Dita and Amos left Israel. They took their two small children, Rela and Coco, who in Israel were called Erela and Yoram, and went to America. This was in the 1950s, when such a move was still considered a transgression.

Amos came from a large family, six boys and a girl, who were raised by their mother. The children all had biblical names that I can still remember (Benzion, Amos, Sa’adia, Zacharia, Elisha, Miri and Hovav), and as a boy I knew them all. As a teenager, Dita had immigrated to Israel with my mother in the Youth Aliyah program, and they remained the closest of friends their whole lives.

Dita and Amos were a handsome couple, and their yeridah, their “descent” from Israel, was forgiven on account of their success in America; Amos became a wealthy steel magnate. Some of his brothers emigrated around the same time, two or three to the United States and one to Puerto Rico. They too made it big in America.

Dita and Amos lived in New Rochelle before moving to Scarsdale, both of them wealthy New York suburbs. I can still remember their Scarsdale address, 7 Copper Beech Lane, from the letters and especially the packages they sent us.

Every few months we would go to the post office on Dizengoff Square to pick up a huge carton filled with clothes. I can still remember how they smelled, and also the excitement that gripped me every time we opened the latest treasure chest.

Hand-me-downs from Coco — that’s how I became one of the first boys in Tel Aviv to wear jeans and flannel shirts. Written in laundry marker on the jeans’ label was the name Coco Milo. When he turned 18 he couldn’t visit Israel anymore because he was born here; neither he nor his parents wanted him to be drafted.

Open gallery view Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits with schoolchildren in Ashdod. September 2015. Credit: Nir Keidar

When Dita and Amos came to Israel every year or two, we would visit them at the Tel Aviv Hilton or go with them to meet relatives in Haifa, Jerusalem or Savyon. It was at their Scarsdale home that I saw my first private swimming pool. I remember Amos cursing out the Histadrut labor federation, the Labor Party precursor Mapai and the “Communists” he said ran the country. He was also mad that “they” didn’t “give it to the Arabs” more fiercely.

Still, he was a charming man. He died three months ago at a very advanced age, and it saddened me even though we had lost touch long ago.

Amos Milo (Mileikowsky) was Benjamin Netanyahu’s uncle, the brother of Benzion. Netanyahu also spent part of his life in America, before deciding to return. Today he has cousins scattered across America, and they too have done well, even though some of them, God forgive them, married goyim. His deeds as prime minister lead us to ask who did the right thing: those who emigrated or those who stayed behind.

Netanyahu’s cousins and their children lead calm, secure lives as he turns all Israel into the former Gaza settlements — fenced in on all sides, an army battalion for every family, stones thrown in the capital and a dark stain on Israel's image. Under Netanyahu. We live in a constant atmosphere of “Holocaust, the Sequel,” every mini-threat is an existential danger, any criticism is delegitimization, every stone a nuclear bomb.

While his cousins’ children are going to college and building their lives, young Israelis are being drafted into the army to serve as jailers and policemen over a conquered people. They’re trained to be ignorant, xenophobic and arrogant about the whole world, these members of the chosen people. The democracy they live in is also foundering. No hope peers over the horizon, mainly because of Netanyahu.

All this didn’t begin with Netanyahu, but he brought it to its low point. I don’t have a clue what he writes to Rela in San Francisco and Coco in Seattle. They must idolize their VIP cousin, but I doubt he can reproach them for choosing America. When I was kid, despite those packages they sent us, reproach was much easier to do.