Here is a moving story my mother told me about the meeting between Yitzhak Rabin and Bundist Marek Edelman.
When my mother [the late Shulamit Aloni] was Israeli Minister of Education, she travelled to the Warsaw ghetto as part of a delegation with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The Polish side included among others Lech Walesa and [Deputy leader of Warsaw Ghetto uprising and lifelong Bundist] Marek Edelman. When it became clear to my mother that Rabin was refusing to shake Edelman’s hand, she could not suppress her anger. She scolded him almost like a child: “Yitzhak,” she said, “are you not ashamed of yourself? Possibly the last brave warrior of the Warsaw Ghetto and you’re hiding your face, you go shake his hand!”
Rabin mumbled something about his mother, “Red Rosa,” not forgiving him for reconciling with Bundists. But my mother insisted and said to him, “Go!” He shook hands and embraced Marek Edelman, and began to talk to him in Yiddish and there were tears in both their eyes. Two fighters — a Bundist and a Zionist — both crying in Yiddish.
At the time when I heard the story I thought, perhaps that inside every tough Sabra with blood on their hands there hides a Yiddish speaking Bundist soul which believes in class rather than ethnic solidarity. Perhaps the assassination of Rabin by the fascist Jewish Right prevented the last opportunity for the tikkun (repair) of the Zionist Israeli soul . . .
As Marek Edelman said: “A Jew is someone who protects the weak.”
Translated by Sol Salbe
“As Mark Edelman said: ‘A Jew is someone who protects the weak.'”
And many, many Jews do just that. They stand up for the weak. But a Jew is also someone who stands up for himself, as Marek Edelman doubtless understood, regardless of his position on Israel.
Well… that can be said about any other group, nation, or individual… He also said this: “To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors”. That is why he criticized Israel: “standing up for oneself” doesn’t mean being an oppressor, and he saw the difference.
“In old age, he was not afraid to speak up for the Palestinians when he felt that the Jewish self-defence for which he had fought was in danger of crossing the line into oppression”: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timcollard/100012403/marek-edelman-death-of-a-great-man/
“In the summer of 2002, Edelman, still going strong, intervened in Israel’s show trial of the now jailed Palestinian resistance leader, Marwan Barghouti. He wrote a letter of solidarity to the Palestinian movement, and though he criticised the suicide bombers, its tone infuriated the Israeli government and its press. Edelman had always resented Israel’s claim on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a symbol of Jewish liberation. Now he said this belonged to the Palestinians.
He addressed his letter to the Palestinian ZOB, “commanders of the Palestinian military, paramilitary and partisan operations – to all the soldiers of the Palestinian fighting organisations”. The old Jewish anti-Nazi Ghetto fighter had placed his immense moral authority at the disposable of the only side he deemed worthy of it: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/marek-edelman-last-surviving-leader-of-the-1943-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-against-the-nazis-1798644.html
So he knew the difference between “standing up for oneself” and being an oppressor- some ppl don’t see the diff (or don’t want to see it) and try to hide oppression behind the mask of “self-defence”.
Don’t try to blur that fact about him….
Marek Edelman was an amazing and courageous human being. Shamefully treated by Israel, simply because of his non-zionism.
A story for Palestinian Remembrance Day; Israeli forces demolish West Bank mosque as peace talks deadline passes.
And the ‘world community’ [wink, wink, nudge, nudge] remains oh, so silent…
It’s such a shame Israel didn’t use his definition of Jewish in its Jewish Law of Return instead of opting for the polar opposite…..