Germany Edition May 4 Recovered Ii

GERMANY EDITION May 4, 2009 Dear Friends: In a few days I’ll be off to Washington to attend the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Jewish Committee. These gatherings are always fascinating and chock full of information especially about international relations. I’ll try to take copious notes and report back on those items I think most interesting. After I get back I’ll be getting ready for my June 12th trip to Hamburg and Berlin accompanying our AJC – Adenauer Foundation Exchange delegation. Perhaps I’ll run into some of you while I’m there. In the meantime… IN THIS ISSUE *NETANYAHU IN WASHINGTON *DO THE PALESTINIANS REALLY WANT A STATE? *AHMADINEJAD AND DURBAN II *ITALY”S FRATTINI ON DURBAN II *DENYING THE DENIERS *PRES. OBAMA AND THE HOLOCAUST *MADE IN GERMANY *PERSONAL NOTES NETANYAHU IN WASHINGTON In two weeks Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be visiting Washington to meet with President Obama and there is a certain amount of trepidation on the part of American Jews about how the two will relate to each other and what the outcome will be. Since the last important meeting between the leaders of the two States both have had changes in governments, leaders and political outlook. Obama has replaced Bush, Netanyahu has replaced Olmert, the U.S. is set on a much more “liberal” course and the Israelis on a more conservative one. Pres. Obama seems to be more interested in extended diplomacy when it comes to Iran and the Palestinians while Netanyahu sees Iran as a genuine military threat to Israel and ha, thus far, refused to endorse the “Two State Solution” as far as the Palestinians are concerned. I do not have any special wisdom or knowledge about how the meeting between the President and the Prime minister will come out. However, if you want another way of looking at things read the next article. DO THE PALESTINIANS REALLY WANT A STATE? The blame for continuance of the Israeli-Palestinian problem both here in the U.S. and in Germany, especially from the left, seems to fall on the Israelis.

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Though it should be obvious to even the least objective observers, Arab leaders and the Palestinian leaders themselves use the situation to hide their poor treatment of their own people and to utilize Israel as a scapegoat. It seems to me that any rational leaders would try to bring the hostility to an end so that their people could begin to reap the harvests that peace would bring. For the Palestinians that has not been the case. I have often wondered why the Palestinians, as Abba Eban, the great Israeli diplomat once put it, “… never miss a chance to miss a chance”. With so much international sympathy for them shouldn’t they be able to push through some sort of deal that would assure them a State and peace for their people? It never occurred to me that – perhaps they really don’t want a state. I recently came across an article in The Atlantic by one of that magazine’s correspondents, Robert D. Kaplan; entitled “Do the Palestinians Really Want a State?” After pointing up all the problems and shortcomings on the Israeli side, he notes, “…there is a deeper structural and philosophical reason why the Palestinians remain stateless—a reason more profound than the political narrative would indicate. It is best explained by associate Johns Hopkins professor Jakub Grygiel, in his brilliant essay, “The Power of Statelessness: the Withering Appeal of Governing” (Policy Review April/May 2009). In it, Grygiel does not discuss the Palestinians in particular, but rather the attitude of stateless people in general. Statehood is no longer a goal, he writes. Many stateless groups “do not aspire to have a state,” for they are more capable of achieving their objectives without one. Instead of actively seeking statehood to address their weakness, as Zionist Jews did in an earlier phase of history, groups like the Palestinians now embrace their statelessness as a source of power. New communication technologies allow people to achieve virtual unity without a state, even as new military technologies give stateless groups a lethal capacity that in former decades could be attained only by states. Grygiel explains that it is now “highly desirable” not to have a state—for a state is a target that can be destroyed or damaged, and hence pressured politically. It was the very quasi-statehood achieved by Hamas in the Gaza Strip that made it easier for Israel to bomb it. A state entails responsibilities that limit a people’s freedom of action. A group like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the author notes, could probably take over the Lebanese state today, but why would it want to? Why would it want responsibility for providing safety and services to all Lebanese? Why would it want to provide the Israelis with so many tempting targets of reprisal? Statelessness offers a level of “impunity” from retaliation. But the most tempting aspect of statelessness is that it permits a people to savor the pleasures of religious zeal, extremist ideologies, and moral

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absolutes, without having to make the kinds of messy, mundane compromises that accompany the work of looking after a geographical space. Grygiel raises a challenging proposition. If his theory is correct, then the Palestinians may never have a state, because at a deep psychological level, enough of them—or at least the groups that speak in their name—may not really want one. Statehood would mean openly compromising with Israel, and, because of the dictates of geography, living in an intimate political and economic relationship with it. Better the glory of victimhood, combined with the power of radical abstractions! As a stateless people, Palestinians can lob rockets into Israel, but not be wholly blamed in the eyes of the international community. Statehood would, perforce, put an end to such license. Mr. Kaplan concludes by saying that the U.S. should continue to put pressure on Israel to do “the right thing”. But the U.S. should also brace itself for an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that may never end, because the Palestinians may already have what they want. If Mr. Kaplan is correct and Prof. Grygiel theory is correct, it seems to me that both the U.S. and the EU should start rethinking their policies. AHMADINEJAD & DURBAN II By this time you have read all the newspaper accounts about the speech Iranian President Ahmadinejad made at the Durban II conference in Geneva and the walkout of the European delegates when he launched into his vitriolic ant-Israel diatribe. Of course, both the American & German representatives were absent by virtue of both countries deciding to boycott the meeting. I must say, Germany’s decision played very well in the American Jewish community in that it was another evidence of Germany’s sensitivity to Jewish concerns and its strong positive feelings toward Israel. Of course, the fact that Ahmadinejad spoke at all at a conference on racism and discrimination is a joke in itself. David Harris, AJC’s Executive Director, writing in the Jerusalem Post I think hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “It was tragedy masquerading as farce. There was the Iranian president addressing the Durban Review Conference in Geneva. Perhaps there was no better symbol of all that had gone wrong with a process originally designed to advance the anti-racism struggle than seeing the world's bigot-in-chief at the podium. And the fact that the hall doubles as the venue for the UN Human Rights Council made a further mockery of his appearance - and of the institution itself. After all, while President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is busy railing against liberalism, predicting the demise of the West, seeking Israel's disappearance, and claiming special protection for Islam, he represents a nation that has trampled on the human rights of its own citizens.

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Instead of being at the podium, he should be in the dock. You can read the entire article: http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/harris/entry/tragedy_masquerading_as_farce_posted ITALY’S FRATTINI ON DURBAN II I don’t want to overload you with material about Durban II. However, the Jerusalem Post had an interesting interview with Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini concerning Italy’s boycott of Durban II wherein he spelled out the reasons for Italy’s action very clearly. Italy’s statement noted, “In our assessment we also considered... the statements that would eventually be made in plenary session and on the sidelines. We could not participate in an event where, once again, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was manipulated and Israel labeled a racist nation, as happened in 2001. The events of Monday afternoon confirmed that foresight." "Not just the text, but the context itself was our concern, Italy bowed out when we realized all space for negotiations was gone and Holland's excellent draft would be discarded," he said. We felt three key points of the adopted paper were unacceptable: approval of the Durban 2001 document, which singled out Israel amid motions decrying racism; insufficient treatment of the Holocaust - the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, and motions aimed at limiting freedom of expression regarding criticism of religions and their followers. "An international forum on a crucial issue such as racism cannot be exploited to attack Israel," he continued. "The EU displayed political weakness and lost an occasion for expressing unity." Frattini said the UN Human Rights Committee ought to be reformed, recalling a US proposal for "a coalition of democracies" within the UN. I think Frattini has a point about reorganization. Countries such as Germany, the U.S., Israel, Holland and Australia (among others) did not boycott Durban II because they were not as opposed to racism as any of the other countries involved. They stayed away because it turned out to be too easy for a pressure group in the UN Human Rights Committee to hijack the conference and turn it into a one issue (anti-Israel) political lynching. Frankly, when it comes to these sorts of issues I do not have much faith in the UN. Anti-Israel propaganda is very often used to cover up the human rights violations of the accusing countries. So while I agree with Foreign Minister Frattini about reorganization I don’t hold out much hope that even with some sort of new structure the scapegoating of Israel will end. So, in conclusion, I’m delighted that Germany decided to do the right thing and took a moral stand. Let’s get ready for Durban III.

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DENYING THE DENIERS In my earlier years I said to myself, “Who cares about Holocaust deniers?” After all, the rational world accepts the facts and history of the 1930’s and ‘40’s and just because a few crazy extremists try to cook up some isolated facts and statistics in an effort to prove that it never happened - well, so what? I started to think more seriously in the 1960’s when Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and the new anti-Israelism became more widespread. I began, vaguely, to see the connections but, frankly, while I fully understood the anti-Israel and anti-Semitism connection, I still couldn’t see where Holocaust denial fit. About 10 years ago there was a celebrated trial in Great Britain which pitted denier David Irving against American Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt. Deborah and I had actually both taught together at Hebrew Union College (Los Angeles) back in the late 1970’s and I knew her to be a person of outstanding quality and genuine backbone. In the case, David Irving sued her and her publisher, Penguin Books, for libel in an English court, after she characterized some of his writings and public statements as Holocaust denial in her book Denying the Holocaust. Although English libel law puts the burden of proof on the defendant rather than the plaintiff, Lipstadt and Penguin won the case using the justification defense by demonstrating in court that Lipstadt's accusations against Irving were substantially true and therefore not libelous. The case was argued as a bench trial before Mister Justice Gray, who produced a written judgment 334 pages long detailing Irving's systematic distortion of the historical record of World War II. The Times (April 14, 2000, p. 23) said of Lipstadt's victory, "History has had its day in court and scored a crushing victory." During the trial it all became clear to me. Holocaust denial is, indeed, antiSemitism wrapped up in academic dress. In “celebration” of Holocaust Memorial Day the JTA featured a Q & A session with Deborah. You can read it all at http://jta.org/news/article/2009/04/19/1004269/denying-the-deniers-q-a-withdeborah-lipstadt (and you should), however, the most important exchange centers around what Deborah calls “Soft-core Denial”. It follows: LIPSTADT: I see the evolution of Holocaust denial -- there is what I call “softcore denial.” Hard-core denial is David Irving or Bishop [Richard] Williamson. Soft-core is more slippery. It's “Why do we have to hear so much about the Holocaust?” or saying “the genocide of the Palestinians.” Soft-core denial is not denying the facts, but either inverting it so the victims become the perpetrators -“Why did the Germans hate the Jews? Because they Jews were rich and conniving,” -- as if to say they deserved it. It's justifying it. Soft-core denial is also making a false comparison, and that dilutes what the Holocaust was. It's a much more slippery kind of manifestation, but it's very much there. JTA: How do you fight it?

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LIPSTADT: It's much harder. You have to go back and zero in on what it is -- you can say, “Look, you might disagree with Israel's policy vis a vis the Palestinians or that they should not have gone into Gaza, but to call this a genocide is to deny what a genocide is.” They are not denying the Holocaust but they are making a false comparison which elevates by a factor of a zillion any wrongdoings Israel might have done, and lessens by a factor of a zillion what the Germans did. And that's not to defend everything Israel does, but you can't call it a Holocaust unless you want to distort what the Holocaust is. When you begin to use the Nazi term and you begin to compare Israeli soldiers -- who are not angels and sometimes do awful things for which they should be criticized and punished -that's different than genocide. The Holocaust was state-sponsored. It came from Berlin and Berlin worked to make sure that every Jew on which it could lay its hands would be killed. In no way can you compare what's going on in the Middle East to that. Even if you have the extreme belief that there should be no state of Israel, to make the argument that Israel is committing a genocide is a complete fabrication and a worm of soft-core denial So, I thank Deborah for putting me on the right track and I now understand more fully how pernicious Holocaust denial is. I used to be concerned about Germany’s laws against it on the grounds that it violated free speech. I now more fully understand that as well. PRES. OBAMA & THE HOLOCAUST While I once had questions about the importance of “deniers” I never had any about the lessons to be learned for everybody from the Holocaust. I was quite pleased to hear that Pres. Obama speaking at the Capitol Rotunda (and reported by JTA) said “The lesson of the Holocaust is never to be silent in the face of inhumanity” "How do we ensure that 'Never Again' isn't an empty slogan, or merely an aspiration, but also a call to action?" the president asked while speaking Thursday in the Capitol Rotunda at a commemoration organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "I believe we start by doing what we are doing today -- by bearing witness, by fighting the silence that is evil's greatest coconspirator." Obama said that "evil has yet to run its course on earth," describing "mass graves and the ashes of villages burned to the ground, and children used as soldiers and rape used as a weapon of war" as well as Holocaust deniers. He called the State of Israel a signal of hope. "The hope of a chosen people who have overcome oppression since the days of Exodus; of the nation of Israel. I think he understands it all pretty well. MADE IN GERMANY 6

There was a time during the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond when American Jews would not touch (or buy) anything that was “Made in Germany”. Very deep was the antipathy! I’m not sure that the same does not still hold true among those who lived through the World War II period. I certainly thought that the same would be the case in Israel. During my first visit there in 1969 (before my first visit to Germany in 1982) I was surprised to see that most of the taxis were Mercedes Benz’s. I didn’t think much about it but over the next number of years it began to dawn on me that the Israelis were way ahead of us American Jews in coming to terms with the realities post-War Germany. There is no doubt that it is still the case. Maybe it’s because we are physically so separated from Europe or that history dies hard in the minds of some but there are still mostly older American Jews who won’t go near anything “Made in Germany”. My, now, many years of visiting both Israel and Germany tell me that the relations between the people of these two countries are far different than those between American Jews and Germany. Of course, I’m not talking about deep down feelings. No one can know, except maybe a psychiatrist, what goes on in the depths of peoples’ minds. I’m talking here about “relations” – how people get along and relate to each other. I thought more about it this past week when www.ynetnews.com, an Israeli based news service, ran an article entitled “MADE IN GERMANY NO LONGER TABOO”. It noted that “Boycott on German-made products during Israel's first years was gradually replaced with local preference for country's high quality goods. After spelling out the history of Israeli boycotts of German goods over the years the story continued …But with time also passive opposition dwindled and several German companies gained prominence in the local market, such as the Lufthansa airline, which is one of the busiest flight operators in Israel. In 1958, when it first opened offices in the country, the company was faced with threats by members of the Beitar youth movement. Trips to Germany, including by train, are also no longer considered taboo. While in the past the importation of German products to Israel was done almost secretly, today an abundance of German-made products are a staple in Israeli households, including cars made by Mercedes, Volkswagen and BMW, Bosch's electronic appliances and AEG washing machines. Israelis eat Milka chocolate, ride Kettler bicycles, use Merck and Bayer medicines and get x-rayed by Siemens machine. The article further explains that while some of these companies participated in the Holocaust, today and some Israelis still kept away from goods produced by them, “But for most Israelis, the "Made in Germany" label today only signifies quality, reliability and lost-lasting products. I don’t have any facts or figures to back up my supposition that the same sort of thing is happening with American Jews – but more slowly. One thing I know is happening and that is that there is a great deal more travel to Germany by 7

American Jews (at least until the economic crisis hit) than in the past. There are many reasons – and that is the subject for another time. However, I firmly believe that the American Jewish Committee’s actual opening of a full-time office in Berlin eleven years ago helped change the “chemistry” and thinking in the organized American Jewish community and it has become more “kosher” for Jews to visit , at least, Berlin. PERSONAL NOTES Remember – if you do not receive the American Edition of DuBow Digest sent directly to you, you can read it on line at www.dubowdigest.typepad.com

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