In her New York Times oped “How Did Israel Become A Place of No Refuge?” Susan Silverman asks a rhetorical question. But it has a ready answer, one she steadfastly ignores in her piece though it’s staring her in the face.
Silverman, a rabbi and co-founder of Miklat Israel, or Sanctuary Israel, is rightly outraged over the recent decision of Israel’s government to deport thousands of African asylum seekers from Israel, which will clearly be a death sentence for many of them. She quotes a refugee from Eritrea who is confident that “The people of Anne Frank will protect me.” Here is a long quote from the piece that explains the puzzlement expressed by the title:
The first night of Passover, Jews around the world, including the Netanyahu family, will recite the same line during the Seder: “In every generation we are obligated to see ourselves as though we personally went out from Egypt.”
Our prime minister is on the wrong side of the Exodus story. But the people of Israel — a country built by those who fled Hitler’s ovens and the oppression of Arab countries where they were treated as second-class citizens — understand the injustice of the government’s policy in our bones. It is why 36 Holocaust survivors wrote a letter to the prime minister begging him to “learn the lesson” of our history. It is why Israelis from all parts of society — doctors, diplomats, rabbis, artists — have opposed this policy. It is why some El Al pilots have announced that they will refuse to fly planes bearing Africans being deported.
Jews, who have experienced expulsion and exile during most of their existence, she complains, should precisely be the people who welcome others who experienced the same fate.
But this is where my answer to her rhetorical question comes into play: we are the people who expelled over three quarters of a million people in our war of conquest in 1948, shooting thousands on sight as they merely attempted to return to their homes (see Benny Morris, Border Wars), and creating the longest continuous refugee crisis in the world today. Notice the word “Palestinian” appears nowhere in her oped.
A nation that is built on an ethnic definition of nationality and arose on the ashes of another people’s existence in the land is actually just the sort of country to deport refugees. When one’s primary concern is to preserve ethnic purity and sovereignty, any admission of “others” – especially non-European others – is bound to be seen as dangerous contamination and to be avoided at all costs. So that’s why I answer her rhetorical question with: “It’s the Nakba, Stupid!”
It was a bizarre piece. You have to wonder if she was conscious of the hypocrisy.
Like cherry tomatoes, fleeting field hospitals in disaster zones, drip irrigation and outcrop of Nobel Prices, there is a sudden outbreak of handwringing of liberal Zionists in the all the usual media.
The lament is about the threatened deportation for black skinned asylum seekers / immigrants in Israel (the deportation of caucasian infiltrators-immigrants from Ukraine and Georgia is not on the cards).
The promises of selfless acts of civil disobedience are all written about at some length. You would almost leave with the impression that the government of Netanyahu has been forced on saintly Israelis by a vengeful anti-semitic God (/sarcasm). 90/101
Well said. Maybe Susan could do a show–like her sister Sarah, who travels around showing her compassion for Trump supporters–but with Palestinians. But she’d actually have to admit that they live there to do it.
SUSAN SILVERMAN- “But the people of Israel — a country built by those who fled Hitler’s ovens and the oppression of Arab countries where they were treated as second-class citizens….”
Hitler built ovens in 1897? Helpless Jewish refugees were treated poorly by the Arabs in Deir Yassin? Well, Reb Silverman doesn’t deviate from the core meme, does she? Savoring her gilded victimhood?
On another cheery note, over at CounterPunch, Thomas Klikauer warns against the new anti-Semitism. He quotes Auschwitz survivor Anita Lasker Wallfisch speaking before the German Bundestag “Anti-Semitism is a 2000-year-old virus and apparently it is incurable. Only, one does not necessarily say Jews anymore. Today, it is the Israelis.”
Once again, throughout the media including “left” media, Zionist Jews are on the offensive weaponizing the Holocaust to bludgeon the opposition while claiming that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, a continuance of a 2000 year history of Jew hatred. I fear that Zionist Jews are disproportionately influential in our doctrinal system. Professor Klikauer is an Australian academic who gets around. In the article he links to “Inside the Anti-Semitic Mind,” which demonstrates that “Israeli” is a code word for “Jew.” Link to CounterPunch: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/09/germany-commemorates-auschwitz-liberation-with-new-nazis/
I conclude by noting my deep conviction that anti-Gentilism is intrinsic to Jewish Zionism (obviously not Christian Zionism). This is consistent with Israel Shahak’s opinion that Zionism is a throwback to Classical Judaism in secular form.
You have to realize the Palestinians are being thrown under the bus, and that their oppressors are going to be successful in stealing all they can from them, and getting rid of them, when you see headlines like this. Saudi Arabia is already the zionist’s best buddy.
“US JEWISH LEADERS TO VISIT UNITED ARAB EMIRATES”
“Head of US Jewish group secretly visited Qatar
Zionist Organization of America’s Morton Klein the latest pro-Israel figure to travel to Gulf state”
Evil wins every time.