Geraldo Rivera: The Jewish people will soldier on

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Jews are a drop in the bucket. There are only 15.8 million of us worldwide, about .02% of the global population. For context, in the United States alone, my infamous 1986 television special opening Al Capone’s Vault had an audience more than twice as large as the total number of all Jews on earth.

That is an admittedly silly way of saying the “Chosen People” weren’t chosen by very many. For context, there are 2.6 billion-with a B- Christians, 2.0 billion Muslims, 1.2 billion Hindus, and .5 billion Buddhists.

For this handful, Israel is more than just the Promised Land. It is the refuge of last resort. Our mini race has endured much over the centuries. Pogroms, genocide, Holocaust, the Six Million, there is an entire glossary of traumas beginning with the mythical expulsion from Egypt several thousand years before Jesus.

Even for Jewish people who would never think of living in Israel, there is comfort knowing that it exists. Despite its imperfections, its painful beginnings, despite even its cruelty toward Palestinians, the existence of the State of Israel is what has changed for Jews after centuries of flight and expulsion.

As the combined Arab armies in the last century, and as Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi’s are finding in this one, Israel fights like its back is to the wall, with no place to go, the end of the road. Every war for Israel is existential. Lose once, lose everything.

So tough Jews fight like there is no tomorrow, no place else they can rely on for their survival. What about America? What about the West? True, times have changed. Having America the bastion of democracy to rely on has given tremendous comfort to the Jewish people. Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty stand like modern-day Pillars of Hercules, offering comfort and security, until they didn’t.

Older Jews live with the tribal memory of the “Ship of Fools,” the S.S. St Louis, which in 1939 filled with 930 Jewish refugees fleeing the coming Nazi-era was denied entry to the United States. The forlorn vessel sailed in circles unable to find a port in the storm, until returning to Germany’s Europe and extinction.

Like the St. Louis, October 7, 2023 is an event that will live in infamy. The invasion of Israel by Hamas took the lives of 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilian peaceniks including many women and children slaughtered and raped in their communes and settlements. It was the worst single day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

Curiously, October 7, was also the day in 1944 that the inmates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp revolted against their Nazi captors. They were annihilated, and now are part of the bundle of nightmares that encourage the Jewish spirit of resistance and retaliation.

Israel’s war in Gaza has brought unspeakable suffering to Palestinian civilians. Women and children have been killed by the thousands. It has shaken our faith in the government of Israel, wrecked the nation’s reputation and unleashed a resurgence of antisemitism that has shaken American college campuses and town squares.

Chants of “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea,” calling for an end to Israel had become part of college life until tardy crackdowns last semester by civil and academic authorities made overt Jew-hatred too costly for perpetrators.

I am frustrated and outraged by Hamas’ refusal to hand over the remaining Israeli hostages, weep for the Palestinian civilians who have lost their lives in Gaza and fear we will be stained by their suffering. If only the land could be divided into two-states living side-by-side in peace.

Now war rages with Iran as Israel with tacit approval of the United States makes clear its refusal to allow Iran to have nuclear weapons. No one knows when this crisis will burn out. However bad things seem, they will get worse. As they have for the last 5785 years, the Jewish people will soldier on.