On a visit Tuesday to the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Acre, where Palestinian rioters had torched Jewish property the previous day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the incidents reminded him of “sights from our people’s past, and we cannot accept that.”
I understand him. When I see TV clips of Gaza going up in flames from Israeli bombardment – foreign news clips, to be clear; Israeli TV is entirely focused on Jewish suffering – I am also reminded of sights from the Jewish past.
I see the burning buildings and wailing children of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish revolt of April-May 1943 – the savage, sadistic German response to a futile rebellion by desperate people who had no future and were prepared to sacrifice their lives to preserve whatever scraps remained of their own dignity.