ZGram - 4/21/2002 - "Ha'aretz: A World Cleansed of the Jewish State"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

April 21, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Would you have thought a year ago that you would have ever seen an article
like this one bandied about on the Internet?  And this from Israel directly! 

It is already getting to be a stigma to be a "holocaust survivor" - and
this is only the beginning!  Imagine when the whole extortion scheme unrolls!

[START]

-- "The Years of Contrition Are Over" -- "Here, at Yad Vashem, on
Holocaust Day, I ran into two journalists from Italy who refused to
enter the museum and look at pictures, due to their claim that the
subject is exploited politically by Israel. They asked me why I chose to
come to such a conference, at a time when Israel is doing what it's doing."

A WORLD CLEANSED OF THE JEWISH STATE

By Yair Sheleg -- Ha'aretz (Israel) -- Friday, April 19, 2002

-- The `new anti-Semitism' sweeping Europe is directed not just against
Jews, but also against their state, said speakers at a survivors
conference last week

A few months ago, when preparations for Yad Vashem's International
Conference on the Legacy of Holocaust Survivors were in full swing,
organizers began to worry. They were concerned both about cancellations
caused by Israel's security situation, and about possible influences of
Israel's current plight on discussions. Perhaps, they feared, subjects
such  as the moral lessons of the Holocaust would cause some well-known
participants, including UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Poland's
President Alexander Kwasniewski, to air strident criticism of Israel's
policies in the territories.

Nervous about such a scenario, Prof. Shevah Weiss, chairman of Yad
Vashem's international council and himself a Holocaust survivor,
proposed  that the conference be canceled, or at least deferred. In the
end, the most  prominent statesmen who were invited, such as Annan and
Kwasniewski - leaders who were supposed to bring much sought-after media
coverage with  then - didn't turn up. Also, a wave of brutal terror
attacks struck Israel; concurrently, there was a rash of anti-Semitic
episodes in Europe. And so the conference's current events message took
on a character that was entirely unlike what had been anxiously
anticipated.

Despite the Defensive Shield operation and the bloody clashes at the
Jenin  refugee camp, events in the territories were not the focus of the
Yad Vashem conference. Instead, the wave of "new anti-Semitism" in
Europe was featured, along with (albeit to a lesser degree) the terror
strikes in Israel.

Ideological Pogrom

Speakers - most of them Jews and supporters of Israel - delivered an
unequivocal, emphatic message. It is to be doubted whether Israel's
professional diplomats and spin masters would have used such outspoken
language in support of the country's situation. Per Ahlmark, a Swedish
writer who served in the past as deputy prime minister, described the
Durban anti-racism conference as an "ideological pogrom."

Ahlmark added: "Criticism of Israel has become very similar to
anti-Semitism. There is in it a rejection of the Jewish people's right
to express its identity in its state, and Israel isn't judged according
to the  same criteria that are applied to other countries. If
anti-Semites once aspired to live in a world rid of Jews, today
anti-Semitism's goal is apparently a world cleansed of the Jewish
state."

French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld struck a similar chord, saying
"hatred of the Jews has today become hatred of the Jewish state."

In his keynote address delivered on April 11 at Yad Vashem's Valley of
the Communities to close the conference, Prof. Elie Wiesel spoke in a
similar  vein: "I cannot tell you enough, my good friends here, how
perturbed I am,  how worried I am, how dismayed I am that the world does
not realized the danger of suicide bombings. I call them `suicide
killers.' These are people who made death into a cult, death into a
passion, death into a theology. They believe that they kill in the name
of their god, and in doing so they  don't realize that they make their
god into a killer. And the world refuses to understand that. And the
world doesn't realize that we have learned in history that whatever
happens to us is usually a beginning," Weisel declared.

Weisel, who was one of the only speakers who related to the
Palestinians' suffering, touched on the claim which holds that
Palestinians ought not to be the "victims of the victims," and pay a
price for what was done to the Jews. "Many survivors came here from DP
camps. Haven't they made Palestinians suffer? That's what the
Palestinians say," Weisel noted. Continuing, he answered the question:
"My answer is simple. When survivors came here, their goal was not to
make them suffer. It was not to  conquer lands that they came here for,
lands that did not belong to the Palestinians, but they came home to
live without fear." Weisel added that "Jews must not be apathetic" about
the suffering of non-Jews.

Supreme Court President Aharon Barak's address stirred considerable
interest at the conference. Barak, a native of Kovno in Lithuania whose
family was saved during the Holocaust by a local farmer, did not relate
directly to current events. Instead, he proposed drawing conclusions
based  on his own personal experience during the Holocaust. "One
conclusion," Barak said, "is connected to the people of Israel and the
state of Israel, to this state's centrality in the life of the Jewish
people, to our inability to rely on anyone other than ourselves and to
the imperative to ensure that these things are never repeated...

"The second conclusion involves deep faith in people; and this is the
basis  of the centrality of the concept of human dignity and human
rights in my  legal thinking ... Hence, conclusions that I draw feature
an endless search  for balance between our national goal as a people,
and universal values reflected by concepts of human dignity and freedom.
I believe that this balance can be attained. I have been on the Supreme
Court for some 25 years, and there have only been a few, rare
occurrences during which I said to myself that this balance cannot be
attained, and that a choice [between them] has to be made. In most
cases, the balance is possible," Barak said.

The Years of Contrition Are Over

Some 80 educators from around the world attended the conference, in
order to hear lectures and (more importantly) to take part in
educational seminars on ways of imparting knowledge about the Holocaust.
They spoke about  how peers in their countries were incredulous about
their decision to come  to such a conference at a time when violence is
so rampant in Israel and the territories. For example, Otto Rol, who has
been involved in Holocaust education for years and serves today as
educational adviser to a Center for  Holocaust and Genocide Studies in
Denmark, said that "there is in Denmark, and generally in Western
Europe, a definite feeling that Israel exploits the Holocaust in order
to dodge criticism for its actions. People  feel frustrated when they
visit Israel, because they feel as though the hosts use the Holocaust as
a way to stop them from speaking out about current events. Here, at Yad
Vashem, on Holocaust Day, I ran into two journalists from Italy who
refused to enter the museum and look at pictures, due to their claim
that the subject is exploited politically by Israel. They asked me why I
chose to come to such a conference, at a time when Israel is doing what
it's doing.

"I myself reject these claims," Rol continued. "As far as I'm concerned,
this  is the best possible time to take part in such a conference - this
is a time  when we are witnessing violent attacks against Jews in
Europe. This is precisely the time to ask what we can do to counter this
anti-Semitism, because 60 years ago events started with the burning of
synagogues."

Tirsa Polin, an art curator at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, a
Jewish woman who lived for many years in Israel and has Israeli
citizenship, related to the seeming contradiction between the huge surge
of interest in the Holocaust during the past decade (in books, films,
research studies, museum exhibitions, media reports) and the eruption of
the "new anti-Semitism." As she sees it, "these aren't the same people.
Those who are interested in the Holocaust and those who attack
synagogues are simply two different types of people."

Alicia Bialskah, a guide and educator at the Auschwitz concentration
camp memorial site, furnishes a different explanation of this seeming
contradiction. "I think it's no accident that there is no rise of
anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe right now," she says. "I
haven't heard of a single anti-Jewish episode in our region. On the
contrary, the outlook is very balanced, and is even fairly pro-Israel.
It seems to me that the reason for this is that with us, the `discovery'
of our terrible acts during the  Holocaust is relatively new.
Apparently, a sufficient number of years of contrition have gone by in
Western Europe, and so now people there feel at liberty to come out in
opposition to Israel."

We, Holocaust Survivors, Want to Tell the World...

The highlight of the conference was the signing of the "survivors'
manifesto" - a document that tries to express all that the Holocaust
survivors want to say to the world, in their advancing years. The
document, written by survivors in collaboration with Yad Vashem, was
read aloud by Zvi Gill, a  board member on the Center of Organizations
of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, which sponsored the conference. The
document was presented at a special closing ceremony conducted in Yad
Vashem's Valley of the Communities.

The document declares: "We have not turned into vindictive people full
of hate ... We chose life. We rebuilt our lives, we took part in the
struggle to establish the state of Israel, and we contributed to the
societies of Israel and of the various states from which we came. Today
we Holocaust survivors ... deliver the Jewish message that memory must
lead to acts and to moral commitment. It must be the basis of action,
and the source of strength for the creation of a better world. We want
to cull from the atrocities a positive message for our people and the
world - a message of commitment to the values of man and humanity. The
Holocaust belongs to the universal tradition of all people of culture.
It has set the standard of absolute evil. Lessons of the Holocaust must
serve as a cultural code fostering education for humane values,
democracy, human rights, and tolerance."

Gill says that preparing manifesto was particularly important to himself
and fellow survivors, since in recent years they devoted the majority of
their efforts to financial compensation claims. They seized the chance
to stress  the moral message inherent in the lessons of their lives.
Avner Shalev, chairman of the Directorate of Yad Vashem, says that Yad
Vashem will ensure that the manifesto receives exposure in the media,
and as an educational tool. Shalev thinks that in future years the
document will be regarded as the Holocaust survivors' "Jerusalem
Declaration," and as an important milestone in responses to the Holocaust.

=====

{Source: 
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=153026&contrassID
=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y&itemNo=153026 )

Thought for the Day:

"He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue
gushed forth.  He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung
upon its feet."

(Daniel Webster, March 10, 1831)