Jewish safety takes precedence over everything else

Don Krausz

I spent years in the Nazi concentration camps where most of my family were murdered. After the war I studied the Shoah and learned the lesson of the 1938 Evian Conference, where most of the prominent countries of the Western world gathered, condemned the Nazi persecution, but refused to open their doors to German-Jewish refugees.

The Jewish Diaspora has been in existence for nearly two millennia. Our contribution to human welfare is out of all proportion to our numbers. We have served as loyal citizens in European countries for more than 1 000 years. And yet, when the murderers came, hardly one country lifted a finger to save us.

Homicidal anti-Semitism predated Christianity and thrived thereafter. There is no reason to assume that it will disappear and its worldwide presence today is proof thereof, despite the lesson of Auschwitz.

The only solution is a Jewish state, ruled by a Jewish majority government and with a very strong Jewish-controlled army – a homeland, a refuge for the eternally persecuted Jew. And never mind if that is racialist and not democratic. Pikuach nefesh, the life-saving principle, takes precedence.

I lived in Israel for years and look upon the country as “our mother, drunk or sober”. She is there for us. If we are critical of her, then we must assist her, help her, not try to destroy her as the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions crowd are trying to do. To me there is nothing holy in that.

And even if these Jews believe that they represent “the best of what Judaism has to teach”, it is time for them to realise that one is judged by the company one keeps.

Lutrin suggests, quite rightly, that a mosque used as a military stronghold becomes a legitimate military target. “It ought to be destroyed, yet Jewish ethics demands more of us.”

Most admirable, especially when not within sniper range of the minaret. I am open to correction but believe that our Jewish ethic of pikuach nefesh applies here – the priority imposed on Jews of saving life.

And I don’t think that the Tanach is referring to the life of that sniper.

Killarney, Johannesburg