by Sandra Kessler
In 2017, the United Nations first declared an International Day of Remembrance for Victims and Survivors of Terrorism. This year, the day landed on August 21st, 2024. As I combed through the UN’s gallery of victims and survivors who have been chosen to represent this unfortunate group, one group’s representation was noticeably absent: Jews and Israelis who have suffered and survived attempts to wipe us off the face of the earth for more than 2,000 years.
Jews and Israel stand out as “Inconvenient Victims”. We are not the only ones in today’s world, but we lead the pack.
Not that we Jews should want to be thought of as “victims” in a zeitgeist in which victimhood is valorized above all else. Yes, we have been persecuted, murdered, pogromed, set on fire, gassed to death, sent up in smoke, and raped, hacked, and tortured through the ages. But much more important is that we keep surviving and thriving! We rend our garments, sit shiva, and then get up to get on with the business of living on our terms.
We shouldn’t forget our past suffering, but we must remember our past triumphs even more. The fact is that we have outlasted every dictator and empire that ever tried to destroy us. Most significantly, even as they tried to destroy us, we built, created, and moved civilization and ourselves forward.
What we don’t, certainly shouldn’t, do is to use our past suffering as our entry ticket into an upside-down worldview that pits “oppressor against oppressed.” To paraphrase Menachem Begin: We are no longer Jews on trembling knees! We have 3,000 years of civilization to our credit to be proud of despite what others say we are.
The West is currently experiencing a civilizational crisis. We are living in a “Grievance Culture” that tries to punish those who value success, strength, and personal responsibility. This Grievance Culture prefers dividing people into ever-smaller slivers of identity to blame everyone else for their victimization while tearing down our institutions instead of building something productive and lasting.
It is downright laughable that the United Nations has created an International Day of Remembrance for Victims and Survivors of Terrorism when, In their gallery of representative victims, there is not a single Jew or Israeli. Not any Jew was murdered by terrorists in Buenos Aires, Paris, or New Delhi. Or a single Israeli who has fallen to monstrous, murderous, periodic Islamic terrorism for a century. No mention of the Israeli victims of the numerous Intifadas since the Oslo Accords or even, most egregiously, the Hamas Pogrom that murdered, maimed, raped, and kidnapped 1200 Israelis on October 7th. Of course, these examples barely skim the surface of Jewish and Israeli victims of terrorism, even if limited to the 20th and 21st centuries.
Israel has its own Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron, which we observed in May, one day before Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. Israel remembers and honors its victims of terrorism as well as its soldiers fallen in the line of duty defending our Jewish Homeland before we can celebrate the nation’s independence. The connection between sacrifice and independence cannot be overstated. Without the willingness to sacrifice, civilization cannot exist.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky knew this instinctively when it came to his fellow Jews. Perpetual victimhood only leads to the hope that some savior will come by to stop the next killing spree. He saw Jews caught in the horror of the 1903 Kishinev Pogrom as passive sufferers who cleaned up afterward and hoped the next wave of hatred would be vented on someone else.
What he saw when he went to Kishinev in the aftermath of the pogrom solidified his determination that Jews need to return to our Eternal Homeland. He also understood that getting there and staying there would require Jews to learn self-defense, handling of arms, and to create an “Iron Wall” to let our enemies know it would be futile to attempt to destroy us. We are not going anywhere. We will never think of ourselves as victims ever again.
So, to the United Nations and its elevation of perpetual victimhood, we should turn to the wisdom of Golda Meir: If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the wrong image. Jews are not only inconvenient victims. We should refuse to be seen as victims at all.
Sandra Kessler is a member of Herut North America. Herut is an international movement for Zionist pride and education dedicated to the ideals of pre-World War II Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky. More about Herut can be found at www.HerutNA.org. Please click on this link and join Sandra (and The Lid) at this great organization