My grandfather served in the US army’s occupation of Japan after the Second World War – I was led to believe that he was too young to have been in the army during the war – but he was born in 1926 and I’ve long wondered if he didn’t maneuver somehow to avoid having to serve in actual combat. In any case, he and my grandmother embodied the kind of gung-ho American patriotism of their generation, the “greatest generation” that was also the last to tolerate lynchings and the first to love the New Deal monolithically. I was their first grandchild, and they poured it all over me, smothering me in patriotic American songs on long car rides. Shudder.
I happen to think it’s wonderful that Jews in America have more or less stopped serving in the American military, notwithstanding that others disagree. I do believe in (voluntary) military service for almost all men, but Jews don’t fight for America any more because we have our own country with our own army – a wonderful thing, even though it’s used for some pretty horrific tasks, like expelling Jews from their homes.
There is something disingenuous about my grandparents’ long “support” for Israel. They met at my grandmother’s high school graduation party in 1948, the same year that Israel was founded. What stopped them from actually doing something for Israel by putting themselves here, when they were most needed? Nothing at all, except their love for America and their indifference for Israel, despite all the money they later donated to the Federations that got blown on overhead and fancy dinners.
Their tastes and attitudes were ordinary:
At the same time, [Jewish American veterans] fought for a Jewish state. In July 1946 more than 4,000 Jewish veterans rallied in Washington to advocate for the admission of 100,000 Jewish displaced persons to Palestine.
4,000 Jews, out of a population of several million in America post-war, politely requesting that 100,000 emaciated Holocaust victims be allowed into their own country while the stench of burning flesh still gathered in clouds over Europe is hardly “fighting” for a Jewish state. It’s in fact so little as to be insulting. American Jews should take their rallies and shove them up their fat asses.
The Jewish War Veterans even promised President Truman that they would recruit a full division of Jewish volunteers for service in Palestine to help keep the peace.
Keep the peace? Seriously? Keeping the peace is the last thing Israel needed in 1948! The war started because Jews wanted to have their own country and our enemies wouldn’t tolerate it. “Keeping the peace” would mean not having a Jewish state at all. It would mean permanent Arabist rule by mustachioed British majors and colonels sneering about “sheeny bastards,” anally fucking each other and privately wishing that Hitler had only finished the job. God, peace may sound nice, but it sucks for the victims who are ready to take what’s rightfully theirs.
The Jewish community, especially, should recognize not only our Jewish veterans’ wartime service but also how they remade their world, the one they bequeathed to future generations. Their struggle to make America a more just society offers us a model worthy of emulation.
My grandparents’ generation did practically nothing to make America “a more just society,” no matter how you define justice. Complaining that you can’t get admitted to a certain country club is not fighting for justice – it’s just annoying. Starting your own country club to out-gentile the WASPs is even worse. Why do American Jews have to be this way? Is it so difficult just to be yourself and let other people be themselves?