What will history show?

Reflecting on Topol's book, got me thinking about some of the great Jewish memoirists, and their contribution to our understanding of their social milieu. For example, consider Glikl of Hamelin, or Solomon Maimon: interspersed throughout their wonderful and charming memoirs are stories of beatings, persecution, rape, robbery, and repeated humiliation that they endured at the hands of the Russians, Poles, Germans, etc. Topol's story is fiction, but the attitude that he records and the pain of his Jewish characters are not at all dissimilar to the way life was there in the Soviet Union. In all these cases the reports are pretty much matter-of-fact. They are all spoken of as part of life in Europe, it was part of their every day routine to be beaten and called "kike" or "zhid" or whatever the local equivalent was. Yes, es is schver to zein a Yid.

Now, history has forgotten all of this. It is a detail. One hardly encountered in history books, and not all that interesting. The life of an Eastern European peasant, however much it is studied by trendy historians is not all that important to the way things are. When we teach history to our students or our children, that is not the stuff that is remembered. It is not remembered by the perpetrators because it is an inconvenient fact that needn't be spoken, and it is not spoken by Jews because it is humiliating and there is greater power in forgetting then living with old pain. (There is of course the cursory yearly bechol dor vador omdim alenu lehaloteinu. . ..)

I hope I am not leaning too far to the left when I express the following concern. But, it seems to me that however much history ignores these events, and however true they are, and however exaggerated or understated they might be, and however many more we do not know about it, it is not something I would like said about me. As Jews, since the days of the Macabees over 2000 years ago, there have been few reports of Jews, as Jews beating anyone else up. It is simply not something Jews do. That is not to say that we could not have used some more violence and aggression in our history. It would have served us well. But I think I would have to agree with what must have been the general fear in every town with a large Jewish population: a real Jewish reprisal would have been used as an excuse to destroy all the Jews in any given town. It would have made things much worse.

Now, if the Palestinians ever develop a literary culture, it is sure to include the same type of story that you find in the stuff I just mentioned. That is not to say that it will be true or justified. That is not to say that any Israeli ever did anything wrong (wish is not the case anyway), and that is not to say that Israelis have any choice. But it is not how I want anyone remembering Jews. When I think about how I want people to look at the first 50 or 100 years of Israel, what I want is what is reflected in the Rambowitz literature. I want to see a literature of proud and strong people. I want to see a literature of people who did what they needed to do to survive - and survived brilliantly. I want to see a literature that reflects the great accomplishments and triumphs of the Jewish state. I want the world to realize that while every race of people were evolving as larger and bigger people who had to be big and strong to survive in their barbaric little world, Jews were learning how to use tools to get by. Jews got smarter and took the task of country-building as a way to improve the lot of a people who had had enough of the rest of the world. The Rambowitz literature of the 1970s reflects the triumphs of the strong and cunning Jews who pulled off genuine Rambowitz feats in the Six Day War and in the raid on Entebee Airport.

I do not want to see a literature of people who had nothing better to do then to make the lives of Palestinians more miserable than their leaders are already doing. Their literature will never record that. Their literature (like the new French novel Memories of Palestine) will know only that it was Israelis who made their lives difficult. It will be the part of history we ignore because we will have the excuse that it was their own leaders as the leaders of the whole Arab world who caused their misery. And the excuse will be valid, but the literature will not accept it. The literature will be about the day to day life of the people, and it is the day to day life of the people that gets remembered.

I am not suggesting that there is much that can be done about this. The Palestinians will be under Israeli control until a solution is found. The Palestinians will be the pawn and sacrificial lamb in every twisted Arab political power play for as long as Arab leaders can get away with it. But, nonetheless Israel must divest itself of its Palestinian problem as soon as it can. It is not the way her early history should be remembered.