Richard Mellor
I too remember reading Exodus and I particularly liked the music, in fact I think I bought the 45 with Ferrante and Teicher playing the theme song, called "This land is Mine" it was a powerful piece. And like Mearsheimer says in the video, I would have had very negative view of Arabs as well; I recall being told of the heroism and courage of the Zionists that made the desert bloom and the implication was that the Arabs, Palestinian people, were backward peasants basically, lazy, shifty characters.
Mind you, in the England of those days, anti-semitism, in the way Jews were portrayed, particularly by comedians, was very much alive. So my initial views of Jews wasn't much better and Catholic school didn't help. But while bumming around Europe in my late teens I met an Americans Jewish guy and through that many others, including an American woman I eventually married. It is how I came to the US. I am still in contact with him to this day.
It's funny, that had they not walked on to that beach (I think it was my bedroom at the time) along the French Riviera, I would likely never have come to the US. But meeting them, changed my outlook and views in the world as the experience shattered the stereotypes of Jews that were prominent at the time. Later, I got in to Russian history and was quite fascinated by the role Russian and Eastern European Jews played in the revolutionary struggles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries against feudalism, capital;aism and for a socialist world.
Over time I have also become familiar with US labor history and the role Jews have played in the workers' movement here in the US is equally as impressive. This history has been besmirched by the Zionist movement and the ongoing treatment of the indigenous people of Palestine by the Zionist regime culminating in the present genocide and destruction of Gaza.
I once met some Israeli's here on a trail and when I mentioned to them the Jewish Labor Bund and the role it played in Europe, they had never heard of it. One of them told me that they are not taught of the impressive role of European Jewry in all forms of life and, if anything, the image that comes to mind is that of the weak jew, passive, unable to defend themselves against the European attempts to annihilate them. The Israelis, the Zionists, they were the fighters, the proud Jews who can't be pushed around. This view of the European Jews is false as there were massive efforts to fightback against an overwhelmingly powerful adversary. A Jewish friend of mine from a German background once reminded me that the Nazi's weren't killing a foreign interloper, "imagine the horror Richard..." he told me, "we were being killed by our own people." German's killing Germans.
I think that Israel and zionism is the greatest threat to Jews, not Islam. And we need to remember that it was Christian Europe not the Arab world, that tried to wipe out jewish life and culture, Christian Europe ----------from the forced conversions and the suicides in Cliffords Tower in York England in the late 12th century where the entire Jewish population of York was eliminated, to the Nazi death camps-------has a poor record when it comes to Jewish safety.
My recollection of Andre Schwarz's book The Last of the Just, which begins with an account of the massacre in York over 1000 years ago, ends as jews are being marched in to the gas chamber at Treblinka as a man tells an accompanying Child to "breath deep". I lost that book in my travels so I am operating from memory, but that ending stayed with me all these years. While I condemn Zionism, which is not Judaism, it is a political movement, and what Israel is doing, I think it is important not to dismiss the fear that is real among older Jews in particular, that they can be victims once again. The chant "Jews will not replace us" which we have heard on more than one occasion here in the US and the rise of Christian Nationalism and the Evangelical movement which is by its very nature anti-semitic, is reason for concern.
The Jews of Europe fought to change a society that was not welcoming to them. But they fought to change the country in which they lived. They fought for socialism nationally and internationally. This is the only solution that will end antisemitism and all forms of racism.
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