We’ve been watching “The Tattooist Of Auschwitz,” painful though it is. It is painful to view the mechanized murder apparatus of the Nazis, and realize that apparently civilized people could sink to such depths. And it is also painful to see the compliance of the Jewish inmates, and realize that centuries of docility had enabled them to survive pogroms and expulsions, but did nothing to help them survive extermination.

They were good little Jews, and soon they were dead little Jews.

And there, I believe, is why Israel is so hated. So long as we remained good little Jews, knowing our place, not making trouble, never even threatening to use violence, remaining passive in the face of insults, and not touching a weapon – well then, we could be tolerated.

But now, we went so far beyond the world’s tolerance level as to establish our own country, with our own laws, our own government, and worst of all, our own army, – oh no, that was too much to bear. We actually had the gall to assert that Israel should be treated like all the 193 members of the UN. That includes the right of self-defense, without which the right to life becomes meaningless.

Murder squads come across the border and kill about 1200 Israeli men, women, and children, even babies. Any other UN member, including the US, would be allowed – no, expected – to smash the source of the attack and prevent its recurrence. But not Israelis, that is to say Jews. They were expected to revert to being good little Jews, who lined up compliantly to be tattooed. And when they proved not to be good little Jews, Jews thousands of miles away in Columbia and UCLA were punished for the presumed misdeeds of other Jews far away – the very essence of racism.

So as I watched the video and had these thoughts, I looked down at the tee shirt I happened to be wearing. It was olive drab and carried the words, “Front Toward Enemy,” which are stenciled on a Claymore mine. It was sold by Rob O’Neill, the SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden. That shirt suggested that I was not a good little Jew, and that I took Churchill’s words seriously: “You can always take one with you.”

By pure serendipity, that was the ideal shirt to be wearing while watching “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.” And in the unlikely event I ever get a tattoo, it won’t look anything like a number. A flag, maybe, but not a number.