Shadows - When the past rules the present uksubs 2017

First count of nature of offence: crime against the Jewish people, an offence under section one A. one of the Nazism and Nazi Collaborators Punishment Law 5710 1950. The accused together with others during the period of 1939 to 1945 caused the killing of millions of Jews in his capacity as the person responsible for the execution of the Nazi plan, for the physical extermination of the Jews, known as the final solution of the Jewish problem: Auschwitz, millions of Jews were exterminated in this camp from 1941 until the end of January 1945. In gas chambers crenatoria So you don´t have any Arab friends? No Thanks god no, the Palestinian is not good people. The Palestinian don´t want to make peace with the Israeli. They want to kill all the Israeli And they have a people to share with them, the Norwegian, Denmark everybody help the Palestinian, that is it. Now I am gonna tell you something –Next five-six –seven years- twenty years, there are gonna not Danemark there are gonna be a Danimarca like Arab. Sweden is gonna be Arab, Norweigan Arab, Danemark all of them. In France too. Never mind next ten year from now, you don´t listen you don´t hear Denmark, this language. Your hear only Arab, Muslim. It seems that you have taken some controversial steps down here, because you are focusing on religions in peace conflicts. Yes, that is true, I have worked in many controversial issues both in public life and in civil society and also my political career. I have been controversial but not for the sake of controversialism but because I like to do things, which not everybody else is doing. Now I am one of those, who are not so dogmatic, that I don´t think, I can be wrong. You know, I have been wrong before, I can be wrong again, maybe I am wrong. So I have supported all the peace initiatives: I supported Oslo, I was involved , I have supported Camp David I was involved. I have sat down with people, who have written the books of how to blow up Jews of the Jihad, how to make the terror. I have sat down, I have presented it together with my Muslim colleagues. We have sat down together with them and we presented a religious theory. They said : Nobody ever presented such a theory before, it sounds sensible. I have talked to more than any other person in this area. I have been around more and met people from all over the Middle East on both sides. I think, there is reason for a lot of optimism. You look perfect yeah. My idea was to see, if it is possible to break the shadows, you know, I raise the question, how do you do that? I think, you can do that, but you really need to apply yourself to that: Is it possible here and now in Israel –you know, I can give you an example of how impossible, it might be in Israel but on the other hand, how the only place in the world, where we can disperse the shadows, maybe not break them, but maybe disperse them is in Israel. Adults in the very classical analytical sense have become vessels for their parent´s wishes and fears, and we must remember, that there is also this underlying assumption for many of the first generation, that their children will recreate something of what has been lost. So it is very complex. They have to be, they have to stand in for someone who died and some times for many people, who died. They have to recreate a future, which their parent´s never had the chance to recreate. So with all that burden, how freely can you live your life? Good, yellah, lets go. See you. When we were a minority, when we were persecuted, a second, a second dear, okay... just a second… One day we shall wake up in the morning, and then there will be no holocaust survivors any more, not even one, the last one will pass away, and the last Nazi victimizer will pass away as well and that will be the first day in which the Holocaust will not be a personal experience anymore but a collective memory. And I would like to struggle over the strategy of the memory: What is it? Did the Holocaust happened to me only to Jews only by Germans or collaborators only. Or is it a human phenomenon that happened this time to Jews by Germans but could happened to any other nation. And of course my argument is that the Holocaust is universalistic, should be our contribution to a universal understanding of a better humanity- not just for more protection and more shielded Israel and more paranoid one. And the third element is a very painful one, which anger a lot of people here: This kind of brutality, the vicious circle of humiliated nation, which is becoming a humiliating nation. An abused child, who becomes a violent parent, this pathological circle can happened to anybody. And what ever happened to Israel in the last couple of years is dangerous, is problematic. Is not moral vis-a-vis with the occupation, vis-a-vis the israeli Palestinians, vis-a-vis the erosion of the democratic space. It is dangerous. We are not exposed enough to anti-Semitism -there is a mix up between anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism - some how the state of Israel has become the face of Judaism. The Holocaust in many ways is the omnipresence, it is always here. I mean you open the paper at the sports section, you have something about the Holocaust, you open it at the art section, you have something about the Second World War. It is always there, it is like oxygen on the air. As if you don´t see it, but you can´t without it Just because my grand parents have never been in the Holocaust, doesn´t mean, that I am immune to this trauma that has been transmitted into my generation here in Israel. And the second thing, I think is, which is a sort of a classical is what we call secondary traumatization. Many people who work in the mental health profession but other physicians as well can be what we call secondary traumatized by working with people, who have experienced severe life threatening traumas. So if you work with Holocaust survivors long enough, you can earn the badge of a second generation. So I have become one, I was not born one, I didn’t grow up one, I probably became one. That is my parents, I think, my mother is pregnant with my brother here. That is a good picture. My mothers parents, which are also my grandparents, two of the children here, almost everybody here except my father and his brother. These two my fathers sister, they all were murdered in the Shoah. I don´t even know where that is or where that is - no that is from forced labor. So the shadows are there, the sadness is there, but it is not a compass by which you should measure your present and your future. The past has nothing to do with my existential decisions of today. Many of our young people are looking, actually are looking for their identity, are searching for their identity are searching for a way. Unfortunately our politicians failed, they don´t show a way, they don´t give a vision, they don´t give hope. To Israel looking at Israel as only an alternative to a catastrophe. This is a shelter, I don´t live in a shelter, I live in a state, a normal sovereign I hope happy state. I do believe, that if we go on with the occupation, we are destroying the state of Israel. We are holding millions of people as second rate citizens, which is in my thought and with my family history terrible. And it is done in my name. Even when the last survivor has passed away, the story is there. The story is strong, it is powerful. The question is, what we do with the story. Do we create from the story, the lack of belief in human kind, which is one way of reading the story that human kind is only evil, and can never be up to anything good, which some people read into the Holocaust. Or as I believe, and I think, that is the real story of the Holocaust is that there is a real choice for human kind. You can choose good and bad, you can choose life and death. There is so much room, we have a beautiful, beautiful Jewish prayer. When we say that prayer, we go back three steps figuratively, we go back three steps and I think, it means, when we go back three steps, it means, that in order to make peace, you have to withdraw and leave place for the other. Because you can´t expect God to intervene and help us making peace, if you are not willing to withdraw. Some times it means withdrawing from territory but some times it also means just withdrawing and leaving place for peace. It is a very sensitive question: Were the Jews victims in the past the answer is yes. Is this still a needless hatred of Jews around the world, the answer is yes. Does that mean, that we have unlimited credit in the bank of morality in the bank of politics to say we can do everything we want, because we once were victims. The answer is no. Does this legitimate us to be victimizers the answer is no. And you cannot justify the denial of rights of so many people, of so many millions of people for so many years, because once we had a Holocaust . It is because, we are Jewish, they are talking to us about the wall. So there is this ever going feeling, that the world is not judging us, as we should. Of course there is also a huge misunderstanding here in Israel, socially, politically and historically about our embarrassing, I would say even inhuman way in which we treat our Palestinian neighbors. Children grew up into a climate in which we are the strong ones, we are the conquerors, and they are the second rate citizens. In a sense maybe not our slaves but a source of cheap labor. We not only treat them badly, they are also the people, who might kill us. So there is this underlying excuse for treating them badly -and that is why people in Israel never understand, why so many diplomats and philosophers are threatening us abroad compare the Israel situation with the situation, that was in South Africa many years ago, the Apartheid. They say, how can they compare us to them. It is completely the same, once you conqueror a different people and you try to make this distinction between us and them, It is all the same. The reasoning is completely illogical and inconsistent, but many people here in Israel say: We are being blamed for becoming an Apartheid state, because we are Jewish. We have created, what we wished never to be experiencing again. We have created a ghetto, but we call it the State of Israel. My name is Janniv. I am a tour guide, we are headed towards East Jerusalem, I will use the time until we reach our next stop to give a short historic briefing. This is a driving tour mostly, we will spend most of the time on the bus, and some times standing at several view points. This place might for most Israelis as well be on the moon. Jewish Jerusalem or Israelis have no idea, what this place looks like. People need to stop water in black tanks on the roof top, because there is water shortage, and they need new sewers lines in many of these neighborhoods, and there is no side walks, no safety walks down the street. And there are not enough schools, every aspect of the every day life here is suffering from neglect of many, many years. It was here, that they placed this week sort of water canon sort of a robotic water canon with a surveillance camera on the wall here. Because many times there are demonstrations on the other side of the wall in Bethlehem, and sometimes they throw stones and Molotov cocktails to the other side, and the border police men has to open the gates and fire all kind of crowd control, means to disperse the demonstration like tear gas, rubber covered bullets and other means. Now this is the top security reality that got the Israeli government to also decide to build a physical barrier between Israel and the West Bank. Closer to us here is the separation barrier again in two forms. Closer to us is an electronic fence or a configuration of an electronic fence and a patrol road and a dirt road, where this is too wide of an obstacle to use in urban areas. They use what you see in the farther part, which is an eight meter high concrete wall of slaps put together and placed with watch towers, surveillance cameras. Sorry- what is the matter Missiles coming into the northern part of the Gaza strip, and it seems very loud here, and now the sound you are hearing here. We are on the top of the hill, and I think, you can probably see, there are lots of Israelis gathered around, they are cheering, when they see this kind of Israelis I think, they should just clear up all the city, just take it of the ground. But the end of the Ramadan the Muslim people can invite the Jews home for dinner. It is called Ilk . Yes, I think in this times, I don´t think so, I don´t think so. Because no people have good relations with Jewish people. I have a friend okay, I bring friends to my house, they look at my neighbors and say bad things. You know, we are not in peace together, we worry of each other. No peace, no, no I can´t invite people to my house. It is very difficult, very difficult Israelis people to invite to my house. It is very difficult. Israelis people can never be like that, not at all, no trust Israeli people. Just talking *** always. If they want something from you very friendly. If they doesn´t want anything, no friendly, not at all. Come in Thank you. Yes, I know, you are busy. Yes we have this special meeting. Especially now because it's after this terrible war we've had the last couple of months. and the man whom I sat with now, we have got him out of Gaza. He is a partner who has a large center in Gaza And it is awfully moving, that we have not been able to meet with him during the war, he has not been able to get out. The thoughts of dialogue you had between religions, which we talked so much about are you continuing with this work? Absolutely it remains not less relevant now, but it’s… … and it is perhaps more difficult, because people find it harder to listen when they are scared, and have been in shelters for months with bombs and times of warfare. And on the other hand, after war you have to make peace, it is also the experience after Europe. Europe has also lived in war for centuries, and now live in peace within the various countries and between the various countries, and that you have tried to make peace and do not succeed, it´s no proof that it should not succeed here. I don’t know why people think what is possible in the world is not going to succeed here. The government and the coalition are elements that fill the public discourse with fear, hate, incitement and racism. In the past those elements were condemned by society, we didn´t take them seriously. It was comfortable for us to ignore them, but let the truth be told . The one who gave the legitimacy as partners, we shall go on a different path, we shall lead with certainty - - determination and sense. I hereby commit myself. We have to unite for a two-state solution. I believe there is a large Palestinian minority here in Israel, and that there could live a small minority of Jews in Palestine, if that is where the peace comes from, and this is where, I think it should come from. Peace has to come from, where it has succeeded, and not from the peace that failed. I´m very sorry, it failed that we have tried so far. “Don´t do to another, that which is hateful to you. We have to unite for a dialogue. That is the first Jewish principle that Hillel the Elder said . I am sorry,we are leaving as you know. Yeah, I know you are. Why are you leaving now? Whats happening? Anyway, why are we leaving. For the foreseeable future the state is going in a direction, which is completely liberal, antisocial with a lot of cynicism. Freedom of speech has been compromised significantly in Israel. There is no process in the foreseeable future our strengthen hold on the Palestinian territory is getting heavier and heavier. It is very difficult to keep your equanimity and peace of mind under these circumstances. So people who are involved in the peace process are suffering from burn out in this country. You can´t keep this Sisyphean work, and keep up your hope and optimism, when all around you things are going in such a completely different direction. So yes, I suppose, if you were going to diagnose me or if I had to diagnose myself, I am burned out, I suffer from burned out, when it comes to the peace process and to in a larger sense burned out from hoping that Israel will be able to correct itself and become again an optimistic social state. I come here because I live in Jerusalem, and I am in shock and enraged about, what is happening here. They are literally Nazis here. Do you hear a religious Jew calling another Jew a Nazi, that is the way, they react. The cultural infra structure in Israel has given up on a social outlook, has given up on compassion The WAR has brought out, the operation, we are not allowed to say the war, the military operation has brought out the inner workings of our society, and it is a dark and sad inner world, in which social values are out of the window. There is only we and them. Them are good for nothing, and the split, this non human, inhuman split between us and them has become so apparent. And I think, that is where the despair walks in for me personally. Tolerance towards opinion, that is not your own has been reduced dramatically. I saw that during the last war in last summer. People could not say for instance, they think this war is not justified, which is a legitimate point of view without paying a very high price. Some times risking real violence, physical violence. To delegitimize somebody, who thinks or speaks unlike, I don´t know if the majority or unlike somebody else is actually one step towards the destruction of democracy. There is a kind of a short cut electric wires of the Israeli. Here is the Israeli who doesn´t know the local Palestinian, the local Israel Aran, who total doesn´t se any immediate relation of responsibility to the occupied Palestinian and the occupied territories. And therefore not understand the price, that I, we pay in the West. And therefore when you say: the three working parameters are: No communication between the two communities de facto of uncertainty and fear and the anger against the Western world, who is against us. These are the working assumption of the Israeli society without linking the three. Again the Russian community here in Moscow was attacked, and after the bombing of the synagogue trying to bomb down another synagogue in Moscow. You see again the hand of vandalism in the city. My own mother went to Auschwitz in 1944, my grandmother was killed in Auschwitz. That is the symbol, which send her to the gas chambers. We do not know, that it is connected to the synagogue, we do not know, that it is connected to the former shooting today. First there is anti-Semitism-there is anti-Semitism what ever I like it or I don´t like it, it is there. Secondly there is criticism against Israel, some is appropriate, some are inappropriate, but it is legitimate. Third there is a kind of correlation done by us and done by other between anti-Semitism and anti- Israelism. The basic process that we are seeing in Europe, and in other places, but mainly in Europe, is the re-emergence of your very basic core anti-Semitism, and they are just putting on the vinyl that we are anti-Israeli policies. It’s a great way to re-create anti-Semitism. Is that true? Am I paranoid? Who knows? Time will tell. I think Europeans should look very well what motivates them to go on demonstrations without anybody opening their mouths, with the Swastika, I saw signs: “We should drop all the Jews into gas chambers,” this makes me really excited. After all, my mother is from Auschwitz, and all my family was killed in Auschwitz, and when 70 years later, I see such a thing in Europe of today, I think somebody had to open his mouth and say something. I didn’t see anybody. Not in the Guardian, not in the German press, not in the Scandinavian press. It worries me a lot and it tells me… and then I saw a sign, not once many times: the Jewish State should be exterminated”. Is there any other state in the world where on demonstrations, people are calling for it´s extermination? No, only the Jewish State. We are today also inside Israel. I dont remember I have some memory still left, I don´t remember such a low point where both the Jews and Arabs are afraid in Israel. People are afraid, people are afraid of each other, it can pass. But the present situation is even worse than the First- and Second Intifada. it is worse, that it was during the Gaza War. People are afraid today, and fear is, you are afraid of different things. But fear is something, which some people utilize for bad things. Part of this fear is created, because we don´t know each other, there is a lot of hatred and incitement. And again youtubes can be used to show, that all the Jews want to go up and burn down the mosques and build a temple. It is a lie, it is a pure lie. It was proven that we Israelis react very well, very positively, to traumas. Give me a good trauma, and we are fantastic in reacting. The ’73, Yom Kippur War was an awful trauma for us Israelis. Therefore 4 years later we had a peace agreement with Egypt. The first Gulf War was a terrible experience. I mean the home front, and the missiles, and the fear. So we went to the Madrid Conference. The first Intifada was shocking and surprising, but it led to Oslo. If there would be something very terrible that would happen to the Israeli Jews, we should react positively toward reconciliation with the Palestinians. If something terrible would happen to the Palestinian, the Western world would walk away from its comfort zone of talking, but not interfering, and impose a solution on Israel. Otherwise, I don’t see any real breakthrough. It will not come voluntarily from within. Would you be able to leave the country and go abroad and stay away, and leave it? I wish to answer you very honestly, I cannot leave, because culturally and emotionally, I was born here, and I am too old. My grandfather in 1929 said there is no future for Jews in Europe, Hitler was not in power, yet. He left to America and he was a very successful businessman, and he wrote to my grandmother: pack the kids and come over. And my grandmother said: what are this nonsense that you speak? We have the responsibility for the large family- I am not coming. So he went back in 1931 and he ended up in Auschwitz. So it’s a very strong question when in our family we speak about when it is the right time to go, it is a very strong question. So, my answer is not a clear cut answer. It’s a clear cut for me, and I still have a mother here, but it is not clear cut absolutely for my kids. Although, when they listen to me: Oh, mum, stop this. But, I know that, in a way, I’d feel more relaxed if I knew they weren’t here. Thank you. good bye. Have a safe trip. Thank you very much good bye. Bye Bye. On the first of July, we are out of here –we don´t have any furniture anymore, we sit on the garden chairs. Waov All yours This is how it is every where— Have a nice trip Thank you very much Take care, take care. thank you, thank you My wife calls it a big restart. She is saying, we are going to restart the system and hopefully experience a great change. I am sure, you will be sad leaving, I am sure. I am sure. It’s what we call, the Americans have this brilliant expression, bitter-sweet. It will be sweet and it will be bitter and … The smells, the weather, the food, the people, the scenery, it’s who we are. We have a very lovely poem in Hebrew, which I will probably be mistranslating, but it says like: Every person has the name that his parents gave him, that his childhood bestowed upon him, that his country gave him, that the food he ate gave him… So, we have all these things inside us. Take care. I will text my daughter just now, so I don´t forget . Yes please. Email me So Ben Yehuda street 35, yes, please. I have even felt the power of shadows, and I have felt, that they have seized the people around me. I have acknowledged that no one is spared of their shadows. They are part of our lives whether we want it or not. It takes courage to face the shadows. And it takes courage to break them.