by Dr. David Fialk, Editor / Publisher

Towards the end of his life my father suffered a stroke that robbed him of his vision: "Everything is like a kaleidoscope." My parents and I lived, not quite together, in a large neo-Victorian that housed my office on its first floor, their apartment on its second, and my abode, a remodeled servants' quarters, on its third.

Mom, coming from a long line of very strong, iron matriarchs, was almost never emotionally available. But I would pop down regularly mostly to visit with Pop, both before and after his stroke, Once (circa 2000), after the stroke, filling him in on the news he could no longer read, I informed him, "They're letting hundreds of convicts out of jail in LA because some cops were caught planting evidence." A master of brevity and sarcasm, he asked, "That's news?"

I ask, "They're massacring Jews again? That's news?"

My first recollection of the centuries-old genocide directed against my people was when I was six-years-old. I remember it as one instance, but it is a conglomeration of memories. The episode, or vision, was regularly repeated, over years, two afternoons a week and Sunday mornings, during Hebrew school, in a classroom above the synagogue. There, on warm days my teacher, Cantor Fischman, would roll up the sleeves of his always white shirt, exposing a long number, more of a dark green-gray than black, tattooed on the inside of his right forearm.

Already at six I understood what that meant, although I didn't yet grasp the details: that he was spared the immediate extermination inflicted on the rest of his family, because he was of prime working age and the Nazi "Thousand-Year Reich" needed slave labor. Back then, in 1963, kids were still taught who Hitler was, and the public in general was reminded of German atrocities.

For those of you who don't know, or need reminding, the periodic massacre of the Jews has gone on, mostly in Christian countries (actively encouraged priests), but more recently also in Moslem lands (actively encouraged by imams). A very short highlight list includes: Granada in 1066, the Rhienland in 1096, Kominitzky 1648-1657 Kishinev 1903, Chevron in 1929. But there is a whole museum in Israel filled with the complete catalogue.

I will let you in on a secret, dormant in some of my fellow Jews because it is just too horrible, but never very far beneath our social veneer; we Jews look on you gentiles with horror. A Holocaust survivor, 50 years after his "liberation," came up to me in synagogue and with palpable admiration said, "You don't look Jewish. That's good." He was sure that "Never Again" would happen again. Just last Saturday it did.

Getting killed for just being Jewish is bad. But, as happened for centuries throughout Europe and also here in the city plaza of nearby León, getting killed for just being Jewish by having your torso wrapped in wet wool (so it shouldn't be too fast) and then being burnt to death is narco-shit... with the good, church-going gentiles cheerfully watching.

Getting killed at a music festival by machine gun-toting Islamic terrorists (many adolescents), just for being Jewish, is bad. But, as just happened last Saturday morning in Israel, being viscously gang-raped by these murderous barbarians for hours on end, all within reach of the dead bodies of your friends, and then being killed (and then having your naked corpse paraded and spat upon in the back of a pickup truck through a cheering crowd in the streets of Gaza), well, that's a really terrible way to go. (Slightly more "fortunate" are the women not murdered after their ordeal, but led away into captivity, the seats of their pants stained burgundy red.)

Russell Means
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An idealogue is someone who twists everything, facts included, to fit their political conviction. I have a new friend, X, a pro-Palestinian, Jewish liberal, who has been twisted by the ideology that he's swallowed. X kindly wrote me yesterday (Monday): "I wanted to extend you my best wishes at this moment. I imagine you are suffering for what is happening in Israel ¡Un abrazo!" I haven't written X back yet, or rather, this article will serve as my response.

Politics are complicated, but I offer here some facts:

1) The once politically dominant peace movement in Israel has been moribund for decades for lack of an Arab partner. Any Arab that espouses, or is suspected of espousing, "normalization" with Israel is murdered.

2) Russell Means (1939-2012), an Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Native Americans, libertarian political activist, actor, musician and writer, declared the obvious, namely, that the Jews are an indigenous people returning to their homeland, Israel. For over a thousand years before Islam existed and for over two thousand years before Muslims conquered the Middle East, the Jews had a homeland in Israel. Since the Canaanites and Phoenicians, ours is the only people who ever connected their nationality with that piece of the Earth. (The Palestinians, as a "nation," were invented by the KGB in the 1960s.)

3) In keeping with the UN's definition of antisemitism, Israel is being held to higher standards than other countries, than any other nation. The press is full of antisemitic bias. The BBC's biased headline in this screen-capture from Twitter is par for the course, the twisted, anti-Israel course that those committed to Israel's annihilation, and the murder or enslavement of its Jews play on: "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free."

If you want to free Palestine, start by freeing the Palestinians from Hamas.

I am now twice as old as Cantor Fischman was then; his tattoo, very likely, has already turned to dust. The more I mature, the more kaleidoscopic the world seems, radically different perspectives at every turn. We are to be forgiven for our pathetic attempts to make sense of the tumult and noise. But amid the storm, always close to the heart of the pandemonium, a shape keeps slipping out of and coming back into focus, a pattern keeps recurring.

Allen Ginsberg, in his poem Kaddish (the Jewish memorial prayer for the dead) borrowed a phrase from Joseph Conrad to describe that recurring manifestation, that constant companion. Conrad himself probably heard the phrase from the lips of a dying man. Each of them repeated it for emphasis: "The horror. The horror."

Yisgadal, v'yisgadash, shamae rabbah...

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