NEVER DID I ASK…
Baruch Cohen
To Mother:
Never did I ask why dawns are red
Never did I ask why flags are like hawthorns
Never did I ask why flowers look tearful in those mornings
Never did I ask why dusks don’t lose their splendourI always saw Mother’s tears
How she wiped them with her handkerchief, I never saw.
I always saw brows shining with sweat
I always saw how grains burst under sun
But a fruit without lamenting, I never sawI always understood man’s sigh
I always looked for that gushing spring
Never did I ask why mountains stab the sky’s back
Never did I ask why the sun refreshes itself in Earth’s poems
Never did I ask why stars whisper to me with their twilightAll these things I received, the whole Universe
Like Mother’s warm caresses
All these things I received, just like my Mother’s earthly end—
I never asked.
I never asked why my Mother’s warm lips no longer whispered lullabies,
Why those hands no longer kneaded the leavened yeast
Or why my Mother’s eyes no longer saw
The great seal of suffering,
Life…(Baruch Cohen is Research Chairman at the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.
The initial draft of this poem, written in 1952, was translated from Romanian by Alex Enescu,
a CIJR student-intern & editor of Dateline: Middle East.)
JABOTINSKY’S PLACE IN HISTORY
Daniel Tauber
Jerusalem Post, July 17, 2012
He was called the next Herzl, the next Dostoyevsky, the Jewish Garibaldi, the Jewish Churchill, the Prisoner of Acre, the Defender of Jerusalem, the Father of the Revolt, and the Father of the IDF. He wrote books, poems and articles. He founded armies and organizations. He was the voice of the downtrodden and was considered by some to be a modern day prophet, travelling around the world warning the people of impending destruction but never doubting their ultimate redemption. Yet, most Jews don’t know much about him or understand his impact on Jewish history.
In much of the Zionist literature, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and his Revisionist-Zionist movement are treated as an afterthought. Where discussed at all, they are often mentioned as a fringe faction.… In Walter Laquer’s History of Zionism, Jabotinsky gets one chapter. In Howard Sachar’s tome, Jabotinsky is mentioned in a few scattered instances.
True, Jabotinsky’s legacy gets a boost every now and then with the election of a Likud prime minister or the death of a Revisionist- Zionist figure, such as Benzion Netanyahu or Yitzhak Shamir. But the occasional spatter of articles don’t do justice to the lasting impact of Jabotinsky’s words and deeds.
Jabotinsky wasn’t just the head of a fringe faction, an influence on two or three prime ministers, or the spiritual father of the leading party in Israel. Every chapter of Zionist history after Herzl’s death was colored by Jabotinsky’s personality. He stands among Herzl, Ben-Gurion and Weizmann as one of the founding fathers of the Jewish State.
Jabotinsky founded the Jewish Legion and the Hagana and renewed the Jewish military tradition which was and remains essential to Jewish statehood. His concept of the “Iron Wall,” with its implications for Jewish military strength, defeating violent Arab opposition to Zionism and achieving peace with our neighbors, has become embedded in Israeli society.
He fathered and fostered the organizations and philosophy which expelled the British from the country, without which the state would not have been founded.… He led the effort for illegal immigration, saving thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. Despite active opposition from the Zionist leadership, the Betar and Irgun saved at least 24,000 Jews, in what they called “Af Al Pi” (despite it all) immigration.…
Until his death, Jabotinsky was the primary Zionist leader who carried the torch of Jewish statehood, while both Weizmann and Ben-Gurion shamefully denied that a Jewish majority and Jewish statehood were the goals of the Zionist movement.
This is not to mention his contribution to the revival of the Hebrew language, his founding of Jewish self-defense groups, his hasbara [public diplomacy] and fund-raising work for various Zionist causes, or his inspiring thousands to come to Israel and help build the Jewish state. His Zionist [hasbara] for the Jewish Legion in Britain has been said by many, including Chaim Weizmann, to deserve “half the credit for the Balfour Declaration.…”
Unfortunately, out of ignorance and political bias of various shades, our historians, intellectuals and educators have relegated Jabotinsky to the sidelines of Jewish history, especially in the Diaspora.…
The true history is one of a minimalist-leftist coalition (Weizmann, Ben-Gurion and the socialist factions) rejecting the policies of Jabotinsky’s maximalist-rightist movement with disastrous consequences for the Jewish nation. Partition was criticized severely; it was Jewish arms which founded the state; and the leadership was cautious of international opinion to the point of being suicidal.
The danger of this historical cover-up is not merely the denial of a great man his place in history, but the prevention of generations of Jews from learning from the failed decisions of the past.
A Jew who is denied the opportunity to read Jabotinsky’s testimony before the Peel Commission, his article the “Iron Wall,” his warnings of “H-U-R-B-A-N,” or the plethora of other classic writings and speeches he produced is robbed of…Jabotinsky’s eternal, prophetic and awe-inspiring message: We are not consigned to our fate. We need not concede our national interests in search of the ever-elusive moral high ground. Our cause is indeed just and if we have the courage, even in the 11th hour, we can redeem ourselves.
[Thursday, July 19 marked the 72nd anniversary of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s passing—Ed.]
THE MIDDLE EAST’S GREATEST UNTOLD STORY
Ron Prosor
Huffington Post, July 5, 2012
This month the United Nations marks World Refugee Day, a star-studded, multimedia campaign to raise awareness about the plight of refugees. Celebrities like Angelina Jolie have cut video spots that will be broadcast on television and spread on social media. Millions will participate in events spanning five continents, from concerts in London to a film festival in Beirut to a bike race in Ecuador. Yet mention of one group of refugees will be noticeably absent from any of these activities: the 850,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries during the past six decades. Their history remains one of the 20th century’s greatest untold stories.
At the end of World War II, 850,000 Jews lived in Arab countries. Just 8,500 remain today. Their departure was no accident. After Arab leaders failed to annihilate Israel militarily in 1948, they launched a war of terror, incitement, and expulsion to decimate their own ancient Jewish communities.
In Iraq Jewish businessman Shafiq Adas, then the country’s wealthiest citizen, was immediately arrested on trumped-up charges and publicly lynched. This was followed by bombings targeting Jewish institutions, arbitrary arrests of Jewish leaders, and massive government seizures of property. Within years virtually all of Iraq’s 2,500-year-old Jewish community had fled, emptying the country of many of its greatest artists, musicians, and businessmen.
Similar scenes played out across the region, from Egypt to Syria to Libya to Yemen. State-sanctioned pogroms descended on Jewish neighborhoods, killing innocents and destroying ancient synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. New, draconian laws prevented Jews from public worship, forced them to carry Jewish identity cards, and seized billions of dollars in their property and assets. The total area of land confiscated from Jews in Arab countries amounts to nearly 40,000 square miles—about five times the size of Israel’s entire land mass.
The vast majority of these Jewish refugees came to Israel, nearly doubling its population. Most entered the Land of Milk and Honey with no milk, no honey, and no money. They were embraced with full citizenship rights and ambitious programs for integration, rising to the highest levels of society.
The years have passed, but the injustice inflicted upon these Jewish refugees continues. Many around the world have remained silent and complicit as Arab governments have sought to erase all memory of their stories.
Nowhere is this revisionist history clearer than in the halls of the United Nations. Year after year Palestinian refugees attract more attention and resources at the U.N…yet not a single syllable about the Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries can be found in any of the 1,088 U.N. resolutions on the Middle East or the 172 U.N. resolutions dedicated to Palestinian refugees.
While Arab leaders have found a refuge from reality at the U.N., they have been unable to outrun the consequences of religious and sectarian persecution, incitement, and violence at home. In the rubble of Aleppo’s former Jewish neighborhoods, Assad’s Allawite-led regime continues to brutally suppress Syria’s Sunni-led uprising. In Egypt, mobs burn Coptic Christian churches in the same way that they attacked synagogues years ago. In Baghdad, where Jews once constituted a third of the population, Sunnis and Shiites remain pitted against each other after years of bloodshed.
Forging a peaceful future in the Middle East will require Arab governments to finally learn the lessons of their pasts. They must build inclusive societies that protect minorities and offer everyone a seat at the decision-making table.
The first steps toward true pluralism will come when Arab countries acknowledge the history of persecution and intolerance in their own lands. They should start by unearthing the 850,000 untold stories of Jews ripped from their ancient homes.
The historic Jewish presence in the Arab World must be recognized. The grave injustices inflicted upon them must be acknowledged. The crimes committed against them must be rectified.
(Ron Prosor is Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations.)
WHO IS LADISLAUS CSIZSIK-CSATARY, ALLEGED CANADIAN NAZI?
Bernie M. Farber
National Post, July 19, 2012
Who is Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary, and what is his connection to Canada?
Csatary is an purported Nazi war criminal. During the war, he was a police Chief in the Slovakian town of Kosice, where it is alleged that in 1941 he was a key player in sending more than 300 Jews to their deaths. Further allegations suggest that in 1944 Csatary helped to organize the deportation of over 15,000 Jewish men, women and children to Auschwitz, where many were gassed to death.
Laszio Karsai, an eminent Hungarian Holocaust historian, has documented testimony from two Nazi officers stationed in Kosice at the time. They tell of Csatary raping Jewish women and then forcing them to dig holes in the frozen ground with their bare hands. Peter Feldmajer, president of the Jewish community in Hungary, reports that “Csatary was particularly sadistic. He created a camp for torturing the rich so they would confess where they have hidden their money.”
Ephraim Zuroff, the leading Nazi War criminal investigator for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, has reportedly uncovered new evidence to suggest that Csatary took delight in whipping Jewish women, and ordering Jewish men and other prisoners to assume stress positions for hours at end. Evidence suggests that he would beat these men them with a dog lead and that he oversaw a shoot-on-sight policy if they tried to escape.
Earlier this week, Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary’s whereabouts were exposed—thanks to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and a British newspaper. He has been living in Budapest quite comfortably in recent years. Today, at 97 years of age and in surprisingly good health, Csatary resides in a rather tony area of the city in a two bedroom apartment.
But where was Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary prior to his arrival in Hungary? It appears that Csatary lived in Canada for almost 30 years, before his supposed role in the above-described activities was first revealed in the late 1990s. Following the war, like many other alleged Nazi war criminals, Csatary manipulated his way into Canada by concealing his brutal wartime activities from Canadian immigration officials. Seven years later, in 1955, as a then rather successful art dealer in Montreal, Csatary applied for and received Canadian citizenship.
And here he lived as a result of the lethargy and inaction by successive Canadian governments when it came to hunting down some of the world’s most infamous and vicious murderers, some of who had settled in Canada.
Things changed in 1985. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, carrying through on a pledge to finally root out alleged Nazi war criminals and enablers, called a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the allegations. Quebec Superior Court Justice Jules Deschenes oversaw this two-year process…report[ing] in December of 1986 that there was significant evidence in regard to 20 individuals. (Another 169 cases were not acted upon as a result of inaccessible documents from Eastern Europe). Amongst those 20 names, it appears, was one Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary.
Sadly, it took the authorities almost 10 more years to act on the findings of the Deschenes Commission; plenty of time for the wily Csatary (who’d been named as a suspect for denaturalization and deportation) to leave Canada in 1997 for destinations unknown.…
Fifteen years ago, some said of Csatary and other alleged Nazi war criminals that they should just be left alone. After all, the argument went, so many years have gone by, and they are old men.
That yesterday’s war criminals are elderly can be no reason to shirk our duty to their victims. We ought not see them as they are today, but should remember them for the thugs and murderers they were so many years ago. To allow their crimes to go unpunished would indeed give Nazism a posthumous victory. It is time for Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary to finally face justice.
SIMPLE JUSTICE DEMANDS THE RELEASE OF POLLARD
Lawrence J. Korb
Jerusalem Post, July 17, 2012
In a startling public disclosure before he died, former US secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger, the man who drove Jonathan Pollard’s life sentence, admitted in a 2002 interview that the Pollard case was “a minor matter” which had been blown out of all proportion to serve another agenda.
This came as no surprise to those of us who have first-hand knowledge of the Pollard case. Weinberger was known to be driven by his deeply-held animus toward the State of Israel. His extreme bias against Israel was manifested in recurrent episodes of strong criticism and unbalanced reasoning when decisions involving Israel were being made. It is widely recognized that Weinberger’s interference in the judicial process netted Pollard a life sentence.
Jonathan Pollard was arrested in 1985 and convicted in 1987 of espionage on behalf of an American ally, Israel. Pollard’s conviction was justified, but his sentence was entirely out of line with others engaging in similar behavior. The usual sentence for this offense is no more than six or eight years, with actual jail time before release averaging two to four years or less.
Pollard is serving his 27th year of an unprecedented life sentence. Pollard received his life sentence without benefit of trial, as the result of a plea agreement which he honored and the government abrogated. Pollard’s life sentence was driven in a less-than-legitimate manner by a last-minute affidavit submitted to the sentencing judge by Weinberger.… There is no evidence that Pollard intended to harm the United States or help its enemies.
Because of a gross deficiency on the part of his attorney, who neglected to file a notice of intent to appeal following his sentencing hearing, Pollard has been forever deprived of his right to a direct appeal against his life sentence. The only appeals he was able to bring were collateral, and were dismissed on technicality, not substance.…
Pollard’s commutation is strongly supported in Israel, in the US and around the world, since it is clear that his punishment was much worse than that of anyone else who has committed a similar crime. Pollard is the only person in the history of the United States who ever received a life sentence for spying on behalf of an ally.
We believe that commuting Pollard’s sentence to time served is the right and compassionate thing to do. We believe that his continued incarceration constitutes a travesty of justice and a stain on the American system of justice.
Incredibly, there are still some with dubious agendas who oppose Pollard’s release.… A case in point is the article by Martin Peretz published [recently] by The Wall Street Journal. Peretz falsely accuses Pollard of offering classified information to other countries, such as Pakistan. This assertion is categorically false. Pollard was never accused, indicted or convicted of spying for any country other than Israel and the documented record bears this out.…
Peretz speciously claims that supporters of Pollard present him as a martyr and this, he claims, is justification for keeping Pollard in prison for the rest of his life. Peretz claims that the importance of Pollard’s release to the people of Israel, a strong US ally, is negligible. He then contradicts himself when he accuses officials who support the release of Jonathan Pollard of “sensing the public wind” and capitalizing on the Pollard issue by jumping aboard the bandwagon.
The truth is, in recent months many of my colleagues, senior American officials as well as high ranking legal officials and elected representatives, have appealed to President Barack Obama for executive clemency for Jonathan Pollard. Among them are cabinet officers, experienced jurists and officials serving at the time of Pollard’s arrest who were intimately involved in reviewing the evidence. Some of the names include: former secretary of state George Shultz, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former White House legal counsel Bernard Nussbaum, former attorney-general Michael Mukasey, former deputy attorney-general Phillip Heymann, former Senate Intelligence chairman Dennis DeConcini, former national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane, former CIA director James Woolsey; and many more.…
The fact that Pollard’s health is failing adds urgency to our requests for clemency.… [Yet] the numerous appeals to President Obama for executive clemency for Jonathan Pollard are all still pending. They are Pollard’s last hope of resolving a 27-year-long injustice which now threatens to end his life in prison.…
President Obama has the exclusive power to commute Jonathan Pollard’s life sentence to the nearly 27 years he has already served. It is not merely the president’s prerogative to eliminate this longstanding stain on the US justice system. We believe that it is his solemn duty.
(Lawrence Korb is a former US Assistant Secretary of Defense.)
