Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken, one of the leading figures of the Israeli Left, vigorously opposed President Isaac Herzog visiting Hebron for a candle-lighting ceremony on the first night of Hanukkah. To make his reservations about Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria clear, Schocken said this week that the parents of Shalhevet Pass, a 10-month-old baby who was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood of Hebron in 2001, were the ones responsible for their baby's death.
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"Shalhevet Pass was killed because of the irresponsibility of her parents, who thought it was possible to raise children in a combat environment, and the Welfare Ministry, which in a normal country would have removed children from war zones," he wrote.
So the victims were to blame, according to the Left, proving its deep hatred for the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria in general and Hebron in particular.
I took an imaginary stroll through "war zones," and there I met Amos Schocken's grandfather, Shlomo Salman Schocken. Back in those far-off days, when Salman Schocken was in the Land of Israel, the entire country was one big war zone. Schocken's conclusion was to leave the Land of Israel and move to New York. Like his grandson, the grandfather thought that the most important thing to do was to move away from war zones.
Those were the days of World War II. On one side, there were Lebanon and Syria, which were under the rule of France's Vichy regime, which was pro-Nazi, meaning that the German air force could use its bases in Syria to refuel and bomb British targets in Iraq. On the other side, a much bigger threat was the German army under Erwin Rommel, who invaded North Africa and quickly made his way toward the Suez Canal. The Germans reached Al-Alamein, some 100 km. (62 miles) from Alexandria, and it was clear that they would not stop at the canal that connected Asia to Europe, but would continue north, seizing control of all the sources of oil in the Middle East.
The Germans were so certain of their impending victory that SS officers in Rome were poring over maps of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel and dividing Tel Aviv, Rishon Lezion, and Haifa into small neighborhoods and areas so they could be quickly and easily "purified" of Jews. The fear that the British lines of defense would fall led to existential fear, and plans to build fortifications on the Carmel ahead of a suicidal battle got underway. The Carmel was supposed to serve as the Jews' last stand and offer them a few days' respite.
Shlomo Salman Schocken, who at the time was head of the steering committee of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, left for New York, leaving the university broken as its leadership fled the war zone. The senior administrator Schocken left behind, David Werner Senator, sent Schocken a telegram containing an urgent call: "General fear. Your absence continues. Losses … Serious financial problems. Recommend strongly that you return quickly."
Schocken declined. New York was the better option. At the start of 1942, Schocken notified the university in a telegram that "I cannot leave America at this difficult time." Schocken's biographer, Anthony David, tells us that even the professors who remained and admired him – Gershom Scholem and Shmuel Hugo Bergmann, Akiva Ernst Simon and Martin Buber – burst out laughing. They were particularly amused by the indirect way in which Salman informed them that he did not intend to return. Most of them saw the telegram as fear wrapped up and sold as vision.
According to Amos Schocken's reasoning, as rockets rained down on the Tel Aviv area – all its residents should have left their homes and moved away from the war zone. When Katyushas fell on northern Israel, people there should have left, and when rockets hit Ashkelon, the people should have fled. My recommendation to Schocken is that he visit Ashkelon and look at the 40,000 new housing units being built, and realize that New York is not our option.
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