Jewish Peace Letter

Vol. 41 No. 2 Published by the Jewish Peace Fellowship March 2012

Ri c h a r d De a t s Two Stories of Courage, Hope & Compassion Praying at Auschwitz • Visiting the Land of the Enemy

Isfahan’s Sio-She Pole bridge

Stefan Merken: ‘The One-Eyed Man’ Larry Derfner: Attacking Iran Isn’t Worth It Jeremiah Haber: Being ‘Pro-Israel’ Today Bernard Avishai: Uri Avnery, Ben Dunkelman and 1948 and After Murray Polner: War Crimes

ISSN: 0197-9115 From Where I Sit

Stefan Merken

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king

s an American Jew, growing up and attend- voices are loud, and he stresses that antiwar Israeli voices ing a Conservative synagogue, I learned what it was must also be heard. to be a part of the small minority of Jews in America. For those concerned about Israel’s future, the possibility AI am old enough to remember my parents talking with pride of US involvement, and regional stability, now is the time to about Israel and the pain and suffering, joy and euphoria, of let your voices be heard. We need to let others know that not Jews finally forming a homeland. all Americans — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — support a In our February issue JPF published its statement, “Pre- war with Iran. We would certainly like to hear your views, emptive Military Action Against Iran’s Nuclear Facilities,” too. trying to draw attention to the beating of war drums on all Also in our current issue are two perceptive essays by sides, and calling for diplomacy rather than war. Richard Deats. The first, “Praying at Auschwitz,” is about In this issue Larry Derfner, an Israeli-based correspon- joining a convocation/march to Auschwitz in 1995, and a dent, writes about the tense Iran-Israel situation and the pos- second, “Visiting the Land of the Enemy,” is about making sibility of war. Derfner is very frank and honest about the peace with your enemy and not just with your friends. possible outcomes if Israel should attack Iran. Prowar Israeli Enjoy this issue. After you read and digest it we’d love to hear from you. Your reactions, agreements or disagreements Stefan Merken is chair of the Jewish Peace Fellowship. are always welcome. Y

Just Off the Press

Congratulations to JPFer E. James Lieberman, MD, and Robert Kramer, Ph.D., on publication of their book, The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank (Johns Hopkins University Press). A rich primary source on psychiatry, history, and culture, the book is a cogent and powerful narrative of early psychoanalysis and its two most important personalities.

Jewish Peace Letter

Published by the Jewish Peace Fellowship • Box 271 • Nyack, N.Y. 10960 • (845) 358-4601 Honorary President Rabbi Philip J. Bentley • Chair Stefan Merken • Vice President Rabbi Leonard Beerman Editors Murray Polner & Adam Simms • Contributing Editors Lawrence S. Wittner & Patrick Henry

Established in 1941 E-mail: [email protected] • World Wide Web: http://www.jewishpeacefellowship.org Signed articles are the opinions of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the JPF.

Illustrations: 1 • Photo by Shahab Maghami, via Wikimedia Commons. 3 • Tulio Bertorini (tbertor1), Flickr, via Wikime- dia Commons. 5 • Shervin Afshar, via Wikimedia Commons. 6 • Dagan: Israel Defense Forces/Flickr, via Wikimedia Com- mons; Gazit: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, via Wikimedia Commons. 9 • Via Wikimedia Commons. 11 • incredible images4u.blogspot.com/2010/01/defending-leningrad-ww2.html.

2 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter March 2012 Jewish Peace Fellowship Stories of Courage, Hope & Compassion

Richard L. Deats

I. Praying at Auschwitz

n August 1995, the fifti- eth anniversary of the end of World War II and the Obeginning of the atomic age, the Nipponzan Myoholji, a Japanese Buddhist religious order, sent out a call for an eight-month Interfaith Pilgrimage for Peace and Life that would begin at Auschwitz and end at Hiroshima. Auschwitz was the evil center of Hitler’s demented plan to exter- minate the Jewish people (ninety percent of the one and a half mil- lion persons who died there were Jewish; there were also many Poles, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other Christians). Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the targets of the first use of atomic bombs — both cities wiped out in lightning flashes that ushered in the atomic age and the nuclear arms “Arbeit Macht Frei”: The main gate of Auschwitz I race that has spread like a malig- nant growth across the world and that continues today, en- to counter the hate and violence in the world. dangering us all. On the last night of Hanukkah, to the mournful beat of I joined with two hundred others from many nations Buddhist drums, we slowly processed to the infamous en- who came for the convocation. For eight days, Japanese Bud- trance of the Auschwitz camp, where the sign over the gate dhist monks and others prayed and fasted on the selection says, Arbeit Macht Frei (Work brings freedom). platform where World War II arrivals at Auschwitz-Birkenau In a deeply moving Hanukkah service, German priest met their fate: immediate death or slave labor. At this place Herbert Frohlich played the flute and Julius Lester, an Af- of immense cruelty and suffering, the monks prayed during rican-American Jewish professor, sang a mournful nigun (a cold December days for an outpouring of great compassion wordless Hasidic chant). We lit hand-made menorahs — over one hundred of them — and placed them in front of the gate. Richard L. Deats grew up in the segregated South As the tiny lights blazed in the dark, Rabbi Everett Gendler and has spent his life working for peace, justice and freedom of Massachusetts reminded us that “The soul is the candle of through nonviolent change. “Praying at Auschwitz” and “Vis- the Lord.” All believers, he said, are called to let their lights iting the Land of the Enemy” appear in his latest book, Stories shine to banish the darkness of the world. While the candles of Courage, Hope & Compassion (CreateSpace, 2011), cour- burned, a few drops of rain fell like tears of God and of those tesy of Richard L. Deats ([email protected]). who died there, calling us to cry out: www.jewishpeacefellowship.org March 2012 Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter • 3 Let justice descend, O heavens, like dew from who were not born.” Rabbi Weinberg reminded us that “The one above, like gentle rain let the skies drop it down. Let who destroys one life, it is as if he had destroyed the world; the the earth open and salvation bud forth; let justice also one who saves one life, it is as if she had saved the world.” spring up. (Isaiah 45:8) On a brass plaque at Auschwitz are the often-quoted words of the philosopher George Santayana: “Those who Later in the week, we visited the barracks and crematoria of cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Yet the vast killing fields that stretched to the horizon. We remem- our addiction to violence and war against one another and bered those who suffered and died in the Holocaust — Jews, Poles, against the Earth has not been broken, nor has the callous- Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others who had ness that turns away from the suffering of our brothers and incurred the wrath of the Third Reich. American Rabbi Sheila sisters, whether across the hall, across the tracks or across the Weinberg said Kaddish (the prayer for the dead) at Crematorium world. Let us pray that we will turn to compassion and make III. As we sang and prayed and wept, candles of remembrance our lives a pilgrimage for Life. were lit “for my father, Julius Fleish”; “for a kind Gypsy woman who always gave people cigarettes”; “for my fellow Jesuits, fifty I have set before you life and death, blessing and of whom died here”; “for my aunts Greta and Freda”; “for those curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descen- with no one left to remember them”; “for all future generations dants may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19b).

II. Visiting the Land of the Enemy

itzhak Rabin, when prime minister of Israel, logue, as well as talks with Iranians we met in shops and at was criticized by many for meeting with the Pales- cultural sites, and that we passed on the street. People were tinians. This tough, old, battle-hardened general re- generally astounded — and cheered — to learn that we were Ysponded by saying, “You don’t make peace with your friends. Americans. Eager to use their English, they spoke of their You make peace with your enemies.” desire for peace and friendship. We often quoted President I have pondered his words a lot and have come to believe Dwight Eisenhower — like Rabin, a former general — who they point the way through many of today’s conflicts. Openness eloquently spoke of the need for peace among the nations. and dialogue can help us move forward in dealing with our ad- We visited an ancient Armenian Orthodox cathedral versaries. I tested this out on a Fellowship of Reconciliation visit and a stunning synagogue in Tehran, where a teacher of Jew- to Iran in 2006 with twenty-two other peacemakers. ish children told us about the country’s constitutional repre- Going there was initially fearsome, because the United sentation in parliament of three major religious minorities States and Iran have been at loggerheads since the Iranian — Christians (with three members of parliament), Jews and revolution of 1979. Generally, we knew the bad things about Zoroastrians (with one each). Jews and Judaism were seen this regime, but it was difficult to learn about the good things positively as part of the Abrahamic tradition, but Zionism of that culture and people. Face-to-face meetings and seeing and Israel are rejected as oppressors of the Palestinians. the sites of this ancient culture, however, showed us another Baha’i, which originated in Iran, is viewed as a heresy and dimension of Iran. has long been harshly persecuted. So religious diversity is For nearly two weeks, we traveled around Iran by plane and present in this Muslim nation, but there are serious problems bus, seeing historical sites and architectural marvels that reflect that need to be dealt with. Persia’s great heritage. We met with various groups — human In Isfahan (a city of over a million), we were aware of the rights, women, environmental, and religious (Jewish, Christian, nearby nuclear power program, which we passed on our way Zoroastrian and Muslim). We visited a rehabilitation center to to the city. We were amazed at this breathtaking metropolis meet with victims of chemical weapons that Iraq used in the that has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage 1980 to 1988 Iraq-Iran war (a war, by the way, in which the US Site. Beautiful palaces and mosques dating from the eleventh supported Iraq and Saddam Hussein). We talked with young to the nineteenth centuries are joined by a main square five women reporters at a cultural heritage news agency and we saw hundred-by-one hundred and fifty meters that has shops, gal- handicrafts made by poor women at another NGO. leries, metal workers and a bazaar surrounding the square. We engaged in lively conversation and challenging dia- Along the Zayandeh-Rood River are exquisite bridges

4 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter March 2012 Jewish Peace Fellowship The Sio-She Pole bridge, Isfahan, Iran: “The great acoustics in the arches encourage people to sing and play musical instru- ments there.”

over four centuries old. The Sio-She Pole bridge has thirty- Saadi (circa 1200-1291) wrote, three arches and the Khayn Bridge has two tiers of arches, the lower row fitted with locks to direct the water flow. The The human race is a single being great acoustics in the arches encourage people to sing and Created from one jewel play musical instruments there. Unforgettable was a young If one member is struck man we came upon, mournfully singing into the wall of an All must feel the blow arch that echoed his unrequited love. Walking along the Only someone who cares for the pain of others river — as well as in the many gardens we visited — were Can truly be called human. masses of roses in bloom. We were taken by surprise that, even in desert places, flowers brightened the landscape of These words are found at the entrance to the Hall of Na- this beauty-loving people. Public “gardens of paradise” date tions at the United Nations in New York City. Can they also back thousands of years. We were joined by a CNN team that be found in the portal of your heart? spent the afternoon with us and then interviewed us. The Sio-She Pole bridge is the inspiration for the saying, Have you not known? Have you not heard? “If you build a bridge toward me, I will build thirty-three to The Lord is the everlasting God, you.” Our delegation sought to build a bridge of friendship The Creator of the ends of the earth. or, perhaps, thirty-three. What if more Americans were to He does not faint or grow weary visit Iran and encourage our government to sit down and get His understanding is unsearchable. to know their counterparts? Many Americans and Soviets He gives power to the faint, did this in the 1980s and the inevitable war widely predicted and to him who has no might he never happened. increases strength. A starting point for the US to meet with Iranians might Even youths shall faint and be weary, be, in that land of great poets, to ponder the words of the and young men shall fall exhausted; thirteenth-century poet and spiritual master, Rumi, who wrote: But they who wait for the Lord Shall renew their strength, Outside ideas of right doing and wrong doing, They shall mount up with wings there is a field. I’ll meet you there. Like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, Prime Minister Rabin was right: you make peace with They shall walk and not faint. your enemy, not with your friend. (Isaiah 40:28-31) Y www.jewishpeacefellowship.org March 2012 Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter • 5 Military Intelligence

Larry Derfner Attacking Iran Isn’t Worth It The Israel public doesn’t know it, but ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan and his opposition to war with Iran has company

etired army general Nathan Sharony, head even stopped. of the Council for Peace and Security, which includes But as far as the public knows, the only security heavy- over one thousand former high-ranking officials with weight against the war is Dagan. In truth, Dagan’s predeces- Rdovish views, says the positions of ex-Mossad chief Meir Da- sor, Ephraim Halevy, preceded him in this view, and the two gan and ex-army intelligence head Shlomo Gazit against an are joined by former IDF chief Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and attack on Iran are “acceptable” to him. Gazit. Retired army colonel Yiftah Shapir, the leading expert None of them are “peaceniks” on the issue. I’m not sure on missile warfare at the Institute for National Strategic any oppose an Israeli attack under any conditions and in any Studies (INSS), Israel’s premier se- time; Kam and Shapir, for instance, curity think tank, says he “does not both said it was vital to Israel’s de- think the price we will have to pay terrent power to be ready and, in [for an attack on Iran] is worth the principle, willing to strike at Iran’s benefit.” He argues that the most nuclear facilities. (Shapir acknowl- Israel can do is delay Iran’s nuclear edged that this view, alongside his ambitions by “some months — a opposition to actually bombing far cry from the possible five-year Iran, amounted to a catch-22.) delay that Israeli security officials But unlike Barak, Netanyahu, are speaking about in the media.” Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon Retired army colonel Ephraim and all the other team players in Kam, deputy director of the INSS, Meir Dagan Shlomo Gazit and out of the government, these says he “does not know” whether people are talking about a down- Israel should strike or not, because he does not have all the side, not just the upside, of a war with Iran: missiles land- necessary information. But in the next breath he emphasizes ing on Israel; terror attacks on Israeli, Jewish and possibly that such an attack “is a very problematic idea, a very danger- American targets abroad; the chance of a mission failure; an ous option.” international crisis, and more. Israelis aren’t hearing these voices, those of members of And what is most unusual to be hearing from Israeli the security establishment who oppose an attack on Iran, or military men is that while a nuclear Iran is certainly a threat, at least have deep doubts about it — and there are crowds it is not necessarily an intolerable one. of them in this country. If these career people with impres- Ephraim Kam: “With reservations I think Israel can live sive titles were to speak out, or failing that, if journalists and with a nuclear Iran. The critical question is whether Iran activists were to seek out their opinions, the march to war would use nuclear weapons against Israel. Rationally, I say being led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minis- no. But this is an assessment not based on fact.” ter Benjamin Netanyahu could at least be slowed, and maybe Nathan Sharony: “I don’t know if the Iranians act ra- tionally. I don’t know if cold war deterrence is applicable to Israel-based Larry Derfner was a columnist for The them. But I have to assume that national leaderships act ra- Jerusalem Post and Israel correspondent for US and World tionally, which leads me to the conclusion that we can live News Report. His writings appear in the Israeli online maga- with a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons. Is this a zine +972, where this article originally appeared. sympathetic situation? No.”

6 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter March 2012 Jewish Peace Fellowship Shapir told me in 2007 that “the chance that Iran will that there are so many potentially influential people who are launch a nuclear first strike is low.” If Iran went nuclear, he against it, or who at least have severe doubts about it. said, what would probably happen is that it would enter a The only people who can throw a wrench in the wheels of “dialog” with Israel, like the Soviet Union had with the US, the war train are those like Dagan, Halevy, Lipkin-Shahak, and as Pakistan has with India. “Strategic logic is stronger Gazit, Kam, Shapir and Sharony — bitkhonistim, security than any ideology,” he said. types, warriors with big brains. If enough of them go public, Why are these and other critics and skeptics in the se- they can start a backlash, and the opposition politicians like curity establishment, except for Dagan and a few others, Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni and Labor’s Sheli Yachimov- keeping their doubts to themselves? The main reason that ich — maybe even former television broadcaster Yair Lapid, emerged from these interviews was a reticence to challenge whose new political party as yet has no name, might at least the government and its security advisors on such a fateful is- begin to ask the government embarrassing questions. sue “without having solid information,” as Sharony put it. In 2007, former defense minister and IDF chief Shaul I suggested to him that if all the skeptics outside he gov- Mofaz told The Jerusalem Post what while he wasn’t ruling ernment and active military service contribute to keep quiet out a military strike on Iran: “The potential for a regional because they don’t know what people around the cabinet escalation as a result of an attack is great. Iran sees Israel as table know, then the people at that table, led by Barak and a target and has ballistic missiles that can reach every Eu- Netanyahu, will be the only authoritative voices the public ropean capital. If it responds, then Hezbollah will respond hears, so they’ll be free to shape public opinion to their taste and maybe Syria, and we don’t even know how Hamas will and have clear sailing to launch the war. respond.” Mofaz quickly forgot those words, but if a wave Sharony replied fatalistically: “By the way, that’s how it’s of opposition arose against the war that’s looming, he might going to be.” remember them. He is probably right — the prowar forces have the field to There is no greater danger on earth today than that of an themselves, and it’s likely to stay that way until the jet bomb- Israeli attack on Iran. In my opinion, it will be the beginning ers take off. But “probably” does not mean certainty. It is im- of the end of this country. There is no more urgent work for possible to accept this brainwashing and to watch the coun- Israelis to do than try and prevent it. The key, the start, is in try sleepwalk to war behind Barak and Netanyahu, knowing getting the antiwar warriors to come out of the closet. Y

‘People’ or ‘the People’ ?

Jeremiah Haber ‘What Does It Mean to Be Pro-Israel Today?’

recent issue of Moment magazine features So here is my response to the Moment symposium, al- a symposium on the subject, “What does it mean to though I am hardly your typical modern Orthodox Jew, if be pro-Israel today?” To its credit, the Jewish period- there is such a creature. Aical asked for responses from a wide range of people, includ- When people ask me whether I am pro-Israel, I unhesi- ing critics of Israel, Jewish and non-Jewish, those who are not tatingly and unabashedly say, yes. I am for Israel, which is the Zionist. But there was no traditional religious respondent, classical name for the Jewish people; I believe in and prac- either Muslim or Jewish, and as anybody knows, traditional tice, to the best of my limited capacities, the love of the Jew- religion is in the driver’s seat in the Middle East today. ish people, ahavat Yisrael. But what does that phrase mean? Hannah Arendt pleaded guilty to Gershom Scholem’s charge Jeremiah Haber is the nom de plume of an Orthodox that she lacked ahavat Yisrael, stating that she loves people, Jewish studies and philosophy professor who divides his time not “the people,” not an abstraction. But even if “Israel” is not between Israel and the US. His blog is The Magnes Zionist taken to represent an abstract collective but rather each and ([email protected]). every individual Jew, it is arguably impossible, not to men- www.jewishpeacefellowship.org March 2012 Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter • 7 tion undesirable, to love people you have never met, or worse, families in their respective diasporas. I have come to the con- whose ideology or character revolts you, simply because you clusion that the State of Israel, as it is currently constituted, are a member of their tribe. (Do you love everybody in your is not that framework, although there are many elements of family?) it that are worth preserving. And yet, for me, ahavat No state is perfect, but some Yisrael means to accord mem- No state is perfect, but some states states are too imperfect, and bers of the Jewish people a Israel is one of them. Maybe I special place in my heart, be- are too imperfect, am oversensitive on this point, cause I view them as extended and Israel is one of them. but I am a citizen of the State family. And that is why as a of Israel and hence a member member of the family I feel of the Israeli family. worse when some of the family act atrociously. Since I focus on people and not states, the response that (On another occasion I will write against the wrong sort resonated with me most was George Bisharat’s: of ahavat Yisrael, the sort exemplifi ed by Meir Kahane’s re- Being pro-Israel means supporting peace and mark, “I don’t hate Arabs; I just love Jews.” Th at sort of aha- stability for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and vat Yisrael is rampant in the State of Israel, and produces the upholding principles that will ensure that peace and same sort of inequity that racism produces, even though it stability over the long term. Th at means supporting professes, with some justifi cation, that it is not racist in mo- the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians to live in tivation.) peace and equal rights in Israel-Palestine. Of course, the Moment symposium question under- stood “Israel” as referring to the “State of Israel,” which itself I started out by saying that I believe in and practice aha- means, the “state of the Jewish people.” And so what they vat Yisrael because I view Jews as extended family. When I were asking is: What does it mean to support the State of read such sentiments from Professor Bisharat, a Palestinian- Israel today? To me, this is an academic question. I am not American professor of law at the University of California’s interested in supporting states or the well-being of states per Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, I also view him as se; my concern is for the well-being of the people of those extended family, but in a diff erent sense. Th e Torah says, “Do states. As a liberal nationalist, I believe that the well-being not hate your brother in your heart,” and the commentator of people requires some sort of political framework, and that Rashi writes, “‘Your brother’ in mitzvot/commandments.” framework is generally a state. But states are only important Professor Bisharat and I are equally commanded to pursue in what they can furnish their peoples. And so we are back to peace and justice; that is why I consider him my brother, or the level of people and not states. if you like, a fellow traveler. Th e same God who commanded Many of the symposiasts assume that the well-being of me to love my fellow Jews commanded me to pursue peace the Jewish people requires the existence of not just of a state, and justice for all peoples. No state built on unjust founda- not just even of a Jewish state, but of the State of Israel. I feel tions is worth preserving, but many states are worth trans- that this too strong. I require a framework that will provide forming into more just polities, even at the expense of trans- the maximum opportunity to fl ourish for the people of Is- forming their identities. Israel is one of these. Y rael and Palestine, and, in an extended sense, their extended

Peace, Justice and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition

Edited by Murray Polner and Stefan Merken.

A landmark collection of contemporary progressive Jewish thought written by activists from Israel, the U.S. and the U.K.

Publishers Weekly called it “literate, thought-provoking” and “by no means homogeneous” and which looked at “from all angles, the idea that editors Polner and Merken believe refl ect the most basic attitude in our Jewish heritage.”

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8 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter March 2012 Jewish Peace Fellowship Disobeying Orders

Bernard Avishai Uri Avnery, Ben Dunkelman And What Happened in 1948 and After

y wife and I recently went to Tel Aviv to had signed the surrender document in which we solemnly see Uri Avnery collect Yesh Kvul’s Yeshayahu Lei- pledged to do nothing to harm the city or its population. bovitz Prize for his peace work over the past sixty- When Haim saw that I refused to obey the order, he left.” Mplus years. (Yesh Kvul was founded in The order had been oral. Dunkel- 1982 to support Israeli soldiers who man, it seems, insisted that it be in refuse to fight in the Occupied Terri- writing, which no senior officer was tories; in Hebrew, the organization’s prepared to do. (Neither would David name means “There is a limit.” Leibo- Ben-Gurion put in writing the order vitz was an eminent Israeli Orthodox to evacuate Ramle and Lod, by the Jewish philosopher who supported way; Yitzchak Rabin and Yigal Allon separation of state and religion and complied with a wave of Ben-Gurion’s opposed the Israeli occupation of the hand.) Twelve hours later a new com- West Bank.) mander was appointed for Nazareth, I won’t say more about Avnery Abraham Yaffe. “I complied with the now. Uri is an icon. I will recount a sto- order [to withdraw], but only after ry he told, one apparently well known Abraham had given me his word of by historians but which I had managed honor that he would do nothing to never to have heard before. harm or displace the Arab population. It seems that the Israel Defense […] I felt sure that [the order to with- Forces military officer who accepted the draw from Nazareth] had been given surrender of Nazareth in 1948 was one because of my defiance of the evacu- Ben Dunkelman, a Canadian who had ation order.” fought in the Canadian army during We fell silent in the hall as Avery World War II and then came to Israel to told the story, reflecting on Dunkel- fight for the nascent Jewish state. Once man’s heroism. You don’t need unusual in command of the city, which was en- Bernard Dunkelman, October 1948 courage to fight your enemies, Leibovitz tirely peaceful, Dunkelman received an (and Orwell) taught, but you do to risk order to expel Nazareth’s inhabitants — a direct order from being called a traitor or a fool by your friends. Rabin described the future chief of staff, Haim Laskov — much as the popula- the evacuation of Ramle and Lod in poignant detail in his mem- tions of Ramle and Lod were then being expelled. oirs (pages the censor first tried to suppress, but which Avery “I was shocked and horrified,” Dunkelman wrote. “I told printed in his now defunct magazine Ha’Olam Hazeh). Rabin him I would do nothing of the sort — in view of our prom- supposed the act was justified. But was it — even for strictly “se- ises to safeguard the city’s people, such a move would be curity” reasons? both superfluous and harmful. I reminded him that scarcely Nazareth is a hybrid city that, for all its tensions, portends a day earlier, he and I, as representatives of the Israeli army, the democracy Israel must become. It has never been the source of violence. But among the youths expelled from Ramle and Lod Bernard Avishai, adjunct professor of business at The in 1948 were Khalil Ibrahaim al-Wazir, or Abu Jihad, and George Hebrew University of Jerusalem, divides his time between Je- Habash — eventually leaders of political organizations willing rusalem and Wilmot, New Hampshire. His books include The to engage in grotesque acts of terror. What was cause and what Tragedy of Zionism and The Hebrew Republic. effect? Again, men and legacies. Y www.jewishpeacefellowship.org March 2012 Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter • 9 Horrors Within Horrors. Then More Horrors.

Murray Polner War Crimes

ot since Harrison Salisbury’s book The 900 Yet Stalin’s purges and punishments never ceased. The Days was published in 1969 has an English-language NKVD and two of his closest henchmen, Andrei Zhdanov book devoted to the German siege of Leningrad (now (who once denigrated the great Leningrad poet Anna Nrenamed St. Petersburg) appeared. The longest blockade in Akhmatova as “a cross between a nun and whore”) and recorded history, it consumed one and a half million people, Georgi Malenkov (who would become one of Stalin’s succes- half of them civilians, many of them children. In merciless, sors after the dictator’s death in March 1953 and then just as unvarnished detail Anna Reid’s Leningrad: The Epic Siege of abruptly be removed and sent — so it is said — to Siberia World War II, 1941-1944 (Walker) is filled with searing im- for an alleged offense) carried out a reign of fear aimed at ages of starvation, cannibalism, corruption and death in the domestic “enemies.” most Westernized and striking of Russian cities. The siege has essentially been overlooked in the West. But then, too, we’ve ignored the enormous sacrifices of the Russian people and its military forces in defeating Nazi Germany and its allies. Reid is a onetime Ukraine cor- respondent for The Economist and Daily Telegraph, and a journalist who holds an advanced degree in Russian studies. At the heart of her book are the memoirs, archives, letters and diaries of people who lived through the siege. Her heartbreaking and an- gry version does not spare the vicious German invaders, though she rightly excoriates the Communist regime for waging a reign of terror against the city’s imaginary dissenters. Trapped Leningraders would in Leningrad’s Nevsky Prospekt during a German shelling, 1942 time turn livid at the sight of well- fed party bureaucrats while the rest were starving; Reid is Reid cites a Leningrad NKVD study noting the sort of on target in wondering why sufficient food supplies were people punished, among them supposed anarchists, Trotsky- not stocked before and after the Germans invaded. She also ists, kulaks, tsarist sympathizers, the rich and, of course, faults party officials for failing to order a general evacua- Jews. She offers a devastating portrait of one roundup of tion until it was far too late. While it is admittedly difficult people awaiting banishment. According to an eyewitness, to measure public opinion, Reid’s reading of the diaries and Lyubov Shaporina, “…about a hundred people waited to be memoirs “show Leningraders raging as much against the in- exiled. They were mostly old women… These are the enemies competence, callousness, hypocrisy and dishonesty of their our government is capable of fighting… The Germans are at own officials as against the distant, impersonal enemy.” the gates, the Germans are about to enter the city, and we are arresting and deporting old women — lonely, defenseless, Murray Polner is coeditor of Shalom. harmless people.” Reid’s book is filled with similar exam-

10 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter March 2012 Jewish Peace Fellowship ples. The popular poet Olga Berggolt’s doctor-father had, she war ended. More than twenty million Russians were dead. wrote, loyally served the Soviet Union since the post-World Leningraders and in fact many Russians looked forward to War I civil war, but was dispatched, emaciated, to Krasno- a change in direction since, “Having fought, worked and yarsk in western Siberia because, Reid speculates, he was suffered for their country for four years, they felt they had Jewish and refused to spy on his colleagues. earned the right to be trusted by its government. They longed Even party officials were not immune, and their personal for the ordinary decencies of civilized life.” conflicts resembled a Mafia shoot-out, with the persecutors It was not to be, and the repression continued unabated. turning on one another during the darkest days of the siege. Four and a half million Soviet troops were captured by the Most notably, Malenkov tried to eliminate his rival Zhdanov Germans, and only 1.8 million emerged alive; the rest, espe- but Stalin spared his sycophant. Everyday Leningraders were cially Jews and party members, were executed by their cap- not as lucky while Malenkov, who survived his fight with Zh- tors. POW returnees were often punished by a government danov, and Vyachaslav Molotov (he who disillusioned many which suspected them of betraying the party. Lev Kopelov, a Communist party members throughout the world in 1939 Red Army soldier, publicly objected to the mass rapes of Ger- when he brushed off the Soviet-Nazi Non-Aggression Treaty man and Polish women, and was sent to a gulag until 1954, by saying, “Fascism is a matter of taste”) began yet more ar- the year after Stalin finally departed this earth. rests and deportations of “suspects” inside the city. The oppression that followed rivaled the darkest years of While Reid dwells on Soviet crimes and ineptitude, she the Thirties when leading Communists, generals and intel- also turns towards the Germans, who after all, were the pri- lectuals were put to death. At its simplest, most absurd level, mary cause of the city’s misery. After they captured near- French bread was renamed “Moscow bread,” echoed in 2003 by Pavlovsky and Pushkin, Olga Osipova, a “fiercely anti- by American pseudopatriots’ transforming french fries into Bolshevik” diarist, initially believed that, compared to the “freedom fries” after France objected to the US invasion of Communists, Hitler and the Nazis were not so bad. But she Iraq. And Soviet propagandists insisted that baseball was quickly learned “that the Nazis were different” after seeing really a Russian invention. Far more seriously, terrified col- them in action. All of Pushkin’s Jews were executed. Another leagues informed on one another and the camps once again memoirist, the composer Bogdanov-Berezovsky, met a for- began filling up. Jews again bore the brunt of the regime’s mer neighbor who described countless examples of hangings vindictiveness. Molotov’s Jewish wife was falsely accused of and shootings of Jewish civilians in surrounding regions. being a Zionist and an advocate of group sex, and was sent In the end, Reid argues, “the war was won at unneces- to a camp, after which her husband, ever faithful to the party sarily huge cost. Of this the blockade of Leningrad is perhaps and personal survival, divorced her. Not until Stalin died the most extreme example…. Had Russia had different lead- did the terror begin to subside; yet paradoxically millions of ers she might have prepared for the siege better, prevented Russians publicly grieved for their brutal Georgian leader, the Germans from surrounding the city at all, or, indeed, though just as many millions were silently thankful that he never have been invaded in the first place.” was finally gone. Y Eventually the siege ended and a few years later the

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