Letters (December 4, 2009)
A selection of letters published in the AJN print edition of December 4, 2009
Dancing on the graves of our martyrs
I AM an old person, a Holocaust survivor. I pride myself on having a considerable sense of humour, but definitely not on the subject of the Holocaust. The word “humour” does not even enter this subject, there was nothing humorous about it. I am writing this on behalf of many of my friends also Holocaust survivors. We were appalled and deeply saddened after reading “Fresh take on Holocaust” (AJN 27/11).
Dancing on the graves of our martyrs? And this, according to Jane Korman, should be a fresh interpretation of our most tragic and painful piece of history? To quote her words: “The memory of these lessons will not be forgotten” -— by dancing in Auschwitz? What an insensitive and degrading idea.
The RSL soldiers travel every year to Gallipoli: not to dance on the memorial sites, but to mourn, to commemorate, or to place flowers. Of course, art must continue after Auschwitz. It did, and it still does, without Korman’s reminders. We did not sit shivah for all the years since the war ended.
We cultivated art, in every form, but not by dancing on the graves of innocent victims who perished so tragically and whose memory we mourn forever.
No-one has any right to desecrate the memory of our people; it is as if they were being annihilated anew.
HELEN LEPERERE
Elsternwick, Vic
Nothing glorious about Gloria at Auschwitz
I WOULD put it to Jane Korman that there are perhaps other ways to express catharsis over the Holocaust than through dancing to Gloria Gaynor songs at Auschwitz (AJN 27/11).
As a member of the “younger generation” mentioned in the article and the granddaughter of an Auschwitz survivor who has been to that death camp, I found this “performance” to be inappropriate and disrespectful, and I struggle to see what it achieves other than hurt for victims and misunderstanding for many others.
I question whether the “all-singing, all-dancing” tour of Auschwitz would be replicated at the killing fields of Cambodia and Srebrenica to make a similar point. Auschwitz is a place of such horror that it deserves silence and reflection, rather than posed photos and video installations.
I put to those more tolerant than myself the following quote from the memorial to Jewish children at the Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany: “When you stand here, be silent. When you leave here, be not silent.” I believe the former is too often taken for granted.
INGRID WEINBERG
Caulfield North, Vic
Settlements are not obstruction to peace
TOM Wolkenberg’s (AJN 27/11) assertion that the Israeli settlements are perhaps the biggest obstacle to Middle East peace is, in my opinion, idealistic nonsense. Even famous and distinguished Israeli historian Benny Morris, who has dissented on many aspects of traditional Zionist history relating to the establishment of Israel, and who has been championed by left-wing narrators of the conflict, repudiated the notion that the settlements are the main obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict on a recent visit to Australia.
The issue of the settlements is a moral one: namely, should Israel continue to expand housing and infrastructure in a region of the Middle East that is so densely populated with Palestinian Arabs? This is a vexed question that has and will continue to be legitimately debated within the democratic and open Israeli political, social, media and academic arenas.
This moral question concerning Israeli policy contrasts with the ideological positions held concerning Jews and Israel that permeates much of the Arab and Islamic world in general, and Palestinian society in particular.
Paradoxically, sedition towards Israel long preceded the establishment of the settlements following the Six-Day War, and Israeli withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza substantially increased Arab-Islamic terrorist activity against Israel in the aftermath. Furthermore, the question needs to be asked as to which Arab, Islamic or Palestinian land Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl and Mumbai terror victims Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg were occupying when they were murdered by Islamic terrorists.
IAN KATZ
Caulfield, Vic
Are Palestinians living in Israel a hurdle?
THE belief that the settlements are “the biggest hurdle” to peace, as voiced by Tom Wolkenberg (AJN 27/11), is not new. It is just difficult to comprehend. How is it that 200,000 Jews living on 1.5 per cent of the West Bank are the impediment to peace, yet 1.5 million Arabs living on more than five per cent of Israel are no impediment at all? The only difference appears to be Palestinian terrorism versus Israeli acceptance. If Israelis began killing Arabs, would that then make those Arabs “the biggest hurdle to peace”? It’s silly!
It strikes me that the only impediment to peace is a distinct lack of goodwill in the Palestinian leadership. No surprise there. Oslo, Israel’s greatest blunder, brought the Palestine Liberation Organisation in from Tunisian exile, and they set up a Palestinian Authority (PA) comprising nine terrorist groups dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Is it any wonder then, now that Israel has frozen settlements, PA President Mahmoud Abbas says it’s not enough -— “there’s still an occupation”? It’s never enough!
Ordinary Palestinians and Israelis are suffering because of this error. It’s time to undo the nonsense of Oslo, with its terrorist overlords, and let Palestinians and Israelis live again … then agreements will come surprisingly easily.
MORRY SZTAINBOK
Bentleigh, Vic
Democracy for all
This past Shabbat a young woman received her tallit from her parents on the bimah of Temple Beth Israel before she read from Torah to celebrate her bat mitzvah.
We are sure that there are some Jews in our community who would not be comfortable with this ritual for a woman, but we are equally certain that few, if any, would challenge her right in a democratic society to choose her form of Jewish observance, including wearing a tallit.
Last week, a woman was arrested for donning a tallit and holding a Torah scroll. Where did this take place? In Israel, the sole democracy in the Middle East; at the Kotel, the wall that is said to belong to the entire Jewish people.
The details of this incident are available elsewhere. What we want to focus on is this. It seems to us that the security of Israel must be defended when the country is attacked, whether militarily or in the media. But the state we are defending is one that strives to maintain democratic ideals. It is not a theocracy that uses the might of the state (including the police) to promote motives that favour only one segment of Israeli society.
In a democracy, we should resist injustice, whether the victims are non-Jews or Jews. But there is an extra dimension when the democracy is Israel and the victims are Jewish. The unjust use of the law to punish Jews for practising Judaism as they will alienates Jews from Israel.
We are among those Jews, because we are Progressive Jews and we do not accept the governance of the religious establishment in Israel.
We call on all Jews, whether they agree with our religious views or not, to join us in ensuring that Israel always remains a democracy, defending the rights of its Jewish citizens to live their Judaism as they see fit. This is as serious to us as defending the state from external attack, because it is an attack on the soul of the state in its aim to be a refuge for all Jews.
If we ignore the case of this woman arrested for wearing a tallit, one day any one of us may be arrested on the streets of Jerusalem for living our lives as Jews in our own way.
Rabbi Fred Morgan
Senior rabbi, Temple Beth Israel
Dr Philip Bliss
Vice-president, World Union for Progressive Judaism
David Robinson
President, Union for Progressive Judaism: Australia, New Zealand and Asia
IDF soldiers must follow orders
I READ with great interest, actually dismay, David Guilbert Rozenman’s letter “Disengagement was ‘ethnic cleaning'” (AJN 27/11).
In the same edition of The AJN, there was an analysis piece entitled “Are ‘refuseniks’ a cause for concern?”, refuseniks being those Israeli soldiers who could refuse to obey orders for the possible future evacuations of settlements. The piece concluded with a quote: “they threaten the very foundation of the state”.
By suggesting, as he does in his letter, that Israel carried out ethnic cleaning in Gaza, Rozenman implies that the Israeli soldiers assigned to the evacuation of the settlements should have disobeyed their orders.
There are anti-Zionist Jews who call for boycotts of Israel and there are even those who justify Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, and so on. But they are really just full of hot air and no serious people listen to them anyway. But those who call on members of the Israel Defence Forces to disobey orders — well, their call threatens to topple the very foundation of the Jewish State.
HENRY HERTZOG
St Kilda East, Vic
Give Sand the boot
SHLOMO Sand, you deserve to have your credentials and degrees rescinded for your attitude that Israel was “born out of an act of rape” (AJN 20/11). Please — Tel Aviv University — give this man the order of the boot — a degree he so richly deserves. And may his livelihood be stopped.
His book creates only more hatred, both within and without Israel, for all Jews around the world. Facts before fiction.
SHIRLEY WISE
Caulfield, Vic
Don’t try to defend Goldstone
JULIE Szego (AJN 20/11) states that people criticise Justice Richard Goldstone rather than his report, and then mentions a few of its more minor defects. She describes him as a “legal purist”, but concedes he may have been “silly” and “naive”. She claims that Goldstone’s verbal objections altered the United Nations Human Rights Council’s written mandate, which ensured that the report would be flawed. She states that criticising Goldstone plays into the hands of anti-Israel agitators.
Should Israel and Diaspora Jewry do anything other than endure with saint-like silence the calumnies heaped on it by the report because Goldstone meant well, according to Szego?
PAUL WINTER
Chatswood, NSW
This was no game
YOUR heading “Play the game not the man” over the article by Julie Szego (AJN 20/11) is misleading. What Justice Richard Goldstone has done is not part of a play or a game. His report has set off a worldwide deluge of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attacks. By his own admission, he said he would head a United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) that had a one-sided mandate that he rejected. As a Jew, he should never have accepted the position.
I have spoken to a fellow South African judge who told me that Goldstone was a publicity seeker and this was why he took the position. As an experienced judge, he would know that he would be required to deal with facts, not his stated “hopes” that he could influence the biased HRC.
The State of Israel was perfectly right to refuse to have anything to do with him. He has damaged us all. Forget about trying to nullify the well-deserved criticism of Goldstone as your writer has tried to do.
SJ NIVAH
Bondi North, NSW
Inappropriate comparisons
THE article and front page picture two weeks ago comparing the Dunera with refugee boats made an inappropriate comparison. A closer analogy is with the Struma, an overcrowded, unseaworthy boat that attempted to take Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine in 1941.
The ill-fated ship with 769 Jewish refugees was refused permission to berth and unload its passengers, who were held onboard under atrocious conditions for several weeks. It was rejected at various ports, until finally towed out to sea and set adrift from Turkey. It exploded later, in February 1942, with the loss of all but one life.
Those of us old enough to remember this incident still feel nauseated by it. Refugees are people. Our own history within living memory dictates that we, as Australians, as Jews and as humans, recognise, understand and respect their needs.
PROFESSOR SOLLY FAINE
Melbourne, Vic
New level of ingenuity
RABBI Shlomo Brody’s article in last week’s AJN on “Passive euthanasia — a halachic analysis” shows just how the Jewish religion has struggled to maintain its relevance with modern medicine. The article is premised on the halachically accepted fact that euthanasia is wrong and goes on to describe the Israeli Steinberg Commission on end-of-life issues.
The most controversial part of the commission’s report related to withholding and withdrawing life-supporting medical treatment, resulting in the patient’s death. This is sometimes known as passive euthanasia because the patient is allowed to die.
In Israel, passive euthanasia under halachah is illegal. This is so even if continued treatment is non-therapeutic.
The Steinberg Commission formulated a plan to get around the secular law so as to maintain the religious law. The commission found that omissions are allowed under halachah, as direct human intervention, unlike an act, has not killed the person.
Its plan is by way of a timer on life-support equipment. If the equipment is on a timed cycle and is not reset, it shuts off and the patient, if he/she cannot live without the machine’s support, dies.
I have spoken to members of the Steinberg Commission. The religious believe that this is supposedly an omission rather than an act, and thus acceptable. The secular believe that it is still an act as a person must initially set the machine and then reset the machine for further cycles. But they are happy the Orthodox on the commission agreed with it and were not going to debate it.
The bottom line? This appears to be an example of a new level of ingenuity when centuries-old halachic authority must be re-interpreted to maintain Jewish law with developments in medicine.
ALAN ROTHSCHILD
Caulfield North, Vic
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