JERUSALEM INSIGHTS UPDATE 183
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1)The Days Before Us
Moshe Kempinski
2) Torah and Thoreau
by Joseph Bornstein
3) THE CRISIS OF AMERICAN ZIONISM
Jack “Yehoshua” Berger ( A well known American Activist For Israel)
4) How -- and why -- Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu became equals
By Clifford D. May
5) Silence is Not an Option
by Suzanna Eibuszyc
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Moshe Kempinski
The
people of Israel and the world in general are entering into a very
delicate and difficult phase of human existence. The menace of world
wide terror and warfare looms just over the horizon. The people of
Israel are particularly menaced as enemies gather around them in hostile
preparedness. Egypt slowly and surreptitiously is rearming in the
Sinai. Iran is feverishly racing towards nuclear capability. The Hamas
in the south and the Hezbollah in the north are gnashing their teeth in
hateful anticipation. Israel’s strongest ally is opting for electoral
concerns over its commitment to help in Israel’s protection. Yet life
continues in its slow and even pace.
There
are those who look to all these signs and do nothing because they are
frozen with apprehension . There are others who want to act and there
are many others who are afraid to. There is also a growing number of
people who are turning inward and upward. Yet amidst them all one senses
an undeniable undercurrent of anxiety. This undercurrent is nurtured by
the innate insecurity of mortal man. The world is becoming more erratic
and mankind is beginning to feel more insignificant and as a result
anxiety creeps in. To counter this it would be helpful to look at the
words of the haftara that been appointed for these days.
Since
Tisha B'av we are in the midst of reading the series of Haftarot called
the "shiva d’nechemta" or the “Seven Haftarot of consolation” .Rabbi
David Abudraham, in his commentary on Prayer called simply “Sefer
Abudraham” explains that the order of the Haftarot actually represents a
three-way dialogue between G-d, the prophet and the people of Israel.
The words of these prophecies spoken By Isaiah were meant to comfort and
give strength to a battered people suffering from oppression and exile.
They were words spoken to a people in a bitter time of spiritual
turmoil and backsliding. Yet they are words that would give hope and
vision throughout thousands of years of exile. They are especially
empowering in these days of the “end of Exile”.
In
the first of those seven Haftarot ,HaShem tells the prophet to "
Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, says your G-d. (Isaiah 40:1).
In
the following Haftara the troubled nation refuses to be comforted. In
fact in voices that echoes our own generation ,they cry out " But Zion
said: HaShem has forsaken me, and HaShem has forgotten me.' (ibid
49:14).
In
the next Haftara ,Hashem , understanding their pain, their wounds , and
their lack of hope and speaks to their pain " O you afflicted, tossed
with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will set your stones in fair
colors, and lay your foundations with sapphires.( ibid 54:11)
Then HaShem makes his powerful declaration; " I, even I, am He that redeems you" ( ibid 51:12 )
This
declaration release the people into a new era of hope and we read in
the following haftara " Sing, O barren one , you that did not bear ,
break forth into singing, and cry aloud, you that did not travail; for
more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married
wife, says HaShem "( ibid 54:1)
The
prophet calls out in relief and joy as well in the next haftara ; " The
spirit of HaShem G-D is upon me; because HaShem has anointed me to
bring good tidings unto the humble ( ibid 60:1)
And
finally we read "0 I will greatly rejoice in HaShem, my soul shall be
joyful in my G-d; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, "
( ibid 61:10).
Those
are powerful words and an uplifting message for a people wallowing in
self doubt and anxiety. It is a message that has empowered and secured
this people throughout generations of exile. As a result it is an even
more important message for a time when exile begins to end.
When
all is said and done the message that will make the change in every
individual soul are the words spoken through His prophet so long ago.
HaShem is reminding us today, as well, when facing a belligerent Iran
and a non caring American President that “it is HaShem G-D who will
cause victory and glory to spring forth before all the nations ( ibid
61:11)
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My enthralling discovery that Henry David Thoreau’s ideas have their roots in Jewish consciousness.
Ever
since my undergraduate days, I’ve had a deep appreciation for Henry
David Thoreau. Of all the great thinkers, the works of Thoreau, one of
the main intellectual architects of America’s Transcendental Movement of
the 1800s, rang most true. He was a man who strove with vigor to live
each day in wonder. He was willing to test his ideals in the flesh and
blood of life, and to fight for his beliefs.
Thoreau’s
philosophy offers an unequivocal appreciation that our physical reality
has infinite depth and meaning, and that much of our life’s task is to
engage and experience the physical as a gateway toward a more
transcendental connection to reality.
Unlike
Hedonism, it does not take physical pleasure as an end in itself, but
limits the value of physical pleasure to being within the terms of a
transcendent and infinite Truth. And unlike Asceticism,
Transcendentalism does not reject all worldly enjoyment as a distraction
from Truth, but rather understands that the physical is a necessary
part of human experience that serves as the means through which we
connect to a higher reality.
If
this sounds familiar to you – it should. The resonances with Judaism
are unmistakable, and it is not by accident that they appear. The main
intellectual founders of the Transcendental Movement, Emerson and
Thoreau, both graduated from Harvard Divinity School where they were
students of the Torah (what they called the “Old” Testament).
Spending
a year learning Torah at Aish HaTorah, I have a greater appreciation of
these connections. It is enthralling to discover that Thoreau’s ideas
have their roots in Jewish consciousness. It turns out I was studying
Torah all along!
Here are three spectacular examples of parallels between Torah and Thoreau.
Interweaving of Thought and Action
“How
vain it is to sit down to write when you have not yet stood up to
live,”1 Thoreau wrote. He wasn’t just a philosopher; he was also an
activist. During the Abolition Movement in the build up to the Civil
War, he was an active participant in the Underground Railroad –
frequently risking his life in order to help escaped slaves navigate
through the forest at night. And when the United States waged war on
Mexico to steal land, he protested and ultimately boycotted the U.S.
government by refusing to pay taxes. When a friend paid his bail after
being jailed for his activism, Thoreau was livid because it undermined
the ultimate impact of his civil disobedience.
These
are the actions of a man who did not merely intellectualize and
pontificate. Indeed, he abhorred the intelligentsia. He understood that
ideals must be rooted in action; we must stand-up and engage our
beliefs.
Jews
have recognized this truth since our inception as a people. Taking
ideals and putting them into action is part of the spiritual DNA encoded
in our very souls. It is no mistake that a startlingly disproportionate
number of Jews are leaders in movements for social justice, have
positions as non-profit heads, philanthropists, and activists.
Legislating ideals into impassioned action is part of who we are.
Perhaps
Ethics of the Fathers states it most succinctly citing Rabbi Chanina
ben Dosa who used to say, “Anyone whose [good] deeds exceed his wisdom,
his wisdom will endure; but anyone whose wisdom exceeds his [good]
deeds, his wisdom will not endure.”2 In this passage Rabbi Chanina is
emphasizing that wisdom unaccompanied by good deeds will necessarily
deteriorate and that sustaining true wisdom requires real-life
application.
Torah
is not meant to be a one-dimensional intellectual endeavor. It is meant
to be a Torat Chaim – a Living Torah – which calls upon us to transform
both ourselves and the world through real change. The two come
together. In Judaism, life is not solely about inward personal growth
and it is not solely about external practical action. The marrow of life
is attained through wrestling with the tension between the two, and
synthesizing them.
Choose Life
In
describing his two-year living experiment to establish a framework of
life that would focus his efforts toward wholly pursuing the highest
truth, Thoreau writes:
I
wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came
to die, discover I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not
life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation [. . .
.] I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. 3
This
passage challenges the reader to appreciate the fact that each moment
of life presents the opportunity to connect to a transcendent reality.
Thoreau offers the moral challenge to live awake and with an enduring
pursuit toward truth. It is all too easy to allow “non-essential” facts
of life to creep their way in and supplant the true life we wish to
uphold. As Thoreau explains, “For the most part we allow only outlying
and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are in, in fact,
the cause of our distraction.” Instead of becoming mired in hollow
business, we must “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
The ethic in this passage echoes the final speech from Moses to the Israelites when he says in the name of God:
For
this commandment which I command you this day, is not concealed from
you, nor is it far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who
will go up to heaven for us and fetch it?’ [. . .] Rather, [this] thing
is very close to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you
can fulfill it. See – I have placed before you today the life and the
good, and the death and the evil [. . . .] I have placed before you
blessing and curse; and you shall choose life” (Deuteronomy, 30:11).
Both
passages place us in a constant and direct relationship4 to truth,
making it incumbent upon us that we strive to adhere to that reality.
There is the overwhelming mandate to live with vigor and not get lost in
falsity that is equivalent to a living death. Thoreau contends that
“the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” because the majority
of us have not dedicated ourselves to “choose life” – we do not abide by
the truth we hold dear, and so we are, in a sense, not living to our
greatest potential. For each of us, what it means to really choose life
boils down to the most intimate and personal question possible. It is
each person’s responsibility to determine if s/he is working
whole-heartedly to grow and pursue truth.
We
might ask ourselves such questions like: When we read the news are we
genuinely seeking important facts, or are we following a routine and
seeking distraction? When we sit down to a cup of coffee after a long
day, are we using that time proactively or as an escape? Do we allow our
lives to be focused on material and transient possessions, or do we
focus on only the most important and meaningful aspects of life?
True Wealth
In
his first chapter describing the proper structuring of one’s life,
Thoreau discusses the problem of overemphasis on worldly gain:
What
I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in
the face of the sun. . . or chained for life at the foot of a tree; or
measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast
empires . . . – even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more
incredible and astonishing than the scenes I daily witness. . . .
I
see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune is to have inherited
farms, houses, barns, cattle and farming tools; for these are more
easily acquired than got rid of . . . . But men labor under a mistake.
The better part of man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost.
By
drawing parallels between legendary acts of penance around the world
and the townsmen’s toils to win luxury and comfort, Thoreau conveys the
profound degree to which we become overtaken by the world of practical
demands and financial success. He even goes as far as to call it a kind
of slavery, writing, “[W]orst of all [is] when you are the slave-driver
of yourself! Talk of the divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the
highway. . . Does divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder
and water his horses!”5
In
providing his definition of true wealth, Thoreau advocates for a life
of simplicity writing, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of
things he can afford to leave alone” (79). He refers to the luxuries and
comforts of life as “positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind”,
noting that the great sages of history all lived humble and simple
lives. The idea is that through simplicity, we are given the freedom and
space to focus on what is truly important in life and to make those
pursuits our real life priority.
This
ethic is closely mirrored by Ethics of the Fathers when Ben Zoma is
recorded as saying, “Who is the rich? He who is satisfied with his
lot.”6 This pithy statement reminds us that true happiness is not to be
found in money but in our appreciation of what we have. As it says in
Ecclesiastes, “One who loves money will not be satisfied with money”
(5:9).
The
confusion that Ethics of the Fathers and Thoreau are warning against is
the allure that worldly pleasures have upon us. Rather than using money
as a tool to build the foundation for a good life, it is all too easy
to treat money and the luxuries it affords as ends in themselves. The
result is as described in Ecclesiastes that “one who has one hundred
wants two hundred.” In other words, once we start to treat money as the
goal, then the demands of physicality will never cease!
This
message is especially important to us in our current era of consumerism
where status and honor are often perceived as being gained through
wealth and worldly achievement rather being based on the integrity of
the actual person.
Before
becoming an observant Jew and building my relationship to Reality
through the framework of Judaism, these values presented by Thoreau rang
true to me, but I always retained a certain reservation. Though I
agreed with much of his philosophy and was inspired by his poetic style,
one man’s personal philosophy was not something I could fully invest
myself in. But upon discovering these ideals within the framework of my
own heritage, that stretches back thousands of years to Sinai, a
fundamental shift has taken place. These ideals now speak to me in a
deeper way. My hesitation is gone and I can commit to striving to
live-up to these ideals. These ethics are no longer just one man
contemplating the good and the evil; they now carry the power of the
spiritual heritage and ancestry to which I am inextricably connected.
1 Written August 1851, in his Journal, vol. 3, p. 378
2 Ethics of the Fathers 3:12
3 Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Yale University Press, 2004. 88. Print.
4
In an echo of Moshe’s focus on Torah not being in Heaven but directly
available to us, Thoreau further writes, “Nearest to all things is that
power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are
continually being executed. Next to us is [. . .] the [W]orkman whose
work we are.”
5 Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Yale University Press, 2004. 7. Print.
6 Ethics of the Fathers, 4:1
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3) THE CRISIS OF AMERICAN ZIONISM
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Jack “Yehoshua” Berger ( A well known American Activist For Israel)
“And
you may say in your heart, “My strength and the might of my hand made
me all this wealth. Then you shall remember Hashem, your G-d that it was
He Who gave you strength to make wealth, in order to establish His
covenant that He swore to your forefathers… (Deut. 8:17)
Hear
O Israel today you cross the Jordan to drive out nations that are
greater and mightier than you… But know today that Hashem, your G-d – He
crosses before you…” (Deut. 9:1-3)”
Earlier
this year a writer by the name of Peter Beinart wrote a somewhat
controversial book called The Crisis of Zionism where as the left
usually does,he took the side of Palestinian Authority / Hamas’ merry
band of terrorists and with the usual leftist harangue, surprise
surprise, he criticized Israel. Along the way, to gain a bit more
notoriety, he got together with another left wing criticizer of Israel,
Rabbi “Saving Israel” Gordis. It is almost comical to see these two
characters in monologue together.
As
Gordis expounds adnauseam at Holy Blossom Temple “… the truth is Peter
there is a lot I agree with…we share the same liberal values…I share
your same Zionist values… I share with you your deep concern abou the
undemocratic nature of the young Israeli electorate… their naked
hostility to Arabs…” and “I think Ovadia Yoseph is about as unsavory a
Jewish person as G-d ever put on the face of the earth…”
Talk about lashon horah, but Danny was playing to his crowd…in a Reform Temple Ortho-bashing is a sure crowd pleaser.
Yes
in the childish minds of these two who could doubt there would be a
crisis in Zionism. Gordis, a Modern Orthodox rabbi, is respectful of
Halacha. As a walkingtalking universalistic empathy machine he is
respectful to all he meets, except it seems when it comes to his own
Jewish heritage when he condescendingly uses the pejorative term of
anti-Semites and Israel bashers “West Bank”, when referring to our
Biblical homeland of Judea/Samaria. Gordis, the liberal proponent of all
humanity, can’t stop his diatribe when referring in his derogatory
manner to his fellow citizens of Israel as “settlers” .Ironically he
does not appreciate “the dose of nuance” that living in Gilo with his
wife and children, they are as much “settlers” to his “Palestinian”
playmates as the other 6.4 million Jews who live in Israel, from the
river to the sea.
But
Gordis these days is busy. He is raising funds for a new liberal arts
college for the Shalem Foundation. Just what Israel needs is another
liberal, left-wing transplant institution (Jerusalem already has the
Shalom Hartman Institute for all things liberal and left) from the
failure of liberal decaying American Jewish life.
But
more recently, Rabbi Danny teamed up with 40 remnants of the Israel
Policy Forum(IPF) to write a letter of concern to the Prime Minister of
Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, regarding the conclusions of what was called the
Levy Committee, three international legal scholars, including a former
Israeli
Supreme Court Judge, who were asked to give their opinion on the
legality of Jewish communal development in the areas of Judea/Samaria,
also known in
our Torah as our Biblical homeland but to Israel despisers as the “West Bank”.
The
land where Abraham bought the fields and a cave from Ephron the Hittite
called Machpela, where King David began his reign as king of Israel,
the land
Joshua crossed into, the land of our covenant, where Jews have lived
continuously during our peoples 4000 year history. One should remember
Tel
Aviv, a wonderful modern monument to the Israeli spirit is not mentioned
once in the Torah nor is Herzliya, but we surely read that Abraham and
David walked
the streets of Hevron, and Jacob fell asleep at a place called Bet
El…Shilo, Shechem, Tekoa and many other places are mentioned in our
Torah which I’m sure Rabbi Gordis must have read about on one Shabbat or
another.
In
the world of fact and not Arab propaganda, the Jewish connection to
Judea/Samaria has been long settled based on the law of both G-d and
man.
Take your pick… but Chamberlinesque appeasers just can’t seem to deal
with it so when the Levy Committee came to the conclusion that…“the
classical laws
of occupation as set out in the relevant international conventions
cannot be considered applicable to…Israel’s presence in Judea and
Samaria(the West
Bank)…” it was this sentence that was paraphrased and plastered on the
headlines of Israeli newspapers and became a subject of debate in the
international media as well…“The panel argued that the Israeli presences
in Judea and Samaria was sui generis because there was no previously
recognized sovereignty there when it was captured by the IDF in 1967.
The Jordanian declaration of sovereignty in 1950 had been rejected by
the Arab
states and the international community as a whole, except for Britain and Pakistan.
As
the Levy Report points out, the Jewish people still had residual
historical and legal rights…emanating from the British Mandate that were
never cancelled, but rather were preserved by the U. N. Charter, under
Article 80- the famous “Palestine Clause”… that was drafted to guarantee
continuity with respect to Jewish rights won at the League of Nations.”
(former Ambassador Dore Gold, A7/07-23-12). One for the good guys in
the blue and white kippas! But the Gordis group of 40 were not pleased
therefore the letter.
What
is most interesting is Danny and the boys must have known they didn’t
have a legal leg to stand on since their letter never mentions the legal
conclusions of the committee’s report, but they based their letter in
words of concern afraid of what the international community would say
…we fear that if approved this report will place the two –state solution
and the prestige of Israel as a democratic member of the international
community, in peril…blah blah blah…Securing Israel’s future as a Jewish
and democratic state requires diplomatic and political leadership, not
legal maneuverings.
We
recognize and regret that the Palestinian Authority has abdicated
leadership by not returning to the negotiating table…but our great fear
is
that the(truths of)the Levy Report will not strengthen Israel’s position
in this conflict but rather add fuel to those who seek to delegitimize
Israel’s
right to exist…blah blah blah…We are confident that with your deep
understanding…you will ensure that adoption of this report does not take
place…Sincerely Danny and the 40 meraglim”- so much for strong American
Jewish leadership. Their weakness can only continue to be an
encouragement
for our enemies, for weakness has always been a provocation. What has
been accomplished in the last 19 years since the appeaser’s
grand moment of “no more terror no more bloodshed” handshakes and
photoops on the White House lawn called Oslo? The rebuilding of a
terrorist
infrastructure in Ramallah and Gaza while over 1600 slaughtered Jews on
buses,in pizza parlors, in discotheques, and at hotel seders, were
obscenely called
“sacrifices for peace”.
These
were the same cheerleaders who supported Israel’scowardly withdrawal
from southern Lebanon that brought Hezbollah and war, the same
cheerleaders that supported Israel’s disengagement from Gaza thatbrought
Hamas missiles by the thousands and war. Zero for three doesn’t even
get you to the minor leagues, but it’s tough to stop the” thick-wallets”
when their egos are running full speed. The Levy Commission came to the
determination based not on hysterical whining, obfuscation or pandering
– but on the holy grail of international law as applied to other
countries in similar situations – that Israel had every right to build
in Judea/Samaria. Are thesecharacters saying that there should be one
set of laws for all the other nations and another set of laws for
Israel? If so they would qualify for a seat at the U. N.
My
own opinion over the years has been based more closely on the 700 page
legal treatise of Howard Grief, Esq., an international legal expert,
entitled “The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel Under International
Law”,
since
the basis of the original Palestine Mandate for the Homeland of the
Jewishpeople was voted on and passed at San Remo in 1920. It resolved
the borders of most of the countries in the Middle East after the demise
of the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, in 1922, contrary to its powers
under the mandate
Britain lopped off 78% of the Palestine Mandate creating the never
existing country called Trans-Jordan with the understanding thereafter
that the land west of the Jordan river would subsequently become the
“reconstituted homeland of the Jewish people.” Again in 1948, Britain
again betrayed its Mandate a war
broke out, armistice lines were created, but never were they to become agreed upon borders.
That
the history is not recognized is perfidy… but then again I’m not a
prestigious rabbi, nor have I written a book with the absurd title “If a
Place Could Make you Cry”. The crisis today is with American Zionist
leadership (the exception being Mort Klein of the ZOA). You can take the
Jew out of the diaspora, but it’s harder to take the diaspora out of
the Jew.
Over
the last 64 years the United Nations which the letter-writers hold in
such fear has been a pretty disgusting hell-hole of tyrants, murderers,
thugs, extortionists and thieves…“Who seek to delegitimizing Israel’s
right to exist”. May I remind them that that is what they have been
trying to do for the last 64 years.
Now
I know there may come a day when hell freezes over but our people have
been around for 4000 years. We’ve seen many of our enemies come and go.
We waited 2000 years to return to our promised land so even if some
don’t like the fact of repopulating our Biblical homeland, we are a
stiff-necked and
patient people and no institution will take our G-d given covenant from
us this time. This crisis of American Zionist leadership, of the
“thick-wallets”, reminds me of a story in the Torah.
Two
years after the Israelites left Egypt it was time to enter the Land.
Moses is told to pick 12 “men of distinction”, probably not much
different than
the “machers du jour” and to scout the land. They journey through the
land and come back with a report that the land is a good land, but ten
of the twelve say the people in the land (the international community at
the time) are too strong, – that they are giants, and because of the
bad report of the ten, G-d is displeased and the Israelites would wander
in the wilderness for 38 more years before entering the Promised Land.
Yet it is their statement of fear that echoes today, “We were
grasshoppers in our own eyes and therefore we were grasshoppers in their
eyes.” (Num. 13:33)
If
you don’t happen to believe in G-d, which seems to be the opinion of
many non-Orthodox Jews in America today, in this case it is also the
laws of
man that are on our side. No more two state delusions. No more
“Auschwitz borders”. No more chirping from “thick-walleted machers”
searching in their
paranoia for Jewish acceptance. Hazak, hazak venis ha zek…I’m sure Rabbi
Danny can explain it to his 40 pen-pals. I only hope he taught it to
his children.
We are a people with a miraculous heritage who have often faced
difficult challenges but with G-d’s blessings and eternal love, we have
persevered to
return to our Land given to our people in an eternal covenant. Stop
chirping about what the international community will say… they’ll say it
anyway.
Do you think the world won’t buy Israel’s next life-saving medical
discovery or Israel’s next high-tech brainchild… and by the way… I’ve
yet to
see an obituary that ends with a bank statement… make your grandchildren
proud. Stand with Israel from the river to the sea. Am Yisroal Chai!.
Shabbat Shalom
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4) How -- and why -- Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu became equals
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By Clifford D. May
A veteran news reporter, foreign correspondent and editor for the New York Times and Newsweek makes sense of the absurd
JewishWorldReview.com |
Iran
or Israel: Which is more deserving of censure? On the one hand, as the
French news agency Agence France-Presse reported last week, Iranian
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is calling Israel “a cancerous tumor”
that, he threatened, will “soon be excised.” He added: “The nations of
the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists. . . . With the
grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East there will
be no trace of the Americans and Zionists.”
On
the other hand, the AFP article goes on to say: “Israel has been
employing its own invective against Iran and its leaders, invoking the
image of Hitler and the Nazis on the eve of World War II and accusing
Tehran of being bent on Israeli genocide.”
So
let’s place these statements on the scale. Dehumanizing Israelis,
likening them to a disease, vowing to exterminate them . . . well, that
does sound a tad extreme. But the Israeli response . . . well, it is
pretty darn insulting! And really, what is the basis for the Israeli
charge?
Could
it have anything to do with the fact that Ahmadinejad’s words are
identical to those used by Nazi propagandists? For example, in 1941
Hitler ordered the excising of what he called “the Jewish cancer” from
Germany. After that came the murder of six million European Jews —
genocide.
Ahmadinejad
also accused “Zionists” of having started World War I and World War II —
just as Hitler blamed the Jews for these conflicts even as his troops
were raping Czechoslovakia. Still, does that justify drawing a
comparison between Iranian Islamists and German Nazis?
Logically,
of course it does, but in AFP’s eyes, no. How to explain this departure
from reality and morality? Several possibilities come to mind.
It
could be that AFP reporters and editors are simply ignorant — that they
have no idea what the Nazis said, believed, or did. I’m sure these
journalists attended good schools (not everyone uses a word like
“invective”), but perhaps they majored in 17th-century French literature
and know nothing of modern history. The one lesson they have learned:
It’s gauche, a faux pas, to call someone a Nazi, or to compare someone
with Hitler — even when such a comparison is justified.
A
second possibility: Multiculturalism requires moral equivalence — which
means no Third World society can ever be described as in any way
inferior to any Western society. So if Iranians are to be criticized for
threatening to kill Israelis, then Israelis must be criticized for
something.
A
third explanation: To acknowledge that Iran’s rulers are akin to Nazis
and are threatening genocide carries disagreeable policy implications.
Among other things, it suggests that Iran’s rulers should, at all costs,
be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. But anyone who says that
risks being labeled a warmonger, a neoconservative, or something equally
unfashionable.
There
is this possibility, too: The AFP article expresses anti-Israelism and,
perhaps, also, the most ancient and durable of biases. Don’t get me
wrong: Not everyone who criticizes Israel is a Jew-hater. Not everyone
who hates Israel is a Jew-hater. But all Jew-haters do criticize and
hate Israel.
Revolutionary
Islamists are candid in this regard. Hassan Nasrallah, the head of
Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese-based terrorist organization, has said: “If
we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable,
weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology, and religion, we would not
find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli.” Nasrallah
also has said that if all Jews gather in Israel, “it will save us the
trouble of going after them worldwide.”
One
final point that the good folks at AFP ought to understand: Any serious
concept of free speech includes the right to insult and offend — to
“employ invective.” But for leaders of a nation to incite genocide is a
crime under international law — the same international law so beloved of
the major media when they think it has application to Israel (or the
United States).
The
well-known international human-rights lawyer Irwin Cotler, a former
Canadian minister of justice and attorney general, has been making a
strenuous effort to remind Western leaders that there is a Genocide
Convention that they have an obligation — legal, moral, and strategic —
to enforce.
“The
Iranian regime’s criminal incitement has been persistent, pervasive,
and pernicious,” Cotler recently wrote. “In particular, this genocidal
incitement has intensified and escalated in 2012, with the website of
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declaring that there is religious
‘justification to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and Iran must
take the helm.’”
Despite
that, Cotler points out, “not one State Party to the Genocide
Convention has undertaken any of its mandated responsibilities to
prevent and punish such incitement — an appalling example of the
international community as bystander — reminding us also that genocide
occurred not only because of cultures of hate, but because of crimes of
indifference.”
Cotler’s
words have so far fallen on deaf ears. True, the U.S. and some European
nations have imposed painful economic sanctions on Iran. But inciting
genocide is not among the reasons given. And on August 26,
representatives of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement will be welcomed
in Tehran. The new president of the NAM? Iran.
Some
bold AFP reporter should ask the diplomats from those 120 nations if
they are concerned about Iran’s genocidal incitement, troubled that the
world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism may soon possess nuclear
weapons, or distressed by Iran’s support of the Assad regime’s barbarism
in Syria and its bloody repression of peaceful protestors inside Iran.
Or are they more upset by Israelis “employing invective” in an attempt
to call attention to these realities? These questions answer themselves.
In that sense, Agence France-Presse is simply following the herd.
Clifford
D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a
policy institute focusing on terrorism. A veteran news reporter,
foreign correspondent and editor (at The New York Times and other
publications), he has covered stories in more than two dozen countries,
including Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, China, Uzbekistan, Northern
Ireland and Russia. He is a frequent guest on national and international
television and radio news programs, providing analysis and
participating in debates on national security issues.
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5) Silence is Not an Option
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by Suzanna Eibuszyc
Born and raised in Poland, I assumed my mother’s Holocaust burden.
It
is said that in every survivor’s family, one child is unconsciously
chosen to be a “memorial candle,” to carry on the mourning and to
dedicate his or her life to the memory of the Shoah. That child takes
part in the parents’ emotional world, assumes the burden, and becomes
the link between past and future. I realize now that my mother chose me
to be that candle.
Suzanna Eibuszyc and her motherThe author (L) and her mother (R)
My
mother was forever haunted by her loved one’s images. She saw them
starved and frozen in the streets of the Warsaw ghetto. She saw them in
the cattle cars that took them to the Treblinka death camp. She escaped
Warsaw in order to save herself, only to be captured and enslaved by the
brutal Stalinist regime. Surviving in the remote corners of Russia,
extraordinary courage and the hope of reunion with her family, kept her
alive. In 1946, almost a year after the war ended, she was allowed to
leave Russia, forced to settle in southwestern Poland. Still hoping to
be reunited with her lost siblings, she made her way to Warsaw – only to
witness the city’s devastation and the annihilation of her family.
My
mother never forgave herself for saving her own life and abandoning
them to the horrible deaths that followed. She never stopped mourning.
My
parents’ huge losses were more than I could fathom. In time I came to
realize it is impossible to recover from such a tragedy. They carried on
with their lives, but the Holocaust was being played out in their minds
every day. Understanding this became crucial in my understanding of
myself.
I
grew up in Poland, in a home where my sister and I experienced my
parents’ daily quirks. I sensed my mother’s abandonment and
helplessness. I felt her fears and resignation. I lived with her
rituals, where every crumb of bread was important, where fear of being
cold was magnified, and where suspicion of others, and secretiveness and
mistrust ruled everything she did. Her scars became my scars.
Growing
up in these shadows made me a witness to what had happened. Sometimes I
was sympathetic. Other times I was filled with contempt – angry and
overwhelmed at being connected to my mother’s ongoing grief.
Exotic Adventures
I
tried to understand how my parents’ family could just be gone,
completely gone. My mother visibly mourned her five nieces and nephews,
repeating often, with emotion, “So young and innocent. They should be
among the living. They were all taken away and murdered.” I grieved with
her.
And
yet, I could not truly comprehend how her family was gone. I had never
seen any photographs, concrete images that my mother once had an
extended family. I was frightened, confused and ashamed that I did not
believe my mother. In my heart I was sad, but in my mind I believed that
her family had never existed.
I
was also envious of my mother’s incredible adventures. Overwhelmed by
the tragedy, I found that I could feel safe by focusing on her Russian
stories. I loved the glimpses of hope and excitement that my imagination
turned into exotic tales. I pictured her living in a foreign place,
riding camels under the hot desert sun. I never imagined her sick or
hungry. From those early childhood stories I decided I wanted to be like
her, to travel and visit unusual and faraway places where she was
heroic and a pillar of strength.
I
also did not understand my mother’s fearful and anxious behavior. I
remember her being especially tense during Christian and Jewish
holidays. She seemed to want to make us invisible. This was a time to
stay indoors, to be mistrustful, afraid of a possible mob mentality. The
baffling, unexplained, anxious behavior only intensified the fear in my
child’s imagination.
In
Poland, where I grew up, people had a deeply rooted belief that Jews
were responsible for killing Christ. Christmas and Easter were times of
great fear for Jews. The Jewish holiday of Passover was a time of
anxiety, too. The widespread rumor was that matzah was made with the
blood of Christian children. It was not until I got to the United States
and was in college that I learned that Jesus was a Jew who was
crucified by the Romans. To this day I do not have any emotional
attachment to holidays, but now at least I understand how this
disconnection came about.
Begging for Mercy
My
very first memory is the sensation of fear. The Holocaust left in its
path a darkness and despair that enveloped the consciousness of both
survivors and their children. I am convinced that the fear my mother
experienced was passed on to me through the sinewy strands of chemical
inheritance known as genes. I was born being afraid.
As
a child I had an abnormal fear of people. When people came to our home I
hid under the large kitchen table covered with a linen cloth that
reached to the floor. I refused to come out until the guests departed.
When
I was five years old, our town held army maneuvers in the city square
right in front of our house. Although I understood they were just
exercises for showing off the Polish army, I was traumatized. Was my
over-sensitivity that day to the sharp sounds of gunfire and tanks
rolling through the streets related to my mother surviving the bombing
of Warsaw?
At
age six, my mother took me to an art exhibit that had come to our town.
The exhibit was a tribute to mothers and children who suffered during
the war. The art showed SS soldiers ripping children from mothers’ arms
and killing them. Mothers being killed. Mothers begging for mercy. My
mother cried bitterly as we walked through the exhibit. I was
overwhelmed both by her tears and because the art was frightening. When I
think back to that day, I realize my mother probably thought I was too
young to understand. Yet her tears were enough for me to absorb the
horror of what was depicted.
The
next morning I woke up hallucinating. SS soldiers were standing on each
side of my bed. I was not allowed to move. If I did, they had orders to
shoot me. I remained motionless, afraid to breathe until my mother came
looking for me. I never burdened her with my terrifying waking dream,
because I remembered how she cried that day.
At
age seven I learned that being Jewish meant that I was different from
my Polish friends. My first day of school began happily enough, but as I
approached the school I was confronted by some classmates who proceeded
to taunt me. “You are Jewish. Poland is not your country. Palestine is
where you belong.” I didn’t understand. This was the first time I’d
heard that my home was in Palestine. It also was the first time I
realized that being Jewish and Polish could not coexist. The day that
began so happily dragged on. I could not wait to run home.
I
was crying as I opened our kitchen door. My mother sat with me by the
kitchen window and explained what it meant to be Jewish. I remember the
sadness in her voice and the tears in her eyes. But I kept thinking how
our true homeland was in Palestine. My response was a simple one: “Let’s
go where we belong.”
We
would often go to the train station to say goodbye to friends leaving
for Israel or America. Why not us? I was angry with my parents for their
choice to stay behind. Only as an adult did I discover my parents’
secret why we did not leave Poland. My father had contracted
tuberculosis in Saratov in 1940 and we were denied entry to other
countries because of his illness. Even Israel would not accept him
because of the advanced stage of tuberculosis. We could not leave until
he died at age 49. My parents concealed the seriousness of his health.
Only my sister, four years older than me, finally figured out the
reason. I never did. I mostly saw them as weak, indecisive and helpless.
My
father, Abram Ejbuszyc, was silent about his past. He never uttered a
word about what happened to him during the war or even about his life
before the war. I cannot help but wonder if this was a form of
self-imposed punishment. My father detached himself and didn’t talk, as
if afraid to make a close connection and lose loved ones again. He
sought to contain his trauma within himself and spare his children. He
lived behind a wall of silence. That was his shelter. He took his burden
to the grave.
New Land
In
New York, we each went in different directions, and the family that we
had been in Poland disintegrated. Our lives became turbulent as our
notions of how things should be collided. My mother worked in a factory.
She got up at six in the morning and took the one-hour subway ride from
the Bronx to Manhattan. With an address scribbled on a piece of paper,
she managed to ask for directions and got to work and back home again.
She was a fighter and a survivor. She was not going to succumb to her
fears. She was determined to make the best life possible for herself.
And so, at age 50, after working in a factory all day long, she enrolled
in night school and soon became fluent in English. I watched her
navigate through her new life, never giving up. She did not burden us
with her fears and problems; those she buried deep inside. Two years
later she was working in a bank.
I
took classes at City College in the department of Jewish studies. One
of my professors was the author and survivor Elie Wiesel. In those
classes I realized the importance of my mother’s story. I persuaded her
to write about her tragic life. My mother listened. She understood the
importance of history and of remembering, not just with regard to the
Holocaust but also for the Jewish legacy in Eastern Europe. She wrote
her story in Polish. Yet I did not share those writings with her.
Somehow we never had the time to journey and emerge together from her
trauma as adults.
After
I became an American citizen, I went back to Poland in 1972. I was
still haunted by the memories of our departure from Poland when my
mother was inconsolable. I had to return. I was looking for something, a
piece of me I had left behind. I had a nostalgia for my homeland, and
the belief that my father was calling me back to the tiny, overgrown
Jewish cemetery where he was buried. The ghosts of my past were
clamoring for some attention.
I
traveled through Europe and Israel. I lived in the desert, under the
hot sun, in a tent. By 1979 I moved to the West Coast, far away from my
mother in New York. I saw her a few times a year and we talked on the
phone every week. I often remembered how, as a child, all I ever wanted
was to follow in my mother’s footsteps. I wanted to go to exotic and far
away places. I turned her stories about surviving in Russia into heroic
journeys. Traveling made me feel courageous like my mother. She passed
down to me her pessimism about life, suspicion of others, and
assumptions about everything turning out for the worst.
Traveling,
however, put me in touch with my mother’s strengths. It temporarily
wiped out the negative themes that played on in my mind. While on the
road, surrounded by unusual, new places, I was happy and at home. At the
same time I had an overwhelming fear of putting down roots. I did not
want to have them severed as my mother had.
The
trauma of loss, the disconnection from community, and my frightened
family all influenced how I chose to live my life. Like other children
of survivors, I developed a self-preservation defense. I built a wall
around myself to protect me from my traumatic childhood. I was torn
between letting go and staying connected. At times my mother’s gloom was
too intense, but I continually found myself being pulled back into her
world anyhow. My conscience would not allow anything else.
On
the day of my mother’s death in 2006 I found a box containing the pages
of her diary, covering 30 years of her life. In a thin, shaky
handwriting she recalled heart-searing memories that began in Warsaw in
1917 and ended with WWII, her return to Poland after surviving
throughout remote corners of Soviet Russia. When my mother died, I first
contacted Elie Wiesel. He encouraged me to start translating the memoir
and not be afraid of the journey ahead. We need to rescue stories like
this from obscurity and share them with future generations. “We must
bear witness,” he said. “Silence is not an option.”
I
was now ready to confront the ghosts of my childhood. And ultimately I
came to understand how growing up with the trauma of Holocaust was
transmitted from my parents to me, their “memorial candle.”
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