“The Holocaust and the State of Israel: Cause and Effect?”

Both Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) and Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel Independence Day) have come and gone. When you think about it two opposites were commemorated: the tragedy of the murders of six million of our People (and others as well), and the joy of our own nation, one that could protect us from such savagery. Now I’m not getting into the politics or the philosophical questions that arise from just the words I employed, but I do want to look at one aspect of these two events.

   Did the Holocaust result in the establishment of the State of Israel?

   Certainly, the world was more sensitive to the plight of homeless Jews in Europe who fell victim to Nazi inhumanity. And I say “homeless” because we have always been obliged to the “host” countries whose relationship to Jews has been, well, as the wind blows. So, whether there was guilt associated with this “sensitivity” towards the suffering Jews, that might have been the case to a degree, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Whether there was some kind of general obligation to “make up” for what happened, that’s another story…probably the case.

   I don’t, however, believe there was cause and effect on the broader scale. Since the Balfour Declaration in the early part of the twentieth century hinted at the first opportunity for a Jewish homeland, the wheels were set in motion for one to be established (“For one to be established”? Isn’t the “one” the ancient homeland of our People? Well, everyone assumed that but there were other potential “homelands,” one in Uganda; and another somewhere in Texas, Amarillo, I believe; and yet another on an island near Buffalo, New York). 

   Furthermore, there has always been a Jewish presence in Palestine, small, yes, but not invisible. And from the end of the 19th century onward that presence grew and was responsible for the development of the land through the JNF (Jewish National Fund) for which your grandparents dropped pennies into pushkes – charity boxes - so that the land would flourish. In addition, there was a defense force and the beginning of government agencies, unofficial, of course, because it wasn’t “our” land yet. 

    When in May 1948 David Ben Gurion announced the establishment of the State of Israel after the exit of the British, it was the nascent United Nations that voted to make it official (imho, one of the few decent things that institution has ever done). There may have been a cause and effect, maybe, but whether the destruction of European Jewry resulted in the Jewish State, of that I’m not at all certain. Having said that, with all its flaws and controversies and questionable policies, it’s ours…it’s not one of our “host” countries.