From: ejk@coral.JPL.NASA.gov (Elya Kapelyan)
Subject: Re: Mr. Arens, what would you have done?
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA/Caltech
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 00:52:35 GMT

In article <22061@venera.isi.edu>, XHDR arens@ISI.EDU (Yigal Arens) writes:
|> In article <1992Jul28.192217.21828@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> ejk@coral.JPL.NASA.gov (Elya Kapelyan) writes:
|> >
|> >  While reading Mr. Arens's responses on Lehi's contacts with the Nazi's,
|> > a question kept popping into my head, and since I wanted a public response,
|> > I decided to ask the question here.  So here it is:
|> >
|> >  What would you have done if you were in place of Avraham Stern?  (I
|> > believe that he was still alive during these attempted contacts.)
|> 
|> It sounds from your question like you believe that the approach taken by
|> LEHI was somehow the only reasonable one possible under the
|> circumstances.  Do you?

	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.
 
|> What confuses me is that you appear to be ignoring the fact that by far
|> the great majority of Jews in Palestine, under the leadership
|> Ben-Gurion, managed to get through WWII without seeking an alliance with
|> the Nazis and/or offering to fight on the Axis side.  As bizarre as it
|> may seem, many Jews from Palestine actually joined the British army(!).

	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.
 
|> So why ask *me* what I would have done?  Are you not happy with what the
|> mainstream Zionist movement chose to do?

	Why ask you?  Because you seem to have a neurosis when it comes to 
Israel.  Because you seem to take some perverse pleasure in showing one, 
distorted side of the issue.  Because with respect to this incident, you are
taking it completely out of its historical context.  

	So the question stands, what would you have done?

	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.  Rationally I
realize that Lehi's approach to the situation was mad, but maybe it was madness
that was necessary to be able to deal with Hitler.

|> --
|> Yigal Arens   "He seems like an average type of man.  He's not, like, smart.
|> USC/ISI        I'm not trying to bag on him or anything, but he has the same
|> arens@isi.edu  mentality I have -- and I'm in the eighth grade."     Vanessa
|>                Martinez, after VP Quayle's visit to her school-LA Times 5/21

	Elya


Newsgroups: XHDR (none)
From: ejk@coral.JPL.NASA.gov (Elya Kapelyan)