Sophie Tucker was a Jewish American singer and radio personality. Known for her powerful delivery, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century and was widely known by the nickname “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas”.

Her hit song, ‘My Yiddishe Momme’ was translated into many languages including German, Spanish, French and Russian as well as in English by a number of well-known stage artistes and touched a chord of humanity, love and respect in audiences worldwide.

The song, broadcast internationally, brought a tear to so many listeners over more than fifty years and struck a chord with families of all faiths, not merely those born Jewish.  It reminded all who listened to it of family values, of decency, humanity and kindness as well as respect for our parents and grandparents, whatever and wherever their origins.

How starkly different are the values espoused today by the hard-Right, extremist Likud Party of Israel headed by the now notorious Binyamin Netanyahu.  A leader and a Party that advocates the forced annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the ‘transfer’ of millions of the region’s majority indigenous people out of their homeland of a thousand years, to adjoining territories.

A political Party that has imposed an illegal blockade of essential goods against 1.8 million in Gaza for over 12 years, in a deliberate, inhuman and illegal attempt at regime change.

A Party that has destroyed schools, electricity stations and hospitals using chemical and other weapons in an (albeit failed) attempt at not only regime change but annexation of land plus the redistribution of water from the River Jordan to Israeli occupied land.

When the newly constituted United Nations, in 1947-8, approved the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state, it was never envisaged that it would serve as a magnet that would attract thousands of economic and political migrants from America, Russia and France, among other places, to sell their homes in order to relocate their families upon Palestinian land that had been largely acquired by threat and violence during 1947-8 by marauding paramilitaries who had already conducted a terrorist attack by bombing the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

“My Yiddishe Momme I’d like to ..  hold her hands once more as in days gone by and ask her to forgive me for things I did that made her cry” [1]

Of course, we are reminded that the song was entitled ‘My Yiddishe Momme’ and not ‘My Israeli Momme’!  And that puts a necessary perspective upon it.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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[1] My Yiddishe Momme lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc

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