Roger Scruton
For nearly two thousand years, following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman imperial army, the Jews lived in exile from their holy places, keeping their religion, language, and customs alive in an unparalleled act of collective memory. Less a race or a tribe than what Giulio Meotti calls a “metaphysical family,” the Jews have remained faithful to their culture and their calling through continuous suffering, targeted wherever they settled by the resentment and xenophobia of their hosts, yet never forgetting Jerusalem—the holy city of their dreams. No other people in history has experienced so much undeserved suffering, or devoted so much energy to remembering and mourning its dead.
And when, in the mid twentieth century, the greatest of all disasters wiped out the Jews of Central Europe—and with them a vital part of our European identity—the world seemed to undergo a brief fit of remorse. The United Nations voted overwhelmingly to recognize the State of Israel as an independent member and as a homeland in which the Jews could at last protect themselves. Israel was, for the Jews, a bid for freedom, a way of achieving the self-government that they had kept alive through two thousand years of memory. As we know, the hatred began again, now directed at Israel and its Jewish residents.
In this book, Giulio Meotti tells the story in detail, reminding us of the terrorist crimes of which the Israeli people have been the victims, of the rising anti-Semitism in the Middle East, and of the unwillingness of so many Western politicians and thinkers to recognize the malice of the Muslim states toward their neighbor. Meotti has given us a moving work of mourning, a new “Shoah” in memory of the many victims of the new wave of anti-Semitism. He invites us to put our duplicity behind us, and to recognize the right of Israel to exist and of its people to defend themselves.
The “blame Israel” approach to Middle Eastern politics is now the semi-official attitude of the European Union. It is an example of the same feeble-minded appeasement that allowed the last wave of anti-Semitism to triumph in Europe. But, as Meotti eloquently reminds us, Israel is not the cause but the target of the current belligerence, and there can be no solution in the Middle East that does not place the blame on those who live by hatred, and who have nothing to offer save destruction. Let us hope that this book will awaken Europeans to their duty toward the Jews, whose vigil down the centuries has been an example to us all.
The Unsung Dead of Israel
“He said that while it was true that time heals bereavement it does so only at the cost of the slow extinction of those loved ones from the heart’s memory which is the sole place of their abode then or now. Faces fade, voices dim. Seize them back . . . . Speak with them. Call their names. Do this and do not let sorrow die for it is the sweetening of every gift.”
CORMAC MCCARTHY, THE CROSSING
“Just as for the victims ofthe Holocaust we say ‘every Jew has a name,’ so also the victims of terrorism today have names.” The words are from Uri Baruch, a French Jew born to Holocaust survivors, who lost a daughter in a terrorist attack. It was September 20, 2001, nine days after the assault on the Twin Towers in New York. The Baruch family had gathered to celebrate the Jewish New Year in Hebron, the city of the patriarchs south of Jerusalem. Together with Uri and his wife, Francine, were their daughter, Sarit; her husband, Shai Amrani; and their children: four-year-old Zoar, two-year-old Ziv, and Raz, just three months old. Sarit wanted to go back to their home in Nokdim, in the Judean desert. Francine convinced them to spend another night in Hebron because it would be safer for them to make the drive in the daylight. They left at dawn the next day.
A little while later, Uri received a telephone call from Shai’s mother. She had heard on the radio that there had been a terrorist attack on the road to Nokdim. She had called her son’s home, but no one answered. Uri immediately called Francine, who was working at a medical clinic. She contacted the army, and then called her husband. “You need to come. It’s them.”
On the way home, Palestinians had pulled their car up alongside Shai’s. He had rolled down the window to ask if they needed help, and the terrorists responded with bullets. The first went through Sarit’s heart, killing her instantly. The three shots fired at the children miraculously missed their targets. Shai was struck four times in the throat, once in the heart, and once in the lungs. He spent thirteen hours in surgery and two weeks in a coma. When he woke up, he saw Uri sitting there. “Forgive me,” he said. “I couldn’t save your daughter.”
In Jerusalem, at the Yad Vashem memorial, visitors can peruse the giant archive that houses the names of the Holocaust victims. Of all the monuments dedicated to the Holocaust, which by their nature are monuments of emptiness, these plain walls with their endless expanse of names are the most poignant. They are an authentic hazkara, an act of remembrance. In its combination of breadth and individuality, the litany of those Jewish names creates a physical sensation of the immensity of the slaughter as well as the tragedy that each victim experienced. One comes away with something like a sense of betrayal. The territory of Israel is covered with plaques bearing the names of thousands of terror victims; they are displayed along city streets, in schools and synagogues, in cafes and restaurants, in markets, in parks and gardens. Like pin-pricks of blood, these plaques form a memorial of the Holocaust, not forcefully but with tender love. For me, giving a voice to Israeli families destroyed by terrorism, letting them speak as the memories are beginning to fade and are shared only with loved ones, was a form of incarnation like those stark walls of names at the Holocaust memorial. Uri Baruch explained it to me this way: “Like Sarit’s grandparents, who decided to go on living despite the pain and sadness for their slain families, we also decided to live commemorating our daughter.”
Judaism teaches that there is something primordial behind the name given to a new life that comes into the world. When someone converts to Judaism, he must choose a new name, like Chaim, “life,” Baruch, “blessed,” or Rafael, “God heals.” Rafael was the name of one of Uri Baruch’s neighbors. He was a Jewish convert from Holland, and was killed in Hebron because he was a Jew. Before anything else, the Holocaust was an ontological attack against the Jewish name. In 1938, the Nazi official Hermann Göring ordered that “Israel” be added to the name on identification cards for Jewish males, and “Sarah” for females. The Jews were taken by the millions to anonymous, desolate places, where all of their luggage, letters, and photographs of loved ones were taken away. Then they were separated from their mothers, sisters, children, wives. They were stripped naked, and their documents, their names, were thrown into the fire. Finally, they were pushed into a hallway with a low, heavy ceiling. And they were gassed like insects. The nowhere land of the Holocaust was the engine of extermination for six million European Jews. Islamic terrorism and denial of the Holocaust, which spread through the world like wildfire after September 11, 2001, feed on this annihilation of the Jewish victim.
Even while the threat of a new extermination of the Jews is today a reality and a promise, the custodians of memory in the West usually distinguish between anti-Semitism, which is piously condemned in homage to the Holocaust, and anti-Zionism, a hatred for Israel that is eagerly accepted and propagated. European culture maintains that nothing can be compared to the Holocaust; that the Israelis killed today because they are Jews have nothing to do with their parents killed in the gas chambers; that the anti-Semitism behind the Holocaust is a singular evil of the past, where its lessons may be safely buried. In reality, it is not only a historical phenomenon, but also a terribly modern one; not just a form of obscurantism, but a crime against a people and its descendants, both theological and genetic. It is the same old evil with new, “enlightened” faces.
Being Jewish in the century of Hitler and the Islamic Republic of Iran means having a club membership that
