’Zionism has been kidnapped by the far right,’ says Holocaust historian Friedlander -
By Anshel Pfeffer | May 18, 2014 |
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.591193
“I am connected to this country. My eldest son and grandchildren live here but I can’t call myself a Zionist. Not because I feel estranged from Israel but because Zionism has been taken, kidnapped even, by the far right. You could say I was a normal Zionist until 1968, when I wrote a short book in French about Israel’s future. I don’t think it was especially daring, but I already then I wrote that we couldn’t continue holding on to territories with Arab population; no one called them Palestinians then. I thought and still do that it would ruin the values of Israeli society from within.”
Friedlander is aware that many Israelis and Jews find it difficult to reconcile his historical research, much of which has focused on the nature of Nazi anti-Semitism and the inaction of German society and the Vatican throughout the Holocaust, with calling upon Israel to relinquish its hold on more defensible borders. “Already in 1974 when I gave a lecture at Hillel in Los Angeles and spoke about my research and also about Israeli policy someone from the audience asked: ‘how can a man who is so aware of the Holocaust’s lessons have such dovish views?’ I answered that learning about the Holocaust may lead some to right-wing conclusions but it can be the other way around and lead you to emphasize more the moral imperative in accepting ‘the other.’ But I have never asked myself why none of this has ever made me paranoid or nationalist. For me the paramount question has always been how the individual man deals with his conscience when faced with injustice and crimes.”
’The right excels at using the Holocaust’
As an early member of Peace Now, Friedlander regrets that his colleagues in the Israeli left prefer not to base their arguments more on the lessons of the Holocaust. “It’s a mistake of the left to keep clear from such a major part of our history. They are afraid of dragging the Holocaust into the political game but we can turn around the way the right uses it.”
Friedlander is fundamentally opposed to making political use of the Holocaust, but believes the left has no choice, since the right has been doing so for over 30 years. “Since the 1970s when Menachem Begin described Yasser Arafat as a ‘second Hitler,’ we have seen how the political right in Israel has been using the Holocaust and its memory to justify more and more radical positions. It caused the left to refrain from even mentioning the Shoah. Personally, it caused me a dilemma when I saw how the subject which I devoted my life to has been used to prop up the most repulsive political attitudes.”