We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to: Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 –
Contents:
Antisemitism 2015: A Global Challenge: Catherine Chatterley, Huffington Post, Dec. 31, 2014— Antisemitism presents a serious challenge for the global community today.
More Words Replace an Anti-Semitism Task Force: Manfred Gerstenfeld, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 30— The European Parliament recently voted down the proposed establishment of a special task force on anti-Semitism.
First Deaths at Dachau: Frederick Taylor, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 24, 2014 — Early on April 13, 1933, an official from the prosecutor’s office for Munich District II set off to investigate a crime.
Generations Forget And Remember: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Jewish Press, Dec. 25, 2014— The drama of younger and older brothers, which haunts the book of Bereishit from Cain and Abel onwards, reaches a strange climax in the story of Joseph’s children.
Wiesenthal Center’s Top 10 Worst Anti-Semitic Acts of 2014: Ahuva Balofsky, Breaking Israel News, Dec. 30, 2014
Anti-Semitism is Inherently Genocidal, Says Expert: Sam Sokol, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 31, 2014
Isolationist Path: Canada’s Military Policy Would Differ Much Under a Trudeau Government: Matthew Fisher, National Post, Dec. 29, 2014
Top 10 Non-Jews Positively Influencing the Jewish Future, 2014: Dovid Efune, Algemeiner, Jan. 1, 2015
Aristotle and Jewish Thought: A Harmonious Encounter: Howard Zik, Jewish Press, Dec. 28, 2014
ANTISEMITISM 2015: A GLOBAL CHALLENGE
Catherine Chatterley
Huffington Post, Dec. 31, 2014
Antisemitism presents a serious challenge for the global community today. The last decade has seen a shocking growth in antisemitic rhetoric and agitation, and routine acts of violence against Jews have returned to European cities 70 years after the Holocaust. The battle between Israel and the Palestinians has become intractable, and the idea of a "peace process" that might finally resolve the issues is not taken as seriously as it was years ago. This fact does not bode well for Israelis or Palestinians, and given the obsessive focus on this conflict by the media and by both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel activist organizations, the lack of resolution and mounting frustration is an ongoing concern for all of us.
Today, we face a major impasse in our discussions about antisemitism: Where many Jews see a new or resurgent antisemitism, non-Jews are more likely to see political protest or a backlash against Israeli actions and policies. In truth, both characterizations can be accurate depending on the specific circumstance. Increasingly, however, this chasm in perception between Jews and non-Jews about the nature of antisemitism is widening, and it is one reason why there is a distinct lack of concern about the problem on the part of the world community today.
Along with news and debate about the conflicts in the Middle East, the Internet, satellite television, and social networking via cellphone allow people across the planet to share an enormous amount of explicit antisemitic material that is, quite frankly, poisoning the relationship between humanity and the Jewish people, making an intractable conflict even more difficult to resolve. This new reality is enormously threatening to a tiny people whose parents and grandparents survived being slated for extermination in Europe 70 years ago. Antisemitic incitement breeds fear and anxiety in Jews and it destroys trust and goodwill, which makes authentic peacemaking between Jews and Arabs impossible. Anyone who claims to want to build peace between Jews and Arabs, especially those who want the Palestinians to build a positive peaceful future in their own state, should also commit to working against the problem of antisemitism and to help retard its growth, in the West and in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Antisemitism is one of the most serious impediments to peace in the Middle East, and that is why it should concern all of us.
Jews are an extremely small community of people on this planet, and non-Jewish attitudes and perceptions about Jews and Israel really do matter, especially in an increasingly globalized reality. In a world population of over 7 billion people, there are approximately 14 million Jews, and almost all of them live in only two countries: Israel and the United States. This means that Jews constitute 0.002 percent, or one fifth of one percent, of the entire human population on planet earth, which in turn means that while Jews know and interact with non-Jews, the vast majority of non-Jews will never meet a Jewish person. If this is our human reality, then what does it mean when 24 percent of the planet holds opinions deemed to be antisemitic, as reflected in the ADL's recent survey of 100 countries?
Obviously we have a phenomenon that is not based in reality or in actual human experience but is communicated and circulated through libel, rumor, mythology, and imagination, as it has been for 2,000 years. Given this, the new media presents a very significant challenge for those of us working to combat the lies and libels of antisemitism. Jewish existence is by necessity dependent upon, and determined by, relationships with the non-Jewish world. Antisemitism is a real and present danger to those relationships, and therefore it remains a threat to Jewish existence. Our challenge for this new year is to clearly identify antisemitism as the conspiratorial and libelous phenomenon it in fact is so that people might consciously separate themselves from it and help mitigate the damage it does to Jews, their neighbors, and human societies.
Catherine Chatterley is a CIJR Academic Fellow
MORE WORDS REPLACE AN ANTI-SEMITISM TASK FORCE
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 30, 2014
The European Parliament recently voted down the proposed establishment of a special task force on anti-Semitism. This occurred in spite of the unprecedented levels of anti-Semitic incidents in 2014 occurring within many European countries. The Parliament’s decision means that the issue of a special task force dealing with anti-Semitism can only be raised again in 2019, after the next parliamentary elections. It is important to document what is said by Jewish leaders and by some Jews in the public eye about the current anti-Semitism in their countries. When the parliamentarians will meet five years hence, they will have this material at their disposal. There will be little to analyze because the quotes speak for themselves. One can start with the usually understated comments of British Jews. Journalist Hugo Rifkind of The Times wrote of his recent discomfort on being a British Jew. “Never before have I felt that attitudes towards Jews in Europe – and even, albeit less so, in Britain – could grow far, far worse before a whole swathe of supposedly progressive thought was even prepared to notice.” In a conversation with Israel’s Channel 2, BBC Television Director Danny Cohen said, “I’ve never felt so uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK as I’ve felt in the last 12 months. And it’s made me think about, you know, is it our long-term home, actually. Because you feel it. I’ve felt it in a way I’ve never felt before actually.”
The only resident chief rabbi of the Netherlands, Binyomin Jacobs, said on a national television program that Jews feel unsafe in the Netherlands and are being threatened and insulted on the streets. He noted that he, himself, also wonders whether or not it is safe for him to remain in the Netherlands. Jacobs has come to the conclusion, however, that he has to stay – “because the captain is the last one to leave the ship.” David Beesemer is the chairman of Maccabi in the Netherlands. He was quoted by the Jewish weekly Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad as saying: “I am now constantly busy with wondering whether I can offer my children a safe future here. Before the summer of 2014 I did not even think about this.” David Serphos, the former director of the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam, wrote, “I don’t dare to trust the authorities after the mayor of The Hague, and now even of Amsterdam do not interfere when Jews and Judaism are threatened. “Often I spoke jocularly with friends about reliable addresses to go into hiding [like in the Second World War] if it would ever be necessary. In recent times I look far more seriously to that very short list.”
In July 2014, after firebombs were thrown at a synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, the former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany – the national German Jewish umbrella organization – said that Jews should, at least for the moment, hide their identity. Otherwise, the risk of an attack would be too great. Dieter Graumann, her successor, said, “These are the worst times since the Nazi era.” “On the streets, you hear things like ‘the Jews should be gassed,’ ‘the Jews should be burned’ – we haven’t had that in Germany for decades. Anyone saying those slogans isn’t criticizing Israeli politics, it’s just pure hatred against Jews: nothing else. And it’s not just a German phenomenon. It’s an outbreak of hatred against Jews so intense that it’s very clear indeed.” As early as 2012, Stephan Kramer, then the secretary general of the Central Council, said he no longer trusts the Germans. “Only the Jews can save themselves.” He added that he always carries a gun, which he had to show to someone who had harassed him on Yom Kippur, in order to frighten him away. Roger Cukierman, the president of CRIF, the French Jewish umbrella organization, said regarding the anti-Israel protests occurring in France during Israel’s Gaza campaign of 2014, “They are not screaming ‘Death to the Israelis’ on the streets of Paris. They are screaming ‘Death to Jews.’” In March 2014, Cukierman’s predecessor, Richard Prasquier, had already said, “Today, much more acutely than when I left my position as president of CRIF ten months ago, the question of our lasting presence in France is raised…. Today in the Jewish community, there is hardly a conversation when the subject of leaving [France] is not brought up.” Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, summed it all up: “Normative Jewish life in Europe is unsustainable.”…
Manfred Gerstenfeld is a CIJR Academic Fellow
Frederick Taylor
Wall Street Journal, Oct. 24, 2014
Early on April 13, 1933, an official from the prosecutor’s office for Munich District II set off to investigate a crime. Three men had been killed in woodland hard by the abandoned Royal Powder and Munitions Factory at Prittlbach, about 10 miles outside the city. Another had been horribly wounded. The stuff of violent personal tragedy, perhaps. Except that the deaths had occurred a short stretch beyond the still-makeshift boundary fence of what the government was calling a “camp for protective custody.” And because no one knew where Prittlbach was, the recently opened detention center had been named after a picturesque nearby town well known as an artists’ colony: Dachau.
Adolf Hitler had been chancellor of Germany for 10 weeks at the head of a coalition administration. On Feb. 27, an arson attack on the Reichstag in Berlin (its true cause still a matter of contention) had already enabled him to suspend many civil liberties. Six days later, on March 5, new elections had been conducted with the full apparatus of government on the Nazis’ side. They made gains but still won less than 44% of the vote, short of an absolute majority. Soon, nevertheless, the Communist Party had been banned and elected provincial governments—including Bavaria’s—replaced by governors appointed from Berlin. On March 24, Hitler browbeat the moderate parties in his coalition into passing an “empowerment law.” After that, he and his henchmen could do pretty much whatever they wanted. And what they wanted to do was to crush all remaining opposition. The wave of arrests that had begun with the Reichstag fire swelled by the day. There were holdouts against the developing dictatorship. Chief among the areas in which traditional political parties had resisted the surge in National Socialist support were the Rhineland and Bavaria, where the conservative Catholic forces were extraordinarily resilient. The Berlin-appointed Bavarian state governor and justice minister were both Nazis, but Catholic morality, professional integrity and a sharp lookout for Bavaria’s rights still characterized the attitude of many officials. This was certainly true of the 39-year-old Munich prosecutor who went out to Dachau that mid-April morning, Josef Hartinger. He took with him an equally rigorous forensic surgeon, Moritz Flamm. It was a 20-minute drive to the camp, where the two investigators were greeted by the commandant, an SS Hauptsturmführer by the name of Hilmar Wäckerle. A brutal blond vision in black uniform and polished boots, surrounded by menacing toughs, he carried a whip made from a bull’s pizzle, designed to flay a man alive.
Hartinger was no shrinking liberal violet. He had served with distinction in World War I and afterward in the militia that helped suppress, without mercy, the short-lived Soviet Republic of Bavaria. He was religious and politically conservative but also a lawyer with a pronounced sense of justice. The camp commandant was something else. Wäckerle could be charming (he fooled a New York Times reporter, who “investigated” Dachau later that same April and came away singing Wäckerle’s praises), but he was a sadist. The law meant nothing to him. To Hartinger and Flamm, it meant everything. Another investigating team might have avoided what lay ahead. It was obvious that the three men had been murdered. Supposedly shot from a distance “while trying to escape,” they had, the eagle-eyed Flamm observed, been executed at short range with bullets to the back of the head. They were all political opponents of the Nazis. As much, if not more, to the point, they were all Jews. As was the mortally wounded man, who, the SS guards said, accidentally “ran into the line of fire.” Hartinger had all he needed to bring murder charges. The story of what happened next, day by tense day, as the deaths mounted up in that fateful spring of 1933, makes up Timothy W. Ryback’s fine and chilling “Hitler’s First Victims: The Quest for Justice.” The details of the Nazi brutality are harrowing; those of the investigation and its ramifications fascinating.
Hartinger was stubborn and brave, fighting obstruction within his department and threats from the newly installed Nazi authorities. He hoped that by drawing attention to the new regime’s murders of opponents and “racial enemies” he could head off the growth of state violence and simultaneously strengthen the hand of German “moderates.” These actually included both the new state governor, Gen. Franz Ritter von Epp—war hero and counter-revolutionary commander, hard-bitten but not fanatical—and, astonishingly in retrospect, the new justice minister of Bavaria, Dr. Hans Frank, who would become notorious as the blood-drenched governor of occupied Poland. In 1933, before power did its work of corruption, Frank retained a diligent lawyer’s desire to act within some vestigial framework of legality. Hartinger knew that the new Reich government was concerned about criticism from abroad, especially America. Hitler also wanted a concordat with the Vatican, in order to placate Catholic Germany, which contained strong pockets of resistance to his regime. Finally, so Hartinger calculated, there was the matter of Reich president Paul von Hindenburg. Now 85 years old and in failing health, the old field marshal remained empowered under the constitution to sack Hitler from the chancellorship, as he had done with several of his predecessors. Hindenburg cared little for democracy, but he did care for the law, and he had already intervened to limit discrimination against Jews, particularly ex-servicemen.
Despite his nervous superior’s vacillations, Hartinger managed to proceed with indictments. When there were further unexplained deaths—including supposed “suicides”—at the camp, he also included those. By the end of May, he was ready to prosecute the SS guards he thought responsible and hoped the world would learn the truth of what was happening at Dachau. It’s no spoiler to reveal that Hartinger’s plan failed, although he got further than perhaps even he expected. The “moderates” were able to prevail against the Nazi fanatics, and von Epp instructed the chief of the Bavarian police, Heinrich Himmler, to stop the illegal killings. In the end, Himmler went over the heads of both von Epp and Frank and persuaded Hitler to close down the case with a direct order. The paperwork was sequestered, and Hartinger found himself abruptly transferred to another jurisdiction. With the Nazis ever more firmly in the saddle, the murders at Dachau soon began again, their perpetrators protected by new immunity laws and weasel-worded regulations. The camp authorities soon found ways of disposing of the bodies, leaving no evidence. The Dachau model became the foundation of the Nazis’ concentration-camp network. This was the beginning of the kill-and-conceal system, created and operated by the SS, that would eventually make routine the deaths of millions of Jews, Gypsies, resistance fighters and anyone else the Nazis deemed inconvenient. Whether the murders that sparked Hartinger’s investigation were actually the first of the Holocaust, as Mr. Ryback claims in the book’s dedication, is debatable, but the pattern is there and the touch of tragic drama perhaps forgivable…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
GENERATIONS FORGET AND REMEMBER
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
Jewish Press, Dec. 25, 2014
The drama of younger and older brothers, which haunts the book of Bereishit from Cain and Abel onwards, reaches a strange climax in the story of Joseph’s children. Jacob/Israel is nearing the end of his life. Joseph visits him, bringing with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. It is the only scene of grandfather and grandchildren in the book. Jacob asks Joseph to bring them near so that he can bless them. What follows next is described in painstaking detail:
“Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel’s left, and Manasseh in his left hand towards Israel’s right, and brought them near him. But Israel reached out his right hand and put it on Ephraim’s head, though he was the younger, and crossing his arms, he put his left hand on Manasseh’s head, even though Manasseh was the firstborn…When Joseph saw his father placing his right hand on Ephraim’s head he was displeased; so he took hold of his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head. Joseph said to him, “No, my father, this one is the firstborn; put your right hand on his head.” But his father refused and said, “I know, my son, I know. He too will become a people, and he too will become great. Nevertheless, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his descendants will become a group of nations.” He blessed them that day, saying: “In your name will Israel pronounce this blessing: ‘May G-d make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.’” So he put Ephraim ahead of Manasseh. (48: 13-14, 17-20).
It is not difficult to understand the care Joseph took to ensure that Jacob would bless the firstborn first. Three times his father had set the younger before the elder, and each time it had resulted in tragedy. He, the younger, had sought to supplant his elder brother Esau. He favored the younger sister Rachel over Leah. And he favored the youngest of his children, Joseph and Benjamin, over the elder Reuben, Shimon and Levi. The consequences were catastrophic: estrangement from Esau, tension between the two sisters, and hostility among his sons. Joseph himself bore the scars: thrown into a well by his brothers, who initially planned to kill him and eventually sold him into Egypt as a slave. Had his father not learned? Or did he think that Ephraim – whom Joseph held in his right hand – was the elder? Did Jacob know what he was doing? Did he not realize that he was risking extending the family feuds into the next generation? Besides which, what possible reason could he have for favoring the younger of his grandchildren over the elder? He had not seen them before. He knew nothing about them. None of the factors that led to the earlier episodes were operative here. Why did Jacob favor Ephraim over Manasseh?
Jacob knew two things, and it is here that the explanation lies. He knew that the stay of his family in Egypt would not be a short one. Before leaving Canaan to see Joseph, G-d had appeared to him in a vision: Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes. (46: 3-4) This was, in other words, the start of the long exile which G-d had told Abraham would be the fate of his children (a vision the Torah describes as accompanied by “a deep and dreadful darkness” – 15: 12). The other thing Jacob knew was his grandsons’ names, Manasseh and Ephraim. The combination of these two facts was enough. When Joseph finally emerged from prison to become prime minister of Egypt, he married and had two sons. This is how the Torah describes their birth: “Before the years of the famine came, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh, saying, “It is because G-d has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.” The second son he named Ephraim, saying, “It is because G-d has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” (41: 50-52) With the utmost brevity the Torah intimates an experience of exile that was to be repeated many times across the centuries. At first, Joseph felt relief. The years as a slave, then a prisoner, were over. He had risen to greatness. In Canaan, he had been the youngest of eleven brothers in a nomadic family of shepherds. Now, in Egypt, he was at the center of the greatest civilization of the ancient world, second only to Pharaoh in rank and power. No one reminded him of his background. With his royal robes and ring and chariot, he was an Egyptian prince (as Moses was later to be). The past was a bitter memory he sought to remove from his mind. Manasseh means “forgetting.”
But as time passed, Joseph began to feel quite different emotions. Yes, he had arrived. But this people was not his; nor was its culture. To be sure, his family was, in any worldly terms, undistinguished, unsophisticated. Yet they remained his family. They were the matrix of who he was. Though they were no more than shepherds (a class the Egyptians despised), they had been spoken to by G-d – not the gods of the sun, the river and death, the Egyptian pantheon – but G-d, the creator of heaven and earth, who did not make His home in temples and pyramids and panoplies of power, but who spoke in the human heart as a voice, lifting a simple family to moral greatness. By the time his second son was born, Joseph had undergone a profound change of heart. To be sure, he had all the trappings of earthly success – “G-d has made me fruitful” – but Egypt had become “the land of my affliction.” Why? Because it was exile. There is a sociological observation about immigrant groups, known as Hansen’s Law: “The second generation seeks to remember what the first generation sought to forget.” Joseph went through this transformation very quickly. It was already complete by the time his second son was born. By calling him Ephraim, he was remembering what, when Manasseh was born, he was trying to forget: who he was, where he came from, where he belonged.
Jacob’s blessing of Ephraim over Manasseh had nothing to do with their ages and everything to do with their names. Knowing that these were the first two children of his family to be born in exile, knowing too that the exile would be prolonged and at times difficult and dark, Jacob sought to signal to all future generations that there would be a constant tension between the desire to forget (to assimilate, acculturate, anaesthetize the hope of a return) and the promptings of memory (the knowledge that this is “exile,” that we are part of another story, that ultimate home is somewhere else). The child of forgetting (Manasseh) may have blessings. But greater are the blessings of a child (Ephraim) who remembers the past and future of which he is a part.
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year!
Wiesenthal Center’s Top 10 Worst Anti-Semitic Acts of 2014: Ahuva Balofsky, Breaking Israel News, Dec. 30, 2014 —The Simon Wiesenthal Center has released a list of its top 10 worst anti-Semitic offenses of 2014.
Anti-Semitism is Inherently Genocidal, Says Expert: Sam Sokol, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 31, 2014—Jew-hatred is by its very nature a violent phenomenon, a leading anti-Semitism researcher told The Jerusalem Post during an interview on Tuesday.
Isolationist Path: Canada’s Military Policy Would Differ Much Under a Trudeau Government: Matthew Fisher, National Post, Dec. 29, 2014—Who would have guessed at the beginning of 2014 that by the fall Canadian warplanes would be bugging out of several airfields in a tiny Persian Gulf emirate to conduct round-the-clock combat operations against jihadists over Iraq or that other Canadian warplanes would be policing the airspace of Baltic states frantic to avoid Russian predations?
Top 10 Non-Jews Positively Influencing the Jewish Future, 2014: Dovid Efune, Algemeiner, Jan. 1, 2015 —Five years have now passed since I first published my annual list of non-Jews who are worthy of recognition for their positive impact on Jewish lives and the Jewish state.
Aristotle and Jewish Thought: A Harmonious Encounter: Howard Zik, Jewish Press, Dec. 28, 2014—Whenever we think of ideas originating in ancient Greece we are inclined to view them as having great conflict with Jewish thought.
Contents:
Visit CIJR’s Bi-Weekly Webzine: Israzine.
CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing is available by e-mail.
Please urge colleagues, friends, and family to visit our website for more information on our ISRANET series.
To join our distribution list, or to unsubscribe, visit us at https://isranet.org/.
The ISRANET Daily Briefing is a service of CIJR. We hope that you find it useful and that you will support it and our pro-Israel educational work by forwarding a minimum $90.00 tax-deductible contribution [please send a cheque or VISA/MasterCard information to CIJR (see cover page for address)]. All donations include a membership-subscription to our respected quarterly ISRAFAX print magazine, which will be mailed to your home.
CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing attempts to convey a wide variety of opinions on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world for its readers’ educational and research purposes. Reprinted articles and documents express the opinions of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.
Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research/ L'institut Canadien de recherches sur le Judaïsme, www.isranet.org
Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284 ; ber@isranet.wpsitie.com
