New disaster brings back Polish tragedies

It was en route to a historic commemoration of the massacre of thousands of Poles by Stalin's secret police, in the Katyn Forest, that Poland's top echelon of national leadership was wiped out in a plane crash last week. The willingness of Russia's post-Soviet leadership today to acknowledge this crime in its Stalinist past, is one silver lining of this agony, then and now. Exactly one year ago yesterday, I provided a Jewish gloss on the movie, Katyn, for the New Jersey Jewish Standard ("Poles apart---in film as in life"):

Katyn, the most recent work of the great Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda and a finalist for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2008, was held over for a month in its run at New York’s Film Forum, the city’s premier art house. It depicts the Soviet murder of thousands of captive Polish army officers during the spring of 1940 and reverberations of the massacre’s aftermath several years later. Dire, in some instances fatal, consequences befell Poles who insisted on the truth, after the war, as to who was really responsible for this atrocity.

Poland, a medium-sized country of approximately 30 million, mobilized a million men when Nazi Germany struck on Sept. 1, 1939. The film opens on Sept. 17, 1939, with refugees fleeing the Germans meeting others running in the opposite direction from Soviet forces. Stalin’s non-aggression pact with Hitler had sealed Poland’s fate.

The filmmaker’s father was among the victims at Katyn, a forested area near Smolensk, deep within Russia. This mass crime is so obscured amid larger crimes that even the film and its promotional material vary in the number of victims cited: 12,000, 15,000, and 22,000.

Wajda was a protégé of Aleksander Ford, a Polish Jew who headed Polish film productions in the immediate post-World War II period. Ford (who had renamed himself in honor of the American film icon, John Ford) was obedient to the Communist regime’s propaganda needs — as he had to be, to make films at that time. One of his efforts, Border Street, was strikingly “pro-Jewish” in its sympathetic depiction of the Jewish plight in the Warsaw Ghetto. It even depicts the saintliness of a pious old Jew who perishes — surprising because of the militant atheism of the Stalinist state — but it also highlights the fighting spirit of younger Jews, including one child, who resist with weapons in hand.

That film’s production values, including battle scenes and plot lines, are extremely poor, undoubtedly reflecting both a limited budget and political requirements for preachy dialogue. A few Jews were visibly prominent in the new Communist government. The film as a propaganda tool proclaimed the need for Jews and non-Jews in Poland to work together to build a new progressive order; it emphasized the fact that they had faced a common Nazi foe. Anti-Semitism is explicitly reviled in Border Street, whether exhibited by Nazis or by ordinary Poles.

Stalin, like Hitler, was a film buff who avidly screened films in private. Ford is reported to have been told in no uncertain terms by Stalin that Border Street was “too Jewish.” But it was not until 1968, during anti-Semitic purges, that Ford was ousted from his job and from Poland. He lived in Israel, Denmark, and the United States, making two films that were not well received, before taking his own life at a Florida hotel in 1980.

By contrast, Wajda has had a long and illustrious career creating films of artistic note even during the Communist era. This particular film, Katyn, is somewhat disjointed. Post-war segments introduced characters who were hard to place in the story, at least for this non-Polish speaker.

There is nothing in Katyn, not even the dominant scenes of wartime and post-war Krakow, that is specifically Jewish. Yet research has so far identified 231 Polish-Jewish officers murdered at Katyn.

By this, I do not mean to argue that there’s anything intentionally anti-Jewish in Wajda’s work. Several of his films have Jewish characters who figure in them positively. But this work reflects what was a fact in war-time Poland: that the struggles of Catholic Poles and of Jews were of a completely different order. They suffered separately (especially after most Jews were ghettoized), even to the extent that Warsaw was the site of two totally separate anti-Nazi uprisings — the revolt of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in the spring of 1943 and the general Polish rebellion in the summer of 1944.

Jews captured during the former were doomed whether they were fighters or not. The Polish freedom fighters of 1944 were permitted to surrender to the Germans after a prolonged battle (depicted cinematically in Wajda’s Kanal) and incarcerated as prisoners of war.

The Polish underground rebelled in Warsaw when Soviet forces were virtually at the city’s gates. Stalin ordered his armies to halt to allow the Germans to eliminate their ostensible ally, a fighting force loyal to the Polish government in exile in London. Six million Polish citizens perished during World War II — three million Catholic Poles and three million Jews. The non-Jewish death toll was about 10 percent of the population of Poland; the Jewish death toll was more than 90 percent of Poland’s Jewish population.

Yehuda Bauer, a renowned Israeli Holocaust historian who is conscientious in respectfully analyzing the historic disasters suffered by a variety of peoples, explicitly characterizes the Polish experience in World War II as a species of genocide. The Nazis intended to reduce the Poles to a nation of semi-literate peasants and manual laborers serving the Third Reich. Polish intellectuals and professionals were imprisoned and murdered in great numbers to deprive the Poles of independent-minded leadership.

One of Wajda’s characters is a university professor summoned with the rest of the faculty to be harangued by a Nazi official, who then herds them off to a concentration camp where the professor dies. But non-Jewish Poles as a “race,” as the Nazis regarded them, were meant to be enslaved rather than exterminated.

O, Jerusalem -- Israel Symposium postscript

Uri and Yael, first cousins on my mother's side, are a rather typical middle class couple, moderate Israelis who live in a suburb of Haifa. Longtime supporters of the Labor Party, their votes are now up for grabs. And hopeful constituents of Rabin and Peres during the 1990s peace process, they now voice disdain for the sincerity of the Palestinian Authority leadership's peaceful intentions. This view seemed almost universal among Israelis we saw on last month's Meretz USA Israel Symposium and in my own travels the week after, until my return about 12 hours before seder time.

On Jerusalem in particular, Yael surprised me with her opinion on the ongoing disagreement between Netanyahu's coalition government and the Obama administration on the right and wisdom of continuing to build housing for Jews in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. "We have no choice," she said.

There is a choice, of course, and this choice that Israel has made is a poor one, because it gobbles up the very ground that is required for a territorial compromise in Jerusalem that would help make a two-state solution possible. While on a tour of East Jerusalem with our very knowledgeable (and patriotic) Israeli guide from Ir Amim, we looked down upon a shiny new neighborhood there. Our guide asked rhetorically if Israel or the Jerusalem municipality suddenly saw the light in providing sidewalks and other amenities to treat its East Jerusalem Arab residents equitably. The answer sadly is "no"; the new traffic circle, the new buildings, the playground and the sidewalks are there for the convenience of new Jewish residents in a development now called Nof Tsyon.

This links to a long NY Times blog post which discusses the issue of Jerusalem in detail.

On the dangers of 'Christian Zionism'

For those who doubt the dangers of "Christian Zionism," I recommend the writings of Rachel Tabachnick in ZEEK, the hip Jewish journal linked online to The Forward. In "Disenchanting Zionism," she writes of the alliance of right-wing Christian Zionists with Kahanists and other Israeli elements who are displacing Arab residents of East Jerusalem, among other noxious things:

“Israel, the Jewish State, is not a political entity,” describes Gary Cooperberg, the former foreign press spokesperson for Meir Kahane in his 2001 post titled “Biblical Zionism is the Only Path to Peace.” He continues, “It is the beginning of fulfillment of Biblical Destiny. It concerns not only the Jewish People, but all nations of the world. Redemption has clearly begun, and all the nations are being judged by G-d. The nation of Israel too is being judged by how it behaves. The terror we see in Israel today is in direct correlation to the failure of our leaders here to conduct national policy according to Biblical mandates.”...

Gershom Gorenberg cites Kahanist Gary Cooperberg, in his book End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. According to Gorenberg, Cooperberg sent a fax to journalists after fellow Kahanist Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 Purim massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers during prayers at Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs. He stated that Goldstein’s “desperate act of love for his people… will some day be recognized by all Jews as the turning point which brought redemption upon us.” Gorenberg explains that Goldstein had told friends days before the massacre that he had a plan to stop the peace process.

John Hagee [a leading fundamentalist Christian Zionist] describes the murder of Yitzhak Rabin as part of a divinely ordained plan. “The shot that killed Yitzhak Rabin launched Bible prophecy onto the fast track,” he pronounces in his book Beginning of the End, and proceeds to describe those Jews who desire peace as “cultural or ethnic Jews who place no great importance on the religious beliefs of the Jewish people.” Hagee continues with his frequently used narrative that Israel, in its quest for “peace at any price” will “entrust its security to the Antichrist,” therefore partnering in the formation of the the “New World Order.”

It is curious that Jews who would not think of embracing Kahanism will happily endorse the partnership with Christians who promote Kahanists and their own parallel religious fanaticism. ...

Tabachnick goes on to quote a BBC interview with the current non-religious mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, who curiously uses a Biblical argument to justify new Israeli building projects in disputed East Jerusalem territory. On our recent Meretz USA Israel Symposium, we saw some of the construction projects in evidence; our guide (a progressive Zionist contracted for us by Ir Amim) noted the fresh sidewalks and other amenities for new Jewish residents, in contrast to the general neglect of infrastructure for East Jerusalem Arabs who are routinely denied permits to expand their housing stock.

By way of bringing up the social justice consciousness that still exists among some Zionists, Tabachnick also mentions that a leading Israeli protester for the rights of Palestinians in the embattled West Bank village of Bilin, Didi Remez, is an IDF combat veteran and the scion of an associate of Ben-Gurion who was a minister in Israel's first cabinet. If you have the chance, follow her link to Leon Wieseltier's caustic commentary on the embattled lives of Palestinian families today whose ancestors saved Jews during earlier hostilities.

Israel: Learn Some Manners

This piece was submitted by Jamie Levin, a former executive director of Ameinu and currently a PhD student at the University of Toronto.

It is often said that Israelis share the unfortunate national characteristic of being rude. Another view conflates Israelis with the sabra, the fruit of a cactus common to the region. In this view, Israelis are direct, even prickly on the outside, but sweet on the inside, at least once you get to know them. Hence native-born Israelis are called sabras.

Though Bibi Netanhayu is the first prime minister born in the State of Israel, I’m afraid he is no sabra by the definition offered above. Fluent in both Hebrew and English, he appears smug in both. Probably for the better, Netanyahu appointed a foreign minister who speaks little English. For when Avigdor Lieberman is understood he often offends; his views border on racist and his policies on the absurd.

More recently, Netanhayu’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, caused a row with Turkey by deliberately humiliating their ambassador on Israeli television. Turkey, a close ally, has criticized Israel over its actions in Gaza. Israel’s response? Seat the ambassador on an absurdly low chair and invite the press into the room while Ayalon lectures the ‘naughty child’. If there was any doubt about the intended effect, Israeli television broadcast the whole bit, including Ayalon’s instructions to the television crew to get the camera angle right in order to fully convey the humiliation. Not surprising, Israeli-Turkish relations have suffered as a result.

And then there are the actions undertaken by Netanyahu's interior minister, Eli Yishai, during American Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to Israel. In preparation for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Yishai announced the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem despite the fact that the Obama administration has pleaded with Israel to halt settlement construction (and honour past commitments to stop building in the West Bank). The timing of this move could only be read as a deliberate attempt to undermine peace talks with the Palestinians and as a direct insult to America, Israel’s closest ally and friend.

In the face a looming Iranian nuclear threat, continued bellicosity from Syria and Hezbollah, and intermittent rocket attacks from Hamas controlled Gaza, it is perhaps no wonder that Israel feels insecure and isolated.

Israel’s recent actions may be the response of an exasperated country in the face of these perceived threats. Ironically, such actions only reinforce Israel’s isolation. And rightly so.

To be sure, one may argue about the finer points of policy but diplomacy requires a soft touch, particularly with one’s friends. It is, therefore, hard to see how these actions fall under the subtle category of diplomacy. These and others are profoundly impolitic acts of an increasingly rude state.

Netanyahu needs to learn some manners.

Jamie Levin is a PhD student at the University of Toronto.

Some reflections on 'Israel Symposium'

I'm still traveling in Israel, basically among relatives, but I wish to reflect briefly upon a couple of memories that perhaps together crystalize the difficulty in arriving at peace, which we explored last week on the Meretz USA Israel Symposium. One involved our visit to Ramallah (the West Bank Palestinian capital) which included an amiable chat with the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad. It was not Dr. Fayyad who was in any way problematic. Indeed, he was gracious and upbeat about his work to build Palestinian institutions in anticipation of being ready to forge a two-state solution by the end of 2011.

When meeting earlier that day with the Haaretz reporter in the West Bank, Amira Haas, I asked her whether she could discuss ways in which the Palestinian Authority had made mistakes, such as the recent dedication of a square in the memory of a slain terrorist who had led the attack on the coastal road in 1978, in which 38 Israeli civilians were murdered---including 13 children and the American photographer, Gail Rubin. Ms. Haas spoke with insight, but I'm honoring her request for an off-the-record conversation.

Waiting in the wings was our next speaker, Dr. Samih al-Abed, a leading figure in the Palestinian Peace Coalition, the Palestinian partner organization that promotes the Geneva Peace Initiative. Designated to introduce him, I found that his resume--as an engineer, planner, academic and official--is quite impressive. But Dr. Abed began with an emotional rebuke aimed at me for having brought up this matter of the square. As if by way of excuse, he mentioned the shrine at Baruch Goldstein's grave in Hebron, the Israeli who slaughtered 29 Palestinians at prayer, early in 1994, one of the critical turning points against the Oslo Peace Process.

Later, I tried to clarify that I was in no way defending the Goldstein memorial. I had also wanted to mention that--unlike the square in Ramallah--it was not an official government monument; but I had no sooner begun than I was emotionally interrupted by Dr. Abed who simply would not entertain any questioning of the recent Ramallah event. The session proceeded to a polite conclusion, but such a defensive reaction from this Palestinian, who has in fact dedicated himself to forging a peace agreement with Israel, was disturbing.

My other disturbing memory, a very complex one, was at the great Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem. Both our very earnest guide and the museum official who addressed our group later, made references that progressives like ourselves had to find uncomfortable. The deputy director in particular, referred to the severe wounding and recovery of her son, a soldier injured during the Lebanon war of 2006. The tone, subtext and text (in some instances) of the remarks we heard connected the tribulations of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to more recent situations that challenge Israel today, with something of a right-wing nuance.

Our guide referred contemptuously to Iran's president Ahmadinejad (although she would not mention his name). It occurred to me that rather than simply being contemptuous of this Holocaust denier, the State of Israel, or some intermediary, should invite him to visit Yad Vashem. Who knows? The man might actually learn something and even be moved.

Someone else in our group reacted to my idea by saying that he'd just repeat what he's already said, that regardless of the Holocaust, why should the Palestinians pay the cost? A good question, but one that requires a thoughtful response: No, the Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust, but this doesn't mean that they had no responsibility when it came to trying to shut off Palestine as a haven for Jewish refugees and survivors.

Israel Symposium, entry II: Wild Days

It has been an intense few days. A meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon that started out polite and soon became a "spirited exchange". We talked settlements and J Street and the meaning of pro-Israel. To be honest, there wasn't much of a meeting of the minds.

We also held several tough sessions with leading Palestinian citizens of Israel - MK Haneen Zuabi of the Balad party, Mohammed Darawshe of the Abraham Fund, Hassan Jabareen of Adallah. We discussed the demands for equality of Israel's Arab citizens - not only on the individual and municipal level, but as a national minority as well. We found some common ground and some reasons to believe that solutions can be found, but we also learned that the path won't be easy. Lots of dialogue will be needed.

We spent a day in Ramallah, the central element of which was a 45-minute meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad. Fayyad's talk was uplifting - he advanced a vision of a Palestinian people ready to take on the responsibilities of statehood and of good neighborliness. For peace to happen, he said, the Palestinian people must be neither submissive nor belligerent - but empowered.

A half-day on the Golan included a meeting with Dr. Yigal Kipnis. Dr. Kipnis is a resident of the Golan who advocates a peace treaty with Syria in exchange for a full withdrawal from the Heights - a withdrawal that would also oblige him to leave his home of 30 years. But Dr. Kipnis stressed that Israel's welfare, its future, outweighs the needs of individual settlers.

We also got up at 5am to be observers on the Palestinian side of the Kalandia checkpoint, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, together with Hanna Barag of Machsom Watch. It's hard to describe in words what we saw there, so I won't try. But it was an important experience for anyone who wishes to understand the human dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy.

And we had dinner with the leading members of the Israeli human rights community - from B'Tselem and ACRI, Gisha and Physicians for Human Rights. They told a tale of concern about where Israel is heading and the threats to the human rights organizations, but they also displayed a courage to continue their work despite the harassment from the government and the hostility of the majority of Israel's citizens. They are Israeli patriots who refuse to give up. Israel and its citizens deserve a better future, they insisted.

Israel Symposium, entry I: gloom and hope

Sunday night, Israel time, 24 hours into the Israel Symposium. How to summarize this intense first day?

We kicked off the seminar last night with Prof. Naomi Chazan, who touched on issues as seemingly diverse as war and peace, Zionism, gender-segregated bus lines, and the feminist revolution among Bedouin women. But with intelligence and finesse, Naomi tied these all together and sketched out the immense internal dangers facing Israel, especially the dangers to Israeli democracy.

But Naomi offered rays of hope, which were seconded by other speakers we had today: Look at the growth of civil society in Israel over the last decade, she said. And look at the new generation of activists demonstrating week in and week out at Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem against the expulsion of Palestinian families. Others referred to the spontaneous growth of the urban kibbutz movement in Israel as a sign of continued or renewed idealism.

We heard a lot about Prime Minister Netanyahu: The main message we heard - from journalist Akiva Eldar, from Gadi Baltiansky of the Geneva Initiative, from Haim Oron of Meretz - is that Netanyahu has to decide which direction he intends to take. If he's on the side of the anti-Zionist, messianic settlers, he should stop talking about two states and continue building beyond the Green Line. But if he's really for two states, he should suspend all construction over the Green Line, reorganize his coalition by bringing Kadima in and showing the extremist right-wing parties the door. And then he needs to pick up negotiations where Israel and the Palestinians left them when Olmert was Prime Minister or at least when President Clinton laid out his parameters for a peace deal.

Another repeating message: There's absolutely no time to waste. Although no one would set an exact expiry date for the two-state solution, everyone seemed to agree that we are getting frighteningly close to the point in which the two-state solution will no longer be feasible. True Zionists, we were reminded, need to push hard for two states, as a one-state situation will be disastrous, under any of the scenarios in which it plays out (Apartheid or the end of a Jewish-majority nation.)

We also heard alternative visions - from those who feel we should be looking past the two-state solution. Journalist Daniel Gavron sought to sketch out a vision of a post-Zionist reality in which a single state of Israel/Palestine would include autonomous structures for Jews, Arabs, etc. And Avraham Burg insisted that while Israel would continue to be the national home for the Jewish people, it could no longer be an ethnocracy - a state that gives extra rights to one group, the Jews, over another group. Israel, he said, needs to be a democracy - full stop. Both Gavron and Burg suggested that the Israeli left - Meretz and Hadash - need to collaborate to help bring Israel to a better place.

We also heard from former Foreign Minister and today head of the Opposition, Tzipi Livni. Unfortunately, her remarks were made off the record and cannot be reported upon here. All I can say is that although I came away impressed by Ms. Livni's realism, I was less impressed by her sense of the dual narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Many of our speakers tried to explain how an extremist minority in Israel - the settlers - had managed to 'abduct' (as Avraham Burg termed it) an Israeli society in which 65%-70% still believe in a two-state solution (even if the same percentage doesn't believe it'll be achieved in their lifetime). Naomi Chazan explained with understanding that Israelis had to deal with years of fear, disappointment, and uncertainty, which had made them vulnerable to populist, super-nationalist slogans. Many referred to the fact that much of Israel's center-left has, out of despair, escaped into escapism, now choosing to watch "Big Brother" instead of the once top-rated evening news programs. Oron and others noted that things in Israel seem normal on the surface - the economy is doing well, and terror in 2009 was at its lowest in 10 years. The downside is that this is lulling Israelis into a sense that this can continue, that the Occupation can coexist over time with security and international legitimacy. Israelis, these speakers feared, will come to their senses only after disaster strikes. Hopefully, the situation will still be reparable when it does.

Many are looking for the international community, including American Jewry, to step up before it's too late. They're not pinning their hopes on Obama alone, but do believe that, to a degree, Israel needs help from the outside so that its leaders don't lead the country down a path that's headed for disaster.

It was an intense first day - full of frightening scenarios, but also with a series of speakers who aren't throwing in the towel, and who will continue to fight for a peaceful, egalitarian Israel.

Almost midnight. More tomorrow.