Here below is
a reasoned, calmly argued letter from
Dr. Sara Roy, a senior research
associate at the Center for Middle Eastern
Studies, Harvard University, and a Jew herself, from a post-Holocaust family, urging
members of the German government not to conflate political opposition to
policies of the state of Israel with anti-semitism. I know this is a sensitive
subject, but I think the best service I can do to my little band of readers is
to offer this concise argument by Dr.
Roy, who tells these parliamentarians that their obligation “lies in holding Israel and Jews to the same ethical and moral standards
that you would demand of any people, including yourselves.”
This argument reminds me of a situation in the 1960-80s following the
Commonwealth decision to boycott sporting contacts with apartheid South Africa.
In New Zealand, where I grew up, and lived in the mid 1970s, Conservative
governments routinely either invited South African teams to tour New Zealand,
or permitted New Zealand teams to visit South Africa, the argument being that
politics has no place in sports. But this was more than sports: this was a
means to bring down, or at least help to bring down, a brutal government whose
policies were an offense to the world. The parallels are striking with the
present position of Israel, which is supported by establishments across the
Western world that have collaborated by complying in the growth of the apartheid
occupation regime that Israel has developed over the years, along with the
considerable growth in the power and wealth of the Israeli state.
Only years later after his release did Nelson Mandela record the immense
lift given to him and his fellow prisoners by the resistance mounted against a
touring South African Rugby team by ordinary New Zealanders, who braved police truncheons,
arrest and attack in their efforts to prevent the games from being played.
Briefly, the small, peaceful country of New Zealand teetered on the edge of a
civil war. Not over a Rugby tour, but in response to a boycott of an evil
state, whose dictates in the selection of racially segregated teams New Zealand
had been obeying for at least 40 years.
Here is Dr. Roy’s letter:
To the Members of the German Government:
I write to you regarding the motion recently
passed by the Bundestag that equated BDS with anti-Semitism. I also write to
you as a Jew, a child of Holocaust survivors and as a scholar of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
My mother, Taube, and father, Abraham,
survived Auschwitz among other horrors. My father was the only survivor in his
family of six children and my mother survived with only one sister in a family
that was larger than my father’s. I know, without question, that if they were
alive today, the motion you are being asked to endorse would terrify them given
the repression of tolerance and witness that it clearly embraces. I shall not
restate what others have already written protesting your action, but I do have
some thoughts I would like to share.
In September 2014 I was invited to speak on
Gaza at the Heinrich Boll Stiftung after the terrible events of that summer.
During the question period, a gentleman stood up who was quite agitated. He
argued quite strongly that given Germany’s history, it is difficult if not
impossible for Germans to criticize Israel. Embedded in his statement was the
belief that Germans should never engage in such criticism. He seemed to insist
that I accept this. I do not. Nor would my parents.
My response to him, then, is the same as my
response to you now: If your history has imposed a burden and an obligation
upon you, it is to defend justice not Israel. This is what Judaism, not
Zionism, demands. Your obligation does not lie in making Israel or the Jewish
people special or selectively excusing injustice because Jews happen to be
committing it; it lies in holding Israel and Jews to the same ethical and moral
standards that you would demand of any people, including yourselves. If you
think that by refusing to criticize Israel’s brutal occupation — and punishing
those who do — you are protecting and securing the State of Israel or the place
of the Jewish people in the world, you are terribly misguided. Your approach
achieves the exact opposite — by insisting on treating Jews as an exception,
you are weakening us by again making us a kind of anomaly, an intruder, a
negation of Europe. It makes us more vulnerable to and unsheltered from the
racism and the true anti-Semitism now resurgent throughout the world.
Your sense of guilt, if that is the correct
word, should not derive from criticizing Israel. It should reside in remaining
silent in the face of injustice as so many of your forebears did before, during
and after the Holocaust.
I lost a large extended family to fascism and
racism. By endorsing the motion that alleges that BDS is
anti-Semitic—regardless of one’s position on BDS—you are criminalizing the
right to free speech and dissent and those who choose to exercise it, which is
exactly how fascism takes root. You also trivialize and dishonor the real
meaning of anti-Semitism. How would you explain that to Taube and Abraham?
Sincerely,
Dr. Sara Roy
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