Happy Father’s Day, Dad!: Tales Of The Greatest Generation & The Middle East
by Gerald A. Honigman
Another Father’s Day is fast approaching here in America, June 21, 2020.
My Dad left this planet far too young 27 years ago. I can always remember because (among other reasons) my fourth child, Elana Yehudit, was born two months later. Dad and I discussed having this new addition much earlier on one of our many fishing trips together…literally, since I was in diapers with my Mother watching me. I told him that it was hard enough on a Florida teacher’s salary to support three kids, let alone another. Little did I know…Elana Yehudit (Judith), G_d bless, would be named for Edward…Yehudah.
After coming home from an earlier visit to the cemetery, I stared long and hard at his picture hanging in my computer room where I do most of my writing.
Given the frequent duplicitous vilification of Israel and Zionism, and the constant turmoil in the Middle East, recollections Dad shared with me many years earlier now came to mind.
Edward Honigman quit Philadelphia’s prestigious Central High School at age seventeen and had to have my grandfather, a naval veteran of World War I, sign for his permission to join the fight against Germany and Japan, as Dad was only seventeen years old. He would serve in both fields of war, moving between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans several times via the Panama Canal.
Competing against older recruits, he excelled and was scheduled for officer training. And then came the interview when Dad was asked what kind of name “Honigman” was… I’ve had those encounters myself as well.
Somehow, Dad wound up in the Armed Guard branch of the United States Navy instead. What a coincidence !
These were the guys (there were just guys on those ships back then) who had to run interference with German U-Boats and such to protect Allied shipping…extremely high casualty rates.
Dad’s own sister ship went down. There, but for the Grace of G_d, go I
One particular story that especially came to mind occurred during the Rommel Campaign in North Africa (he was involved in many others over the four years that he served in World War II).
Dad and several friends were on leave in Aden in the southeastern part of the Arabian Peninsula (now Yemen). His buddies decided to have some “fun,” and so asked him to call the Arab attendant carting them around town “yahudi.” Here was the Arab man’s response:
“Please, sir, curse me, spit on me… but never call me that.”
My Dad, may G_d rest his beloved soul, had called him a Jew.
Today, some eight decades later, I realize that this Yemeni Arab, like many/most of his brethren elsewhere, had been raised on such “religious” teachings as those calling Jews descendants of apes and pigs; accusing Jews of using blood of non-Jews to make Passover matzoh (they also share that sacred belief with the lands of Christendom ); charge Jews with killing Prophets (but, at least not G_d–as in Christendom); and other such goodies as well…You get the idea.
So... are you still wondering why there is a resurrected Israel today?
Oh yes, “Jew” is also a common adjective in the Arab world.
Kilab yahud — “Jew dogs” — is a common appellation for the “Arab World’s” native Jews, who also make up one half of Israel’s Jewish population…with many others having fled elsewhere. Greater New City alone has about 50,00 Syrian Jews in its environs. I attended some of their beautiful synagogues some decades ago.
And if you buy the Arab line that this hostility is only a recent development, due to the rise of modern political Zionism (I mean, how dare those Jews want the same thing in one minuscule state that Arabs have conquered from others and created for themselves in some two dozen!), then I have not one but two bridges to sell you. The works of the Egyptian Jewess and scholar Bat Ye’or (on Dhimmitude, etc.), and those of Professor Albert Memmi, whose family dates back hundreds of years in Tunisia, are must reads.
My Father, Lieutenant Edward Honigman, of blessed memory, was part of the amazing folks whom Tom Brokaw called in his great book, the greatest generation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Generation).
He came home after four years of war and joined the Philadelphia Police Department–where he served for almost three decades. I would join him and my Mother on May 8, 1948–within the same week as the resurrection of Israel.
In light of what is going on today–both here in America and in the Middle East–I thought these memories might be appreciated by some other folks too.
Happy Father’s Day ! http://q4j-middle-east.com