Isn’t it ironic?
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By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
For centuries, Jews have been blamed for the death of a fellow Jew, Jesus Christ. There are even people – and I have met some of them – who quietly look at the Nazi Holocaust and justify it based on their misguided view of what I had in my first sentence.
A couple of months ago, an often respondent to this column wrote to me privately with the following comment and question: “So the United States of America was founded on the teachings and life of a foreign-born, brown-skinned Jewish guy who never spoke a word of English, fed and healed the poor for free, publicly defended a woman from being shamed and killed, and chose not to conform to either religious or political nonsense. Cool. When are we going start that?”
The key point in my response was this: “No one can do this on their own, not with all the laws, lawyers and good intentions in the world. The Pharisees tried that, and it didn't work. We all must bend our knee to the Creator, there is no other way.”
And now comes forth a Jew, one Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, who stands for the face of good in a storm of evil. Is President Zelenskyy perfect? No, none of us are. There have even been reports of atrocities committed by Ukraine. It will take years to sort this out.
Yet, the overwhelming evidence is this. Ukraine had thrown out their evil leaders and elected a comedian, Zelenskyy, to right the ship of state (that has the credulity of a poor carpenter’s son from the village of Nazareth becoming savior of the world).
In the big picture, after this, Ukraine, attempting to live peacefully among its neighbors, was attacked by a bully. A bully who had already carved off pieces of Ukraine as early as 2014, evil deeds which Ukraine had left unanswered to keep the peace.
This is as if Canada had decided to annex the state of Washington, and we had let them take it without firing a shot.
So, this man, Zelenskyy, a man whose great uncles were killed in Hitler’s concentration camps, finally said enough is enough. When we meekly offered to extract him from Ukraine he famously said, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.”
Our mistake can be forgiven, for we have often extracted our puppets (the Shah of Iran comes to mind), when things get too warm for them at home. But Zelenskyy is no puppet of ours or anyone else, he is a Jew standing for peace with his neighbors. A Jew who “deserves” to be angry with the world yet is not.
Juxtapositioning Putin with Hitler and Biden with Chamberlain, I see great irony in those who would appease rather than stand for what is right. Hitler was an invader, and so is Putin. It took the likes of Churchill and Zelenskyy to teach us, once again, when to say enough is enough.
Some may be inclined to suggest this scene is like the U.S. Civil War, where the South chose to break off and the North chose to invade. The South often expressed confusion that the North didn’t leave them alone but chose to invade. There has been much hand-wringing over this old conundrum and President Lincoln publicly used the excuse that preserving the Union was the paramount objective. He even went so far as to soliloquize that slavery was secondary, union preservation was paramount. But his record clearly showed that he and his family hated slavery from an early age.
Lincoln was clever, using a way to rally the Northerners who might have been in favor of slavery to join the fight. But we all know the real fight was about ending slavery.
Zelenskyy’s battle is clearer: A people attempting to live their own lives in their own country. As a world, we have made some half-hearted attempts to aid Zelenskyy, but we have not joined the fight of good over evil.
We just don’t want to be bothered. And that is ironic, too. Next week, we’ll talk about how we might be forced to join the fight via projectiles coming over the horizon.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He may be reached at jthompson@taii.com.
HCP columnist
For centuries, Jews have been blamed for the death of a fellow Jew, Jesus Christ. There are even people – and I have met some of them – who quietly look at the Nazi Holocaust and justify it based on their misguided view of what I had in my first sentence.
A couple of months ago, an often respondent to this column wrote to me privately with the following comment and question: “So the United States of America was founded on the teachings and life of a foreign-born, brown-skinned Jewish guy who never spoke a word of English, fed and healed the poor for free, publicly defended a woman from being shamed and killed, and chose not to conform to either religious or political nonsense. Cool. When are we going start that?”
The key point in my response was this: “No one can do this on their own, not with all the laws, lawyers and good intentions in the world. The Pharisees tried that, and it didn't work. We all must bend our knee to the Creator, there is no other way.”
And now comes forth a Jew, one Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, who stands for the face of good in a storm of evil. Is President Zelenskyy perfect? No, none of us are. There have even been reports of atrocities committed by Ukraine. It will take years to sort this out.
Yet, the overwhelming evidence is this. Ukraine had thrown out their evil leaders and elected a comedian, Zelenskyy, to right the ship of state (that has the credulity of a poor carpenter’s son from the village of Nazareth becoming savior of the world).
In the big picture, after this, Ukraine, attempting to live peacefully among its neighbors, was attacked by a bully. A bully who had already carved off pieces of Ukraine as early as 2014, evil deeds which Ukraine had left unanswered to keep the peace.
This is as if Canada had decided to annex the state of Washington, and we had let them take it without firing a shot.
So, this man, Zelenskyy, a man whose great uncles were killed in Hitler’s concentration camps, finally said enough is enough. When we meekly offered to extract him from Ukraine he famously said, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.”
Our mistake can be forgiven, for we have often extracted our puppets (the Shah of Iran comes to mind), when things get too warm for them at home. But Zelenskyy is no puppet of ours or anyone else, he is a Jew standing for peace with his neighbors. A Jew who “deserves” to be angry with the world yet is not.
Juxtapositioning Putin with Hitler and Biden with Chamberlain, I see great irony in those who would appease rather than stand for what is right. Hitler was an invader, and so is Putin. It took the likes of Churchill and Zelenskyy to teach us, once again, when to say enough is enough.
Some may be inclined to suggest this scene is like the U.S. Civil War, where the South chose to break off and the North chose to invade. The South often expressed confusion that the North didn’t leave them alone but chose to invade. There has been much hand-wringing over this old conundrum and President Lincoln publicly used the excuse that preserving the Union was the paramount objective. He even went so far as to soliloquize that slavery was secondary, union preservation was paramount. But his record clearly showed that he and his family hated slavery from an early age.
Lincoln was clever, using a way to rally the Northerners who might have been in favor of slavery to join the fight. But we all know the real fight was about ending slavery.
Zelenskyy’s battle is clearer: A people attempting to live their own lives in their own country. As a world, we have made some half-hearted attempts to aid Zelenskyy, but we have not joined the fight of good over evil.
We just don’t want to be bothered. And that is ironic, too. Next week, we’ll talk about how we might be forced to join the fight via projectiles coming over the horizon.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He may be reached at jthompson@taii.com.