The French call it a "crie de coeur"; a "cry from the heart." We Jews call it a "kvetch" (rhymes with "wretch" and means "complaint"); I like ours better.
So much water goes over the dam so quickly these days; the debt-dance, the market drop, the downgrade, the bigger market drop, the catastrophic loss of American military life in Afghanistan. Nothing, however, seems to knock on my dressing room door shouting, "Mr. F: Your opinion is urgently needed!" Some "old business" is blocking my way forward. It's about what many of my fellow Jews are saying about the Oslo massacre.
I'm not talking about "J-Street" Jews, far-left Jews, Israel-hating Jews, self-hating Jews or wealthy Jews opening their homes to $71,000-a-couple fundraisers for the re-election of Barack Obama. I'm chilled by the words of "real" Jews, Jews willing to stand in the hedge and take up the gap in the fight for Jewish and Israeli survival. From the very famous to the almost famous to the obscure, it's as if some very non-Jewish thought-virus has commandeered their minds to get Oslo screamingly wrong.
No names or attributed quotes, please. I love these people and I expect to be on their side again for the rest of my life. But first, Oslo!
Their theme, crudely stated, is something like this. "Hold everything, folks. This just in! Did you know that those Norwegian children who were shot down at a 'summer camp' were being brainwashed and molded into an anti-Israel strike force planning anti-Israel boycotts and militating for the declaration of a Palestinian state? No, folks, this 'summer camp' wasn't for roasting weenies and telling ghost stories around the campfire. This summer camp was more like a 'Hitler Youth' outing!"
One extremely famous Jewish commentator even had Norway on the wrong side in World War II. One Jewish activist punctuated her comments about the Norwegian people by saying, "They just hate Jews!" (They don't!)
May I borrow my favorite line from Christianity? Namely, "Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do!"
It's true that the government of Norway is fiercely pro-Palestine and anti-Israeli. And like all governments and individuals who hold that position, Norway is factually bankrupt. They say officially that the cause of Palestinian terrorism is the Israeli "occupation." Ask them what the cause of that terrorism was before the 1967 war that led to Israel's "occupation" and the Norwegians lose their audio. Forget anything as complex as Israel never taking one inch of land that was "Palestinian" or even "Arab." All that land was an unsettled leftover of the Ottoman Empire's defeat in 1918. Norwegian officials don't want to risk the even deeper confusion that might attend an honest exploration of the facts.
For democratic, highly civilized Norway to be swine-headed over Israel is beside my point. How dare any Jew suggest that somehow Norwegians had Anders Breivik's massacre coming to them because of their anti-Israel feelings! I especially rebel at the cowardly attempt to say that without saying it. All the offending statements include assurances that, "I'm not saying Norway's anti-Israeli feelings justified the slaughter."
Oh, no? You're not! Then why do you bring it up? I don't care if the children at that summer camp were all wearing swastika armbands and learning the "Horst Wessel" song in German, that doesn't justify their murder. Neither does it justify Jewish insinuations about their "anti-Semitism" while pretending no such insinuations.
Some of the Jewish commentators actually seem to think this tragedy exposed a major anti-Jewish "cell." You should know this about Norway. Every political party has its own "summer camp" where as many youths as they can entice are invited to hear the party's platform from the party elders. The Labor Party, Norway's dominant, runs the camp at Utoya where the calamity occurred. I once spent a pleasant summer day at the Norwegian Conservative Party's "summer camp" at Elingaard.
Meanwhile, what do we do about Norway's "anti-Semitism"? (Many Jews actually ask that!) I say, pat them on their blond heads and send them condescendingly on their way. Of all the anti-Israeli governments on earth, Norway is the least menacing. They're four-and-a-half million people unlikely to do more than politic for a Palestinian state.
I say strengthen Israel, strengthen America and strengthen the ties between the two. And vote for a pro-Israeli president in 2012.
And what do we do with all the self-hating and anti-Israeli Jews? Albert Einstein took care of them once and for all, even before Israel was born. In 1939, a publication, "Who's Who in Jewish America," listed a Jewish industrialist, his boards, mergers, acquisitions and accomplishments. The guy went nuts.
"What right has that rag got to write me up?" he railed. "I may have been born Jewish but I haven't lived a Jewish day in my life, and my new wife didn't even realize I was born Jewish and she's upset …" and so on. The Jews at that time were themselves quite upset, except for Einstein, who smiled and, with that face that looked like an unmade bed, said, "You see? That's the strength of the Jewish people.
"All the cowards run away!"