A History Of The Jews III, Johnson - B

      This is a continuation of a book previously partially posted on September 23rd and October 5th.
      At the beginning of WWI, Zionism had many adherents in the British government, which led to the Balfour Declaration’s statement: “His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Almost immediately, there was conflict between the Jews and Arabs. By the end of the 1930s, there were approximately 500,000 vastly outnumbered Jews in Palestine.

      Germany was the best-educated, most sophisticated country in Europe until the Versailles Treaty inflicted its victor’s torment on the nation. Among many reactions to the pain was the equating of Bolshevism with Judaism, leading to a rise in anti-Semitism. That anti-Semitism was fueled by the vitriolic hatred of Adolf Hitler, which led to the decimation of Europe’s Jews. “By the opening of the war in September 1939, many of the eventual horrors had already been foreshadowed, and the system to carry them out was already in embryonic existence.” The ensuing Holocaust murdered six million Jews from every country in Europe, but primarily those of eastern and central Europe. There was little sympathy for the 250,000 displaced survivors of the Shoah. “The overwhelming lesson the Jews learned from the Holocaust was the imperative need to procure for themselves a permanent refuge.”

      In 1939, Britain repudiated the Balfour Declaration. At war’s end, the Jews began fighting the British in Palestine, leading to their eventual withdrawal and the creation of Israel in 1948. The Israelis defeated an Arab attack that tried to crush the new country. The UN estimates that 650,000 Arabs fled. In the ensuing decades, the 500,000 Jews living in Arab countries left for Israel. By the end of the Six Days War in 1967, Israel had assured its security and survival. Israel again defeated the Arabs in 1973 and made peace with Egypt a few years later. The country had 3 million Jewish citizens by the time of the Camp David Accords.

      Perhaps equal in importance to the establishment of Israel was the astounding success of Jews in America, where their number reached almost 6 million at the end of the 1970s. “This aristocracy of success became as ubiquitous and pervasive in its cultural influence as the earlier elite, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.”

       The Book of Joshua says: “Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” “The Jews believed they were such a special people with such unanimity and passion, and over a long span, that they became one. They did indeed have a role because they wrote it themselves. Therein lies perhaps the key to their story.” It goes without saying that this is an extraordinary and enlightening history. The reason I’ve struggled is that often a paragraph will encompass the point being made but divert itself back or forward a thousand years, or dally in theological musings, making it just a bit difficult to follow.