AN ARDENT HARD-LINE SUPPORTER OF ISRAEL

When I first started blogging, I had every intenntion of concentrating on criminal justice-related matters. However, as you have seen, I have published quite a number of blogs on Israel and on the fallacy of "moderate" Muslims. I admit that I am biased and you know that I am an ardent hard-line supporter of the State of Israel. Let me explain why.

I was born in Germany. My parents and I came to the United States in 1936, three years after Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party came to power. My father had been in command of a German army machine gun platoon during World War I. He served on the Eastern front until he was wounded in Poland. After he recovered from his wounds, he was awarded the Iron Cross and served on the Western front until the end of the war.

When the Nazis came to power, my father was forced out of a management position with Germany's largest department store chain and he was arrested and detained for a time by the Gestapo. Although he had always been a law-abiding patriotic German citizen, my father lost a very good job and was arrested simply because he was Jewish. He saw the handwriting on the wall and we left Germany for the United States. Millions of other Jews were not as fortunate.

We were able to come to America only because we had distant relatives here who were willing to sponsor us by guaranteeing to look after our basic needs. It was easy to leave Germany because the Nazis were glad to get rid of the Jews. The families of two uncles and an aunt also came to America. Another uncle drowned in the English Channel when, bound for Argentina, his ship struck a mine and sank.

When the rest of the world became aware of Hitler's "final solution," the Nazi term for the extermination of the Jews, did it open its doors to Jewish refugees? No, it did not. It stood idly by while six million Jews were exterminated during the holocaust. The Muslim world, on the contrary, applauded Hitler's attempt to rid the world of Jews. Even the United States, which during the Nazi era was beset with endemic anti-Semitism, refused entry to Jews who were unable to obtain an American sponsor and, thereby, must share some of the responsibility for those put to death in Hitler's extermination camps.

Where were the victims of Nazi persecution to go? Since biblical times, Jews have lived continually in the land which became known as Palestine, albeit in relatively small numbers. In 1917, The Balfour Declaration, named after the British prime minister at the time, expressed Britain's support for the establishment of a national Jewish homeland in Palestine. However, even after the end of World War II, the British, under pressure from the Arabs, turned back shiploads of Jewish refugees attempting to land in what was to become the State of Israel.

Today, there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism throughout Europe. That hatred of Jews is fueled by Muslims and neo-Nazis. A concerted effort to boycott Israel is being led by the same intellectuals and left-wing academics who have always sided with the Palestinians and accuse the Israelis of Naziism.

In the United States, left-wing academics have succeeded in getting a number of well-known universities to divest themselves of any investments they held in Israel. Former President Jimmy Carter, never a friend of the Jewish state, falsely accuses Israel of committing atrocities against the Palestinians and of practicing South African style apartheid.

The college from which I retired in 1993 had a number of avowed Marxists on its faculty. This element controlled the college administration by getting a majority of trade union members elected to its board of trustees. The Marxists, hiding behind the doctrine of Academic Freedom, persistently condemned American free enterprise and our government's domestic and international policies, never once saying anything positive about the good old U.S.A.. And, of course, they constantly attacked Israel in their one-siced lectures.

Israel is the only country in the world which welcomes Jews no matter where they come from. It took in most of the few holocaust survivors because no other country wanted them. It took in many Jews from Poland and the former Soviet Union, both of which have had a long history of virulent anti-Semitism. Israel is the only refuge for Jews who are being oppressed simply because they are Jews. So, now you know why I am an ardent supporter of Israel. And, why am I a hard-liner? Because the Muslim world is firmly committed to the destruction of Israel.

Israel is being pressured by the international community to make suicidal concessions to the Palestinians. Israel cannot afford to give up all of the West Bank if it is to have secure and defensible borders. It cannot give up East Jerusalem for the same reason. It cannot accept the return of Palestinian refugees. All of the Arab demands are designed to bring about the eventual disappearance of the Jewish state. If that were to happen, what country will take in the unwanted Jews of the world?