My youngest granddaughter is flying to Israel as I write this blog. Am I worried? Of course, but she has been hoping for months she could go with eight friends from her eighth-grade class in California.
Our family is part of the golden age of modern Jewry. These days, my wife Risa and I wake up at night wondering if it is ending.
Today is also Holocaust Remembrance Day. If you have not walked through a concentration camp and read the stories, you do not feel the chill you get when you see the photos of the emaciated survivors in striped suits who were among the few alive to be liberated.
Today we witness spoiled college students, some of them naive Jewish kids, who think they are so cool to be anti-Israel while vaping in a tent on campus protesting.
This is a sickening sight for me. It is a clear signal of the waning of the incredible American Jewish success story of the last 70 years. It is also the strongest argument for Israel to do its utmost, for as long as it can, to wipe out Hamas, which wants to destroy the state and kill as many Jews in its power.
Do I agree with everything Benjamin Netanyahu is doing? Of course not. He’s a politician desperately clinging to power. But he also is a patriot and a warrior whose brother, Yonathan, died attempting to free Jewish hostages in Uganda when he was a teen.
Israel is being squeezed now by demonstrations from people supporting the families of the hostages who are pleading for a deal.
The American president, still Israel’s primary ally, is prodding Netanyahu to work out a deal to calm the noise on American campuses and position himself in the Presidential campaign.
Hamas appears almost ready for some kind of deal to save itself from further destruction. Its leader, Yahya Sinwar, thinks he has won the war by surviving this long and turning so much of the world’s public opinion to view him as a martyr instead of a butcher.
I sit here in Chicago, trying to do business, watching the Cubs on TV, and reading every scrap I can about the Middle East. The birth and survival of Israel has been one of the greatest joys of my life.
One of the saddest experiences of my life is seeing the signs saying “from the River to the Sea” being carried around college campuses on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
May my beautiful granddaughter, Orli, have a safe and joyful trip to the Jewish homeland.
Question: How do you feel about me writing about so many Jewish Topics?
16 Comments
Are you afraid I will learn something???
Well, I am biased. I agree with you. My father came to the US in 1930. All family that didn’t leave Poland were murdered. He fought in WWII. I am happy my parents are not alive to have seen what happened on October 7th and the Leftest backed University riots/protests. About Jews that are involved in self-hating behavior, may Hashem have mercy upon them and their progeny.
15 THOUSAND massacred children in Gaza is sickening to me and those vaping college kids are right over the target, the “Golden age for modern Jewry” is indeed coming to an end and That is a source of our strength. Every illegal invader sent here by the HIAS, should be deported and shipped to ISRAEL. Free Palestine! stop the Jewish led genocide.
I support Israel, and Netanyahu. Hamas and it’s enablers must be destroyed.
Lloyd,
I was a 15 yr old High School student when my 18 yr old brother and I spent the summer in Europe traveling by bike. That was 1971 and the Munich Olympic Stadium was being built. I had studied history but only ancient history and American history at that point, as European History was an elective for a few years down the road. So when my older brother told me we were going to ride to Dachau i did not know anything about it. This past December my wife and I traveled to Bucharest and one of the places we visited was the Torture Museum. I found that the age of the visitors to that museum were primarily high school age kids and it told the story of the Jewish inhabitants that suffered under Russian occupation long past WW2 until their own post cold war liberation. But the Hungarians were still making sure that the education system included what was still relevant to many of the adults still alive who had grown up in those conditions.
I know when I look back now 15 to 18 years ago, remembering working with my son on his high school history exams, they skipped right over WWI and WW2 instead focusing on the protests during the Vietnam War that was going on while I was in high school. They say if we do not learn from history we are destined to repeat it. Thanks for continuing to offer insight and encourage us to check out the reality of what should have been learned and continues to need to be taught.
Lloyd – Keep writing. It pains me as a Christian to see what is happening on our campuses. On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I stand with you today and every day. Evil exists in the world. October 7th is a day we should never forget. I never will. Peace!
On our metal working discussion forum we ban any political or controversial topics. On our forum there are people with substantially different politics that I can still have friendship, respect, and learnings from. Their friendship is welcome. Topics like this we skip – or we would not have a forum as it would descend into flaming arguments. There are places to discuss important topics and issues but I respectfully submit Lloyd your business forum may not be one of them.
Keep writing, Lloyd!
Thanks for sharing your insights. My wife and I were just discussing these topics last night. I am saddened by the current state of affairs in our country and the world. I would hope that we could learn from our past and find ways to live in peace with one another.
Lloyd, keep on writing about Jewish topics. I appreciate your candor. Your perspectives present moral and philosophical issues that public officials and ordinary citizens alike need to consider before deciding what to believe about a given topic and how to resolve conflict related to that subject.
Lloyd, thank you for writing about this. As an American, I am Pro-Jewish and Pro-Palestinian while being anti-Israel and anti-Hamas. Wouldn’t a separate independent country for Palestine solve these problems once and for all. I’m interested to hear your thoughts and others thoughts on this.
Thanks for your comment. Personally, I think an independent Palestine must come soon but not dominated by terrorists like Hamas. I think most Palestinians would agree. Currently Israel has a very substantial Arab population whose descendents chose not to flee in the 1948 War of Independence. Most of Palestinians in 1948 believed that the Arabs who hugely outnumbered the Jews would slaughter them in a few days. Similar to Ukraine. In 75 years Israel has become an affluent scientific powerhouse still attracting Jews from around the world and investment too.
Hardliners in both countries have refused settling. In recent years the Abraham Accords have brought several of Israel’s Arabs together in a sort of peace. Iran and Syria snd Hamas have resisted. We are witnessing the triumph of the hardliners of both Jews and Arabs now with this awful war the result. Neither side will win, but the people in Gaza have suffered most.
Definitely keep writing. The more places people can get educated on what’s happening in Israel the better.
Lloyd
Twenty years ago I toured Auschwitz. I saw the ovens in your picture, I walked into the showers that gassed the Jewish people. It wasn’t a fun experience, nor pleasurable. To imagine the inhumanity that one human can and will do to another is unimaginable. Yet it appears that there still are many individuals that think “thru the propaganda” that the holocaust never happened. They live in a reality of their own because they have never learned history. They should be picked up and made to watch the old film reals taken by the U.S. Army documenting the holocaust. The “River to The Sea” chant is a call for the destruction of a complete race of people. Sadly many are fine with that happening. They should be held for the Anti-Semite’s that they are.
Keep writing. Keep opposing those that want the destruction of Israel or any society.
I hope you keep writing about our history with your insight. History is all of ours.
Hi Lloyd, I think you know a bit about HORST Engineering’s story and my grandfather, Horst Liebenstein’s, flight from Germany in October 1938. Our Jewish/German heritage is a key part of our company’s history, entrepreneurship and precision. It is also embedded in our core values/family values. So of course I enjoy that you are sharing your thoughts. At the holidays, I bought my father Stanley a book: “My Effin’ Life” by Geddy Lee. Dad is a big Rush fan and overall, a huge rock-and-roll fan. I knew a bit about the book from an interview, but had no idea that the first three chapters were going to be so intensely about Lee’s parents Holocaust survival story and their subsequent immigration to Canada (Toronto). I’m only reading a few pages a night, so I have a ways to go, but it is amazing. It’s reminding me that I have to write down more of the verbal history that has been passed on in our family.