I wrote these words many years ago — to be precise, right after the U.N. Security Council Debate on May 24th, 1967 about 45 years ago and right before the outbreak of the Six-Day War two weeks later; but they seemed appropriate to reproduce here because in the writer''s view almost nothing has changed in the interim and the same words apply, perhaps even more so — today.
So, if the reader will allow me this perhaps rather childish indulgence, I shall reproduce them here because, as ever, we seem still to be in the hands and at the whim of the U.N. Security Council and its affiliate The General Assembly:
Words Written after the U.N. Security Council Debate
May 24th, 1967
And where shall we go? ‘To America,’ you say,
‘To anywhere — we don’t care where.’
But we are done fleeing, we are done running away.
Because we were stubborn and would not give in — but
we shall not give in —
Because we would not be absorbed like all the rest, you
chased us all over the world.
You, you people began it; and now once again,
We are in your hands again — our fate at your disposal —
We the outraged people, we the people who have refused
to die.
But it has been at your disposal before — but we shall
not give in —
You in the form of the Roman Empire exiled us, sent us
packing, expelled us from our land,
Ploughed under our religious shrines, made of Jerusalem
a waste place.
And, because we were stubborn, you chased us,
Because we would not give in — but we shall not give in —
You tormented and tortured us and would not allow us to
live as part of your world.
And then you fed us into the gas chambers and decimated
our race —
But there were still some of us left who would not give in;
And then, when we wanted to go back to our own land,
You said, ‘No. You cannot go back. There is someone else
living there now’.
But where shall we go — where would you have us go?
And so we said, ‘We shall go back. There is room for us
there.’
But you made it difficult for us and so we fought, coming out
of the concentration camps;
And then you left us to our own devices — in the lurch, so to
speak,
To deal with the problems which you had created, though
you had promised us
And said you would stand by us — and so we had to fight
again.
And now, once again, we are in your hands again —
Once more, we the outraged people, we the ever-recurrent
refugees,
We the ever-present exiles — we the people who have
refused to die,
Though you have all wished us dead a thousand times —
Though your theology proclaims the fact that we should
live.
Once more, we are in your hands and your cross to bear,
to deal with as you see fit.
O Lord, lament that execrable day that, once more, we
should be in your hands
And at your mercy, for I have no confidence in your mercy.
But I tell you this — I swear it, that it be upon my heart —
As the Lord ‘has engraven us upon the Palms of His
Hands’,
If you let us down now, as you have every other time in
ours — the most importune of pasts —
For your own individual, separate, and picayune motives,
I curse you.
And my curse shall ring down through the ages for none
of you shall escape
The fiery and horrendous fate you reserve for us — not one
of you —
And you shall all tread the path you have condemned us to
tread before you.
And hear my words — hear them, as you heard all my
brothers before me,
In whom you have put so much faith — as you heard
Moses’ (or Musa’s) ‘blessing and his curse’,
For if you do this to us now, when we are only ‘the Remnant’
left,
I swear that none of you shall escape a fiery and horrific
death
Worse than anything you have reserved for us.
And one final word before I’m done — one final word;
And hear it, hear it so that this time you know — this time,
let there be no mistaking it,
For this time we shall fight, for we are ‘the Remnant’,
We shall fight to the last man, as we did in the Warsaw
Ghetto
And at the time of Bar Kochba, as we did at the Fortress
of Masada;
For it shall not be so easy to dispose of us now.
But I say these things mainly for your own souls rather than
our own —
For the Holocaust, which you have inflicted and intend to
inflict upon us,
Shall itself be inflicted upon you.
New York, U.S.A.
May 24th, 1967
This piece will be followed by two others, written two weeks later at the outbreak of the War and during and at its highpoint — for the really perspacacious reader, they can be found in my THE NEW JERUSALEM, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, Ca., 2007 (now out-of-stock, but I have some copies here — for more details, see my website RobertEisenman.com and comments below).