath our feet. Antisemitism has always been the baseline. Support has been the exception. Friends often applied stricter rules to Jerusalem than they would apply to themselves.
The warmth shown after the Holocaust never erased the double standard. The Holocaust survivor bump has faded, and baseline antisemitism has returned.
Written by urgent.news from Jerusalem Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
