Racism and Zionism

Delivered by
Ambassador Mordecai Yedid
Head of Israel Delegation
September 3, 2001
Durban

Madame Chairperson,

Why, when the world was created, did God create just one man, Adam, and one
woman, Eve? The Rabbis answered: so that all humankind would come from a
single union, to teach us that we are all brothers and sisters.

This Conference was dedicated to that simple proposition. We, all of us,
have a common lineage, and are all, irrespective of race, religion or
gender, created in the divine image. Indeed, this single idea, unknown to
all other ancient civilizations, may be the greatest gift that the Jewish
people has given to the world, the recognition of the equality and dignity
of every human being.

The foremost right that follows from this principle is the right to be free,
not to be a slave. It is imperative that international community address and
duly acknowledge, already far far too late, the magnitude of the tragedy of
slavery.

The horror of slavery is profoundly engraved in the experience of the Jewish
people - a people formed in slavery. For hundreds of years the children of
Israel were enslaved in Egypt until, as the Book of Exodus recounts, the
call: 'Let my people go' heralded the first national liberation movement in
history, and the model for ever liberation which was to follow.

The Jewish response to slavery was remarkable. Rather than forget or
sublimate the suffering of slavery, Jewish tradition insisted that every Jew
must remember and relive it. And to this day, on Passover, every Jewish
family reenacts the experience of slavery, eats the bread of affliction, and
appreciates once again the taste of freedom. Through the ages of our exile
this psychodrama has had a profound impact on the Jewish psyche: making sure
that every child born into comfort knows the pains of oppression, and every
child born into oppression knows the hope of redemption.

But remembrance of our suffering as slaves has a more important function -
to remind ourselves of our moral obligations. The experience of oppression
brings no privilege, but rather responsibility. We have a responsibility to
protect the weak, the widow and the orphan and the stranger, because as the
Bible says:

"You yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt." Even God, in the first
and most fundamental of the 10 commandments, identifies Himself not as
'Creator of the World' or 'Splitter of the Red Sea', but as 'the One who
freed you from slavery'.

And indeed in every country in which they have lived, Jews have been in the
forefront of the battle for human rights and freedom from oppression. The
same urge for national liberation, that led to the Exodus, and that led to
the Zionist dream that Jews could live in freedom in their land, was
intrinsically bound up with the belief that not just one people, but all
peoples must be free. It was this conviction that Theodor Herzl, the founder
of the Zionist movement, expressed in his book Altneuland, as early as 1902:

"There is still one problem of racial misfortune unsolved. The depths of
that problem only a Jew can comprehend. I refer to the problem of the
Blacks. Just call to mind all those terrible episodes of the slave trade, of
human beings who merely because they were black were stolen like cattle,
taken prisoners, captured and sold. Their children grew up in strange lands,
the objects of contempt and hostility because their complexions were
different. I am not ashamed to say, though I may expose myself to ridicule
for saying so, that once I have witnessed the redemption of Israel, my
people, I wish to assist the redemption of the Black people."

As Herzl understood, remembrance of slavery is integral to the Jewish
experience. A Jew cannot be truly free if he or she does not have compassion
on those who are enslaved.

Madame Chairperson,

If slavery is one form of racist atrocity, anti-Semitism is another. And by
anti-Semitism, let us be clear, we mean the hatred of Jews. The word
'anti-Semitism' was deliberately coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr an
anti-Jewish racist in Germany, to replace the term 'judenhass', Jew-hatred,
which had gone out of favor. It has always, and only, been used to describe
hatred and discrimination directed at Jews. Attempts to eradicate the plain
meaning of the word are not only anti-Semitic, indeed they are
anti-semantic.

Those uncomfortable recognizing the existence of anti-Semitism not only try
to redefine the term, they try to deny that it is different from any other
form of discrimination. But it is a unique form of hatred. It is directed at
those of particular birth, irrespective of their faith, and those of
particular faith, irrespective of their birth. It is the oldest and most
persistent form of group hatred; in our century this ultimate hatred has led
to the ultimate crime, the Holocaust.

But anti-Semitism goes far beyond hatred of Jews. It has arisen where Jews
have never lived, and survives where only Jewish cemeteries remain. And
while Jews may be the first to suffer from its influence, they have rarely
been the last.

Anti-Semitism reveals the inner corruption of a society, because at its root
it is fueled by a rejection of the humane and moral values the Jewish people
bequeathed to the world. As Anne Frank, the Jewish schoolgirl in hiding from
the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam, wrote in her Diary:

"If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is
over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example. Who
knows, it might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples
learn good, and for that reason only do we now suffer."

Anne Frank was murdered by the Nazis in Bergen-Belsen for being a Jew, just
one of over one million Jewish children to be killed in the Holocaust.

Those who cannot bring themselves to recognize the unique evil of
anti-Semitism similarly cannot accept the stark fact of the Holocaust, the
first systematic attempt to destroy an entire people. The past decade has
witnessed an alarming increase in attempts to deny the simple fact of this
atrocity, at the very time that the Holocaust is passing from living memory
to history. After wiping out 6 million Jewish lives, there are those who
would wipe out their deaths. At this Conference too, we have witnessed a
vile attempt to generalize and pluralize the word 'Holocaust', and to empty
it of its meaning as a reference to a specific historic event with a clear
and vital message for all humanity.

Could there be anything worse than to brutally, systematically annihilate a
people; to take the proud Jews of Vilna, Warsaw, Minsk, Lodz; to burn their
holy books, to steal their dignity, their freedom, their hair, their teeth;
to turn them into numbers, to slaves, to the ashes of Auschwitz, Treblinka,
Majdanek and Dachau? Could anything be worse that this? And the answer is
yes, there is something even worse: to do such a thing, and then to deny it,
to trivialize it, to take from the mourners, the children and the
grandchildren, the legitimacy of their grief, and from all humanity the
urgent lesson that might stop it happening again.

Madame Chairperson,

The 20th century, which witnessed the atrocities of the Holocaust, also
witnessed the fulfillment of the Zionist dream, the reestablishment of a
Jewish state in Israel's historic land. For Zionism is quite simply that -
the national movement of the Jewish people, based on an unbroken connection,
going back some 4000 years, between the People of the Book and the Land of
the Bible. It is like the liberation movements of Africa and Asia, the
national liberation movement of the Jewish people.

And it is a movement of which other national liberation movements can be
justly proud. It has strived continually to establish a society which
reflects highest ideals of democracy and justice for all its inhabitants, in
which Jew and Arab can live together, in which women and men have equal
rights, in which there is freedom of thought of expression, and in which all
have access to the judicial process to ensure these rights are protected.

The aspiration to build such a society was enshrined from the outset in
Israel's Declaration of Independence:

"The State of Israel... will foster the development of the country for the
benefit of all its inhabitants; it will ensure complete equality of social
and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of creed, race or
gender; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language,
education and culture."

It is a tall task. It is a constant struggle. And we do not always succeed.
But, even in the face of the open hostility of its neighbors and continued
threats to its existence, there are few countries that have made such
efforts to realize such a vision. Few countries of Israel's age and size
have welcomed immigrants from over one hundred countries, of all colors and
tongues, sent medical aid and disaster relief to alleviate human tragedy
wherever it strikes, maintained a free press, including the freest Arabic
press anywhere in the Middle East.

And yet those who cannot bring themselves to say the words 'the Holocaust',
or to recognize anti-Semitism for the evil that it is, would have us condemn
the 'racist practices of Zionism'. Did any one of those Arab states, which
conceived this obscenity stop for one moment to consider their own record?
Or to think, for that matter, of the situation of the Jews and other
minorities their own countries?

These states would have us believe that they are anti-Zionist, not
anti-Semitic, but again and again this lie is disproved. What are the
despicable caricatures of Jews that fill the Arab press and are being
circulated at this Conference: what are the vicious libels so freely
invented and disseminated by our enemies - about the use of poison gas, or
depleted uranium bullets, or injecting babies with the Aids
virus - if not the reincarnation of age-old anti-Semitic canards?

To criticize policies of the Government of Israel - or of any country - is
legitimate, even vital; indeed as a democratic state many Israelis do just
that. But there is profound difference between criticizing a country, and
denying it's right to exist. Anti-Zionism, the denial of Jews the basic
right to a home, is nothing but anti-Semitism, pure and simple. As Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote:

"You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely
'anti-Zionist'. And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high
mountaintops. Let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When
people criticize Zionism they mean Jews_ Zionism is nothing less than the
dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land_And
what is anti-Zionism? It is the denial to the Jew of the fundamental right
that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord to all other
nations of the globe. It is discrimination against Jews because they are
Jews. In short it is anti-Semitism."

The venal hatred of Jews that has taken the form of anti-Zionism, and which
has surfaced at this Conference is, however, different in one crucial way
from the anti-Semitism of the past. Today it is being deliberately
propagated and manipulated for political ends. Children are not born as
racists, racism is a result of lack of education and political manipulation.
And today generations of Palestinian children are being deliberately and
systematically indoctrinated, with textbooks stained with blood libels, and
children's television programs dripping with hatred. This high-risk strategy
is bound to fail, but it will exact a heavy price.

The conflict between us and our Palestinian neighbors is not racial, and has
no place at this Conference. It is political and territorial, and as such
can and should be resolved to end the suffering and bring peace and security
to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. The path towards such a resolution
is clear: an immediate cessation of violence and terror and a return to
negotiations as recommended by the Mitchell Committee Report, which both
parties have accepted. The outrageous and manic accusations we have heard
here are attempts to turn a political issue into a racial one, with almost
no hope of resolution.

Barely a year ago, at Camp David, the Israeli Government demonstrated its
deep commitment to peace by offering our Palestinian neighbors far-reaching
compromises. These compromises, you will recall, were applauded by the
entire international community. But, the Palestinians did not accept these
proposals, nor did they put forward any compromise proposals of their own.
To our deep dismay they responded with a wave of violence. Over the past
year this violence has escalated into protracted and inhuman attacks on the
Israeli civilian population, forcing Israel to assume a role we abhor,
defending our citizens by military means which we had hoped and prayed would
be relegated to the past.

I will not refer here to the disappointing statement we have heard from the
head of the Palestinian Authority. Rather than utilize this vital forum to
inspire his own people, and the people of the world, to seek peace, honor
and harmony, he chose to use this podium to incite to bitterness and hatred.
Another missed opportunity by the leader of the Palestinian people.

My own cousins, two little daughters and their brother, lost their legs only
a few weeks ago in a terrorist attack on a bus carrying children to school.
Many Palestinian children have likewise been wounded for life. The vicious
libels, the delegitimization and dehumanization we have heard at this
Conference will do nothing to prevent more Israeli and Palestinian mothers
and fathers bringing their young ones to their graves.

But here today, something greater even than peace in the Middle East is
being sacrificed - the highest values of humanity. Racism, in all its forms,
is one of the most widespread and pernicious evils, depriving millions of
hope and fundamental rights. It might have been hoped that this first
Conference of the 21st century would have taken up the challenge of, if not
eradicating racism, at least disarming it: But instead humanity is being
sacrificed to a political agenda. Barely a decade after the UN repealed the
infamous 'Zionism is Racism' resolution, which Secretary-General Kofi Annan
described, with characteristic understatement, as a "low point" in the
history of the United Nations, a group of states for whom the terms
'racism', 'discrimination', and even 'human rights' simply do not appear in
their domestic lexicon, have hijacked this Conference and plunged us to even
greater depths.

Can there be a greater irony than the fact that a conference convened to
combat the scourge of racism should give rise to the most racist declaration
in a major international organization since the Second World War?

Despite the vicious anti-Semitism we have heard here, I do not fear for the
Jewish people, which has learned to be resilient and to hold fast to its
faith.

Despite the virulent incitement against my country, I do not fear for
Israel, which has the strength not just of courage, but also of conviction.

But I do fear, deeply, for the victims of racism. For the slaves, the
disenfranchised, the oppressed, the inexplicably hated, the impoverished,
the despised, the millions who turn their eyes to this hall, in the frail
hope that it may address their suffering. Who see instead that a blind and
venal hatred of the Jews has turned their hopes into a farce. For them I
fear.

We are here as representatives of states, and states of their nature have
political interests and agendas. But we are also human beings, all of us
brothers and sisters created in the divine image. And in those quiet moments
when we recognize our common humanity, and look into our soul, let us
consider what we came here to do - and what we have in fact done:

We came to learn from our history, but we find it being buried to hide its
lessons.

We came to communicate in the language of humanity, but we hear its
vocabulary twisted beyond all comprehension.

We came out of respect for the sacred values entrusted to us, but see them
here perverted for political ends.

And ultimately, we came to serve the victims of racism, but have witnessed
yet another atrocity, committed in their name.

©Dr Bruce Rosen, 2001