Patriotism seems to be out of style in the United States, and many young people are also being influenced by toxic woke ideas that falsely smear Israel as an illegitimate “apartheid” state. That’s why JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin believes we need examples of Jews who dedicated their lives to serving both America and Israel more than ever.
He’s joined in this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by Steven Ossad, whose latest book is dedicated to retelling the story of one of the greatest of American Jewish heroes: David (“Mickey”) Marcus, the U.S. West Point Military Academy-trained American Jewish officer who helped lead Israeli troops in its War of Independence in 1948.
Marcus is the most famous of the foreign volunteers who joined the fledgling forces of the newborn Jewish state. Ossad’s new book, Chasing The Shadow: Mickey Marcus’s 200 Days of Destiny, is the first book in English dedicated to this subject to be published in 60 years.
Speaking of his subject, the author says that Marcus was the son of Romanian immigrants to the United States who “made it” in the era between the two world wars. He graduated from West Point, where he won acceptance from his classmates as a collegiate boxing champion. He went on to a career in the law and the administration of New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia before returning to the service before the United States entered World War II. He was a highly-ranked Pentagon staff officer and played an important role in the occupation of Germany and the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.
But in early 1948, he accepted an offer from the head of the government of what would soon become the State of Israel to organize and train the troops of the Haganah as it transitioned from an underground militia to an army of a beleaguered nation that was about to be invaded by five nations. He would go on to be the first Jew given the rank of general (aluf in Hebrew) in 2,000 years, going on to command the newly named Israel Defense Forces that successfully lifted the siege of Jerusalem before he was killed on the evening of a ceasefire in the conflict as the result of a tragic friendly fire incident.
According to Ossad, Marcus is a symbol of shared national security interests of the United States and Israel, as well as a symbol of the democratic values of an army that fights a common enemy. The author also notes that in the current atmosphere of hatred for Israel and antisemitism, he had a difficult time finding a publisher for the book before the University of Missouri finally accepted it.
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