A “Kapo’s” Confession and the “Good Germans” Who Slander Pro-Palestinian Jews

The Israeli government and its rabid supporters are the disgrace to Judaism, not those they casually scorn as Self-Hating Jews and Nazis.

At least 95 percent of the people who call me a self-hating Jew undoubtedly don’t know what happened on May 27, 1942 or whose initials those are.

When I sat down to write this story earlier today, my initial plan was to write on the way that Israel’s ongoing attempted genocide of the Palestinian people – and anyone who calls it otherwise at this point is a liar, propagandist or in an extraordinarily deep state of denial – is reflected in the modus vivendi of the Mossad, Shin Bet and the country’s other foreign intelligence and internal security agencies. The secondary focus of the article was going to be about the way that’s reflective of how Israeli War Crimes are baked into the country’s DNA.

The plan changed when I quickly realized the story merited, and fundamentally required, an introduction, and that didn’t turn out to be as brief as I initially imagined either. As a result, today’s edition of Washington Babylon is entirely about why I felt the need for an introduction in the first place. I’ll write the story I intended to write today, whose thesis may sound obvious, but it’s based on a few interviews with former CIA officials who are intimately familiar with Israeli intelligence, and they shared some very interesting and revealing tales. I’ll publish Part IV of the series on the Washington’s 116 Club – Installment III with links to the earlier two ones is here – next Monday or, time allowing, which doesn’t seem likely at the moment – on Friday.

So, to begin this story, I’ll explain what was behind today’s change in direction, which was mainly prompted by my desire to reject the vile allegation that’s been hurled at me, and most Jewish supporters of Palestinians, that my anger towards Israel result from being a self-hating Jew and generally anti-Semitic. I shouldn’t even need to say that, and demonstrate it as well, but I find it necessary to as I’ve frequently been accused of that, especially on Twitter, where I’ve also been called a Nazi and a Kapo. 

In fact, much to the contrary, the reason for my anger, and why it’s especially intense, is precisely because I’m proud to be Jewish. That was passed on from my parents, who I wouldn’t describe as particularly devout, but viewed their Jewishness as an important part of their identity, and certainly in the case of my mother, the most important part. My maternal grandmother was born in Ukraine and raised in a shetl outside of Kiev, where she fled from in the early-1900s, made her way across Europe with a group of Jews from the same area, and took a ship from Belgium to America. 

A huge number of relatives of both of my parents were killed during the Holocaust – I have photographs of dozens of them taken in cities and towns across Europe from the days before that nightmare began to unfold, which I still find painful to look at – and a small number of those who survived emigrated to Palestine and became citizens of Israel after it was established in 1947. Not surprisingly, one of the primary ways my parents’ Jewishness was manifested was an intense loyalty to Israel and a correspondingly deep loathing of all things German, especially Germans. 

My parents were divorced when I was a teenager and I lived mainly with my mother until I graduated from high school. She rented an apartment from a German national, which she would only have done if desperate but continues to astonish me nevertheless. 

I vividly recall being with my mother one afternoon as we walked past our landlord out front of the building. She spat on the ground, looked him in the eye, and called him a “Daytsh Hunt.” She spoke Yiddish well and even though I only picked up a few words of the language, I knew immediately – and our landlord did too as its similar to German – I what it meant: “German dog.”

After graduating from high school, I spent about nine months in Israel and spent the first part of the trip at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, which was founded by Polish Jews and named in honor of Mordechai Anielewicz, the first commander of the famous revolt at the Warsaw Ghetto, and is home to a museum named "From Holocaust to Revival,” which in the words of a Wikipedia entry about the kibbutz, is “among the many Holocaust memorials in Israel..especially commemorates Jewish resistance against the Nazis.”

Yad Mordechai is located about two miles from Gaza and, to quote again from Wikipedia, “expanded on the land of the Palestinian village of Hiribya, which the Israelis depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.” I didn’t know that at the time, but if I had it wouldn’t have troubled me because at the time I was as deeply loyal to Israel, and as ignorant of Palestinian history, as my parents were.

My loyalty began to wane when I went to university – I’m a proud graduate of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, whose symbol is the large saltwater clam that closely resembles a large, erect penis, but I digress – and especially after the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in 1982. However, my pride in being Jewish never diminished and it’s become much greater over the years.

My parents' faithfulness to Israel never wavered, but, like them, the memory of the Holocaust marked me deeply. In 2017, I got the above tattoo to honor Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, whose initials are at the beginning and end of the date between them: May 27, 1942, the date they assassinated SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the “Butcher of Prague” and a primary intellectual author of the "Final Solution to the Jewish question."

The heroes who killed Heydrich. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

So, I take the words “Never Again” seriously, but, unlike the supporters of Israel and its grotesque Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attack all of the country’s supporters as anti-Semitic, I don’t interpret the term as only applying to Jews. Nor do I believe, as they clearly do, that the Holocaust amounts to a never ending moral blank check that Israel can cash whenever it wants to be publicly exonerated of war crimes, ethic cleansing, and, most recently of the attempted genocide of Palestinians.

Today’s Good Israelis are yesterday’s Good Germans, and the Jews living in the US and elsewhere abroad who blindly support Israel are arguably worse. Had those in the former group lived in Prague in 1942 they would have been among the rare Czechs who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers and cheered the capture of Kubiš, Gabčík, and the other members of the Czech resistance who assassinated Heydrich. Had those in the latter group been Polish Jews at the Warsaw Ghetto that same year they would have been among the rare Kapos that ratted out the leaders of the uprising at the Warsaw Ghetto.

The Good Jews who currently defend Israel’s indefendible war crimes are the ones who disgrace Judaism. Jews who support Palestinians honor it.