Through all the horrors that Jews have faced, including the Holocaust caused by Adolf Hitler, they have remained steadfast in their beliefs, beliefs that go back several millennia. They continue to greet even their foes with ‘Shalom Aleichem’.
A delegation from the American Jewish Committee has been visiting India for nearly a week, and are travelling around the country. Led by Jason Isaacson, a long-time office-holder of the AJC, the delegation comprises the Director of the AJC Asia-Pacific Center, Shira Loewenberg, and other high-ranking members of the Center. In a world where actions based on anti-Semitism crop up in different parts of the globe, it would have been a relief to come to India, a country where those who are anti-Semetic form a minuscule element of the population. As Shira Loewenberg puts it, “We (the Jewish community) feel at home here, and that the people like us.” They do, and for good reason. Jewish civilization has endured millennia of persecution, some with the intent of stamping out the Jewish faith from the world. Through all the horrors that Jews have faced, including the Holocaust caused by Adolf Hitler, they have remained steadfast in their beliefs, beliefs that go back several millennia. And yet, despite all the persecution and injustice that they have been subjected to, the Jewish people continue to greet even their foes with “Shalom Aleichem” (Peace be upon you). Indeed, there is a popular song by the same title, which is sung by folks across the world. Shalom (Peace) is an oft-repeated word in the lexicon of members of the Jewish community. A greeting and a sentiment that has remained the same despite so much cruel conduct against members of the Jewish community, behaviour spanning such a long time. It is a matter of shame that the campuses of some of the most pricy universities in the United States have reverberated to anti-Semitic chants and worse, anti-Semitic actions such as violence against Jews on campus. The response by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to the October 7, 2023 terror attack by Hamas on Israel has been the excuse for several such actions, but it needs to be remembered that Israel has never struck first in the many wars the State of Israel has fought since it was founded in 1948, but has only responded to an attack made on it by others.
In 1948, the former colonial power, Britain, gave the State of Israel a much smaller portion of the Mandate territory than was the case after the war began just a day after the new state was born, in which its fledgling army was able to seize control of around three-fourths of the Mandate territory. In 1967, another war was launched on Israel which it won within a week, and annexed still more land. After the 1948 war, several Arab states refused to recognize the new state, a policy that has been abandoned by many of the Arab states by now. In recent decades, some complacency had come to Israel that the state was no longer subject to attack, an illusion that was shattered by the Hamas terror strike. Why Prime Minister Netanyahu continued for so long to leave Hamas alone in Gaza despite it being controlled by a terror group is beyond comprehension, except that he would have assumed Hamas to act in a rational manner and avoid an attack on Israel which could be suicidal to the terror group. Such groups operate under their own version of rationality, and Hamas calculated that capturing several Jewish hostages made it immune from a significant IDF strike. They were mistaken, as the scale of cruelty of the October 7, 2023 attack awoke Netanyahu from the delusion that Hamas was too small to risk Israeli vengeance. More than a year later, the war with Israel begun by Hamas continues, and by now, much of the military capabilities of proxies used by Iran against Israel, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, stand severely degraded. Rather than represent a victory for the Axis of Resistance (to the existence of the State of Israel) formed by Iran, the Hamas terror attack has led to the weakening of the Axis, much to the discomfiture of Iran. The 1940s Holocaust in Germany burned into the Jewish psyche the need to fight back at any attack and not to wait in the expectation that a visceral anti-Semite could change his or her ways. Not just Israel but the Jewish people as an entirety give as good or better than they get punishment. As for the people of India, the overwhelming majority like and even admire the Jewish community, and this has been reflected in the favourable emotions created by visits of members of the Jewish community to our country. The fightback against anti-Semitism is visible not only in members of the Jewish community but by large elements of the population in countries such as India. As for the AJC, the all-important Washington bureau is headed by a Jewish citizen of the US who is of Indian descent, Nissim Reuben, who has not abandoned his roots, remaining fluent in Gujarati, the language spoken by his ancestors.