Drones over Auschwitz and Gaza

This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

It was an important week in Jewish history. What it might mean for the future is difficult to predict. Whatever way it goes, the road ahead looks bleak. The center of Jewish identity, Holocaust and Israel, is going down in the oppression of another people.

Ceremonies commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz were held, but that solemn day was foreshadowed by significant events some days earlier. On successive days the International Criminal Court opened its war crimes inquiry into Israel’s actions in the Gaza war and “Censored Voices,” a film that offers a critical perspective from Israeli soldiers who served in the 1967 war, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

So as Steven Spielberg spoke at Auschwitz of the “perennial demons of intolerance” and of those in Europe who want “all over again to strip you of your past, of your story and of your identity,”  and the BBC released its footage of a drone-filmed tour of Auschwitz which allowed the “world a chance to see the haunting ruins as they’ve never seen it before,” at The Hague Israel’s dirty weapons were being hung out for all to see, even if the official case never sees the light of day. On the 1967 war, it seems that the Jewish celebration of that “miraculous” victory with the “most moral army in the world” is about to end. In fact the Gaza war and Israel’s victory in 1967 are increasingly viewed as connected.

In reporting on “Censored Voices,” the Times cites the connection the public is already making. The Times leads with the difficult truth that has been hidden to those who make of Israel an innocent icon, then on to Gaza:

A young Israeli soldier, fresh from the front, bluntly recounts the orders from above. “They never said, ‘Leave no one alive,’ but they said, ‘Show no mercy,’ ” he explains. “The brigade commander said to kill as many as possible.”

Another recalls encountering Arabs on rooftops. “They’re civilians — should I kill them or not?” he asks himself. “I didn’t even think about it. Just kill! Kill everyone you see.” And a third makes it personal: “All of us — Avinoam, Zvika, Yitzhaki — we’re not murderers. In the war, we all became murderers.”

The wrenching, taped testimony is not from last summer’s bloody battle in the Gaza Strip but from the 1967 war, when Israel started out fighting Egypt, Jordan and Syria for its very survival and ended up seizing the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula and parts of the Golan Heights. As the International Criminal Court considers a war crimes investigation in the recent conflict, a new documentary film is showcasing previously unaired admissions of brutal behavior by an earlier generation.

Later in the review, the Times returns to how the film might settle in the public mind:

But with Israel increasingly in a defensive crouch on the international stage, the film raises concerns that, viewed without consideration for the existential threat Israel faced at the time, it could become catnip for contemporary critics.

Catnip is a peculiar term for war crimes for sure and certainly for a connection that is dangerously close to Israel’s foundation. Next stop – 1948?

By 1948, I don’t mean on the energetic Left; the Left is already there. I mean the general public and the international powers-that-be. That would be a new ball game entirely. True, we would need a new world order for 1948 to come into play. I doubt it will go that far. But probing Israel’s victory in the 1967 war in the public realm is already significant.

Did I forget the plea by Israeli lawyers for Israel to fess up on Israel’s enablement of the genocides in Rwanda and Serbia?  It’s another bruiser, with a specific shout out to Shimon Peres and his sometimes adversary, sometimes partner, Yitzhak Rabin. Writes genocide scholar Yair Auron:

The history of the State of Israel will remember you, Shimon Peres, as a leader with a great deal to his credit – one of the major contributors to the building of the country in its first 70 years. Yet several debts are recorded next to your name on the fringes of that same history. While they may seem insignificant next to the enterprise of establishing the state, they are of utmost importance.

In the early 1990s, you and the late Yitzhak Rabin stood at the head of the country’s leadership.

Those years were full of hope – hope that was cut off with Prime Minister Rabin’s assassination – and the government that you led was the most open in the country’s history.

Yet you and Rabin sinned in all your actions concerning the acts of genocide that were perpetrated in Rwanda and Serbia.
You approved the transfer of arms from the State of Israel – and not only through arms dealers – to Rwanda, and the Serbia of Slobodan Miloševic and the Serbian forces while the genocide was in progress.

The whole world knew about it in real time, and both of you also definitely knew.

But, then, the whole world knows about Jewish power in Israel and America. Jews definitely know what’s going on in our name in real time, too. At least the broad outlines. More and more is being uncovered and even understood by Jews about Israel’s birth, expansion and continuing aggression.

What the world is thinking about Jews, Jewish history and Israel as these events and charges unfold, how Jews are absorbing the impact of the world’s and internal dissenting spotlight, is difficult to gauge. So, too, with the short term and long term effects. Airing the suffering and aggression of Jews is one thing. Movement on the political and identity front are another.

The powers of our world have Israel’s back. For now.

Something has to give. The naked power that keeps Israel afloat is being challenged everywhere. The Holocaust is vanishing in public perception as much because of Israel’s behavior as with the passage of time. The Holocaust-Israel axis, so central to Jewish identity over the last decades, is on oxygen support. Everyone knows the future lies somewhere else.

Is the Jewish future to be played out with drones over Auschwitz and Gaza?

Jews seem to be in a dark corridor with no exit. On one side Auschwitz, on the other, The Hague, moving back and forth between the two, first stop 1967.

“These people want to all over again strip you of your past, of your story and of your identity.” So the great auteur speaks at Auschwitz. But since we are now doing this to the Palestinian people and beyond, the great crime is reduced to our own behavior.