Sunday, 27 April 2025

Some Reminisces of Alexander Maistrovoy


While growing up in Moscow, I never once encountered Jews who hated Israel or wished her ill. Now, in Israel as well as among Diaspora Jewry, a series of betrayals, shame and meanness are imprinted in my memory like a newsreel. 


I grew up in Soviet Moscow, in a largely Jewish environment. We often talked about Israel, discussed what was happening in Israel, worried about this country.

I DO NOT REMEMBER a single example when I encountered disdain and negative attitudes toward Israel among Moscow Jews. Some preferred to discuss this topic in a whisper - more than understandable, given the regime's prohibitions. Some were bolder.

But I repeat: I NEVER saw Jews sympathize with Arabs and Israel haters and demonstratively despise the Jewish state. This was unthinkable.

I knew almost nothing about Jewish tradition (except that we bought matzah at the Moscow synagogue). But Jewish tradition inspired respect and pride in me and many of my Jewish peers.

I remember how attentively I read the TANAKH (and it was not so easy to get hold of it in the 70s) about the great history that took place in Jewish land here thousands of years ago. My feelings were typical for a significant part of Jewish youth.

One of the most painful discoveries already here in Israel was the realization of HOW MANY Jews in Israel and the United States are ready to easily put the fate of this country on the line and even sacrifice it; how many despise both Jewish values ​​and biblical history (even if they formally observe some traditions).

A series of betrayals, shame and meanness are imprinted in my memory like a newsreel:

  • The naive Oslo Agreement and “sacrifices on the altar of peace” (thousands of Jewish victims were “sacrificed”, and none of the “architects of Oslo” were punished!);
  • The betrayal of those cooperative Arabs who were foolish enough to rely on Israel. “We have been betrayed,” one of the mayors of Samaria told me in an interview in 1995. His words have stuck in my memory;
  • The shameful IDF flight from Lebanon, the resulting wars, and the betrayal of the Maronites;
  • The humiliation of Ehud Barack ready to give everything away at Camp David, and the thousands of lives lost after that in the “second intifada”;
  • Betrayal of the Jews of Gaza – they were the best of the nation, evicted and mistreated;
  • Pilgrimage of Israeli intelligentsia to Arafat: the same Arafat whom even the Russians, not to mention the Jews, openly despised;
  • Jewish policemen that trampled Israel-loving Jewish boys and girls with gusto in Amona;
  • Sderot that was abandoned to its fate in the name of appeasing Hamas;
  • Auto-da-fé over Elor Azaria, who shot dead a wounded suicide bomber who he suspected of carrying explosives;
  • Amos Oz, who sent his book to the serial killer of Jews Marwan Barghouti (he wrote: 'Hope to meet soon in peace and freedom'), and Jewish homosexuals who called their Arab sexual partners “proud Palestinians”;
  • Haaretz, the Palestinian Arab newspaper in Hebrew, and TV channels in the role of Soviet Agitprop, plus two Ehuds - Barak and Olmert (I interviewed both, and today I feel disgusted for it);
  • The generals who nurtured Hamas;
  • Head of the leading left-wing party, a former general, who called settlers “subhumans”: “These are not people, these are subhumans, they are despicable”.

This list is endless, you can easily add to it.

Then it turns out that there are Jews who are capable of mocking other Jews on Yom Kippur.

And they don't just exist. That would be half the trouble. The trouble is that they are a huge part of the not so large but very powerful self-styled Israeli elite that controls the media, academia and other vital parts of the country.

I would never have believed that after two thousand years of suffering and the Holocaust, Jews would worship their tormentors.

A friend of mine who worked at Lessin's theater told me how the acting troupe lived with the dream of quickly "breaking out of here" and going to Germany, a "civilized country," as they called it.

"One day, one of them came up to me and said that Hitler was right," he recalled.

I wrote articles about self-hating Jews and found that there were hosts of them on both sides of the ocean.

And then October 7th occurred, and it turns out that, while some have learned from their mistakes, many things are much worse. It turns out that many former Israeli officers and ISA has-beens are devoid of both shame and honor. They are not fighting the enemy, but the government of their own people. And here they are ruthless.

Every day a new abomination comes into our consciousness. We saw:

I saw Jews who vilify those who sympathize with them, like Trump and Orban, and fawn over those who despise and oppress them.

I saw American Jewish billionaires donating to Jewish foundations so that they could, through Jewish NGOs, fund terrorist groups and Islamo-Nazis in Israel and on campuses.

I saw Bernie Sanders, George Soros, Thomas Friedman, Chuck Schumer, Judith Butler, Jerrold Nadler, Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff, Peter Beinart, Rabbis for "Palestine," Jewish activists for "Palestine," Jewish LGBTK+++ for "Palestine." Thousands like them. A huge part of the Jewish American self-styled elite. (None of them observant Jews, btw.)

These Jews have forgotten their own dignity and reason. They have even forgotten the instinct for self-preservation. They are spoiled, vile children who, have inherited a home earned through pain, suffering and blood, break down its walls and set it on fire from the inside to please the jeering crowd outside.

They have forgotten what it is like to live in galut, in fear, in humiliation, in contempt, in powerlessness. Less than a hundred years after the Holocaust, they seem to be obsessed with a new Holocaust.

The “People of the Book” gave birth to the “People of the anime”: infantile feelings, infantile thoughts, infantile worldview. And this is their finest hour.

Alexander Maistrovoy was born in Moscow in 1960, and today he lives in Israel, working as a professional journalist. He is also the author of Ways of God (2002), Jewish Atlntida: Mystery of the Lost Tribes (2009), and Agony of Hercules or a Farewell to Democracy (2009). Google Books

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/407391