Remembering the Nakba – A Jewish perspective

JVL introduction

On Monday May 15, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi took part in “A Lamentation: Remembering the Nakba” at the Quaker Meeting House in Salisbury, organised by a a group of human rights monitors from the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). They had asked her to provide a Jewish perspective on the ongoing catastrophe which has been visited upon the Palestinian people since the foundation of the state of Israel 75 years ago. Her reflections, posted below, warn of the dangers of failing to learn the lessons of the past – that all forms of hatred and discrimination have to be fought collectively, regardless of who are the victims or the perpetrators.

How few lessons have been learned

80 years ago, on May 11, 1943, a Jew called Szmul Zygielbojm committed suicide in London after learning that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had been crushed.

A guerrilla rebellion of a few hundred insurgents, mostly in their 20s, the youngest aged 13, had – for three weeks – fought off an assault from heavily armed Nazi forces determined to kill all remaining inhabitants of the ghetto. They had been sent in with the aim of giving the Fuhrer a birthday gift of a Judenfrei Warsaw – “a Jew-free” Warsaw.

Since January 1940, Zygielbojm – a leading member of a Jewish socialist organisation called the Bund – had been on an international mission to expose what was happening to the Jews in Poland. With the brutal destruction of the ghetto, he despaired of his efforts to lobby those with power to take action – and took his own life.

Marek Edelman, the last surviving member of the uprising command group, wrote in his memoir: ‘We who did not perish, leave it up to you to keep the memory of them alive—forever.’

Edelman included Zygielbojm among this number. But his memory is not commemorated by either the Polish state, or the state of Israel.

As my friend David Rosenberg, a leading member of the Jewish Socialists’ Group and a historian of Jewish experience, wrote in Tribune magazine last week,

“Those still alive know how few lessons have been learned, as several European countries, including Poland, are once again led by right-wing, ethnonationalist regimes that care little for minorities and trample on democratic rights.”

[You can read David’s richly informative, humane and moving article here: ‘I Can Neither Be Silent Nor Live’: Remembering Szmul Zygielbojm.]

To the bafflement of many good people such as yourselves, the government of Israel, while claiming to represent all Jews, itself falls into the category of a right-wing, racist, ethnonationalist regime – a tragic truth reinforced by the inclusion in its current ranks of individuals with unashamed Fascist inclinations.

The support for such a repellent government by many Israelis and, to their shame, many Jews around the world, is the result of political choices made in the past and reinforced to this day by Western powers with their own interests to protect in the Middle East. Those political choices provide the context for the impunity granted to Israel – a state which – as we are commemorating today – tramples on the rights of Palestinians – and has done since its inception.

Many Jews reject outright those political choices. We understand that the persecution Jews have faced for centuries is a form of racism experienced by innumerable other persecuted communities. Critically, we understand that all forms of racism must be combatted by people of all traditions, faith and ethnicities, working in solidarity with one another for tolerance and social justice for all.

It’s a cliché to say of the Holocaust – “Never Again”. But this has to mean “Never again for anyone, anywhere” – not only for the Jews who were without doubt its most numerous victims. Never again should any human being be discriminated against, victimised, stereotyped, hated or persecuted because of who they are.

My liberal Jewish upbringing, like that of many others, draws instinctively on this understanding, resulting in Jews being particularly well represented in campaigns against racism and for civil rights, equality and justice, both in the countries where we live and internationally. For me personally, an early idealistic sympathy for what we were told would be a democratic utopia welcoming Jews from all over the world to Palestine, quickly turned to disillusion in the face of the reality of military occupation, illegal settlement and what we now know to be the crime of apartheid against Palestinians. I, like very many others, refuse to stand by while such crimes are committed in our name.

In 1938 Henryk Erlich, another leading member of the Jewish Workers Bund, wrote with extraordinary prescience about where the Zionist plan to build a Jewish state in Palestine would lead.

He said “The Zionists regard themselves as second-class citizens in Poland. Their aim is to be first-class citizens in Palestine and make the Arabs second-class citizens.

He foresaw that the spiritual climate of a Jewish state in Palestine would be one of eternal fear of the surrounding Arab nations and eternal struggle with the indigenous people for every foot of ground.  He saw clearly that it would be a climate in which reaction and chauvinism would flourish.

The philosophy of the Bund, the organisation to which Erlich, Zygielbojm and Edelman belonged, was encapsulated in a powerful Yiddish word “Doikheit” which translates as “Hereness”. It means that wherever we are, this is our home and this is where we struggle for justice. To treat anti-Jewish racism as exceptional, to prioritise Jewish fears and concerns above those of others, far from advancing the anti-racist cause actually threatens to undermine it, by sowing confusion and division where above all we need clarity and unity. To put one’s faith in a state which privileges Jews and by definition treats non-Jews, particularly Palestinians, as of lesser worth, betrays the memory of those millions who have fallen victim to racist injustice and of those who fought against it.