Veteran's Day: And the Jewish National Fund is calling for American Jews to buy $5000 plaques on Ammunition Hill, a battlefield memorial site in Jerusalem, to honor Jewish veterans of armies in other countries.
Michael Desch picked up this "one for the dual loyalty file" in the New York Times Magazine yesterday: "On
p. 18., bottom lower left side of the page, there is a Veterans Day ad from JNF
honoring a fellow named Herman Margules, an American soldier of Jewish descent,
for his heroism in the Battle of the Bulge. Interestingly, his son
memorialized his father with a plaque in Jerusalem, rather than here in the
United States.
"It strikes me as very strange that JNF
would make the unassailable case that 'throughout, history, Jews have
fought in defense of their countries' in such a fashion. Why not
honor them in their own countries? This is really surreal."
At its website, JNF says, "Jews have come to the defense of their countries… Jews have fought in numbers well beyond their proportion in the population."
The JNF is raising a troublesome issue: Jews have actually not fought in anything like their proportion in the U.S. population in the Iraq war. There have been more Buddhists serving in the U.S. armed forces (in a war whose braintrust was disproportionately Jewish). I'd note that Michael Oren is featured in the JNF video. Born in the U.S., he served in the IDF, not our army. But of course he comes over here all the time to write military history of the brave Israelis.
I think that's the secret message: Guess what, the U.S. and the Israelis are in the same war, the war on terror and Islamofascism. And as for us Jews, we gave at our office on this one–Jerusalem.
