Here's the late great Alfred Lilienthal, back in 1949 when the Reader's Digest ran anti-Zionist stuff, in a prophetic piece called "Israel's Flag Is Not Mine," inveighing against "cheap racial nationalism." 60 years ago, but it feels real fresh:
have no ties with, no longings for, and feel no responsibilities to
Israel. And I believe that the future happiness of the Jews in America depends
on their complete integration as citizens of this—our true—country. I am sure that if we Jews as a group are persuaded to divide
that love which people normally give to their native land, it can lead only to
disaster….
There is today a deep split among Americans of the Jewish
faith. The Zionists are the more vocal; they have more organized political
power. But they do not speak for all of us, and I hope not for most.
But when we protest the right of the Zionists to speak as
"American Jewry" on the question of Palestine, we are told that Jews
should not be disunited, must not fight among themselves on Palestine or any
other issue. And if we still speak out against what we feel is a dangerous
trend, we find ourselves reviled and ostracized as traitors…
The answer to bigotry and anti-Semitism does not lie in
fanatical Jewish nationalism. Of course the blowing-up of the King David Hotel,
the hanging of the two British sergeants, the assassination of Bernadotte, the
massacre of Arab women and children at Dier Yasin were all acts of tiny groups.
But they have weakened the moral and spiritual stature of the world's oldest
religion. Israel's terrorist Beigin and Hollywood's Ben Hecht, who encouraged
such lawlessness by saying, "Every time you let go with your guns at the
British betrayers of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in
their hearts!" such people are doing the Jews more harm than any words
which Goebbels spoke.
Thanks to the anonymous euonymous primate, Nim Chimpsky.
