Israel, the Diaspora and Jewish Denial

Is the Diaspora Doomed, Israel abandoned? An open Response to an email responder

2011-12-06T21:25:00.000-05:00

Thank you for your email, Larry. I well remember our earlier discussion and, it appears, neither of us has much shifted in the interim! While I accept your position regarding the history of antisemitism reflected in Church/Christian policy; while I continue to accept also your distinction between us and them regarding slavery: still, beyond educating our youth to the reason we are hated, I don’t see the Zionist mission of providing for our physical salvation being advanced. My concern as I hope is reflected in all my writings is to demonstrate to the best of my abilities to my admittedly tiny audience the danger to our physical survival represented by Christendom (religion and secular); in other words, to our Diaspora.

Although not identical the threat to the state of the Jews is similar, as reflected in Bush and Iraq and, more blatantly, under the present administration. I am entirely non-(American) partisan in my comments, simply reflecting the facts as objectively as I can interpret them.

I am not so quixotic as to expect our Diaspora to rise up and leave; where to? The only other Jewish “homeland” was created under Stalin, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Siberia. And I hardly expect that to be open to mass Jewish immigration today even if we would all choose to move! Neither do I expect Israel to immediately abandon her quixotic “special relationship” with the US; after all, we are still tiny and vulnerable and dependent on the US, whatever the cost. What I am hoping to achieve is to raise doubt in the denial-prone consciousnesses of both communities as to the need to respond realistically to a very real environment. For me the enemy is not our lack of knowledge of the past, but our failure to accept its meaning for the future.

For our Diaspora “Never Again!” is an inappropriate and inadequate response to the Holocaust. The Shoah is a clear shot across our bow, the promise of things to come unless we take its implications seriously, and act. And for Israel, while our dependence on the West is real, it is long past time to begin looking outside Christendom for our next strategic alliance. China has few Christians and no culture or history of antisemitism; India, with its Moslem population, would still represent a problem so long as the state of the Jews remains in the Middle East. Israel simply must grow beyond her neediness, our emotional dependence on a false special relationship that in reality is special for the US, and that only so long as Israel fulfills

America

’s interests. And under the present

administration that bottom-line should, by now, be crystal clear.

Obama’s mouthpiece Panetta said as much, “Israel, too, has a responsibility to pursue these shared goals – to build regional support for Israeli andUnited States’ security objectives.” For the US the bottom line is the US. That was how it was in 1940 when the US chose to ignore its “special relationship” with Britain under attack from Germany. If Britain is expendable, where does our faith come to play?

While I understand and substantially agree with your position, Larry, short of Divine Intervention (which failed to materialize in the Roman war) I fail to see how it will affect our physical survival in the real world, comes the real Final Solution to the West’s Jewish Problem?

Sounds harsh. But I know no other way to say that which I consider obvious.

Regards,

David

Why a blog on Jewish Denial?

2008-02-27T23:06:00.006-05:00

26 December, 2007

History does not repeat itself. But it does serve as precedent.

Early in the Enlightenment, the revolution which transformed Europe from theocratic to secular, Jews were viewed as different from Christian Europeans, and that difference was assumed based on their geographic-linguistic origins. Jews, although residing in Europe for more than two thousand years, were considered “Semites,” arrivals from the Middle East, while European Christians were presumed to have their origins in a mythic people migrating from Eurasia, the “Aryans.” Eventually the scientific search for difference turned to biology, and the notion of a Jewish "race" was born. Antisemitism as a political movement arrived with the 19th Century.

But why the Jews, how do so small, generally impoverished and defenseless a minority become so prominent, deserve so much thought and animus from some of the greatest minds of modern European science, arts and politics?

Antisemitism was not an invention of modern society, but the secular adaptation of a long established precedent, Christian anti-Judaism. With the gospel charge of deicide, the accusation the "the Jews" murdered Christ, they became the pariah people, enemies of Christ, Christianity and Christians. Crusaders on their way to liberate the Holy Land from the Moslems attacked first the Jewish enemy living in their midst. Later the Inquisition, intent on ridding Christendom of heretics tortured Jews until they agreed to accept Jesus, tortured and burned alive those who refused. One respected population study estimates that, had Jews been free of persecution since the fall of Jerusalem their numbers today would equal that of the entire British Isles.

Which is the backdrop against which we are compelled to understand Europe’s Holocaust, Christendom’s most recent and nearly successful attempt to solve its Jewish Problem. With all the talent and intelligence dedicated to planning and executing the Final Solution there was little that was really new or innovative. Armbands, ghettoes, all medieval in origin. What did make the effort so successful was the introduction of 20th Century technology. IBM provided primitive but effective computers to trace third generation Christians back to their single Jewish grandparent; Hitler’s idol, Henry Ford, provided the Holocaust the assembly line needed to efficiently transport, turn Jews into corpses, dispose of their remains; and bureaucracy made the entire process impersonal and free of guilt. But for all intents and purposes the Holocaust was only the next, not the last, logical step in a process begun 2000 years earlier. And 21st Century technology is far more efficient than that available in the 1940’s.

For those among us who prefer to believe the Holocaust a unique event in history foisted by a half-crazed if charismatic leader upon his hapless and otherwise innocent countrymen, were the residents of the Polish village of Jawabne Nazis, were they under the spell of Hitler when they rounded up their 1600 Jewish friends and neighbors, herded them into that barn and burned it to the ground? Were the Ukrainians captured on film beating to death with clubs their long-time Jewish friends and neighbors; were the French police who rounded up the Jews of Paris for deportation to death in Auschwitz; were all these Nazis also? Was all Europe under the evil influence of the madman from Germany?

And what of the non-continental countries, particularly the United States and Britain who, in full knowledge of the unfolding horror, closed their eyes and borders to our refugees, passively stood by for two years allowing the machinery of murder to run its course unhindered? How justify Roosevelt allowing the SS St. Louis to steam up and back the American shoreline, the captain pleading for permission to offload his cargo of 900 Jews fleeing Germany, forcing them back to their fate. How justify Roosevelt’s excuse not to bomb Auschwitz (it would kill innocent Jewish inmates; it would distract from winning the war was the excuse given) when allied bombers regularly over flew the camps and rail lines carrying Europe’s Jews to what the president knew was their certain end? Is not passive and silent acquiescence also complicity?

For centuries past Jews had few options but to suffer the wrath of our neighbors. Since Shoah we have another option, to join our destiny with that of the Jewish state. That we choose to disregard the clear warning of recent history, that we know but interpret it other all the time subjecting our children and theirs to a risk bordering on eventual certainty; such rationalizing and self-deception is, by definition, Denial.

Of course Israel-as-refuge presumes that the Jewish state acknowledges and accepts its Zionist responsibility towards the Diaspora. This commitment is not always obvious and will be one of the questions, along with those raised above, that will be the focus of this forum.

Shoah won’t repeat itself, by Noah Klieger with a response by David Turner

2008-02-27T22:57:00.004-05:00

01.27.08, 23:55 / Ynet, Israel Opinion

Following are excerpts from an article by Dr. Klieger which appeared as a Ynet opinion, 27 January, 2008. Dr. Rieger views with alarm an education system that leads Israeli children to the conclusion that history cannot repeat itself, that the Holocaust was a unique event in history. I totally disagree both with the assumptions and the conclusions. I wrote two Talkbacks challenging Dr. Klieger's thesis, both of which follow his comments.

We must teach our children that Israel will not allow another Holocaust.. Some of the findings of a recent poll about the Holocaust truly stunned me. In the framework of the survey, about 400 students and soldiers were asked, among other things, whether the Holocaust can happen again, what is the best Shoah studies method in their view (classes at school, documentaries, or visits to death camps in Poland,) and what is their attitude to Holocaust survivors.

As it turned out, 82% of respondents said that another Holocaust is a possible scenario.

This figure is worrisome… The Shoah, as I have been emphasizing for dozens of years, was not “just another genocide,” like the ones we have seen before and still see today. It was a calculated, thoroughly planned mass murder that was methodically implemented by hundreds of thousands if not millions of Germans and their helpers from various nations; step by step, with determination, based on a master plan.

Therefore, the Holocaust cannot repeat; because Israel, the Jewish people’s state, will be able to contend with such new evil plan, if it indeed emerges.

Response, 1

If only the world were as simple as Noah Klieger believes. If only Shoah were the unique event in history that he and most of us make it out to be. If only the Jews of Germany had overcome their wish-based faith in their fatherland, their belief that so civilized and cultured a people and civilization, where Jews had lived for more than 2000 years, and come to their stay-or-go decision based on history rather than faith, how might history have been different. Instead they based their decision, as does Klieger, on the evidence of their present, a present where to their eyes, Jews were more accepted, assimilated and intermarried than in any other country in the world. They reassured themselves that surely a country whose prime minister before Hitler was a Jew, as was the author of Germany’s democratic constitution. Certainly, like Krieger, they could reason that the good and cultured German people would quickly come to their senses, would realize that the rabble-rouser and his thugs do not represent Germany; that Hitler must soon be thrown out of office.

But reliance on belief betrayed them. And their trust in their civilized and cultured Diaspora homeland cost not only their own lives, but those of their children and, very possibly, provided the Nazi visionaries of the Holocaust the time and cover to move their dream of a world judenrein from idea to near-reality.

Jewish Denial involves convincing ourselves, Israelis as well as Jews who choose the convenience and familiarity of life in the Diaspora, that the normalcy we see around us, the smiling faces of our neighbors and co-workers, the platitudes of world leaders about the “tragedy,” that all that appears is real and forever. And it is, for as long as Forever does not hit a major crisis, such as a severe economic downturn, so long as the unemployed do not see immigrants or those seen as Other amongst themselves as competitors for scarce resources and jobs. Because when conditions change, so also does Reality. Then, as with individuals in crisis, society seeks to target frustration and blame away from self; to find a target, an obstacle which if removed, might set things right. And for western civilization the traditional obstacle, Christendom’s Other, is The Jew.

The Holocaust is today 63 years in our past, a historical event no more real or immediate, than those other atrocities perpetrated by Christendom on our people during Inquisition and Crusade; no less legendary those whose lives were taken because their neighbors believed Jews murdered Christian children in order to provide blood for our Passover matzot; or for poisoning the wells of our Christian neighbors thereby spreading the terrible plague of the Middle Ages (projection is the turning of one’s own guilt on to the object of the guilt!); or, frenzied by the gospel charge of deicide, that the Jews murdered Jesus, the pogroms sure to follow Easter services. I raise these atrocities not to incite, but to point out the obvious: we have been murdered and tortured and expelled and still convince ourselves that things will always turn out because a beneficent pope or town bishop or local king would at some point intervene to save us. Was that not evidence that we were secure and protected in our homes? Until, of course, the next famine or plague or celebration of Easter again brought down the wrath of our neighbors.

The problem with Mr. Klieger’s humanistic plea, his concern that those 83% of our youth who accept the verdict of history where their parents are unable, or choose the comfort of Denial and look away from reality; that somehow acceptance of historical reality by our children is the problem and not the holocaust to come. Like Mr. Klieger our German relatives chose the “goodness and common sense of their neighbors” to support their comfortable lifestyle, at terrible cost. Perhaps had they accepted the obvious lessons of our history in Diaspora, had they accepted the offered assistance from our other communities concerned by the steadily increasing, if non-lethal antisemitism then, rather than sending the message that Hitler was a temporary phenomenon they might have sounded the alarm, a publicly broadcast message of warning. they might have alerted our communities in Poland and Rumania and, yes, the United States of the real dimensions of the danger. Perhaps had they overcome their Denial the full force of the Holocaust might have been blunted, or, by early public disclosure, even avoided.

Response, 2

On re-reading, there are just too many misunderstandings, misrepresentations to allow them to stand. The most obvious disqualifier to Klieger’s thesis is his complete failure to see the contradictions in his own interpretation of the genesis of the Holocaust. How conclude from his correct observation that, (it) was a calculated, thoroughly planned mass murder that was methodically implemented by hundreds of thousands if not millions of Germans and their helpers from various nations; step by step, with determination, based on a master plan,” that “Therefore, the Holocaust cannot repeat…”? Were Israel the paragon of commitment to the Diaspora that Klieger suggests, and most Jews would hope for, but which evidence contradicts, how would a country of only 5 million Jews credibly protect the Jews of a far larger, wealthier and more powerful country by threat? Let us assume, for arguments sake, that the locus of the next such threat was, say, the five million Jews of the United States (plus how many others disappeared by conversion; certainly the German single grandparent law would be resuscitated next go-around). Israel would be lucky to be able to defend itself from the ripple of such a massive danger, to say nothing of intervene to protect those threatened, that, to quote Klieger again, “that the State of Israel is the absolute guarantee to the Jewish people’s safety.”!

Far from the problem in education Klieger identifies, a problem I also assumed, but for opposite reasons, it appears Israel’s education of our children is succeeding in instilling in them a healthy respect for history, an ability to see beyond the appearance of normalcy surrounding us, and upon which we can constructs our denial, fantasies such as that promoted by Noah Klieger.

Hands off the Law of Return!

2008-01-25T11:28:00.000-05:00

21 October, 2007

The Law of Return is the single most important document defining the character of the Jewish State and its relationship with the Jewish People. The move to amend it represents the most serious assault on that relationship since Ben-Gurion proclaimed statehood in 1948.

Menachem Ben-Sasson, chairman of the Knesset Constitution Committee announced that he would hold 12 hours of discussions with the intention of cobbling together a constitution in time for Israel’s 60th Independence Day celebration. Among the controversial issues the committee is to consider is a “compromise” version of the Law of Return. According to Ben-Sasson all sides will be taken into consideration, all sides will be represented in the final document. This is not encouraging since “all sides” to be considered includes the Rabbinate’s push for a Halachic-only definition of Who is a Jew. Such a definition would potentially alienate the majority of Jews living in the Diaspora. The third rail of Israeli-Diaspora relations, Who is a Jew must have no place in redefining the Law or Return.

I

How much influence the Diaspora should have on issues of an existential nature regarding war and peace is, so far as I am concerned, not a question. Israelis benefit or suffer the consequences from such issues and those decisions should be theirs alone to make. But issues existential regarding Israel’s relationship with the Diaspora is an area in which the Diaspora must be included on an equal basis. The Law of Return and the Grandchild Clause fall into this category. In fact the consequences of changing the Law are of such importance to both State and Diaspora that it must remain out of the reach of Israeli politics and politicians, since these represent transient attitudes of an immediate nature, while the Law is 2,000 years of history projected into the future. The Law must be protected from the influence of persons and groups with more immediate and selfish agendas.

The Law of Return is a Basic Law, among the first enacted following proclamation of statehood. It was no coincidence that such a law was in the forefront of thought at the time since statehood followed by a mere three years the liberation of Auschwitz. The need for enacting the Law was obvious at the time, as was the need to include a Grandchild Clause. Since Germany did not follow Halacha in determining who is a Jew, the Law had to conform to the German Holocaust definition.

The Grandchild Clause is also fundamental because it recognizes a basic psychological, sociological and historical fact, something almost culturally deterministic: once a traumatic event occurs the memory does not just fade into history but serves as precedent for future behavior.

But what has this to do with Israeli law, with Israel celebrating 60 years of independence, with Israel finally enacting a constitution? Everything! Because the Law of Return defines Israel’s relationship with the Diaspora, her acceptance of responsibility for the mission which Zionism bequeathed to, and for which the movement created the state. Will Israel evolve into a Jewish state, a country defined only by internal self-interest, its uniqueness that it is the only country with a Jewish majority? Or will Israel continue to identify with its historic responsibility as the state of the Jews, the only country whose purpose, beyond survival itself, is to serve as refuge and protector of Israel dispersed? This is the real issue surrounding the Law of Return: the Zionist heart, the very reason for the creation and existence of the Jewish State.

II

Orthodox Jews had for centuries sought to fulfill their Halachic obligation to live in the land of our forefathers. But it was not until the late 19th Century that some among us took a critical look around and concluded that Jews were not, never would be safe living in Christian society. They saw Palestine ideologically as sanctuary, future homeland and refuge. Later, around the turn of the 20th Century an assimilated Jewish journalist named Theodor Herzl, while covering the Dreyfus Affair in France, came independently to the same conclusion. If France, the country which led the way towards “emancipating” Europe’s Jews after 1800 years of serfdom could so quickly turn virulently antisemitic in response to the fraudulent but assumed treason of Dreyfus, how secure could we be in other, less philosemitic countries of our Diaspora? Herzl concluded that Christianity’s “Jewish Problem” could only be solved by Jews creating and living in our own state. Thus was Zionism born, the movement of Jewish self-emancipation. Forty years before the event Zionism recognized the physical threat that was soon to engulf the Jewish People in Holocaust.

III

While the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty was already in process before the crime, the murder of our six million forced sobriety, sanity and conscience upon the countries of Christendom that had directly committed the murder, or had stood by lending silent support to the slaughter by refusing refuge to its victims.

The legal precedent and need for the Law of Return was established in pre-Holocaust Germany. According to German race theory Jews were classified as biologically distinct from humanity, separate and sub-human. But since Jews and Aryans both appear human to the eye, Germany’s legal system had to devise a way to define the separation. For purposes of classification it arrived at the definition of “Jew” as an individual with a single Jewish grandparent. No matter that the grandparent was a Christian convert, that the child’s parents were both committed Christians; that the grandchild was third generation and baptized Christian. Once the child’s link to the grandparent was established the child was defined Jewish and condemned by the state for Final Solution. Jew was Jew and, to remove the threat of pollution from the true human family, death the final solution.

IV

The Law and the Clause and, for that matter Zionism and the Jewish State are necessary so long as the threat to our people continues; so long, put another way, as Diaspora exists. Is Christianity an irremediable threat to Jewish existence? This is the question that since the Holocaust has occupied not only Jews, but Christian scholars and the Catholic Church itself.

Twenty years after the ovens cooled the Church did a self-evaluation of its historical and textual role as possible inspiration and collaborator in the murder of our six million. The resulting document, Nostre Aetate, acknowledged that basal Christian texts refer to Jews and Judaism in ways that inspire hatred and incite violence. But the Church also concluded it could not eliminate or change those textual references without, it decided, undermining the very foundation of Christianity. So the Church settled on a middle ground of retaining the texts as holy while encouraging they not be taught or read literally. Clergy and faithful were directed to pass over the excesses of the offending passages. But recent surveys indicate that not only has there been no change in the way those passages are read and understood, but that anti-Semitism is more, not less prevalent today than before Nostre Aetate. This realization has led Church leaders to schedule a second conclave in 2008 tasked to revisit the problem of scripture-inspired anti-Judaism. But Church sources involved in its planning admit that, once again and for the same reasons, the offending passages will not be touched.

So the Law of Return continues necessary to Jewish survival; to serve its essential function in Zionist theory and practice. The Law defines Israel’s Zionist mission, our state as protector and refuge for threatened Diaspora Jewry.

V

Today, with but six decades separating us from that nearly successful effort to rid the world of Jews we, both resident of Israel and Diaspora, continue to deny the relevance of our recent history, choose to see Jewish life in Diaspora as normal, safe and secure. And at present it is relatively so. We convince ourselves that the past is aberration, our country in Diaspora exceptional. But when we lived in Germany before Shoah we felt exactly that same sense of safety and security, considered our fatherland also exceptional. In those days also we identified with and felt accepted by our country and neighbors, Germans first, Jews second. As in the United States today, in pre-Holocaust Germany we were leaders in the arts, academia and politics. Just a few short years before the ovens of Auschwitz we provided as many leaders of party and government in Germany as we do today in the United States.
Which is why the Grandchild Clause is, and will ever remain, such a necessary, no the key element of the Law of Return; and why it must never be tampered with. Because just as the Clause anticipates our future based on history and precedent, so too does the comfort we felt in Germany pre-Holocaust stand as yet another precedent: No country of the Diaspora is truly exceptional regarding antisemitism; no Diaspora “homeland” will for ever be secure for Jews.

VI

It appears that the Ben-Sasson Committee motivation to water-down the Law of Return is fed by two streams, the orthodox-Haredi interest in Who is a Jew; and political reaction to the recent spate of swastika synagogue desecrations by alienated Russian émigré youth. The parents of these self-styled neo-nazis, brought to Israel under the Grandchild Clause, apparently had little previous identification with Judaism as religion, destiny or state prior to leaving Russia. In other words, both parents and children were poor candidates for assimilation. If there is a problem with the Law it is not in the wording but in the way it is administered in times of non-emergency. As to joining the destiny of the Law with that of the Who is a Jew controversy, the two are distinct and must remain separate. Who is a Jew is part of the struggle for Jewish identity between religious orthodoxy and the majority secular citizenry of the state. The Law of Return defines Israel’s Zionist mission, her identity as the State of the Jews, her responsibility as haven for our threatened. Who is a Jew is political, and threatening as the controversy is to Diaspora Jewry, an internal Israeli debate. The Law of Return is national and must be insulated from Israeli politics and politicians.

Menachem Ben-Sasson must be brought to understand the distinction, to guarantee and protect the integrity of the Law of Return as Israel’s Zionist mission.

Antisemitism, the dark heart of Christianity

2008-01-25T10:44:00.002-05:00

25 January, 2008
Antisemitism and Islamophobia are both instances of xenophobia. In a way that's consoling to us Jews who prefer to consider ourselves hated because we are viewed as Other, something possibly overcome by educating the majority population, by ourselves demonstrating by behavior that we are as loyal to our country of residence as our non-Jewish neighbor. More so! A consoling thought, but unfortunately does not conform to our unique history of dispersion among Christendom. Without going into describing 1700 years of persecution, torture, murder and expulsion which was a constant of our life in dispersion, our most recent brush with our host's Jewish Problem presents an excellent example of the tragedy of mere xenophobia to describe Shoah. Jews lived in and had colonies in Germany for more than 2000 years (how far back can the forerunners of modern non-Jewish Germany trace their forebears?). In pre-Hitler Germany we were leaders in politics, culture and commerce, intermarried at a rate only now approached in the US. In no country before or since were our people more loyal or assimilated. When we seek a reason for the aberration Hitler serves both as explanation and reassurance. After all, pre-Hitler Germany was among the most civilized and cultured in Christendom. turning on a minority constituting less than 1% of the total population; then expanding its machinery of death to include all Jews in Europe and, if successful, worldwide? The sheer magnitude, the insanity of the project bangs at the door of insanity-, of mystery-as-explanation.

But how explain the residents of Jewabne, Poland forcing their Jewish neighbors and friends into barn and then setting it ablaze? And the Ukrainians who rescued their Jewish neighbors from the SS only to club them to death before, what was described as the disgusted eyes of the Germans, were they Nazis, also under the sway of that half-crazed German leader? Or the French police who rounded up the Jews of Paris for deportation to Auschwitz Nazis also? Was all Europe Nazi, under the evil influence of the madman from Germany? Were we the victims of world-wide xenophobia?

I think not. Simple explanations are consoling. They are also dangerous, and in the case of the Jewish people, fatal. We are singled out not because we are “strangers”, for how long does it take to be considered native, 200 years, or 2000? In the case of the Jews xenophobia is at best a partial explanation, a background as explanation and justification.

The real cause of anti-Jewish animus lies at the very heart of Christian dogma and belief. Condemned by the gospels as the deicide people, blamed for the death of the Christian god, condemned for the crime for all generations it should be no mystery that anti-Judaism, and its secular daughter antisemitism are a permanent part of Christendom, and of Jewish experience in the Christian Diaspora.

Pollard, Israel and American Antisemitism

2008-01-23T22:30:00.001-05:00

17 January, 2008

For more postings regarding Pollard, http://ThePollardAffair.blogspot.com

The Pollard Affair haunts the American Jewish community and the State of Israel. It raises questions regarding the status and security of Jews in the United States, the relationship between Israel and the US, and the evolving character of Israel as State of the Jews. How did American Jewry respond to the unfolding events surrounding the arrest and trial of Jonathan Pollard; on what was his life sentence without parole based and justified? How did Israel respond to Pollard's arrest and trial? And who are those "unnamed government sources" who surface in the press obviously timed to pressure Israel and remind us of Pollard's "perfidy."

I

In an exchange of letters in 1989 during which Pollard ask I lead the effort to promote his freedom Jonathan and I agreed that only Israeli government intervention would achieve that goal. Once I accepted the challenge all postal communication between the two of us came to an abrupt and mysterious end.

In December, 1989, as Director of Justice for the Pollards I arranged for Jonathan's sister and myself to tour Israel in order to build grassroots and governmental support for the effort. We spoke before enthusiastic and overflow audiences at universities; interviewed on the radio and television. Our activities were followed closely and reported daily in the media. My meeting with Israel's Chief Rabbis resulted in a letter from them to President Reagan requesting Pollard's release. My meeting with Interior Minister Hammer won his support for the effort. But the political high point of the trip was our meeting in the Knesset with more than thirty Members from all parties and ideological leanings, left and right, religious and secular. By consensus, they agreed to prepare a Knesset petition to President Reagan requesting Pollard be allowed to come to Israel. Within weeks more than seventy Members had put signature to paper and a Knesset delegation was dispatched to Washington. Reagan assigned the task of receiving the Knesset delegation to a low-level functionary.

Among the communities we visited was the development town Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev . A television reporter accompanying us asked a child if he knew who Ben-Gurion was and was met with silence. Asked who Pollard was the child shouted, "Pollard saved Israel!" On the ride back to Tel Aviv a former ranking Mossad officer told me that within Israel's intelligence community Jonathan's contribution to Israel's security was considered even more important than that of Israel's legendary spy in Syria, Eli Cohen.

Over the years I have been told that, with the possible exception of the present incumbent (I am not personally aware that Ehud Olmert has or not discussed Pollard with Bush), all prime ministers approached US presidents to secure Jonathan's freedom. In fact his release was considered imminent more than once in recent years, blocked in the end by high-ranking, faceless US Government bureaucrats.

Has Israel been as proactive at all times as it might have been? Probably not. But this brings us back to that Knesset vote reported recently in the Jerusalem Post. The second paragraph in that article pinpoints what I had hoped to achieve in 1989: "The bill would have set up a three-pronged effort, including the appointment of a special minister to head the release effort… " (Since writing this Eli Yishai announced that his Shas party would make Pollard's release a condition for his party's support of the goals of the moribund Annapolis summit). The Knesset took the initiative in 1989-90 for Pollard. The Knesset continues to have an important role to play as conscience and motivator to the Government.

II

The United States and Israel have for many years had an agreement to share intelligence. Mutually beneficial when respected and adhered to, the agreement serves both countries' interests. Pollard, employed by Naval Intelligence as an analyst, discovered that information vital to Israel's security was being intentionally withheld. Most of us, Jews, Zionists, would likely have accepted this quietly as "beyond our pay grade." But Pollard, a young, idealistic and outspoken Jew and Zionist took matters into his own hands. He offered, and Israel accepted. Why, if he knew a crime was in process did he not go to his superiors; why, faced with a crime of such magnitude did he not go directly to the Secretary of Defense? The scope and character of the materials in question suggested that the order to withhold came from high up in the bureaucracy. And at the top of that ladder was the Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger. And Weinberger's sympathies were widely known.

Weinberger turned Pollard's trial and sentencing not only into a travesty of justice, but into a media circus. In the spotlight of the press he dramatically "raced" to the courtroom moments before Judge Robinson was to pronounce sentence. He "demanded" the plea agreement, the government's promise of leniency in sentencing in exchange for Jonathan's cooperation, be vacated. With the resulting life sentence in hand Weinberger addressed the press to denounce Pollard as a "mercenary and traitor deserving the death penalty."

A conviction of treason allows for a sentence of death. But Jonathan was not charged with or convicted of treason, and the Secretary, a prior Halliburton lawyer, knew this. But "The Affair" was his creation, his show. Pollard was not convicted of treason but of "passing information to an ally," a charge usually disposed of quietly to avoid public embarrassment, and typically resulting in little or no jail time.

III

Casper Weinberger was known to be embarrassed by his Jewish heritage so may be "excused" for exaggerating Jonathan's guilt, branding him "traitor." But how explain the embarrassment, the knee-jerk reaction of some American Jews in their passionate denunciation of Pollard?

The obvious explanation is our unease in our land of residence. Before the war Germany, a land in which Jews had lived for more than two-thousand years, was the international exemplar of freedom, acceptance and assimilation. Against the backdrop of the Holocaust we in America know that our position, positive as it appears in the present, is materially the same as that of our pre-war relatives in Germany. Post-Shoah in our hearts we feel what our minds deny, refuse to accept; that wherever we choose to live in Diaspora we will always be at risk. And, as our experience in Germany demonstrates, no degree of assimilation will protect ourselves or our children or their children from that eventual fate.

With recent history as backdrop our awareness of the Pollard Affair forces us to confront our real fear, our primary insecurity in Diaspora, our vulnerability as Jew in Christian society. And we recoil, not at ourselves for knowingly placing our children at risk, but at our prisoner for forcing us to confront directly our fear in face of Denial.

IV

The Reagan Administration seemed particularly vulnerable to infiltration for purposes of espionage and 1985 became known as the Year of the Spy. Spies for China and the Soviets, for allies and enemies seemed to be exposed daily. Certainly the most important was an American home-grown, Aldrich Ames. Finally uncovered several years after Pollard, Ames was CIA chief of counter espionage for Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In addition to his responsibility for the deaths of at least 11 American agents, at his trial it was also revealed that he fabricated intelligence information implicating Pollard to divert suspicion from himself. This same fabricated intelligence provided part of the rationale for the harsh sentence meted out to Pollard. Another of those "mysteries" surrounding the Pollard Affair was that Aldrich Ames, the Yankee master mole would become a mere footnote to the Year of the Spy, while Pollard and Israel would be the symbols of betrayal of an innocent and trusting United States.

Within all bureaucracies interest groups emerge to promote or impede policy by the governments they are paid to serve. Antisemites and nativists in the Departments of State and Defense, for example, nearly derailed President Truman's post-Holocaust support for the UN resolution calling for the creation of a Jewish state. Having failed they nearly succeeded in blocking the president's recognition of the new State of Israel. Since such groups hire replacements from among their own they self-perpetuate. Pollard either landed gratuitously into their hands or they were involved in his creation as spy. Either way Pollard provides anti-Israel "unnamed government sources" an instrument by which to influence Israeli decision-making on issues deemed important to her enemies.

V

Beyond our obligation to achieve the release of Pollard, what are the lessons of The Affair? Regarding the United States as safe haven: out of fear of nativist antisemitism (blatant and significant before and during the Holocaust), American Jewish leadership were muted in response to that unfolding tragedy. Backdoor efforts to influence Roosevelt by our shtadlanim of the day (themselves often Administration insiders) proved no more effective than their reputed backdoor supplications to Reagan on behalf of Pollard forty years later. The anti-immigrant laws enacted by Congress decades earlier to keep out Eastern European Jews remained in force throughout the war at least in part because Roosevelt chose not to respond to the mass-murder of Europe's Jews.

For our Diaspora: Denial regarding the Holocaust continues. We choose to ignore the lessons and precedent of Christendom's long-standing Jewish Problem and its Final Solution. For how else could we continue to live in and to be responsible for raising families in our Diaspora homes while consciously acknowledging the unthinkable, the continuing and accelerating historical precedent? Jewry in the Diaspora is forever dependent on the fickle goodwill and mercy of our host country, of our friends and neighbors. But that acceptance is also sensitive to economic and political conditions, very uncertain variables. That we know but suppress our knowledge, refuse to accept it, this is the very definition of Denial. In our hearts we know what we refuse to accept, that within Diaspora we will forever remain strangers in a strange land.

"Never Again" is more than a near-forgotten slogan and reminder of the dangers of Holocaust. It was and must continue a signpost and reminder for those among us who choose to live as Jews in post-Shoah Diaspora. As for those who choose conversion as a way of enhancing prospects or minimizing risk, Germany continues a chilling reminder. While we may regard ourselves as patriotic and contributing to our country of residence, in the end it is not ourselves but those we live among who determine our fate. And living in the world of the Information Superhighway, tracing us back three or more generations is no more difficult than a computer search of national hospital records. We can hide, but they our identity is one keystroke away.

For Israel: Shoah is also drifting into the mists of history, its lessons fading from national consciousness. What further evidence than the recent proposal by the chairman of the Knesset Constitution and Law Committee to remove the Grandparent Clause from the Law of Return. The Clause is precisely Zionism's commitment of refuge for anyone threatened as Jew from persecution. It is the very reason the Jewish people created a Jewish state. Or take the recent instructions of the Interior Minister to the Jewish Agency: halt activities promoting immigration by Jews not so defined by Halacha! And where will this end, that only persons living according to Halacha, born of a Jewish mother will be considered Jews by the secular Jewish state; that in the end only Halachically-pure and genealogically-provable Jews will be granted refuge by the state built, paid and fought for by Zionism, our almost entirely secular national liberation movement? And how many generations back on that genealogical chart will Israel go to determine Jewish purity, perhaps back to two Jewish grandmothers?

Being a Jewish state subjects Israel to the same discrimination, the same enemies faced by our people in the Galut. But as a state we are at least in a position to take collective, even decisive action against those enemies. But what of enemies hidden in the midst of friends, those anti-Israel constituencies within the US government bureaucracy for example? At both Wye River and Camp David Pollard was vilified in the press for no apparent reason (certainly he had done nothing newsworthy locked away in his prison cell) other than to embarrass American Jews, to pressure Israel at sensitive negotiating moments. Both recent occasions where Pollard's release was raised as part of US-brokered peace agreements bureaucratic interference induced President Clinton to reverse himself, to back away from releasing Pollard.

As for Israel as a country, our survival depends on two primary factors. We must find a way out of our isolation in the Middle East. Israel cannot realistically absorb three million Palestinians and survive, and any other alternative is morally unthinkable and politically unrealistic. So the goal of Greater Israel must be removed once and for all from Israel's political map. If we cannot force the Palestinians to make peace we can at least relinquish claim to the lands over which they fight.

Secondly, Israel must return to her Zionist roots and mission. Over the years we have drifted away from identity as "Zionist;" indeed the term has become passé, almost an embarrassment (today those aware of Zionism at all tend to use "Post-Zionist" to describe Israel-in-the-World). This drift from Zionism is expressed in many ways. By Netanyahu in a speech last year to an American audience; by the recent suggestion of the chairman of the Knesset Constitution and Law Committee to limit the Law of Return; by the recent instructions by the Interior Minister to the Jewish Agency Executive to stop encouraging aliya by communities not Jewish according to Halacha; by the persistent effort of some orthodox politicians to enact Who is a Jew, legislation which would define a Jew according to Halacha for the State of Israel. If enacted Who is a Jew will drive a wedge between the Jewish state and the Jewish people in Diaspora, the majority of whom do not identify themselves "according to Halacha."

Politically and demographically Israel cannot afford to lose the Diaspora. Israeli policy regarding Jewish status must recognize and accommodate no, be sensitive regarding our Diaspora community. Israel's drift towards separation and isolation ignores the fact that the state needs the Diaspora as much as the other way around. And the overwhelming majority of Jews, in Israel and Diaspora, are not orthodox, do not trace lineage or live according to Halacha.

So long as we are subject to others definitions of who is a Jew we must be equally flexible in doing so. Even a self-hating Casper Weinberger should qualify for refuge should the need arise again. Israel is the State of the Jews, not merely the Jewish State, home to our current residents, "the Israelis." Alongside survival, Zionism is Israel's mission and identity.

VI

The genesis of the Pollard Affair remains shrouded in mystery and open to speculation. In his book, Territory of Lies, Wolf Blitzer describes events which hint at Pollard's recruitment as being suspect without actually drawing that conclusion. How, for example, could this young and openly Zionist Jew find employment in Naval Intelligence, an organization within a service with a reputation less than philosemitic; had not Pollard only recently been rejected as unfit for a similar position with the Central Intelligence Agency? And how was it that his handlers in Naval Intelligence included Pollard as part of the team tasked with providing intelligence to Israel, precisely the position that would provide him the platform from which to appreciate the importance and volume of information being withheld from the Jewish state? And how was it possible that Pollard was able to smuggle day-by-day, briefcase-full by briefcase-full, unsuspected and undetected for more than a year photocopies of intelligence documents which, as described by Weinberger, would fill a space "six feet by six feet by six feet?" I suppose all of this could all be dismissed as a total lack of security within Naval Intelligence. But that seems unlikely.

VII

Some Israeli lawmakers are again raising the possibility of releasing Marwan Barghouti, this time as part of a deal to free Gilad Shalit. In fact Barghouti's release is all but inevitable given the chaos of Palestinian politics and the deference of Israeli authorities to this charismatic and potential reformer. But the Bush Administration would also like to see him released. President Bush will leave office in one year, his legacy a trail of regional failure and carnage. His moribund Annapolis "summit" is his last chance for at least one success. But who credibly represent Palestine, an anarchic society in political chaos? Barghouti offers the only available hope of unifying his people. His importance to the peace process makes him a bargaining chip not only for the release of Shalit, but also for Israel's American Prisoner of Zion, Jonathan Jay Pollard.

Pollard has said several times that he does not want his freedom at the cost of freeing a terrorist. Belying the opinion of those who label him "traitor" and "mercenary," after twenty-two years in prison Jonathan is still an uncompromising and principled idealist, a true Zionist who continues to place Israel's welfare above his own. And while I have deep respect for his principles, after 20 years watching him unjustly suffer in American prisons, aware that he is likely to suffer another 20 years or die in custody; knowing that the true criminals are those "unnamed government sources" who derive pleasure in parading him before the public when it suits their fancy, Barghouti for Pollard may be Israel's last and best opportunity to obtain his freedom for years to come.

Whatever its roots, the use made of Pollard over the years leads to an obvious conclusion: Pollard in prison represents a danger to both the American Jewish community and to the State of Israel. The longer he remains in the hands of his jailers the longer they will have him available to serve their dangerous agenda, to be used to threaten and manipulate our community in the United States and the Jewish state. Pollard's release is not merely an act of righting an obvious injustice; it is a matter of primary importance to the security of American Jewry and to the State of Israel.