As an American Jew I grew up knowing my Jewishness
in the grand tradition of Southern Laid-Back Reform Judaism like that reflected
in the famous movie "Driving Miss Daisy".
Zionism wasn't a "thing" taught to us;
we were not given any notion to "make the move". Oh, but yes, we were
told to back our fellow Jews in Israel with money and political support
especially in time of crisis, but "Gott Im Himmel!" make dare I say
it "Aliyah"!!!
One of my first most vivid memories of the
awareness of my connection to "those Jews in Israel" was on that
morning of June 6th 1967 as a "privileged American born diaspora
Jew". I can remember my Momma, of blessed memory, waking me up and telling
me to come quick and to watch the news. She knew better then to wake up my
older brother who couldn't care. As she stood there in our living room in front
of our large brand new Zenith Console Color TV she held a kitchen towel and
wringed it and as she stood frozen watching the screen with a look of concern,
dread and fear I had never seen before she spoke to me in a fearful (Southern
Jewish) voice; "On dear lord what is happening."
I took my place on the floor in front and watched
the reports of an amazing day of fighting. The story was just then breaking, that
Tuesday June 6th 1967, of how the Israeli Air Force had carried out
a fantastic feat by launching a preemptive strike against the combined Arab air
forces of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan destroying hundreds of their aircraft on
the ground on their air fields. They pockmarked the landing strips with
craters.
As millions other saw on the news reports of just
how in a lighting war move Israel had entered Sinai and had decimated the
waiting Egyptian Armies by smashing and destroying hundreds of brand-new Soviet
made tanks with outdated but Israeli upgraded and modified World War II “Super”Sherman tanks and British Centurions.
Up until that eventful morning I had been a
relatively naive Jew living in Alabama in the United States. I was an American
living in peace and tranquility far from the terror and fear of immediate death
faced by my fellow Jews in Israel.
Prior to the outbreak of the conflict we had all witnessed
on the evening news of those days, presented by real respected journalists and TV
news anchormen. Men with integrity; Walter Cronkite of CBS and Chet Huntley and
David Brinkley of NBC. We watched in trepidation, the massive hate filled demonstrations
and the sections taken or cited from Arab broadcasts of the
"impending" extermination of the tiny Jewish State. The foreboding of
mass extermination that would murder the Jewish remnants of the Holocaust and
those ethnically cleansed form Arab lands hung heavily in the air.
We saw- witnessed - on the nightly news broadcasts
how U Thant and the UN capitulated and with their tail between their legs as
they readily abandoned- "withdrew" from their posts in Gaza at the
demand of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser.
We witnessed the closure of the sea lanes to
Israel in the Straits of Tiran.
We saw the intermittent deadly and highly
destructive shelling of the Kibbutzim and Moshavim along the border of the
Golan Heights.
The parades and marches to bombastic martial music
with thousands of "Goose stepping" formations of soldiers along with
their new Soviet Made tanks and anti-aircraft missiles.
And last but not least, who cannot forget the famous singing in pride by the
It truly amazes me just how the
"Dyzinformation" and "Revisionist Historians" have erased
the facts of the fear of immediate genocide that were loudly proclaimed and
broadcast on the world news nightly in those months prior to the magnificent
and astonishing Israeli military victory.
I ask how far have we been distanced from this
previous picture of innocence and admiration of the brave little David merely
because we Jews survived and won?
How little Israel, symbolized as the young
shepherd boy David, surrounded as in 1947 by powerful superior numbers in
weapons- tanks and aircraft, strategic supplies and men - the "modern day
version" of Goliath.
The world's utter astonishment and amazement of
just "HOW?" tiny Israel was able to carry out a military victory akin
to the biblical recounting of the encounter between the young David with his
smooth pebble and slingshot against the mighty heavily armored Goliath.
Or the infamous return of the responsibility of
the Temple Mound to the Wakif and the Mufti of Jerusalem by Moshe Dayan at the
urging of Rabbi Goren and other Rabbis of note who said that no Jew was allowed
to step there?
How Abba Eban spoke to the world begging to
"sit and negotiate" but to nil.
I ask; “Just how fickle are the memories of those
who aspire to hatred?"