A JEWISH STATE MUST REMAIN
The nations who gathered at Evian in France in July 1938 just prior to the Second World War offered the Jews of Europe little hope of sanctuary or salvation. After gathering there to discuss the Jewish refugee crisis which was growing because of Hitler’s policies, many of the 32 representatives seemed to be more absorbed by the luxuries and pleasures the holiday resort afforded than the refugee problem they had gathered to discuss. To the shame of the international community they offered little to the Jews of Europe at a time when the fires of extermination were being kindled. Had there existed by this time the Jewish State that the League of Nations had promised years earlier then millions of European Jews could have been saved. Both Canada and Australia have recently made official apologies to the Jewish people for their callousness toward desperate European Jewish refugees. New Zealand had an affirmative part in the League of Nations decision in 1922 to grant Palestine to the Jewish people as their national homeland.
Our nation also was part of the Evian discussion in 1938 and although Jewish refugees were taken in by New Zealand our quota was far too small. Everything changed with the reestablishment of Jewish statehood.
When the Jews of North Africa and the Middle East were being persecuted after the War it was the reinstated State of Israel which came to their rescue. More Jewish refugees were taken in by Israel in its formative years of existence because of Arab persecution than the displacement of Palestinian refugees as a result of Israel’s War of Independence which was forced upon Israel by the Arab nations.
In 1967 as strong Arab armies began to mobilise and converge upon Israel’s vulnerable borders with the express aim of destroying the 19 year old Jewish State, the United Nations abandoned their responsibility to step in and chastise the Arab nations for their threat to a sovereign democracy. Even France who at the time was Israel’s closest ally abandoned her at her time of need. In desperation the Israelis were forced to act with a pre-emptive strike against the Arab air forces which were threatening them. Within six days, adding to the Arab shame for their aggression against Israel, was the Arab humiliation of a resounding defeat. The rest is history. When an airliner of innocent Jews was taken hostage and ended up at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976 it was the State of Israel who came to their rescue. The Jews of Ethiopia were rescued from great peril in dramatic airlifts in operations that took place in 1984 and 1991. These airlifts would rival any of the Bible stories that have made the people of Israel famous from antiquity. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989 it was the State of Israel that offered many of the Jews of that crumbling empire a real refuge and hope. Over a million came from the former Soviet Union in just 10 years. Without the State of Israel these Jews would have been at the mercy of non-democratic regimes which in our view were cruel, ruthless and anti-Semitic.
There needs to remain an independent Jewish State that can function with or without the cooperation of other nations. The horror of all horrors—the Holocaust—just 75 years ago, as well as blatant and increasing antiSemitism everywhere, demands the continuation of Jewish statehood. The Jewish people are justified in having their own sovereign state. They have learned from centuries of experience at the hands of merciless persecutors. Now amid threats from Iran and others who have stated that their aim is to completely destroy them; when it comes to the security of their very existence
“we will defend ourselves by ourselves”. This is the lesson they have learned after millennia of Jew-hatred.