A Holocaust survivor who criticized “Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories”

Yehuda Elkana was an Auschwitz survivor who is in the news today because he died recently “at the age of 78.”  You can read about him on the website of The Vancouver Sun here.

This quote is from The Vancouver Sun, which printed an article that was published in The Daily Telegraph on December 29, 2012, about the death of Yehuda Elkana:

While all societies needed a collective mythology (and Elkana was critical of those in Germany who want to “close the chapter” of the Holocaust), “any philosophy of life nurtured solely or mostly by the Holocaust leads to disastrous consequences.”

In a later interview Elkana spelled out his fears for where this philosophy was leading Israel: “We are heading toward turning 100 million Arabs into a terrorist army against us: the whole Arab world! The United States wants to support rational, moderate Arabs. And rational, moderate Arabs will tolerate Israel’s occupation of Arab land less and less. So what is there to look forward to if we go on this way?”

I believe that Yehuda Elkana hit the nail on the head. We have now reached the point where 100 million Arabs are against Israel and America is in the middle of it because of our support for Israel.

I watched Mike Huckabee’s TV show last night.  He told about his recent trip to Omaha Beach where American troops landed and went on to “liberate France and to eventually save the world.” From there, Huckabee traveled to Poland to visit Auschwitz, where he was photographed at the iconic “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate into the main Auschwitz camp. Huckabee said that “what they (the American soldiers) came to fight was made clear when we went to Auschwitz.”  I wondered why Mike Huckabee would go to Auschwitz in the dead of winter.  Now I have learned that he has scheduled a trip to Israel in February this year.  Huckabee is following in the footsteps of Glenn Beck, who first went on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz before going on to Israel.

I love Mike Huckabee: to me he is the epitome of a good person.  Huckabee is quite religious, since he is an ordained Baptist minister.  As a devout Christian, Huckabee supports Israel, as do most devout Christians.  But is he right to support Israel when even a Holocaust survivor refers to “Israel’s occupation of Arab land.”

This quote is from the article about Yehuda Elkana:

Moving to Israel after the war, Elkana experienced profound unease with the way the Holocaust was being manipulated by governments of right and left to craft an atavistic Jewish national identity. He became convinced that the motives behind Israel’s uncompromising approach to the Palestinians was “a profound existential ‘angst’ fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust and the readiness to believe that the whole world is against us, and that we are the eternal victim.”

The term “atavistic Jewish national identity” might need some explanation.  What bothers the Palestinians is that most of the Jews in Israel are not the descendants of the Jews who lived in Palestine before they were expelled. Today’s Jews who are “occupying Arab land” are the Ashkenazi Jews, aka Russian Jews, aka Khazars.  The original Jews in Palestine are believed to have been the Sephartic Jews who later settled in Spain; there are not many of them in Israel today.

Yehuda Elkana was 10 years old, and living in Hungary, when he was sent to Auschwitz in 1944, along with the Hungarian Jews.  Ten years old?  Wait a minute.  How did he survive? Surely, he didn’t lie about his age and convince Dr. Mengele that he was over the age of 15.

This quote from the article explains how Yehuda beat the odds and was not gassed at Auschwitz:

In 1944 the family moved to Szeged in Hungary where, later that year, they were rounded up and transported to Auschwitz. They survived by sheer accident. As they were being lined up for the gas chambers, SS guards pulled them out of the line and sent them in a train with other Jews to clean up Allied bomb damage in Austrian cities. They made it to Israel in 1948.

So why was the family of Yehuda Elkana not sent directly to Austria, where 10 year old Yehuda was put to work cleaning up bomb damage?  They were sent first to Auschwitz because of the location of the railroad lines in Europe.  Auschwitz was the largest railroad hub in Europe, analogous to the railroad yard in North Platte, Nebraska, which is the largest railroad hub in the world. The Jews from Hungary were first sent to Auschwitz where they changed trains and then went to Austria.  Yehuda had to make up a story to explain why, as a 10 year old, he was not gassed at Auschwitz.