If you want to understand the price of Zionism in the U.S., study the late A.J. Granoff of Kansas City.
Granoff was born in Kiev in 1896. He came to the United States when he was 8, surely because his parents were frightened by pogroms.
At 24, he had a law degree from the University of Kansas. At 28 he started his own firm. He became a leader of B'nai B'rith. And then in 1947, he and his friend Eddie Jacobson, the former partner in haberdashery with Harry Truman, went to the White House to appeal to Truman to back the creation of the state of Israel. They said they were motivated by the people in refugee camps in Europe who wanted to get to Palestine.
Neither man was a Zionist, Granoff's son Loeb has said in this Truman bio, "But they both believed passionately in the importance of a Jewish state." Their petition was successful. Truman backed the partition of Palestine–a partition that was quickly nullified by Jews and Arabs, with the result that Jews ended up with almost the whole enchilada, and there has been no end to fighting for 60 years.
In today's Kansas City Star, Granoff's son Loeb, a Kansas City lawyer and leader of the Jewish community, writes a piece justifying the detention in Gaza of a Kansas City-area businessman who went home last year to visit his sick father and was stuck for months there while the Israeli authorities challenged his right to travel. I wrote last week about the businessman, Yaser Wishah, a Palestinian who emigrated to this country 20 years ago.
Here is what Granoff says in dismissing his appeal:
Israeli military caravans” and spent 10 months in an Israeli jail. The
fact that he recently had a lengthy delay extricating himself from
Gaza, given the present volatile situation, should have come as no
surprise.
The rest of the piece is all about how the Palestinians have rejected all overtures for peace. You might think that Yaser Wishah was a terrorist. Here is how he explains his 10-month prison sentence:
morning in violation of a curfew to dump garbage in a bin, Israeli
troops chased her into the family’s living room and pinned her to the
floor. Wishah said he came down to protect her and ended up in jail for
10 months.
Would you stand around and watch your mother being beaten by occupying troops? Would you try and visit your 90-year-old father when he was ill?
I go back to the beginning. A.J. Granoff was an immigrant who escaped persecution and made a very successful life in the United States. He helped to found the state of Israel, a place he had no intention of going. And now his son, who has obviously done well in the U.S. and has not the least interest in moving to Israel either, is engaged as a mouthpiece in the United States for that country's persecution of a minority under its power.
The lesson: For generation after generation, Zionism has demanded the support of American Jews. Oh, what has that service done to their hearts!
P.S. In a fine letter to the Star two days ago expressing sympathy for Wishah, Brit Tzedek board member Allan Abrams states that "American Jews are now recognizing the extent of Palestinian suffering." Couldn't happen too soon.
