From the hell of the Warsaw Ghetto to Gaza – one tragedy separated only by time
This Green and Surprisingly Pleasant Land examines the psyche of Israel’s leaders as they pursue an endless strategy of elimination
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, is dead and yet the destruction of Gaza continues. To understand the unending trauma that motivates Israel’s determination to rid itself of its enemies and pursue an endless strategy of elimination a visit to the museum of Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot (The Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz) in Northern Israel is recommended.
The Kibbutz commemorates the largest uprising by Jewish resistance fighters during the Nazi Holocaust in 1943 when Jews were herded into the Warsaw Ghetto prior to their deportation and almost certain death in concentration camps. Against all odds the fighters held the Germans at bay and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy despite the inevitability of the outcome.
The ghetto uprising is a singular moment in the foundation story of the Jewish state. On the one hand it memorialises the extraordinary courage of the fighters and on the other supports the narrative that without a home of their own the Jews, however brave, live in perpetual threat of extinction.
This is the central rationale for the foundation of the state of Israel. It is summed in the slogan, ‘never again’. Never again will the Jews allow themselves to be slaughtered and never again will the Jewish people be weak. The battle against weakness and assertion of Jewish strength is endlessly repeated by Prime Minister Netanyahu as he explains what is happening in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond.
It also underlies his instance that Israel has no obligation to listen to the rest of the world, because the rest of the rest of the world cannot protect Israel more effectively than it can protect itself. This is fighting talk that overlooks America’s endless supply of weapons without which Israel’s army would be devastated.
Israel believes it stands on the higher moral ground because it is avenging the Holocaust and no longer having to rely on outsiders to defend the Jews.
The idea that the Jewish people always stood alone before the establishment of the state is only partly true as it ignores both the heroic actions of non-Jews who helped save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. In fact it was the Polish resistance who supplied the weapons that enabled the ghetto fighters to maintain their resistance.
Another part of the state’s foundation narrative is deeply offensive as it repeats the notion that Jews were ‘led like sheep to the slaughter’ during the Holocaust, thus blaming the victims for their fate. This also is not entirely true, as there were numerous acts of resistance and self-sacrifice but it serves assert the myth that Jews can only be strong in a Jewish state.
More complex, is that Israel’s foundation story is largely constructed around the experience of European Jewry. The founders of the state were understandably traumatised by the Holocaust and the need to save European Jewry but this disaster was not part of the experience of Jews from Arab lands who, before the establishment of the Jewish state, lived in various degrees of harmony with their neighbours. Now they constitute the bulk of Israel’s population
Most of these incomers had Arabic as their first language and, were treated as second class citizens when they arrived in Israel, literally being sprayed with the insecticide DDT to cleanse them on entry. With time they became more integrated and in asserting their right to equality often became the most implacable proponents of extreme Jewish nationalism.
A state defined by past sufferings was always likely to view it’s future through survivor’s trauma. This trauma was reinforced by the reality that its neighbours were indeed actively seeking its elimination.
Thus the central pillar of Israel’s ideology revolved around military strength. Opponents of the state were castigated for being proponents of a second holocaust. Palestinian nationalism was widely viewed as not being a national liberation movement, as Zionism described itself, but as an antisemitic threat tinted with shades of the Holocaust.
How then could it be possible to contemplate the establishment of a Palestinian state? What then were the grounds for seeing the Palestinian resistance as anything other than a new form of Nazism?
Understanding what lies behind so much of Israeli thinking provides little comfort to the Palestinians cowering from bombs raining down on their already destroyed homes but the psyche of Israel’s leaders, focused on the of elimination of the threat to the state’s existence, needs to be clear.
The carnage in Gaza, the success in killing off the Palestinian leadership and the cowing of neighbouring states are viewed as securing the future of the Jewish people. Hebrew speakers will know that the mantra of ‘אין ברירה’ – there is no alternative - is endlessly repeated to justify what Israel does.
As a teenager steeped in admiration for Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the Ghetto uprising, I was inspired to join Hashomer Hatzair, the leftist youth movement where he was a leader. The attractions of muscular Zionism seemed to be a glorious answer to many problems. This belief has dwindled over time and in wake of the daily images of death and destruction in Gaza the idea that might is always right has pretty much been shattered. There has to be an alternative, more importantly, there has to be the will to find one.
Post trauma is a symptom in which a person falsely believes that he/she is being persecuted following a traumatic event. Yes, Israel's culture is post traumatic, however, the statements of those attacking Israel and the preparation for military attacks on Israel uncovered recently (tunnels, arms, etc.) indicate that indeed, there are those who wish to destroy Israel. So is it a psychological problem of the Jews in Israel or reality?
excuse me for making a very small point: European immigrants to Israel were also sprayed with DDT. Apparently everybody was infested with lice, European and Arab jews. The difference between the two groups is that those coming from Europe were not too disturbed by it while those coming from Arab countries were extremely insulted and continue to speak about it to this day.