The State of the Jews

The Simon Wiesenthal Center released its latest top-ten list of suspected Nazis yet to be brought to justice. Yes, they’re old. Then again, given the opportunity, they murdered people.

THE LIST:

1. Dr. Sandor Kepiro – Hungary

Sandor Kepiro (Alliance)

2. Milivoj Ašner – Austria

Milivoj Asner (l), Croatian Ustashi victims (r) (The Sun)

3. Samuel Kunz – Germany

4. Adolf Storms – Germany

5. Klaas Carel Faber – Germany

6. Karoly (Charles) Zentai – Australia

Charles Zentai (Deutsche Welle)

7. Soeren Kam – Germany

Soeren Kam (About.com)

8. Peter Egner – United States

Peter Egner (Seattle Weekly)

9. Algimantas Dailide – Germany

Algimantas Dailide (About.com)

10. Mikhail Gorshkow – Estonia

Not on the list, possibly dead:

Alois Brunner – Syria

Alois Brunner (Deutsche Welle)

Dr. Aribert Heim – Location unknown

Aribert Heim (Deutsche Welle)

Recently spotted on iTunes. The Hebrew Bible is only for those 17 and up because of “Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes.”

Can’t say I blame them.

Zvi Mazel, former ambassador to Egypt, writes in The Jerusalem Post:

All was in place for an impressive ceremony that would have shown the world that Jews and Muslims could rejoice in harmony over a site dedicated to a man held in veneration by both. Maimonides had been the personal physician to Saladin, and for centuries Jews, Muslims and Copts had come to his yeshiva in search of healing. As work was nearing completion, it was agreed with the Egyptian authorities that the small Jewish community of Cairo would organize a dedication ceremony on March 7.

And then the Egyptians had a change of heart. The head of the Antiquities Department stated that it was an Egyptian site. Let Jews hold a religious ceremony discreetly and among themselves; the official inauguration by the Egyptian authorities would take place a week later. That the decision was both ludicrous and impractical did not occur to them until it was too late.

People living there were ordered to close their shops, their doors and their windows and not set foot outside. Security personnel checked invitations and barred journalists from entering. A reporter from a popular daily who tried to interview me was driven away none too gently. A similar fate met a New York Times correspondent. The event was to be kept strictly private – or so hoped the Egyptian authorities. They presumably had not heard of cellphones and other sophisticated recording and transmitting equipment.

(After the jump, Egypt doesn’t miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Also video of the dedication of the beautiful synagogue and yeshiva.)

It’s no secret Ha’aretz represents the left-wing fringe in Israeli politics, with columnists who openly question Jewish statehood and a reflexive assumption of Israeli responsibility for anything that goes wrong in the region.

Still, even for Ha’aretz, this is crazy. In an editorial titled: “Netanyahu, the US has given you a second chance. Use it.” the paper tries to argue that (a) the Americans are offering a “second chance” that, presumably, may not return, (b) “the US had demanded that Netanyahu … agree to deliberations on all the core issues,” and (c) that “Netanyahu will commit a grave error if he is tempted to continue the damaging clash with Obama, and if he uses the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to enlist the president’s political enemies to advance the positions of the Israeli right wing.”

The degree of disinformation contained in this piece is staggering, and begs the question: Are Ha’aretz’s savvy editors so disconnected from reality, or are they knowingly lying to advance their politics?

Almost anyone who lived through the period of the Holocaust, observing it from either near or far, will readily testify that information concerning the Nazi murder of the Jews, when it first came out, seemed absolutely unbelievable—impossible. In retrospect, however, as we look back on the exact sequence of events that led to the tragedy, we tend to conceive of it as the culmination of a predetermined and unavoidable march of destiny. Such a complete turn-about in our attitude to past events is hardly unique, but in the case of the Holocaust the contradiction is an especially flagrant one because the contradictory attitudes are so emphatic. The enormity of the crime being committed by the Nazis, as intelligence of it began to filter into the countries outside the occupied areas, placed it beyond belief. Yet once it became evident that the unbelievable had indeed occurred, it began to seem altogether necessary and inevitable. Now the question, often put in a self-torturing way, is, how could we have overlooked the signs that unmistakably foretold the impending tragedy?

So begins a remarkable essay by Hebrew University sociologist Jacob Katz. Worth a read.

My speech last week in Riga on the uniqueness of the Holocaust. It is edited slightly, and shortened:

In the ten short minutes I have been given, I’d like to try to offer what I believe is the Jewish public’s perspective on the issue at the heart of this conference. I am not an academic, but a journalist. Less an investigator of facts than an observer of public assumptions and beliefs.

It is from that perspective that I want to bring something to the attention of the scholars, activists and politicians gathered here – what I believe may amount to the central lesson that the world’s Jews have drawn from the Holocaust. You cannot understand Jewish politics and political structures of our day without, I believe, understanding this central lesson.

The Holocaust marks the crowning genocide of the bloodiest century in human history, in part because it was the most philosophically purposeful and intellectually sophisticated mass murder ever seen. But for Jews it is about more than the murder alone, about more even than six million Jewish lives and those of millions more enemies of the Nazi regime.

It is about the history-shattering power of hatred. The dead are already dead. But this capacity for hatred lives on.