Tova Herzl
A Second look
The 27th day of the month of Nissan, this year on April 20, was chosen by the state of Israel soon after its inception as the annual commemoration of the Holocaust and the heroic and all but futile attempts to rise up against it: it is the anniversary of the crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt.
For me, personally, nationally and professionally, this date has deep meaning. Personally, as a child of survivors (I am named after my grandmother who was gassed at Auschwitz); nationally, as a citizen of Israel (a country that rose like the phoenix from the ashes of the gas chambers); and professionally, as Israel’s first ambassador to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (from which most South African Jews originate).
As newly independent countries, these Baltic states came face to face with the realisation that the decimation of their Jewish populations and the extent of local collaboration with the Nazis during World War II were unequalled elsewhere.
It is not only questions of historical responsibility, transcending generations, that came to mind, but other, deeper conclusions. Arguably, these have broader and louder resonance in this country, but they are universally valid:
l The events of 50 to 60 years ago teach that any manifestation of racism, minor though it may seem at the outset, is not to be tolerated.
It is impossible to know where it will end or what its cost may be. Who could have imagined that the rantings and ravings of a third-rate Austrian painter, Adolf Hitler, would ultimately lead to the Third Reich?
l So-called “culture” is no guarantee against barbarism. Nazism grew and gained support among some of the most supposedly “civilised” people ever. Opera went hand-in-hand with murder, theatre with slave labour. Vast scientific knowledge and technical skills accumulated by the state were harnessed to make systematic genocide more efficient.
l Having suffered appallingly from the long-standing scourge of anti-Semitism, Jews deserve a place in the sun to call their own. A country willing and able to shelter our persecuted brethren. Centuries of persecution and discrimination might have been prevented had we dwelt in our own historical homeland, from which we were exiled 20 centuries ago.
It is to be hoped that those of the surrounding nations that have not yet done so will recognise the need and inevitability of a Jewish state, so that we may finally resolve the outstanding political issues in a spirit of reconciliation and dialogue. The alternative, as preceding centuries have shown, is not acceptable.
Racism, ethnic cleansing, genocide, holocaust: these are indeed the ugliest manifestations of humanity’s worst characteristics. It is, therefore, commendable that the international community has taken it upon itself to discuss them, with a view to combating and eliminating them.
The fact that South Africa has been chosen to host the upcoming United Nations conference, which will discuss some of these issues, carries deep symbolic significance, invoking the recent victory of justice over injustice, of equality over discrimination and of brotherhood over superficial, skin-deep branding.
With the exception of the Holocaust, history knows no greater example of racism as state ideology (to which state machinery was geared) than witnessed, and defeated, here in South Africa.
These expressions of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man are so terrible, so unique in their perversion, that they should not only be remembered as events and processes from the past but also be treated as warnings for the future lest we forget how low we can sink.
It is therefore sad that there are those who would attempt to deprive the upcoming anti-racism conference in Durban of some of its deepest significance, and hence some of its potential relevance at least in those sections of the agenda that concern me, as a Jew and an Israeli.
Unfortunately, a serious attempt is under way to remove that longstanding form of racism anti-Semitism from the agenda. Its deliberate avoidance indicates less than complete honesty in the expressed desire to confront racism. Were that not enough, some want to query the legitimacy of Zionism, and, by extension, ask whether Israel, of all the countries whose flags would flutter in Durban, has the right to exist.
At the same time, an effort is being made to place the conflict in the Middle East on the agenda. While, unfortunately, that conflict continues, and is a legitimate subject for international discussion, what has a political struggle to do with racism? And if it does, are all other conflicts devoid of it? Or are we to conclude that the rest of the world is at peace?
Imagine: an international conference on racism that chooses, of all the struggles, to discuss only one alleged form it takes with a view to singling out for condemnation the country that has given shelter to the victims of the most ancient form of racism, a country that, in turn, some conference participants actively wish to delete from the agenda. Could Kafka have done any better, could the absurdity be more glaring?
The agenda and the results are ultimately the sum of the deliberations of the participants. But unique qualifications, among them moral standing and location, give particular participants a more powerful and meaningful role in influencing the outcome.
My South African readers know, as I do, the meaning, implications and manifestations of racism first-hand: we have imbibed it with our mothers’ milk. We know that its significance should be noted, remembered and viewed as a warning. We should not compromise on that.
Tova Herzl is Israel’s ambassador to South Africa