This letter comes from a woman in Dallas:
Jay:
I am a fourth-generation Texan from a large family of German and Irish Catholics. I can tell you with absolute certainty that my tiny 62-year-old Roman Catholic mother – who has never owned, much less shot, a gun in her life – would not hesitate to join the IDF if they would take her. Several cousins and I would be not far behind.
It’s not just the Southern Baptists and evangelicals who “get it” around here. My grandfathers fought, and their buddies died, to save European Jews in WWII. Their children and grandchildren will not hesitate to make the same sacrifice for Israel, lest we dishonor their memories.
To make sure the next generation understands that anti-Semitism is real and that Western civilization depends on Judeo-Christian values, my five-year-old son is spending the summer at a Jewish camp.
I may not be able to promise “Never again,” but I’ll damn sure not be complicit in the Islamist annihilation of the “filthy Zionist entity.” Not on my grandfathers’ or my parents’ or my own watch, and not on my son’s.
By the way, you may well balk at what the letter-writer said about the purpose of World War II. But I think it is sometimes wise – not to mention generous – to leave interpretations of that war, and other wars, to individuals: to soldiers and descendants (as well as to statesmen, historians, et al.).
I wrote the reader back and said that, if she went on like that, she’d make me cry. She responded, “Don’t tear up. There’s no crying in baseball or Texas!” (Allusion to A League of Their Own.) She then said that she had shared one of my Israel posts, and our exchange, with her mom. Before providing her mom’s response, the letter-writer said, “Honestly, if you knew how tiny she is, and how absolutely terrifying when roused . . .”
Her mother wrote one line: “Where’s my gun!!!!”
(The gun, presumably, she would be supplied in the IDF.) (Nitpickers will always write in to say, “Well, you said she had never owned a gun.”)
I’d better close this subject of Israel and its American supporters for now. Many thanks to all readers for their letters – I am tempted to say, for their testimonies.