A day or so after Thanksgiving of the year when I was in the seventh or eight grade, and hated gym class above all the other torments that junior high school offered in bounteous measure, I had a short conversation with another girl in my gym class. We were not particular friends, only that our lockers were adjacent, and we would be changing out of our school dress, into the black shorts and short-sleeved, snap-closure white blouse that Mt. Gleason Junior High dictated to be proper gym class attire. I don’t even remember her name, only that she was sturdy and somewhat stocky and like me, blue-eyed with dark-blond, brown-sugar colored hair and a fair complexion… and like me, not particularly enthusiastic about gym class, and all its’ works and all its’ ways. Both of us were of the devoutly un-athletic sort who picks a team position based on the likely chances of having little or nothing to do with the ball.
So, on this first day of gym after the Thanksgiving holiday, I struck up a conversation about it, about how my family Thanksgiving had gone— how all the constellation of great-aunts, great-uncles, and grandparents had gathered for the ritual feast. The family Hayes had gathered at either Grannie Jessie’s little white house on South Lotus, or Grannie Dodie and Grandpa Al’s house in Camarillo. I can’t recollect which, so unvarying was the rotation, so regular the attendance of the senior members and devout their interest in JP and I, Pippy and our new baby brother. Most of them being for one reason or another, childless, I lamented the lack of cousins, for it meant their concentration on the four of us as torch-bearers of a new generation was as focused as a laser-beam, and I assumed that the same was true of my gym-dressing room friend.
“Oh, no,” said she. ”It’s just my parents, and my brothers and sisters. We don’t have any cousins either. All of my parents’ families… they all died. We don’t have any cousins, either.”
“None of them? None at all?” I asked, in disbelief. No fond grandparents, no doting great-aunts, no eccentric great-uncles? None of them at all, nothing outside the usual parents and sibs at the dinner table, nothing special, relations-wise, about the holiday table, with roasted turkey, crackling-fat and richly stuffed with brown-bread dressing? About this time in life, my peers had begun to lose grandparents to the usual span of human mortality— I had lately lost one, Grandpa Jim, and thought myself lucky to still have three, all of them still healthy, cantankerous and good for another couple of decades. To have none at all, though… that went beyond misfortune. That was a catastrophe.
My gym-friend shrugged.
“My parents met after the war, in a DP camp. They were just kids. It turned out they were both the only survivors of their families. They got married and came here. There was nothing for them to go back for, anyway.”
Nothing to go back for, anyway, in Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine… somewhere in Middle-Europe, wherever her family trees had sprung up and been pruned with brutal finality of all but two last little shoots. Transplanted, new-rooted in America, but haunted forever by a ghostly range of empty chairs around the table at those family gatherings so universally assumed to me multi-generational.
The genocide against European Jews is as much of a challenge today to get ones’ sensible American head around as it was sixty years ago. Us Indian-massacring (sorry, Native American massacring!) slavery-enabling, Negro-lynching (Sorry— Persons of Color lynching!) religion-addled, brutally-capitalist, petty-small-town minded uncultured Jacksonians are forever being lectured about our shortcomings by those cultured Europeans. Europe was, after all, the place where they did everything better than us… more cultured, more tolerant, and oh-so-much-better in every civilized way. And yet, pogroms never happened here. Social prejudice, country-club anti-Semitism, distrust of the “other”— oh yeah, all of that…but never pogroms. Russian and Polish Jews came here to get away from pogroms, ungrateful and unappreciative of the cultural advantages to living in Europe.
The clamor of the lectures by our so-called moral superiors pretty much swamps the observation that the Native American and Black American communities still exist in a far more vibrant state than, say, the Jewish communities of Poland… and that Paris, the city of Light has a suburb torn for the fourth night running by what we, in our uncouth American way, used to call race riots. Ah, well, Europe— they do things with so much more style, over there. Sixty years ago, under German occupation, ordinary Europeans watched their neighbors, their friends, coworkers, classmates, employers and employees, their doctors, and cleaning women rounded up and marched away to oblivion. Some eagerly assisted; some benefited from participating, most watched and turned away and did nothing, not wishing to risk what might happen to them, should they be too open in objection. A very few righteous, possessed of a fiercely refined moral sense, and courage of the sort usually termed “crazy-brave” did what they could… that there was anything left of European Jewry by 1945 was a sort of miracle in itself. On a national level, only the Danes can be credited for behaving in a way that we hope we could ourselves be equal to, given the same situation. They refused, categorically, firmly, and in a manner most breathtakingly effective, to turn over Danish citizens of the Jewish faith to the occupying German authorities… of course, the Germans had gone easily on the Danes, hoping to win them over to the benefits of the Thousand-year Reich… but still, and all… German blandishments did not tempt them to sell out their fellow citizens.
So, during a week in which the elected leader of Iran, which has done everything it can to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, has publicly and in terms quite straightforward and understandable, vowed an intention to wipe Israel off the map… a small and pesky nation formed in no small part from the survivors of the European-wide holocaust. What would a single nuclear hit do to a tiny and democratic survivor-state? Nothing good, that should go without saying. So, what will Europe do, this time? How stalwart will be European resolve be to intervene, given that Israel was referred to as “that shitty little country” by a French diplomat at an English dinner party, that anti-Semitism (now charmingly called anti-Zionism) is at a revoltingly open, all-time high? No matter what they call it, it’s still used for the same old purpose, to kill Jews, or at least, justify their murder by a third party. How nice. How amusing, that European hands would be kept clean of the murder of Jews. This time, anyway.
Oh, yeah… if I were a Jew, I’d think twice before depending on Europe to keep my ass safe… especially given how effective they were, overall, about that the last time.
The eastern world, it is explodin’.
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy
It’s bound to scare you boy
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Sgt Mom,
Go to
http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com/2005/10/why-havent-we-seen-this.html
This will give you a more complete picture of what this Iranian has in store.
Comment by Roy — 20051031 @ 2055
Sgt Mom
Sorry, but on this occasion you’re a wild mile off the mark. Everyone in Europe is very well aware of what happened in Germany and I don’t see anyone pretending it didn’t (other than the odd nutter, of which you have plenty yourself).
Of course, the scale of the devastation had nothing to do with the chickenshit Republicans who bottled out of the war for so long, did it? I don’t doubt it suited the purposes of many of your fine American anti-Semites of the time very well indeed, in fact. Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for the Democrats you’d be blogging in German.
As for Israel, if America hadn’t spent the last 60 years trying to salve its conscience by giving Israel a free pass on whatever the hell it wanted to do and instead suggested that it be subject to the same rules as the rest of us, the world might be a safer place. And no, that doesn’t mean I want it off the map - just that it checks the map to see which bits belong to it.
Kind regards
Al
Comment by Al — 20051101 @ 0245
“Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for the Democrats you’d be blogging in German.”
Whaaaat? Do you mean to say that the Germans were preparing to invade Southern California… perhaps at Redondo Beach? Wow, I’m a history nut, but I’d never heard that one!
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20051101 @ 0835
What he said. Pssst! If you’re looking for WMDs I know where you can find some… And get it through your head: disagreeing with Israeli policy does not make me an anti-Semite. It’s just one of those accusations used to stifle debate. Mordechai Vanunu disagreed with Israeli policy, and he did eleven years in solitary. What does that make him?
And for fuck’s sake! One pissed frog mouthing off at one dinner party does not represent the prevailing attitude of an entire continent. It may be awfully handy to quote in your rant, but its employment as a means of generalising about everyone on the entire land mass is patently ridiculous. As for no pogroms EVER having happenned in your wonderful multi-ethnic uptopia I suggest you cast your mind back to the Crown Heights riots in 1991. And what about the KKK? What about lynching, and segregation? Your picture of your country features some pretty immense blind spots it seems.
More cultured? Yep. More tolerant? Certainly. Very much more progressive at least; nobody in my country is going to try and tell me that my kids will have to learn creationism, or that their pregnancies are anyone’s business but their own. I wonder why uou relish the opportunity to pour scorn upon Europe so freely? To me it smacks somewhat of an inferiority complex.
Comment by Robin — 20051101 @ 0848
Robin I kind of consider myself european largely due to locational upbringing….I did’nt set foot in the states permanantly until I was almost 12. Let me tell you all I knew of the United States is what was taught in history class and what little I saw of it on television(watched more BBC then anything). Needless to say I wasn’t in any great hurry to come across the pond….in fact I did’nt want to come at all. The long and the short of it is…..NO COUNTRY PAST OR PRESENT IS FREE OF BAD BAD THINGS, done for the sake of religion, race, politics…and being in the wrong f***ing place at the wrong F***ing time.
Comment by Cpl Blondie — 20051101 @ 1403
Sgt. Mom
That was a moving piece about your classmate. Thanks for sharing. One wonders at the virulent responses it
produced.
Comment by Letty — 20051101 @ 1458
Right. So stop ragging on the Europeans all the time.
Comment by Robin — 20051101 @ 1622
Not supporting Zionist beliefs does not make one a hater of Jews. Taking land from one people to give to another another does not make one a altruist. Believing that one people are God’s Chosen over all others might make one a little gullible.
I never understood how the terrible suffering on one people at the hands of another people give them the moral authority to take the land of others and to commit heinous crimes.
http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/
Comment by gdgadfly — 20051101 @ 1705
You want ragging on Europeans all the time? Try LGF, Robin, sweetie.Also, I do not recall anyone telling me that Blondie had to be taught creationism… But then, I sent her to a Catholic school. They were a little hyper there about teen pregnancies, though.
BTW, I read (among others) the Guardian Weekly, the Economist,(on-line, IHT (on-line)the Spectator, the Telegraph, and I used to do the London Times, before they went all secretive on us. There is some astonishly ugly stuff which may have been going on for longer than I’ve been keeping track of it: academic boycotts of Israeli academicians, French Jews being told to not wear yarmakas, vandalism of synagogues, cemeteries and Allied war monuments, French Jewish schoolchildren being beaten up, local street festivals in Belgium and Holland being broken up by middle-eastern youths, housing areas in French cities being no-go areas for local police, an insane percentage of rapists in Scandanavian prisons being… um… non-scandanavian… the Protocals of the Elders of Zion being STILL a best-seller… and now riots in a Northern English city… and one in a Paris suburb that is now in it’s… what, fifth day?
I’d be sitting back and enjoying a heaping helping of schadenfreude, except for a creeping fear that some morning I will wake up, turn on the radio, and hear that Tel Aviv, or Avignon or Salerno has suddenly vanished in a brilliant flash of light and a mushroom-shaped cloud.
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20051101 @ 1847
First of all, enough with the “sweetie” crap. Your particular patronising tone is something that I’ve chosen to ignore as long as I can do. Yes, I am younger than you. But if you really feel the need to try and belittle me perhaps you’re painfuly aware of how little the things that you say hold water?
Yep, a lot of things that you say do go on. But shit happens. Nobody over this side of the pond believes that we’re living in an utterly harmonious society. But such a society does not exist (sorry to have to break that one to you old-timer). All that the rational majority can do is try and ensure that those on the margins of society remain just that: marginal.
Once again, you fail to seriously address any of the counts on which your ill-thought post has been challenged. You effectively accused all Europeans of wanting all Jews dead. That’s (I seem to say this a lot) patently ridiculous. Then you justifty this assertion based on oooh such a long list of incidents. There are tens of millions of people on this continent how dare you make such a grotesque accusation? And (yawn) disagreeing with Israeli policy does not etc etc….
Comment by Robin — 20051101 @ 2000
Wel, Robin, you keep coming back… I can only assume you enjoy it, perhaps I should put on my military dominatrix costume, break out my quirt and have some fun…
Oh,yeah, stuff happens. Sixty years ago, people in occupied Europe watched their friends, neighbors, co-workers and countrymen be rounded up and shipped off by the Nazis, and with a few honorable exeptions, did F***all about it. You don’t seem to think Americans have changed anything at all in the last sixty years as regards minority relations… and I haven’t seen much proof lately that European attitudes have changed much as regards Jews.
Again— were I Jewish, and living in Europe today, I’m not sure I’d put much faith in Europeans coming to my defense in a life or death situation. Being good at pattern-recognition, I’d have my bags packed, and be doing everything possible to have some valid visas for about anywhere else.
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20051101 @ 2110
Sgt. Mom, keep ragging on the Euros. You will not puncture their preening pompous self regard, but at least their phoney moralizing and pretense at sophistication will be challenged, as it needs to be.
Anti-Semitism is rife in Europe and has been for centuries, and most Europeans quietly wish the Jewish “problem” (meaning people) would simply disappear. Hence their happiness to create a Jewish state, and their current embarrassment at its existence.
Comment by Steve Skubinna — 20051102 @ 0302
Oh dear. Let’s rephrase:
“Oh,yeah, stuff happens. Sixty years ago, people in America watched the Jews in Europe be rounded up and shipped off by the Nazis, and spent five years doing F***all about it. ”
To pick through all of your specific points would take all day, however in summary:
- the law in France is intended to prohibit the introduction of the burqua. The fact that other religions, including Christianity, are having to follow suit is a natural and imho reasonable compromise
- the riots in Paris are nothing to do with Jews; it’s tied to their Algerian / Tunisian colonialism
- similarly in the North of England, the issue there is one of integration of Muslim immigrants
- you know as well as we do, and undoubtedly better, that there has been a rise in the promotion of Creationism and associated fruitcake fundamentalist nonsense in the US since Blondie went to school
War memorials? Sure, very occasionally. And those responsible get arrested and prosecuted.
So what’s the deal then? Rosa Parks is dead so Americans can pretend things were always fine? You’ve got a very much more recent history of institutionalised, legalised racism than any European country. Or is this something subtler; starting the buildup of reasons to invade Iran in time to have a useful war up and running by the time the chimp steps down and he has to start thinking of reasons why Americans would vote Republican ever again - “Hey - we’re at war!” worked the last time after all.
If I were Jewish and living in Europe today I’d be doing what every other Jew in Europe seems to be doing - getting on with life. And those of us who aren’t Jewish, but want our children to grow up with an understanding of the world around them and what happens if we don’t guard against hate, take them to things like the award-winning, admission record-breaking Holocaust permanent exhibition running at the Imperial War Museum.
Characterising Europe as one big anti-Semitic landmass demonstrates thinking every bit as lazy and paranoid as Henry Ford’s almost a century ago in the Dearborn Independent.
Finally, I can’t speak for Robin, but the reason I come back here (and indeed bother to reply) is that the blogging is usually of a consistently high standard - as indeed it was in your original article; I just didn’t agree with your premise. The reason I don’t frequent LGF or similar (e.g. Instapundit) other than when I’m really bored and looking for a barrel of fish to shoot is that I have a low tolerance for blogs which use mass misquotation of mainstream news sources as an apparent excuse for rampant racism and paranoid delusional Democrat-hating. Most of those people need professional help, frankly.
PS What’s with the Swedish rapists though? Haven’t read that one.
Comment by Al — 20051102 @ 0327
And exactly what would you have had them do against SS Panzergrenadiers? Throw rocks? What would it have benefitted anyone to have another pile of corpses? Sure, it’s easy for you to sit in front of a screen and declare in self-righteous fervor that YOU would have been different, that YOU would have done something. But YOU’LL never have to prove it, so your words mean jack shit. I don’t know what the hell I would or could have done if tanks rolled up my street; since I wasn’t there, I have bugger all right to judge the people that were. I suppose you over there enjoy some sort of moral ascendency that we poxy Europeans aren’t party to. Go on, pretened that the USA entered the war to rescue the Jews. I dare you.
And when will you get it through your head that attitudes to Jews and attitudes to Israel are not the same thing? Yup, French Jews are no longer allowed to not wear yarmakas in school or government buildings; but then Muslims and Christians are forbidden to wear their religious symobols as well. Whatever you think of that law, it’s not anti-Semitic. The other incidents you recount are newsworthy precisely because they’re outside of the norm. You’ll never see the headline “Most Europeans coexisting most of the time” because it’s the norm, see? And as for the Allied war cemeteries, I’ve been to a large number of those places, including Colleville-sur-Mer at Omaha beach and the reverence with which they are treated is breathtaking. Yes, I know there have been isolated incidents. But those people don’t speak for all of us, only for themselves and may they rot.
For somebody who rages against the “MSM” so much you seem very eager to be manipulated by them when they conform to your prejudices. Yup, many of us don’t have much time for Israel. We don’t like Mossad agents carrying out kidnapping, or the bulldozing of peoples’ homes, or the ghettoization of the Palestinians, or the use of tanks and gunships in civilian areas. But that has fuck all to do with anti-Semetism and very much to do with basic humanity. So change the anti-Semite record will you? It’s getting old.
Comment by Robin — 20051102 @ 0632
Well, the Danes managed very nicely, Al, without having to throw rocks at Panzers. And it helped enormously being a short distance from Sweden.
But daring me to pretend that we got into WWII to rescue Jews? Oh, for… how goddamn dumb to you think I am? Oh, nevermind… plenty dumb, apparently.
The bit about the high rate of incarcerated Muslim rapists in Denmark and Norway, relative to their numbers in the general population… there’s a entry with a lot of links and translations from local media here.
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20051102 @ 0724
Robin, dear boy
When I saw the delightful footage of the Palistinian women dancing in rapturous joy at the news of the thousands of Americans killed in the fall of the Twin Towers, I knew two things.
Firstly, I knew that whatever happens to the Palistinians is of their own making, and that I could give a shit less if they live or die. That makes me relatively neutral on the subject of Palistinians. That means they are a two on my list of three kinds of people.
Secondly, my notion that the muslims, not just arab muslims, are my enemies and the enemies of my country was affirmed. It’s because thats the way they are and because they choose to be my enemies. Once again, I do not give a rat’s ass about the content of this particular religious sect, but I have made decidedly non-neutral decisions about those that espouse the muslim faith based on conduct observed from some of their more revered and wacked out members. That means they are a three on my list.
Frankly, I think we are being too restrained in our dealings with them, at home and abroad.
Oh yes. One more thing. Friends of my enemies are not my friends. That includes apologists, who are also threes.
Have some brie and go catch up on the Huffington Post.
Comment by B Dubya — 20051102 @ 0834
You’re a fool and I’m not going to dignify your diatribe with an adequate response.
Comment by Robin — 20051102 @ 0919
Then my work here is done.
See you at the HP, Rob
Comment by B Dubya — 20051102 @ 0943