Please don’t write about Ya’ir Golan! a friend begged me, “Anything a leftist like you writes will only harm him!”
So I abstained for some weeks. But I can’t keep quiet any longer. Gen. Ya’ir Golan, the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, made a speech on Holocaust Memorial Day. Wearing his uniform, he read a prepared, well-considered text that triggered an uproar, which has not yet died down.
The main sentence was: “If there is something that frightens me about the memories of the Holocaust, it is the knowledge of the awful processes which happened in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in 2016.”
All hell broke loose. What!!! Traces of Nazism in Israel? A resemblance between what the Nazis did to us with what we are doing to the Palestinians?
I feel compelled to write about the general’s speech after all, because I was there. I know what Golan was speaking about. Though we belong to two different generations, we share the same background. Both our families come from small towns in Western Germany. His father and I must have had a lot in common.
There is a strict moral commandment in Israel: Nothing can be compared to the Holocaust. The Holocaust is unique. It happened to us, the Jews, because we are unique. I have broken this commandment. Just before Golan was born, I published (in Hebrew) a book called “The Swastika,” in which I recounted my childhood memories and tried to draw conclusions from them.
My book did not deal with the Holocaust, which took place when I was already living in Palestine, but with a question which troubled me throughout the years, and even today: How could it happen that Germany, perhaps the most cultured nation on earth at the time, the homeland of Goethe, Beethoven and Kant, could democratically elect a raving psychopath like Adolf Hitler as its leader?
The last chapter of the book was entitled “It Can Happen Here!”
In this chapter I discussed the possibility of a Jewish Nazi-like party coming to power in Israel. My conclusion was that a Nazi party could come to power in any country on earth, if the conditions are right. Yes, in Israel, too.
Now comes Gen. Golan, an esteemed professional soldier, and says the same thing. The storm broke out, and has not passed yet.
Israelis have a self-protective habit: When confronted with inconvenient truths, they evade its essence and deal with a secondary, unimportant aspect. Of all the dozens and dozens of reactions in the written press, on TV and on political platforms, almost none confronted the general’s painful contention.
Things happening in Israel, especially since the last election, bear a frightening similarity to those events. True, the process is quite different.
Indeed, the differences between Israel today and Germany then are far greater than the similarities. But those similarities do exist, and the general was right to point them out.
The discrimination against the Palestinians in practically all spheres of life can be compared to the treatment of the Jews in the first phase of Nazi Germany.
The rain of racist bills in the Knesset, those already adopted and those in the works, strongly resembles the laws adopted by the Reichstag in the early days of the Nazi regime.
Of course, no one in their right mind would even remotely compare Netanyahu to the Fuehrer, but there are political parties here, which do emit a strong fascist smell. The political riffraff peopling the present Netanyahu government could easily have found their place in the first Nazi government.
One of the main slogans of our present government is to replace the “old elite,” considered too liberal, with a new one. One of the main Nazi slogans was to replace “das System.”
The general did not mention the occupation and the settlements, which are under army rule. But he did mention the episode which occurred shortly before he gave this speech, and which is still shaking Israel now: in occupied Hebron, under army rule, a soldier saw a seriously wounded Palestinian lying helplessly on the ground, approached him and killed him with a shot to the head. The victim had tried to attack some soldiers with a knife, but did not constitute a threat to anyone any more. This was a clear contravention of army standing orders, and the soldier has been hauled before a court martial.
A cry went up around the country: The soldier is a hero! He should be decorated! Netanyahu called his father to assure him of his support. Avigdor Lieberman entered the crowded courtroom in order to express his solidarity with the soldier. A few days later Netanyahu appointed Lieberman as defense minister, the second most important office in Israel.
Before that, Gen. Golan received robust support both from the Minister of Defense, Moshe Ya'alon, and the Chief of Staff, Gadi Eisenkot. Probably this was the immediate reason for the kicking out of Ya'alon and the appointment of Lieberman in his place. It resembled a putsch. The inclusion of Lieberman’s party in the government coalition confirms Golan’s blackest fears. This is another fatal blow to the Israeli democracy. Am I condemned to witness the same process for the second time in my life?
So I abstained for some weeks. But I can’t keep quiet any longer. Gen. Ya’ir Golan, the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, made a speech on Holocaust Memorial Day. Wearing his uniform, he read a prepared, well-considered text that triggered an uproar, which has not yet died down.
The main sentence was: “If there is something that frightens me about the memories of the Holocaust, it is the knowledge of the awful processes which happened in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in 2016.”
All hell broke loose. What!!! Traces of Nazism in Israel? A resemblance between what the Nazis did to us with what we are doing to the Palestinians?
I feel compelled to write about the general’s speech after all, because I was there. I know what Golan was speaking about. Though we belong to two different generations, we share the same background. Both our families come from small towns in Western Germany. His father and I must have had a lot in common.
There is a strict moral commandment in Israel: Nothing can be compared to the Holocaust. The Holocaust is unique. It happened to us, the Jews, because we are unique. I have broken this commandment. Just before Golan was born, I published (in Hebrew) a book called “The Swastika,” in which I recounted my childhood memories and tried to draw conclusions from them.
My book did not deal with the Holocaust, which took place when I was already living in Palestine, but with a question which troubled me throughout the years, and even today: How could it happen that Germany, perhaps the most cultured nation on earth at the time, the homeland of Goethe, Beethoven and Kant, could democratically elect a raving psychopath like Adolf Hitler as its leader?
The last chapter of the book was entitled “It Can Happen Here!”
In this chapter I discussed the possibility of a Jewish Nazi-like party coming to power in Israel. My conclusion was that a Nazi party could come to power in any country on earth, if the conditions are right. Yes, in Israel, too.
Now comes Gen. Golan, an esteemed professional soldier, and says the same thing. The storm broke out, and has not passed yet.
Israelis have a self-protective habit: When confronted with inconvenient truths, they evade its essence and deal with a secondary, unimportant aspect. Of all the dozens and dozens of reactions in the written press, on TV and on political platforms, almost none confronted the general’s painful contention.
Things happening in Israel, especially since the last election, bear a frightening similarity to those events. True, the process is quite different.
Indeed, the differences between Israel today and Germany then are far greater than the similarities. But those similarities do exist, and the general was right to point them out.
The discrimination against the Palestinians in practically all spheres of life can be compared to the treatment of the Jews in the first phase of Nazi Germany.
The rain of racist bills in the Knesset, those already adopted and those in the works, strongly resembles the laws adopted by the Reichstag in the early days of the Nazi regime.
Of course, no one in their right mind would even remotely compare Netanyahu to the Fuehrer, but there are political parties here, which do emit a strong fascist smell. The political riffraff peopling the present Netanyahu government could easily have found their place in the first Nazi government.
One of the main slogans of our present government is to replace the “old elite,” considered too liberal, with a new one. One of the main Nazi slogans was to replace “das System.”
The general did not mention the occupation and the settlements, which are under army rule. But he did mention the episode which occurred shortly before he gave this speech, and which is still shaking Israel now: in occupied Hebron, under army rule, a soldier saw a seriously wounded Palestinian lying helplessly on the ground, approached him and killed him with a shot to the head. The victim had tried to attack some soldiers with a knife, but did not constitute a threat to anyone any more. This was a clear contravention of army standing orders, and the soldier has been hauled before a court martial.
A cry went up around the country: The soldier is a hero! He should be decorated! Netanyahu called his father to assure him of his support. Avigdor Lieberman entered the crowded courtroom in order to express his solidarity with the soldier. A few days later Netanyahu appointed Lieberman as defense minister, the second most important office in Israel.
Before that, Gen. Golan received robust support both from the Minister of Defense, Moshe Ya'alon, and the Chief of Staff, Gadi Eisenkot. Probably this was the immediate reason for the kicking out of Ya'alon and the appointment of Lieberman in his place. It resembled a putsch. The inclusion of Lieberman’s party in the government coalition confirms Golan’s blackest fears. This is another fatal blow to the Israeli democracy. Am I condemned to witness the same process for the second time in my life?
