Remember Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film Schindler’s List? In it Oskar Schindler, an ambitious Czech businessman, has his epiphany in Krakow, Poland during the German occupation. Schindler came to Krakow to make his fortune using Jewish labor at a factory he opened. Schindler worked the system to get unpaid Jewish workers by bribing the German Army contacts he had made. At that point in his life, Oskar just had the philosophy ofvgoing along to get along. As he got to see and understand what was going on regarding how the Germans treated the Jews, Schindler quickly got a conscience. From that point on, he did all that he could to aid those Jewish workers in his factory, without getting the authorities to stop his efforts. It was a tightrope that he had to walk. By the end of the film we see how Oskar Schindler, after his epiphany, had saved so many lives.
The karmic turnaround now faced by so many of the Jewish faith (of which this writer is but 12.5%) is what has been occurring in Gaza. Imagine if Oskar Schindler, the man who had his epiphany, was now an Israeli Jew. Imagine if he had, some time earlier, opened a factory in Gaza for whatever self-centered reasons he may have had. Perhaps the fact of securing cheap labor and low costs to run his factory made this businessman plan such an operation. As in the Spielberg film and what Oskar Schindler saw and heard in that Krakow ghetto, so too this Israeli Oskar Schindler would have woken up to the current reality. One must surmise that this present-day Oskar Schindler would do his best to stand up for the Palestinians being terrorized and murdered by his countrymen. Unfortunately, the Oskar Schindler from Krakow had to do it alone. Perhaps it is time for more and more Israeli Jews to become like an Oskar Schindler for Gaza.