When Helen Thomas declared that Jews have no place in Israel and should go home to Germany and Poland, she unleashed a current of outrage within the American Jewish community. How dare she suggest, they wondered, that Jews should return to the countries of ‘the Final Solution.' From her comments, it was unclear if she meant that Jews should have been killed in the Holocaust or that they should simply go back to what she viewed as their ancestral homelands--never mind that Israeli Jews are from all over the world, including Israel itself. However, the reaction within the community to the suggestion of Germany and Poland demonstrates that for many American Jews, it amounts to the same thing. But, in fact, it is not. While her proposition is at best preposterous and at worst despicable, let us examine for a moment what exactly today's Israeli Jews would discover waiting for them in Germany and Poland if they left Israel.
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