OF GENOCIDE AND MORALITY

Forward, NY

Aug 29 2007

History usually passes from one era to another in a slow, glacial
process, too gradual to be discernible until the change is complete.

There are times, though, when the change happens in an instant, like
a flash of lightning splitting a summer night. Such was the birth of
the atomic age at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 62 years ago this month.

Such was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of communism,
when Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank in Moscow and defied the tyrants,
16 years ago last week. And such, we may learn to our sorrow, is the
end of the post-Holocaust era in Jewish history. That age may have
evaporated last week in a haze of wrenching moral contradictions,
as the imperatives of remembering and resisting genocide collided
with the needs of Israeli security.

If the collision had happened once, it would be merely a crisis. But
it happened twice in one week, in two dramatic and unrelated crises.

One was a confrontation between Israel and American Jews over
recognition of the 1915 genocide of Armenians at the hands of the
Turks, which Israel fears would alienate an essential Muslim ally.

The other was the agonizing sight of Israeli troops expelling a
group of Darfuri refugees who had crossed vast deserts, fleeing the
genocide in their homeland, to seek refuge in the Jewish state. Two
crises, unrelated yet reflecting the same moral dilemma, suggest
that something larger is under way – perhaps something as large as
a tectonic shift in the ground under our feet.

Since the end of World War II, the accepted narrative of Jewish history
has been a simple, linear one: from Holocaust to redemption; Israel
as the retort to Auschwitz. In a deeper sense, the post-Holocaust
era brought with it a new mission for the chosen people – to bear
witness to the horrors of genocide, to see to it that memory would be
preserved and that never again would such horrors be permitted. For
the past 60 years, Jews everywhere have seen the rise from the ashes
of a reborn Jewish state as the symbolic and physical embodiment
of that mission. For most of us, remembering the Holocaust and
cherishing Israel have been the two interlocking pillars of modern
Jewish identity.

Last week those two pillars collided, in the most literal and dramatic
way possible, shaken loose from their moorings by the shockwaves
of genocide in two of the world’s hot spots. Israel found itself –
or placed itself – on the side of the deniers, and Jews around the
world were left standing in numb disbelief.

One incident began in Watertown, Mass., a small town with a large
population of Armenian Americans. The good people of Watertown know,
as many Jewish activists know, that the murder of Armenians by Turkey
on the eve of World War I was one of the first mass atrocities of the
20th century and helped inspire Hitler. Yet Armenians have struggled
for almost a century to wrest even the barest acknowledgement from
Turkey of their tragedy. Turkey denies it, and much of the world
stays silent, fearing Turkish wrath.

Earlier this month, Watertown decided to drop its participation in
an anti-prejudice program of the Anti-Defamation League, because
the league has refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide or to
endorse an upcoming congressional resolution on the subject. The ADL,
like most Jewish organizations, fears – correctly – that speaking on
Armenia’s tragedy will create tension between Israel and Turkey.

However, after an ugly confrontation between the ADL’s national
office and its Boston chapter, the league finally issued a statement
acknowledging that the Armenian massacres were "tantamount to
genocide." The statement promptly touched off the feared diplomatic
crisis between Turkey and Israel. The crisis has yet to be resolved.

The other crisis, involving Darfur, erupted just days after the first
one. On August 17, Israeli police arrested a group of 50 Africans,
most of them from Darfur, who were trying to enter Israel from Egypt.

They had fled their homeland and trekked across the Sinai Desert,
hoping to find refuge in the Jewish state as some 1,500 other Africans
have done in recent months. Two days later, Israel announced that it
would no longer grant refuge to African refugees – including those
from Darfur – and would henceforth return all future migrants to
Egypt, starting with the 50 arrested on the 17th. The expulsions
raised a chorus of protests from a broad cross-section of Israelis,
spanning the political spectrum. It drew criticism, too, from human
rights groups around the world. Ironically, some of the American Jews
who had led the Save Darfur campaign from the outset were quick to
spring to Israel’s defense, citing its unique security concerns.

There’s no doubt that collisions between fighting genocide and
defending Israel cut the heart of Jewish identity in the post-Holocaust
era. What, we may ask, is the point of fighting for a Jewish state
if it will not act in a Jewish manner – that is, serve as a beacon
to us and the world? Wasn’t that supposed to be the promise of Israel?

Well, no, it wasn’t. The promise of Zionism, from Herzl to Ben-Gurion
to today’s Israel, was to normalize the Jewish condition – to
remove the Jewish people from its rootless, luftmentsh status as a
scattered nation with no ground to stand on and no responsibility for
the implications of its beliefs. It was to bring the Jews back into
the rough-and-tumble of history, of real-life struggles as lived by
sovereign nations. The idea of Israel as somehow exempt from the rules
of realpolitik, from the tough moral choices faced by other nations,
was an invention to make the Zionist revolution comprehensible to
those of us who did not undergo the revolution. It was an Israel we
invented for ourselves.

Still, while it’s tempting to portray these crises as reflecting the
differences between Israel and the Diaspora – or between ordinary
American Jews and the organizations that have become slaves to Israeli
policy – that conclusion is unfair to Israelis, to the organizations
and to ourselves. For all the demands of realpolitik, many Israelis –
including 63 members of Knesset, a majority – demanded in vain that
their government not expel the Darfuris. As for the Armenian tragedy,
as real as we know it to be, the fact is that Israel desperately needs
the friendship of Turkey, its most important ally, and that friendship
comes with a painful price tag. Remembering genocide is important,
but not as important as saving lives today.

If anything, the genocide collisions of August should make us
re-examine the moral principles we have created for ourselves in
the wake of the Holocaust, and consider whether they reflect the
realities of today’s cold, hard world. In the end, political ethics
based on slogans and theories, with no recognition of the ugly choices
required in navigating this hard world, are no ethics at all.

The task of the post-post-Holocaust era is to forge a new ethic for
our new world.