Thoughts on International Holocaust Day
Traditionally, it is around Yom HaShoah that the history and lessons of the Holocaust are in focus, and we pause on that special day to honor the victims. As a Holocaust survivor it has always been very important for me to participate in Yom HaShoah events either in the United States, in Israel, or wherever in the world I might be on that day. A recent and welcome recognition of the Shoah is the annual commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. As we approach it this year, it is important to recall the significance of having the international community demonstrate awareness of the ongoing task to impart the lessons of the Shoah and be reminded of the deadly dangers of forgetting the brutality that human beings can inflict. This international commemoration recognizes the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the special responsibility to ensure that the lessons of the Shoah are never forgotten. At the same time, we must all do much more to ensure that those lessons are not only remembered on January 27, but are absorbed deeply by societies around the globe and transmitted from generation to generation. One of the basic lessons from the Nazi era is that acts of hate and hate speech cannot be ignored. Words of hate, and the world's disregard of that hate, paved the road to Auschwitz. Yet, we see that the United Nations continues to permit its platform to be used for spewing hate against Jews and Israel without consequence. Among the numerous examples are Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blaming Jews and "global Zionism" of dominating international finance and media, a Libyan representative charging that Israel's actions in Gaza are worse than the Holocaust, and the President of the General Assembly accusing Israel of "crucifying" the Palestinians. Address to the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism
The following speech was given on December 16, 2009, at the third international conference of the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism, in Jerusalem. Ministers, your Excellencies, Ambassadors, Dear Friends. There is something very depressing, ironic, sad and exhilarating for a child survivor of the Shoah [The Holocaust], who was saved in "Yerushalayim D'Lita", the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" in Vilna, to be sharing a platform with the Foreign Minister of Lithuania, in the holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of the sovereign state of Israel, to address, again, and again, the subject of anti-Semitism. And so I find myself in a jumble of emotions at the moment. I know what brings us here, I know what motivates us to be here. I respect and appreciate the presence of so many good people who have come from across the globe because they understand the importance and significance of standing against anti-Semitism. And yet at the same time, I am very troubled. Troubled because in a sense this has become a ritual; this has become an undertaking where we come together almost once a year; we address, and we analyze, and we go home. Yes, we pass some resolutions; make some promises and declarations, but in fact so many of the wonderful words remain at the conference. Even the small commitments that were made in previous conference - to do what? to monitor, to report - have not been implemented. And so, this year has been probably the worst year of global anti-Semitism since the Second World War; the worst year since we began to monitor and report it. Egypt's blind spot for anti-Semitism
Much has been made of the significance of President Obama's choice of Cairo as the location for his first major address to the people of the Muslim world. There, in June of this year, the recently elected leader of the United States took his message of rapprochement, openness and acceptance with the Muslim world to the traditional seat of Arab culture and an important ally of the United States in promoting peace and stability in the region. In the months and years ahead, Egypt undoubtedly will continue to play an important leadership role as a key US ally in working to counter the forces of terrorism and bring together the Israelis and the Palestinians to work on issues of security and peace. But at this most crucial point in relations between the US, Israel and the Arab world, obstacles to true peace and rapprochement remain. And one of the major stumbling blocks for Egypt is the blatant anti-Semitism that pervades many sectors of its society - from the news media to popular and academic books, to publications and recordings of religious sermons - and the government's unwillingness to do anything to confront it. Articles and caricatures in the Egyptian media routinely feature anti-Semitic depictions of Jews as stooped, hook-nosed, money-hungry and conspiratorial. Israeli leaders are depicted as Nazis. Articles deny or diminish the Holocaust. Anti-Israel and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories frequently surface, with references to the infamous anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as do modern incarnations of the medieval blood-libel. (One Egyptian newspaper reported in May 2007 that Israel was polluting Palestinian drinking water with "microbes, dirt and atomic garbage.") These expressions of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments do not occur in a vacuum. They have led to government policies that sanction real-world discrimination against Jews. One only need look to the Egyptian government's recent attempt to exclude Israeli doctors and activists from an international conference on breast cancer, or the anti-Semitic diatribe unleashed by Egypt's Culture Minister after losing his bid to become the next head of UNESCO. These official policies, in turn, contribute to the barriers that block true normalized relations between Israeli and Egypt despite 30 years of official peace. Hillary's Middle East saga
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's excursion to the Middle East has the look about it of a leader responding to the latest political pressure point. She goes to Jerusalem and says that Israeli settlements should not stand in the way of negotiations, and even compliments the Netanyahu government for the steps it has taken. She then proceeds to Morocco and says that America has always opposed Israeli settlements and Israel is very far from meeting American expectations on the subject. Despite the appearance of pandering to local concerns, the Secretary of State's trip has been important in setting straight American priorities in an effort to get the peace process back on track. Let's be clear. The tension that has arisen between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government since last spring is not about Israeli settlements per se, but about how Israeli settlements fit in to the larger challenge of peacemaking. American presidents one after another have opposed Israeli settlements since the 1970s when the settler movement truly emerged. Some did so with greater vigor than others, in particular Jimmy Carter, who not only criticized settlements but also said that they were an obstacle to peace, and George Bush the elder, who held up loan guarantees as long as Israel continued settlement expansion. So, as Secretary Clinton said in Morocco, the Obama administration was hardly breaking new ground in its demand that Israel freeze settlement building. Where it was moving in a new direction was in taking previous comments about settlements being an obstacle to peace and making that the centerpiece of American policy. In fact, Israeli settlements, whether one supported them or opposed them, had never prevented negotiations from taking place when the will to negotiate otherwise existed. But now, by the US insisting that Israel freeze settlements as a precondition to restarting negotiations, we were indeed creating a reality which did not exist heretofore: Settlements were blocking peace talks. Palestinians now said they wouldn't negotiate as long as Israel continued to expand settlements. From a whisper to a roar: The return of the blood libel
If there is one thing we have learned from history, it is that predicable patterns of behavior provide the underpinnings of virulent anti-Semitism. Like a lethal virus or a pestilence, the disease of Jew-hatred cannot flourish by itself. It needs the right conditions, the right combination of circumstances and a proper environment to grow and spread. We know, for example, that the Holocaust didn't begin with the bricks and mortar of the gas chambers. It started with words - hateful words, ugly words - words that could inspire enough hatred to create the conditions for a rapid-fire combustion that led to the annihilation of six million Jews and millions of others. And we know that the 9/11 terror attacks in the US didn't start with airplanes and boxcutters. Those attacks began with hateful ideas and words that inspired the terrorists to maim and kill more than 3,000 innocent people. For centuries, one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of anti-Semites has been the ability to fuel hatred by creating a mythical idea of Jews being a pathologically loathsome people. These notions are founded in stereotypical attributes and hateful canards - that Jews are greedy, that they keep to themselves, that they are all-powerful, that they are "blood-suckers," or that they control the government or the media in order to advance sinister agendas. Perhaps the worst manifestation of this hatred is the ancient blood libel. This odious myth, handed down through the centuries from medieval times to the present day, suggests that Jews prepare their Passover matzot with the sacrificial blood of Christian children. This despicable slander led to pogroms, expulsions and bloodshed against Jews throughout history. The blood libel is recognized as one of the taproots of anti-Semitism. And it is as alive and well today as it was more than a century ago. Most recently it resurfaced with accusations now swirling through the blogosphere that American Jews and Israeli soldiers are involved in a broad conspiracy to harvest organs for profit. It started as a whisper. The whispers suggested that Israeli soldiers tasked with patrolling the Palestinian West Bank weren't just policing and keeping the peace, but were rather involved in something much more nefarious - capturing innocent civilians so their organs could be harvested and illegally sold on the black market. The Fatah factor
Let's start with what I believe is the obvious: Fatah and Hamas are two very different organizations. Not only are they at each other's throats whenever they have the opportunity, but they speak very different languages. Hamas talks of an Islamic state, Fatah of a Palestinian national state. Hamas calls for Israel,s destruction, Fatah talks of two states living side-by-side. Hamas proudly takes credit for terrorist attacks against civilians, Fatah in public statements decries such attacks. In other words, it is not helpful and not accurate to suggest, as some do, that there is no difference between the organizations. Hamas cannot be a partner for peace. Fatah could be. The words "could be" point to the continued ambivalence toward Fatah. The potential for a peace partner is there but it has not been realized. We've seen this ambivalence in the behavior of Israeli governments over the last 15 years: engagement during the Oslo process and at Camp David, followed by non-engagement during the second intifada, followed by re-engagement during the tenure of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was in this context that Fatah held its first conference in 20 years. It provides an opportunity, based on examining the declaration of the gathering and seeing the document through the prism of recent events, to assess whether Fatah is more than a potential partner for peace. After meeting with Obama, what's next?
I had the opportunity to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House on July 13, along with fifteen other representatives of Jewish organizations. Afterwards, everyone wanted to know whether I now felt reassured about the state of US-Israel relations. Standing with Iranians against tyranny
As history is being made on the streets of Teheran, the Western world is relatively quiet. Yes, President Barack Obama has at last referred to the injustice of the regime's actions and criticized its violence, but he and other leaders have calibrated their responses. Two Israel writers, Ben Caspit and Ben-Dror Yemini, have taken note and chastised the West for this reticence, contrasting how quickly condemnation of Israel rises to the surface in moments of crisis. They suggest that in certain circles it is far easier to criticize a Jew for killing a Muslim, even when provoked, than when a Muslim regime murders innocent protesters. They simply dismiss the argument made by many American officials and commentators that the restrained approach is the correct one to prevent the regime from using American "meddling" to undermine the legitimacy of the demonstrators. They reason that this is just an excuse for inaction since the Iranian leaders are already blaming America and Israel. Seeing the glass half full - for now
Perspective is everything. The glass can be half full or half empty. These unoriginal thoughts came to mind after two significant events in the life of the state of Israel and the Jewish people - the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Israel and the meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The tendency in the Israeli press was to focus on the negative. The Pope was widely criticized for the things he failed to say or said in an infelicitous way. And the Washington summit meeting was picked apart for the alleged lack of warmth between the leaders and for the pressure points and disagreements. Here we go again: "The Israel Lobby made them do it!"
I have said it before and I must say it again - anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claiming American Jews control US foreign policy and are disloyal US citizens continue to be expounded through the Internet and permeate mainstream Web sites, blogs and commentaries. The most recent case is the Charles Freeman affair - the designated Chairman of the National Intelligence Council who decided to withdraw his name from consideration after concerns were raised about the central role he might play in intelligence affairs, given his anti-Israel statements and connections to the Saudi government, as well as to the Chinese. The Freeman appointment was disturbing on its own terms without generalizing about where US-Israel relations were heading. On US-Israel relations his views fall far away from mainstream opinion in America and enter into that area of demonizing Israel and its supporters in the US. Nothing better illustrates where Freeman is coming from than in his statement explaining his withdrawal. He articulates, in the guise of a victim, the essential conspiracy view of the Israel-supporting community which made his appointment so troubling in the first place. He sees the exposure of his troubling attitudes toward Israel as proof "that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired." |
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