From: ejk@coral.JPL.NASA.gov (Elya Kapelyan)
Subject: Re: Mr. Arens, what would you have done?
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA/Caltech
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 20:55:12 GMT

In article <1992Jul30.040140.9463@midway.uchicago.edu>, rivk@quads.uchicago.edu (nora gayle rivkis) writes:
|> In article <1992Jul29.005235.2778@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> ejk@coral.JPL.NASA.gov (Elya Kapelyan) writes:
|> >
|> >	To be absolutely honest, I don't know.  Lehi's approach seems to have
|> >been based on the idea that if the Jews of Europe were to be saved, it would
|> >have to be done _during_ the war, and not after.  Lehi's approach was mad, 
|> >but maybe it had to be.  The fact remains that "mainstream" Zionists did 
|> >almost nothing to save the Jews of Europe.
|> 
|> Unless you consider fighting the Nazis directly to be "nothing". It is
|> at very least a reasonable position to take that, when you are dealing
|> with someone who is threatening to take over the world and implement 
|> their death-machine throughout all of it without possibility of escape,
|> and who is coming far too close to being able to do it for anyone's
|> comfort, the first priority is to see to it that they are prevented
|> at all costs. Negotiating with the Nazis for the lives of some Jews
|> would have, IMO, even if successgful only have saved them for a few
|> years unless you could also defeat their war effort. Otherwise, they'd
|> simply have picked up the ones they'd released later, when there was
|> nobody to stop them. I think offering them help of any kind, even in
|> exchange for Jewish lives, was a very bad idea.
|> 

	Nora, what you say is correct, however you are working from hindsight.
My objection to Arens's postings was precisely that--it's easy to sit now and
say that Lehi was wrong, but what about back then?  Next, you write that it
is wrong to have helped Hitler by paying him to get Jews out.  However, that
was the policy of the Jewish Agency in the mid-1930's (sorry, but I can't 
remember the exact dates).  So were they wrong?  Since then, Israel has paid
(essentially) ransom to the likes Ceausesku (sp?) in Romania, and Mengistu
in Ethiopia.  Neither one was a pleasant character.  Are you willing to 
condemn Israeli actions?  Furthermore, at one time Herzl conducted negociations
with Pobedonostev whose "solution" to Russia's "Jewish problem" was "One third
will emigrate, one third will convert, and one third will croak [like animals]".
Was he wrong?  I do realize that we are talking about different magnitudes of
evil, but the principle is basically the same.

|> >	I am not ignorant of the fact that Ben-Gurion and the majority of the
|> >Yishuv (including the Irgun) sided with the Allies.  And I am well aware of 
|> >the existance of the Jewish Brigades.  However, the mainstream Zionists also
|> >seemed to believe that there would be Jews left after the war, who could then
|> >be rescued, and did not realize the full enormity of the danger facing the
|> >European Jewry.
|> 
|> Or they recognized the danger to the Jews of the entire world if the
|> Nazis were allowed to proceed. Elya, you phrase the above as though
|> the proper course of action would have been to side with the Nazis in
|> the war, if they would agree to let Jews go in exchange. Do you really
|> think they'd have kept that promise when they had total control?

	Nora, I don't know what the proper course of action was, and I don't
envy the men who had to make those choices.  However, I do know that to 
demonize them by nearly equating them to Nazis IS wrong.  In addition, judging
from the materials that I have read, the mainstream Zionists did _not_
realize the enormity of the danger facing European Jewry.  In that, they were
no different than the majority of European Jews themselves, but that does not
make it any less erroneous.  
 
|> >	As to the question of whether I am happy with the actions of the
|> >mainstream Zionists, it is a hard question for me to answer.  I lost over 100
|> >members of my family during the Holocaust, so somehow I can't help but wonder
|> >what if?  The position of the majority of the Yishuv doomed six million Jews,
|> >so I don't know if anyone can be "happy" with that decision.  
|> 
|> Wait a second. The position of the Yishuv was what doomed the Jews of
|> Europe? This is roughly equivalent to saying that someone who looked
|> nastily at the Boston Strangler one day was responsible for dooming
|> his victims. The Holocaust was the responsibility of those who caused
|> it, Elya; not those who fought it but with tactics that perhaps differed
|> from yours. Do you really think the fate of all six million was entirely
|> dependent on the Yishuv's policy?
|> 
|> >	Elya
|> 
	Let me rephrase my comment.  I did _not_ mean to imply that it was the
Yishuv's attitude that caused the death of the six million Jews.  I still 
wonder what the Yishuv's response would have been had they been fully 
cognizant of the danger facing European Jews, because somehow I think it would
have been different.

	But, to return to the original question, which was "aren't you happy
with the actions of the mainstream Zionists".  Can you say that you are "happy"
with those actions?  (There is a difference between accepting facts and 
being "happy" with them.)

	Elya
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