Hamas/Gaza War Musings #68: Trump's Deals, Deja Vu 1960s "Give Peace a Chance"

 

I'm going to be very blunt. US President Donald Trump's "deals" with perverse, vicious, violent countries and especially terrorists remind me of the totally unrealistic, wacky 1960's slogan and Lennon-Ono song/philosophy Give Peace A Chance. 

I thought it was stupid when all the rage in the time of the "hippies," and life in the past close to six decades has only reinforced my doubts. 

Trump, Bibi Netanyahu and I are all about the same age. We came to age in the 1960s. I rejected the philosophic fads of the time adopting a Torah Observant life and Zionism. None of the popular philosophies attracted me. It didn't bother me that my fellow students in Great Neck North thought I was really strange. I thought they were. I'm not a follower, but most people are-- including the popular ones like Trump and Bibi... obviously. That's how it seems to me.

This post is short. I'm not wasting words. Vicious terrorist enemies must be defeated, destroyed. They won't change if you're nice to them; they'll just think you're a sucker.

What do you think, really think? Do you think that Trump's deals can bring peace?

Where Were You? Liberation of Jerusalem, Kotel, Temple Mount 1967

I'll never forget spring 1967. The terrible stress and worry which predated the miraculous Six Days War. culminated in Israel's liberation of Jerusalem's Old City, including the Temple Mount and Kotel, Western Wall.

During those tumultuous weeks I was simultaneously busy with all of the things that American high school students did in their last weeks of school, being that I was about to graduate and finally leave Great Neck. As one of the very few Jewish student activists, busy with NCSY (National Conference of Synagogue Youth,) SSSJ (Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry,) Betar and all the pro-Israel activities I could find, my priorities were very clear to me.

It was hard to be "two places at once," listening to all of the news updates and attending lame duck classes, which no longer had any real purpose. The school administration made it pretty clear that they could take revenge and withhold our diplomas if we had dared to skip classes or even the "Senior Class Beach Day."  At Jones Beach, I went from student to student giving them the opportunity to donate money to Israel via the NCSY Torah Fund. And in class, my friend and I took turns sitting on a gigantic transistor radio which was tuned to a news station, so we could hear the latest from Israel.

But the television newscast I remember best found me babysitting, just across the street from my house. That was when I saw and heard the reports of the IDF liberating the Old City and the Kotel. I can't find it on youtube with the loud crying of the soldiers, which I remember so clearly to this day. As they cried, so did I.

Do you have any memories of that historic and miraculous time? If so, what are they?

Six Days War, Lots of Memories But No Pictures

This is how I looked when in high school. I'd wear sweatshirts from NCSY or Seminars decorated with SSSJ buttons. I was the true non-conformist. No green bookbags for me!

In my last couple of years there, in Great Neck North, I became a big Jewish activist. It began when I got involved in the synagogue's NCSY chapter, which led me to SSSJ-Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, TLS-Yeshiva University Seminars and then to the Betar Zionist Youth Movement. To put it very mildly, if I didn't fit into Great Neck society before, (we only moved there in 1962 when I was thirteen 13,) the the new Zionist and Orthodox Jew was definitely an oddball and hadn't a chance in hell to ever fit in.

If someone was writing a screenplay or coming of age novel, they'd love the timing of it all, since I graduated in 1967, which for a very involved Jew and Zionist as I had become, was the perfect time to have a major crisis or change.

As high school was finishing, most of my classmates were busy with prom plans, graduation parties etc. I was just counting the days to be out of that place.

When the threats against Israel began in May, we began fundraising. One Sunday, the kids in my NCSY chapter made a "workday," and people paid us to do all sorts of chores. The payment went to NCSY's Torah Fund to be transferred to some project in Israel.

I have memories of standing outside of some Jewish event in Manhattan, holding two corners of an Israeli Flag, while someone else had the other two, and passersby put money on the flag. I think I did that with my Betar friends. I ended up joining Betar at the beginning of my senior year in high school, when Israeli Folk Dancing just wasn't enough for my budding Jewish activist and Zionist identity. 

There was also a giant meeting in Great Neck for the Jewish Community, which had the participation of all four rabbis, Rabbi Wolf from the Orthodox Great Neck Synagogue, the Conservative rabbi from Temple Israel, and the two Reform from Temples Beth El and Emanuel. I was an usher.

During the war, our class had its Senior Class Beach Day at Jones Beach, which I was required to attend. Attendance was very strict in those days. I walked around collecting money for Israel from my classmates, the Jewish ones. One, who was dating a non-Jew at the time, got into a big fight with his girlfriend when he donated. Some told me that their parents had "donated tanks" etc. Great Neck had some very wealthy people. The nickels and dimes I managed to  collect were nothing compared to the real fundraisers.

And finally, where was I when I saw the broadcast of the IDF paratroopers crying at the Kotel, Western Wall at that first moving prayer? I was across the street from my house babysitting. I'm glad the kids were all asleep, because as I heard the soldiers crying, I cried, too.

Just over three years later, I was married and we made aliyah. I just can't imagine living anyplace else but in Israel!

Here I am getting the National Standards Award from NCSY at the 1967 National Convention, just a few weeks after the Israeli Victory in the Six Days War! My dress was bright orange.

Six Days in June, 1967

Here's my article which appears in the latest Voices Magazine, April, 2007.

Six Days in June, 1967

I guess this will reveal to you how old I am. That's the price of "fame," no privacy, no secrets.

I was a senior in high school, and Great Neck North was my alma mata. For those of us who remember the time, we remember well that from May, 1967, there was a terrible fear that Israel would be destroyed.

Israel and World Jewry had put its faith in the United Nations to protect Israel, and when Egypt's Nasser told the UN forces patrolling the Suez Canal area to leave, they just hightailed and left. All that was left for us was to pray. I'm sure that Great Neck Jewish community wasn't alone in having massive meetings to which "everyone," Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and unaffiliated attended. In Great Neck all of the rabbis sat together on the podium; I was one of the ushers.

I was relatively new to Zionism, having been introduced to it by another of the Great Neck Jewish "activist" kids maybe a year before. Zionism and Aliyah were not on the NCSY curriculum in those days. Due to his influence, I had joined Betar where I learned pure Zionism without the "socialist-kibbutz" adjectives. Previously, I had thought of Israel as a place one leaves, since I knew Israelis who lived in New York but had never heard of a New Yorker moving to Israel. At the same time I was a SSSJ activist, with the emphasis on Russian Jews leaving the USSR, but nobody seemed to ever reveal for where.

Great Neck is the kind of place, at least in the mid 1960's, which thinks and acts through its pocket, bank account and the like. Yes, that means that two of my strongest memories were of fund-raising during those stressful weeks.

The Great Neck Synagogue, which at the time was the only Orthodox Synagogue, sponsored a "clean-up" campaign. I don't remember the snappy slogan, but we, the members of the "Teen Club," the Great Neck Chapter of NCSY, offered to send kids to clean anything and everything for a donation which would be sent to Israel. I spent most of that day coordinating things, and if I'm not mistaken most people told the kids to wash their cars. One home I did go to was one of those enormous, stately mansions in Kensington, where we were asked to clean out the not-recently-used child-sized "dollhouse." People were very generous.

My other fund-raising venture was on Senior Class Beach Day. In those days one never missed school, on threat of dire punishments, and even something as ridiculous and frivolous as Senior Class Beach Day had to be attended. As a "newly religious," I did know that Jones Beach and a bathing suit weren't very proper, so I armed myself with a "pushka" and asked the hundreds fellow Jews in my class for donations.

Some kids politely put their ice cream money, or change after getting ice cream, into the "pushka," but others told me how their fathers had "just donated three ambulances to Israel, so I don't have any money for you!" Another one, a Jewish guy going out with a shiksa from the class, quickly emptied his pockets of change into the "pushka" and then "got it" from his girlfriend: "Why are you giving money to them?!"

During the war, we wanted to know what was going on, so my good friend (to this day) brought a transistor radio to school. Today, in the days of almost "microscopic" ipods and the like, it's probably hard for many to imagine, but a transistor radio was big, very big, like a large dictionary and just as comfortable if you're sitting on it. Yes, that's what we did to hide it from the teacher.

During most classes we wouldn't dare, but there was a substitute in "Accounting for Seniors." As we both recall, we were the only females in the class, both of us being daughters of CPA's… but that's another story. The "sub" couldn't control the class at all, and none of us had the patience to even attempt to be nice to her. She knew that my friend had brought in the radio and heard it, but she couldn't find it. I was sitting on it while it broadcast the news to the class. That was probably the only "funny thing" that happened to me during the war.

Did I have an inkling that I'd be living in some of the Biblical Land liberated in the Six Days War? Honestly, no. The concept of Aliyah was still "jelling" in my mind, and I still wasn't very familiar with Eretz Yisrael beyond the abstract. If I had been asked about Shiloh, I'd have been stumped. But Shiloh has been my home for almost twenty-six years already, and I have no plans on moving.