Open letter to Europe in general

I wrote this 15 years ago, and it is still actuality...

To whom it may concern:

I hereby confirm that I was born into a Jewish family. That I got my education as every one else after the second world war thinking that the anti-Jewish organized crimes were, after 6.000.000 murders, a thing of the past. (Of the recent past, at that!)

Now, taking a long breath, I look around.

There is a cultural problem in most of the countries that used to have Jews as a minority. The Europeans and the Arabs were used for a thousand years to kill Jews now and then. Nothing special with this conduct; that was the usual way of majorities through the ages everywhere.

As a Jew, it is easier for me to explain this with an old Jewish joke:

Two European aristocrats are squabbling.

One of them says “if you kill my Jew, I will kill yours!”

But now countries that were used to solve their internal problems attacking “their Jews” have to make do with very few Jews or no Jews at all.

Then they attack cemeteries, empty synagogues and the like.

Israel, as a Jewish State, does not make a difference for them.

Here in Israel this persecuted people tries to convert to normalcy.

Normalcy includes defending yourself when attacked. Especially if the aggression is going on for years.

But then the onlookers, who were quiet all the time, suddenly realized that the Jews are fighting back.

That is the reason that Europeans and Arabs are so upset with Israel.

What happened here? The classic role of the Jew as a passive victim is still a cultural icon in those countries.

A Jew was something to denigrate, segregate, despise, and after a small diabolic switch, to rob, violate and murder. 

NO MORE!

We will not ask for clemency or “grace” from any editor, king, prince or prime minister!

We will have the impudence to defend ourselves the best we can!

We are a very tiny minority in the Middle East. Still we won all the wars we fought. Including the Iom Kipur war, yes.

This war begun in the Holiest day of the Jews, exactly like a thousand pogroms began not many years earlier.

And no one in Europe remembered this diabolic little detail that pointed to a direct relation between the pogroms and the Iom Kipur war (what an impudent name for a war!).

One of Israel secret weapons is that the Arabs suffer from the cultural prejudice to think that Jews are born bland, irresolute cowards in contrast to their being aristocratic and fighting people.

Every ten years or so there is a war around here in which the Arabs and their European friends have an oportunity to learn that the old prejudice is just not true.

I am old enough to remember times when all the newspapers where full of articles about the “Jewish Question”.

One of the Jews best friends in those days was Pierre Van Paasssen.

He asked in 1945, “after the end of the war, every people will be represented in the international conferences, but who will speak for the dead Jews?”

Today there is an answer; Israel will speak for them and for the living Jews!

There is no more a Jewish question.

When the Arabs take notice and recognize that Israel is here for good, peace will be easy to achieve.

About the Europeans I would like to see them better attend their own problems. Should we ask if they herd about a “Gypsy Question” or more politically correct a “Roma Question”.

Does the elegant European “pro-palestinian” intellectual know that in his country there is such a community, ostracized, denigrated and so on? (More or less as the Jews before the holocaust).

Does not the European citizen know that no one wants a Gypsy in his neighborhood, including himself?

Have you ever looked for a Gypsy Doctor? Well, you were probably thinking about Tarot cards, not about an M.D.!

How many Gypsies in your country finished University?

Europeans did not only invent the “ghetto” and the “pogrom”. They also had the impudence to give them a name.

Now look for a name for a Gypsy camp. Try to resolve the “Gypsy Question”. Then call me back.

In the meantime I will attend to my problems. I know you are an honest person. I know you will speak to the Gypsy community and try not to deny there is a problem. I promise not to bother you again with questions about the Gypsies till you find a solution.

Then call me back.

May be then we will speak about the Euskady people (the Basks, you know, in Spain and France), or the Bretons (this is in France), Corsica (again in France), Ireland, the Scottish, the Tirol and the like.

May I remind you that to resolve the Kosovo mess you needed the intervention of the Americans?

Do not forget the new minorities: the Turks and Kurds in Germany, the North Africans in France, Belgium and Spain…

Well, this is a problem just beginning to brew in the witches' cauldron…

You do not want to speak about Europe? What about the bereberes in North Africa? Do you know who they are? How many they are? (much more than a dozen million!) Who murdered their national singer? Why is it that they can not study in their language?

How many Christian they are in Egypt? Do you know? (again, more than a dozen million). How happened they are absent from the influential positions, except for some "token Christian" for external consumption?

Well, check in the books, the old ones. How many Christian they were in Syria 100 years ago and how many they are today? And in Amman? Alexandria? Irak?

Well, let's say that every day they are less…

That is the way of your world: if you close your eyes at the proper time you will see only what you want to see.