Saturday, April 5, 2008

Junior Theme (what else?)

The question I landed on for JT is "Why does the US still support Israel?" I want to try and go back and find the source of the relationship, because during the Holocaust, the US barred most of its borders against the Jews trying to escape Europe, and President Roosevelt didn't help.

When I first started exploring ideas, I really wanted to do something relating to the Holocaust, but obviously, I had to relate the subject to US history, and more difficultly, to current issues in America.

One story that always remained in my mind was that of the failure of the Wagner-Rogers Bill. It proposed that 20,000 Jewish children under the age of 14(?) would be permitted into the country, the bill died in Congress, and neither the US nor Cuba would take them, so they were sent back to Europe to their deaths. This story always strikes me particularly hard because I lost many members of my family that were under the age of 14 on both my grandfather and grandmother's sides, and I can only imagine if they could have been taken in by the US, then my family might be bigger than it is now (I have no 1st cousins on my dad's side). And I can only image the terror experienced by those children who thought they were free.

2 comments:

Judy Gressel said...

Carly,
today I pointed you toward reading some of Thomas Friedman's editorials. You really need to choose a book this week--no excuses!
I will show you a book tomorrow titled "Israel: Opposing Viewpoints"
Read chapter 6: Should the United States Support Israel?
There are 4 essays to read:
The U.S. Should Strengthen Relations with Israel
The US Should Not Support an Oppressive Israel
The United States Should Maintain Aid to Israel
The US Should Eliminate Aid to Israel
These should get you going...
Mrs. G

Judy Gressel said...

Good news Carly!
We have a trial database to those articles/essays on Israel:

Go to:
http://access.gale.com/k12trial
/go/?key=4677_156554

Type in the search word Israel, and you will find many essays.
Mrs. G