A Painful Admission

In the late 1970's and 80's I was friendly with a young woman who was always what today we would call politically correct. Except that she would say, from time to time, that we had to be ready for the next time "they" came for us--for the Jews. I was more politically mature than Sara--after all, I had a degree in politics from a first-rate university--and I would tell her that those days were past; the Holocaust had cured the world of such feelings.

I'm here to say that I was wrong. Without suggesting that the threat is anything like what it was in the 1930's and '40's, it is nonetheless clear that the kind of anti-Semitism that kills Jews--sometimes, large numbers of Jews--is no longer confined to a few fringe elements. There are people out there who want to kill Jews BECAUSE they are Jews, and those people have machine guns and rockets. They are backed by a nation--Iran--whose President denies that the Holocaust happened and has called repeatedly for the extermination of Israel.

And what will the world do? Apart from the United States, I suspect that the answer is, very little. Being old enough to remember when this country was neutral in the struggle between Israel and its Arab neighbors, I do not have a great deal of difficulty in seeing how events could develop to the point where the United States, too, could stand by while Israel fights for her life.