Presumably you meant “wouldn’t have been unthinkable,” and I know where you’re coming from. What wasn’t unthinkable, and what was maybe even expected, was persecution. Pogroms, expulsions, lynchings, riots, taxation, blood libels, ghettos, and all the rest were just the cost of living among gentiles for thousands of years.
The holocaust was something new and different. I’ve read myriad first-hand accounts of Jews who refused to believe what was happening until it was too late, both within Germany and without.
And, I suspect that a big part of it wouldn’t necessarily be armed resistance, but rather transport and financial support to evacuate people.
I mean, think about how the Holocaust might have played out had there been an Israel for the Jews to emigrate to, an El-Al to get them there speedily, and a government and people willing to foot any bill in order to make it happen?
In pragmatic terms, that’s probably what it would mean. The Israelis don’t have the force projection ability to stop something like a Holocaust in Europe, but they could probably arrange the evacuation of a hell of a lot of people really fast if they really set their minds to it and damn the expense.
And I think there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that if Israel faced some kind of existential threat, fanatical wouldn’t begin to describe the response of the IDF and the Israeli people.
A fair point, and I tend to concur with your point, that the Jewish populations thought this was another pogram and never realized what was in store…heck, it was until 1942 (IIRC) that the Wanasee Conference that the “Final Solution” was firmly mapped out; until then uprooting Jews and sending them to ghettos/work camps was the standard method of treatment (albeit plenty were murdered in the doing).
Anyway you look at it, it was a horrible part of human history (sadly repeated many times before and with a few tries since (the aforementioned Tutsi, Cambodia, etc.) ) and one the Jewish population is unlikely to ever let happen again.
Many people have wondered why the Jews didn’t fight back against the Nazis. A few did, but it wasn’t part of the culture. Jews had been passive through centuries of abuse in Europe, but nobody had tried to exterminate them. The next time they won’t give in.
Would Israel nuke another country to stop another attempt at extermination? As you say it’s good policy for your enemies to think so.
I recall reading of Jews being shot by the German army. One of them attacked a German with his pocket knife, and the Germans began killing Jews with axes.
I don’t know. Would they? Let’s say, for arguments sake, that Stalin rises from his grave and decides to finish the pogrom he had already started by the time of his death. Would Israel nuke Russia to stop it from happening? In such a scenario, what is Israel’s chance of surviving?
Israel’s nuclear policy has been called the Samson Option, after this passage in Judges 16 where the blinded Samson dies;*
“Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and braced himself against them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left. 30 And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he bent with all his might so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life.”*
Which of course is why the 800,000 Jews living in Arab occupied lands were slaughtered along with the 6,000,000 Jews killed by the Nazis…
Oh wait, they weren’t. Indeed, they formed the major influx of people to Israel right after the founding of Israel, when they were kicked out of the Arab countries following the 1947 conflicts. Harshness toward the Arabs for the removal, but they were at least alive to come to Israel…unlike most European Jews…
And no, I am not trying to sugarcoat things; Jews in Muslim lands often lived in ghettos, were subject to persecution and riots, and had trouble sometimes practicing their religion (hmmm…lot like Europe/Russia in some ways…). And yes, before you haul them out, there were Arab Nazi sympathizers and yes, many Arab areas had Allied forces in them…but 800,000 Jews in Muslim lands lived; of 8,000,000 Jews between Moscow and the English Channel…quite a bit fewer.
Not belittling the distrust and hatred today; but comparing them to the Nazis is a bit over the top. IMHO.
You left out Hitler meeting with arab leaders based primarily on their mutual hatred (even though Hitler thought the arabs were only barely higher untermensch than the Jews).
But all of the above was before the founding of Israel, something that the arab muslims just can’t seem to accept for some reason…
They would probably load a bunch of guys on a C-130 and do an Entebbe style rescue. It would certainly depend on the number of people to be rescued and their location.