I'm hearing a lot in the news these days about the rise of Antisemitism in the United States, as well as in the rest of the Western world.  Of course, the very concept of Antisemitism is abhorrent to me, as are all other forms of racial or ethnic hate.  But we must be very careful to differentiate between speech, thoughts, and actions against Judaism, and those in opposition to the State of Israel.  What the State of Israel in general, and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular has been doing in Gaza and the Palestinian territories over the past several years has nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism, and is enough to make me ashamed of my own Jewish heritage.

I was born to non-practicing Jewish parents, and grew up in Inwood, an upper Manhattan neighborhood that was at the time equally inhabited by Jews and Catholics.  (I must have been well into my early teens before I realized that “Catholic” was not synonymous with “Christian”.)  My father was an immigrant from the Ural Mountain region of Russia, who got out in his late teens along with his family. to avoid antisemitic persecution by the Soviets. And my mother was in a long line of several generations of Brooklyn Jews.  I, myself, am a devout atheist, and have been as long as I can remember.  I remember even as early as elementary school, declining to stay home on the Jewish holidays, reasoning that we were excused from school (NYC Public School system) in order that we might attend services, so that didn't apply to me.  I remember having a wonderful time playing games, and socializing with all my Catholic friends in half-empty classrooms, where no real teaching was done, the teachers knowing that they’d have to make it all up anyway the next day when the Jewish kids came back.

But what is being done by Israel to the Palestinian people is appalling.  Have we lost our memory?  Have we forgotten Hitler’s "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem"?  Israel is perpetrating its very own Holocaust in Gaza.  The refugee camps there are its very own versions of Auschwitz and Dachau.  In the Jewish “Settlements” resides Israel’s very own Lebensraum.  None of this has anything to do with Judaism, and everything to do with colonialism, ethnic cleansing and genocide.  Where in the Scriptures does it say we should deny food, water, and medicine to a starving, thirsty, and injured people?  What verse of the Torah might suggest it’s OK to rain artillery shells upon 100 innocent people in order to kill the half dozen terrorists hiding amongst them? 

And what appalls me even more is that my own country is complicit in this shame.  It is our artillery shells and our rockets, and bombs and drones that Israel is inflicting on these poor people.  If we want to give Israel any weapons, I’m fine with Patriot anti-missile systems or other defensive weaponry.  But not a single bomb or airplane or tank or bullet for offensive action.  Hamas is indeed a terrorist organization, and Israel has a right to defend itself.  But as things stand now, Israel's terrorism is ten times that of Hamas, and so is that of the United States in its support of Israel.  And that statement is not Antisemitism.  It is anti-terrorism.

Back in the '90s, Jenny had introduced me to Virgin Gorda, a tiny island in the British Virgin Islands I have very fond memories of it. We had stayed in a resort called Guavaberry Spring Bay, where we had a one-room bungalow of our own, a 5-minute walk from the resort's private beach. It was also a 15-minute walk from town where we would do our food shopping and occasional restaurant meal. If we wanted to explore the island, there was a rental car outfit called Mahogany Car Rentals that would either serve as a taxi or drop a car off at our door for a daily rental.

I loved the place. We paid it another visit in 2006, and I thought it was time we went back. Jenny agreed, and so we made our plans. The resultant trip was just as lovely, but with a couple of disasters thrown in at the very beginning and the very end of the trip just to keep things from being too perfect. Click the photo above for the story, the photos, and the videos.