<< I find it amazing that you haven’t heard anyone who is not a Jew speak well of them. >>
There are many good people who are non-Jewish supporters of Israel and of Jews, and they usually don't just support Jews, but other groups or cultures different from their own. Some people never have anything good to say except about their own religion or culture.
And it is just rare to read a compliment directed towards a culture or religion other than one's own. Thanks!
Usually when a non-Jew makes a comment about Jews, it is to insult Jews. As a child growing up in the 50's, I was shell-shocked into reality, by constantly hearing antiJewish statements from other children or their parents. When I would hear insulting language, I just kept my Jewishness quiet, and I had all the friends that I wanted.
As a child, I learned quickly that I was fully accepted, fairly popular, and had plenty of friends as long as I didn't say that I was Jewish. To me it was like having a shirt that people hated. As long as I didn't put the shirt on, everything was happy.
As a real young child, I didn't even know what Jewish meant. I just knew that if I told certain people that I was Jewish, unpleasant things would happen to me.
<< I know nothing of Jews. I never met one until my mid-thirties, and even then, the encounter was very brief. >>
You obviously remember your first meeting with a Jew. Why did it stick in your memory?
<< We told him we knew next to nothing of his people, their history, or Israel. We did know that they suffered in Nazi Germany. >>
I knew nothing about Nazi Germany or the Holocaust until after my teenage years. I couldn't believe that humans could be that brutal and inhuman. The thought that 1.5 million Jewish children were systematically tortured and murdered was incomprehensible to me. How can a grown adult pick up a little child by his ankles and smash his head into a wall, while at the same time having other little children forced to stand in line waiting for their turn?
Jews say "Never Again". The world says "Never Again". But then we witness the atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo and Afghanistan and Rwanda and Iraq; and we bear witness that the UN and many "civilized" nations would rather just stay still and cower and let the "Nazis" of the world, do it again to another people. God bless President Bush and America for having the courage to stand up to another Hitler, this time in Iraq.
<< Whenever I encounter discussions about Israel or Jews, I think about my brief exposure to them that summer afternoon so long ago. >>
Have you ever been insulted, or threatened because you made a decent comment about Jews? |
