Finally! A Comment!

After months and months of nothing, the other day I got the proof that somebody is actually reading the stuff I am writing here occasionally. I got a comment! And an interesting one, too - see for yourself under "Blame Israel for the London Terror Attacks".

I thought one idea raised by Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous deserved a response. He or she writes "Wouldn't it have been much more fair for Germany to surrender part of its land to create a homeland for the Zionists?".

Great idea! I could be living in the "Jewish Black Forest Reservation", surrounded by green, lush mountains, cool springs and lots of Black Forest cakes! So why did those Zionists come up with the crazy idea to move to the Ottoman Empire, or later the British Protectorate, buy worthless lands from the laughing Arabs, dry up swamps, have 8 out of 10 kids die from Malaria, and even farm the desert without knowing anything about it?

The answer is simple: History. The German reservation proposal may sound logical at first, but only if you ignore the history of the Jewish people. This is a very, very long story, but in a nutshell it goes like this. Somehow -a few thousand years ago- the Jews emerge as a people in this area. They adopt that strange monotheistic religion, which later becomes the inspiration and common denominator for two spin-offs, first Christianity and then Islam, never mind. They build two gigantic temples, marvels of architecture at the time, only to have them torn down, first by the Greek and then by the Romans. The Romans not only destroyed the second temple, they massacred most of the population and the rest dispersed in all directions. End of story. Or could have been, was it not for that stubborn attachment of those Jews to their culture, and yes, to their homeland. This is of course what got them into trouble with two world powers in the first place, and it continued to do so for the next 2000 years. Once the Romans had vanished from the stage, some Jews trickled back to Israel, but the majority had found it a lot more comfortable to settle abroad, say in the Black Forest and some other attractive locations. But somehow the general hospitality of the Black Forest farmers was interrupted every now and then by the occasional progrom, usually when their communities were stricken with the Black Death, Pestilence, war, or other undeserved disasters. After two millennia the Jews finally had enough and decided that it is time to go home. Zionism was born end of the 19. century and slowly the numbers of returning Jews climbed, especially after WWI, when the British administration supported the idea of a new Jewish homeland in "Palestine" for a short while. Appeared Hitler and tried to finished the job the Romans blew. End of story. Or could have been, was it not for the pioneering spirit of the Jewish refugees escaping the horrors of WWII, which meanwhile had build enough of a viable economy and self administration to trigger the acceptance of a reborn Jewish state on the original land by the international community. Israel was reinstated in 1948 on about 1/3 of the historic territory. Happy end of story. Or could have been, was it not for the Arabs, which by now were not laughing anymore and decided to end the Jewish adventure right here and then. But that is really a long story.

It seems history is the problem. Things were a lot easier if everybody would just forget about their past and their culture, and live happily ever after. That may be an acceptable way of living, but then we all have to do it. One can not ask one people to forget about their very roots and at the same time sanctify the historical rights of another people. Can one?

One last thing. My commentator called Israel "the last obvious European colonial enterprise". The absurdity of that claim should be clear by now. The idea of a modern Israel was born by the Jews calling themselves Zionists, but their romantic dream became possible only due to the bad conscience of the Europeans for not having stopped the slaughter of 6 Million of their unwanted citizens, and the lack of motivation to reintegrate the surviving refugees. As absurd as it may sound, without Hitler there would be no Israel today. The Israeli desert was a convenient place to dump those Jews, and anyway the Arabs would take care of the rest, and finally, end of story. Or so you think!