Like Lambs to the Slaughter

Why, many have asked, did they just obey

just meekly accept the edicts that disentitled

them to life, liberty and happiness? Why did they

go, like lambs to the slaughter? Why not fight?

Why did they allow themselves to be annihilated?

Jews, you see, learned to be Bambis, to live in

the forest of rejection,  humiliation, scorn and

the pogroms scheduled to distract their neighbours

from their own oppression by their national leaders

prepared to believe authorities' claims it was all

the fault of grubby Jewish moneylenders, all

the banks owned by Jews, the race a cancer on

decent society. The diaspora of a once-proud

people learned avoidance through the efficacy 

of hidden identities and a recessive presence where

isolation helped and there was security in their

ghettos. Only, much to their dismay to realize

that even the trees they hid behind and the very

stones called out to their oppressors: Here is a Jew

kill  him! An unobtrusive presence, a secret pride

too fragile to sustain life. New eras always dawn.

No need for today's Jews to hide behind foreign

police while trembling in the anguish of fear. In Israel

their home and native land it is Jewish keepers of

the law that preserve their security. And those Jews

elsewhere who once shivered and shook with the

prospect of deadly violence forever offering an

olive branch, now loud and proud confront their

slanderous accusers 'Yes, I am a Jew, my mother is

a Jew, my father is a Jew, my children are Jews'.

All engaged in the critical art of self-preservation.