LESSONS UNLEARNED

  Will we ever learn? Will we always play dumb and then look astounded by the turn of events? How many more warnings must we receive and ignore before we learn history's lessons? George Santayana said it well when he warned that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Now I read an apt statement attributed to Mark Twain: "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

Any which way you put it, the point is clear. Keep making the same mistake under the repetitive stupidly ignorant or purposely ignorant standpoint but do not expect anything to change, unless it goes from bad to worse and even more worse than that. Nor does it matter in what area or field one perseveres in that behavior. Keep an increasingly incompetent president in office in Century Village and do not expect things to get better nor policies to change. Run after a dictator wannabe, pump him up, insert fear into the equation, and add hatred innate in us all and we get another Hitler, another wannabe looking to succeed a la Trump. Keep on holding to false thoughts, wrong stresses and we will produce yet another repetitive tragedy of history. Yet another bloody turn of history.

Throughout history Jews have been targets for all sorts of reasons. They had the nerve to stand aside, separate and believe in one unseen G-d while the rest of the world worshipped wooden statues who desired firstborns to be burnt in their name. They refused to die, outliving all the vast empires and conquerors of history, this tiny, poorly armed, perpetually short of funds nation stubbornly holding on to their heritage and identity.

Exiled from their homeland, there was always a Jewish population throughout the ages who remained there, while many traveled at great risk through the centuries to pay homage, to mourn, at the last remnant of the two Temples. Taken by force, or invited in to help organize a government, or settle an economy needing help, always, always, there came a turn on them. Be it the rulers who borrowed money and refused to pay back, as Edward II did, or envious people who resented their success, or the Church that ranted and raved re false accusations about Jesus, or blood libel, or needed to turn attention from their own faults or the faults of the government, of the hunger and deep poverty of the people, or release of holiday tension, such as Easter or Christmas, needing a pogrom or two, an expulsion or two, the violence took place. And it never ever stopped.

Even here in America there were covenants in housing which banned a Jew from buying a home there. There was great prejudice in hiring and employment, in acceptance to universities. Leo Frank was lynched here for a crime he did not commit. Of value to every country in which they lived, prospering despite all attempts to stifle them, finally achieving in the nineteenth century some recognition as citizens, yet not everywhere, they realized that there was only one hope, one answer. That was to leave these countries and return to their own. Desperate enough to take any offer, these failures resulted in the understanding that there was already a homeland - the land under the Turkish Empire's control, known as Palestine, a play on the word Philistines, a people which once was part of the population there, then disappeared in the veils of history.

It was a land of desolation. Traveler after traveler, writer after writer, men of religious vocation, all wrote of the nothingness there, the empty lands, the marshes and the deserts, the small and miserable populations of some Arabs and some  Jews. The Jews apparently were rebuilding, trying for a life where they were free to live without fear of bloodshed, but sadly that never ever really happened, did it? Massacres by incited Arabs by the lords of Greater Syria who resented the growing presence of Jews, who showed that the land could be repaired, that  there was hope on these sands, founding Tel Aviv on the dunes of a beach. The riots of Hebron in 1929. All the intifadas where the population was incited, rewarded for killings, for terrorism, and always the rockets, the bombs, the physical attacks of assassins, no distinction between military targets and civilians.

To this day it has continued. Give back the lands and there will be peace. Well, we did. Sinai was returned. Sharm el Sheikh was returned. Lebanon areas were returned and there was no peace. Offers were made that were refused and even when they had the land there was no peace!!!

Stop the apartheid and there will be peace. What apartheid. Visit Israel. See the Arab population walk with no fear, with interest only in stores and purchases. They are on Rehov Yaffo. They are in the pharmacies. They are doctors and nurses, head administrators in hospitals, not Arab ones either. They own stores, attend national universities. They have special aid programs for Arab women, for the youth, all to encourage growth and education. They are teachers, members of Knesset and on and on. Apartheid? Where. No building permits? Go take a tour and see the handsome palatial three story homes they erect.

Bah, humbug said Scrooge and so say I. True, there is violence, True, there is hatred. True, there is the poison of ages, the presence of Big Lies and always, forever and ever, history repeats itself. Trouble in the land - blame the Jews. Kill the Jews. Massacre that family at the Sabbath dinner table and yes, even unto the infant. Never mind truth. Never mind the fact that while there are over 27 Moslem countries this is the only Jewish one, the country that takes in refugees of even faint Jewish ties for no one else wants them. The country where the Arab population lives better than in Arab countries.

Lies and historical hatreds always abound and rebound. Not even a century has passed after the exposure of the horrors of the Holocaust, of crazed prejudice taken to the extreme, of the Western powers, the Allies, ignoring the known facts, refusing to bomb train tracks, and still- kill the Jews, blame the Jews, be it here or Israel or wherever there needs to be  a scapegoat.

The violence today is not over a house in one area, but rather over the right of Jews to have a land of their own, an historically appropriate land, one where there were numerous Kingdoms of Israel and Judea, where always, Jews lived. Where the blood of Jews fertilized the nation, where people visiting or arriving to safety, for the first time, fall upon knees to kiss the ground. It is over the intransigent attitudes of Arab countries who need this supposed Palestinian people as a valued aid in turning aside people's attention to their faults, their inequities, their violations of rights, of their war crimes, and on and on.

 No, we do not learn from history. We continue to make excuses re the murder, the persistent attacks of violence upon Jews wherever they are found, including France, America, Russia, Britain, wherever. It seems there is a new word in the lexicon of prejudice - invisible. Groups claim that others do not see them, that they are invisible to others, ignored. Well, we Jews wish that we were invisible, rather than being kept in the public's eyes, all the better to serve as scapegoats that save their nuts from their proverbial fires.

Please, ignore us, allow us to live in peace wherever we live, in Israel or countries around the world. No more throwing an old woman, a survivor, out of her window after beating her. No more attacks on schools, stores, on the streets. No more. Hear the truths of history and understand. Please, let us be invisible to the wrong eyes.

And despite it all, we will survive. Through it all, through all the historical attempts to get rid of us, to take our properties and lives, to steal our children and baptize them, to crush us beneath the feet of rulers and the duped members of their nations. Please, let us be invisible. We do not wish to compete for the crown of who is the biggest target of bias. Just leave us alone. We are invisible - and invincible - in history. History has shown the truth of that. Invisibility - a blessing surely to be prayed for. Invisibility that will allow us to settle problems without the eyes of the world turned hypocritically upon us. Invisibility. Ahhh....