Love affairs are seldom permanent. Nor was mine with Israel. Actually, I should call it a unilateral admiration affair, for I admired Israel greatly, but Israel didn’t know of my existence. It’s like being in love with a movie star, like my relationship with Ingrid Bergman.
My admiration affair with Israel probably began with the book (1958) and movie (1960) Exodus starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint and a star-studded cast of notables, directed by Otto Preminger. The movie’s influence on Americans was immense, and on many more the world over. Its historical accuracy was debatable.
In 1958, when I probably read the book, I was 26 years old and had already spent four years in US Army military intelligence based in Germany, so I knew something about Germany’s recent history and the holocaust. Many years later I visited the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar. Just before a lecture explaining the place and its history, a bus arrived with German tourists from Bavaria. They entered the lecture room smiling and chatting. By the time the speaker, a Polish woman speaking in German, had finished, many were in tears. We were then led around the camp, and saw the building containing a row of about six ovens, where the victims' remains were incinerated.
Some years previously, around 1984, I traveled to Israel for the first time on business from Geneva with El Al, the Israeli airline. I knew that El Al was probably the most secure airline in the world. It was the only one, for example, that physically inspected all air freight.
After I had checked in and was in line to board the aircraft, I showed my boarding pass and passport to a smiling young lady. She asked me to accompany one of their security goons hovering over us. OK, I said to him, where are we going? He motioned for me to follow and led me to the Station Manager’s office. He invited me to sit while he examined my passport. Why are you going to Israel, Mr. Smith? he asked. I handed him my business card, which identified me as an Assistant Director of IATA, the International Air Transport Association. “I’m going to a meeting of the IATA airlines in Tel Aviv,” I told him. “Will El Al be at the meeting?” I told him yes, that as national carrier the El Al sales manager would be chairman of the meeting. “Do you know who that is?” he asked. “Yes, Dov Adiv.” He handed back my passport. “Have a good trip, Mr. Smith,” he smiled. I asked him, curious, why I was singled out for this interview.
“We check anything unusual, or shall I say suspicious. Your passport was issued in Germany, you live in Geneva and you’re an American citizen. Doesn’t really add up. But your profession explains it.”
Tel Aviv has grown considerably since then, no high-rises like now. It reminded me of Montevideo – small town-ish. On at least two visits I tried to locate an old friend, Osvaldo Romberg, who had been my assistant way back in the 1960s in Buenos Aires. He was an artist even then, with little or no interest in the airline business. But he was necessary for me when I first got there, because I spoke no Spanish and needed an honest assistant and interpreter. He wasn’t much of an interpreter because his English wasn’t very good, but he had been hired by my predecessor for his honesty in revealing that the detective agency he worked for was cheating IATA. My three-year-old daughter, Bibi, fell in love with him, so he had become a friend as well as an assistant.
Every time I looked for him in Tel Aviv he was out of town, in Europe usually, giving classes in universities on painting technique – or something; the artists who informed me weren’t sure of what he was doing. Either way, he was a successful and well-known painter in Israel, which he had not been in Argentina.
In those days, before “open skies”, giving discounts on IATA-established fares was punishable by fines up to $25,000, depending on the gravity and/or amount of the discount. My predecessor (Van for short) had purchased a KLM round-trip “test ticket” from Buenos Aires to Tel Aviv via Amsterdam at a 25% discount. He didn’t buy it himself of course, which would not have been possible because he was known, but used a so-called intermediary, a young friend of Osvaldo’s, at a Jewish travel agency. He informed the KLM sales manager in Buenos Aires, who naturally denied giving a discount and said he would investigate. The travel agent also denied it. Van sent the violation report to our head office in New York. While waiting for KLM’s official reply, he was called back to New York to become IATA’s prosecuting attorney. So the “post investigation” was left to me, a new Inspector IATA in Argentina. It was my first case.
New York sent me KLM’s reply to our accusation that they granted a discount to Javier Horowitz. KLM admitted that Javier paid 25% less than the established fare. However, KLM received the correct amount. How? The difference had been arranged by the Jewish Agency in Buenos Aires, and paid for by a synagogue in that city.
Osvaldo claimed that it was all a lie. I told him to ask Javier if he knew about the discount being paid by a local synagogue. But Javier’s mother told Osvaldo that her son did not want to talk to him, that he was out of town anyway.
I had never heard of the Jewish Agency, and it was only much later that I learned that The Jewish Agency for Israel is the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world, established in 1929 as the operative branch of the World Zionist Organization, and its purpose is to encourage Jewish immigration to Israel and support their integration into the State of Israel. [Google]
So in a certain respect KLM’s claim was logical. I tried to contact the representative of the Jewish Agency in Buenos Aires but was told in its office that he was in Israel and wouldn’t be back for a month.
KLM had included in their defense a letter signed by the rabbi of a synagogue in the Once district of Buenos Aires confirming that they had paid the missing 25% for Javier’s ticket to Tel Aviv. “Ok Osvaldo, let’s go and see that rabbi.”
The synagogue was run-down and poor-looking in a run-down and poor-looking district. The rabbi received us immediately and Osvaldo was attempting to explain why we wanted to speak with him, something he wasn’t sure of himself., when I noticed a familiar accent in the rabbi’s speech. He looked confused.
Sprechen Sie Deutsch? I asked him. Clearly surprised, he looked at me and said Yes, in German.
I explained our mission and showed him the letter he had allegedly written confirming that his synagogue had donated the money for Javier’s ticket. He smiled and asked if I thought they had money to spare for donations. I smiled back and said no. But the letter? It’s a forgery, he said. I asked if he would put that in writing, but he said he could not put anything in writing, because he did not want trouble. He left the room and came back almost immediately. He showed me a blank letter with the synagogue’s letterhead. This is the paper we have been using for the past three years. The one you have was outdated long ago. He said I could have the blank one with the true letterhead but asked me not to use his name. I promised to refer to him as only “the rabbi”. We parted in a friendly manner. I was aware that my being an American was helpful.
I sent my detailed report to New York, with only one piece of documentary evidence – the synagogue’s updated stationary page – and my sworn step-by-step investigation. The case was heard by the IATA “Breaches Commission” a week later, with my attendance and testimony. The Commission ordered KLM to pay a fine of $25,000, at least double that in today’s value, the maximum possible fine.
About a year later I became friendly with the Jewish Agency manager, an Argentinean who was a member of the same chess club as I was. We never spoke of the Javier Horowitz case. Osvaldo found out, however, that Javier was given a free ticket to Israel by KLM in return for his silence. I guess they hadn’t expected me to go to that synagogue. In 1975, after I had been transferred to Zurich, the now ex-Jewish Agency manager in Buenos Aires stopped by my office one day. He explained that he was planning to make a Travel Agency in Zurich specializing in travel to and from Israel and he would like me to be its manager and, if I liked, part-owner. I was tempted, because my employment with IATA had become shaky because since the “open skies” legislation we were unable to impose fines on airlines. But the travel agency was a dangerous do or die initiative. If I quit IATA and the travel agency failed, what would I do in Switzerland to support my family and myself? So I declined the offer. Luckily a short time afterward my immediate boss in IATA, who was a fancy dancer in the company’s halls, had the inspired idea of calling us “Tariff Integrity officers” instead of “Compliance Officers”. The idea was to convince the airlines not to resort to discounts rather than force them not to. To almost everyone’s surprise, it worked, at least for a good while.
Skip to the present.
I knew that most of the original inhabitants of Palestine – the Palestinians – had been forced out, but didn’t know the details. Frankly, I never even thought about it, until reading a book by J.M.G. LeClézio: Wandering Star. A young German Jewish girl, Esther, escapes the Nazis with her mother, traveling by foot over mountains, through rivers, avoiding many dangers until finally boarding a clandestine ship carrying them to Palestine. Some time later, with the war still not over between Israel and the Arab countries, Esther is in a convoy of trucks heading for Jerusalem, when she sees a column of refugees walking along the side of the dirt road:
A woman sitting next to her leaned over. ‘Arabs’. That was all she said. There were about a hundred of them, maybe more, just women and young children. Dressed in tatters, barefoot, rags wrapped around their heads. Some were carrying bundles on their heads. Others had suitcases, boxes tied up with string. … The trucks had stopped and the refugees walked slowly past, turning away their faces with blank looks. There was a heavy, deathly silence weighing on their faces, like so many masks of dust and stone. Only the children looked back with fear in their eyes.
Esther climbed down from the truck; she walked over to the group, trying to understand. The women turned away, some shouted harsh words at her in their language. Suddenly a very young woman broke away from the crowd. Her face was pale and haggard, her dress covered with dust. She was wearing a large scarf over her head. Esther saw that the straps of her sandals were broken. The girl walked up close enough to touch Esther. There was a strange gleam in her eyes, but she didn’t speak. For a long moment she stood still with her hand on Esther’s arm as if she were going to say something. Then she pulled a blank notebook with a black cardboard cover out of her pocket and on the first page in the top right-hand corner she wrote her name, in capital letters like this: N E J M A. She handed the notebook and the pencil to Esther, so that she too would write down her name. She stood there for a moment longer, hugging the notebook to her breast, as if it were the most important thing in the world. Finally, without a word, she went back to the group of refugees who were already walking away. Esther took a step toward her, to call her, to hold her back, but it was too late. It was time to get back into the truck. The convoy set out again, surrounded by a cloud of dust. But Esther couldn’t rid her mind of Nejma’s face, her eyes, her hand on her arm, the deliberate solemnity of her gestures as she extended the notebook where she had written her name. She couldn’t forget the women’s faces, their averted eyes, the fear on the children’s faces, or the heavy silence over the land, or the shadows of the ravines, around the fountain. “Where are they going?” Esther asked. The woman who had drawn back the tarpaulin looked at her without answering. “Where are they going?” Esther repeated. The woman shrugged her shoulders, maybe because she didn’t understand. Another woman dressed in black with a very pale face responded, “To Iraq.” […] The woman also said, looking at Esther as if she were trying to read her thoughts, “No one is innocent, they are the mothers and wives of the men who are killing us.” Esther said, “But what about the children?” Those eyes wide with fear had been etched in her mind, she knew nothing could erase their faces.
In the evening, the truck convoy reached the gates of Jerusalem ...
A 65-page section entitled NeJma follows. It’s mostly in the first-person about Nejma’s cruel, miserable, inhuman life in the refugee camps, where they can only survive by the UN truck arriving every day with food and medicine for the thousands.
The author doesn’t explain how and why this is happening, just as he relies on the reader’s knowledge of Hitler’s Third Reich to understand why Esther was escaping from Europe. He only describes the young girls’ passion paths of suffering. I knew something about the Palestinians having been uprooted from their homes and forced into foreign refugee camps, but not much. My sympathy was still with Israel. The sad irony, however, of Jewish victims metamorphosing into the brutal uprooters of the Arab victims, was not lost on me. The author of Wandering Star relates how two children – one Jewish, the other Arab – meet for a brief moment on a road in Palestine; one is arriving, the other is leaving. Esther will find a new home in the Jewish state of Israel. Nejma will be abandoned to her sad destiny as a life-long refugee.
Zionism and antisemitism
The Zionist movement is an enemy of Judaism Rudolf Steiner wrote in 1897, maintaining that founding a political state based on a religion is falling backward historically, and can only end badly. Political states must be based on human rights, not spiritual culture, that is, religion. He was very much in favor of Jewish assimilation in Germany and Austria. Nowadays, over a hundred years later, he has been accused of antisemitism, as is everyone who dares to criticize the Jewish state of Israel. That will certainly include me once this is published. I at least know that I am not antisemitic.
I know what antisemitism is. When I was a kid way back then in Brooklyn, almost all the adults of the previous generation were antisemitic, but not in a brutal way. Many of our neighbors were Jews, and my parents and relatives got along with them fine. My aunt married a Jew who was merrily accepted as somehow being an exception.
So who is critical of Israel and not antisemitic? How about these guys?
Acceptance speeches at the Academy Awards for the best documentary feature film: No Other Land
BASEL ADRA (Palestinian)
Thank you to the Academy for the award. It’s such a big honor for the four of us and everybody who supported us for this documentary. About two months ago, I became a father, and my hope to my daughter is that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing violence, home demolitions, forced displacement that my community, Masafer Yatta, is facing every day. ‘No Other Land’ reflects the harsh reality we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.
YUVAL ABRAHAM (Israeli)
We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. We see each other. The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end; the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of Oct. 7, which must be freed. When I look at Basel, I see my brother. But we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws, that destroy lives, that he cannot control. There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country [USA] is helping to block this path. Why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living.
They are not recommending, or even mentioning the so-called two-state solution. What they demand is a solution “without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people”.
After the second world war and the holocaust it was understandable that the Jews would want a political state as a homeland, and that many of them would join the Zionist movement. They felt that it would be the only place where Jews could be safe. But today most Jews are safe, sound and prosperous living in other countries, especially, but not only, in the United States. So they can no longer argue that the Jewish State of Israel is necessary. In order to survive, the citizens of Israel would need to take what Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham demand: a state “without ethnic supremacy with national rights for both of our people”. Yes, that would be the solution, perhaps the only solution. But would it not mean the end of the Jewish state? It would. So the Israeli government will never permit it.
Doesn’t it look as though the founding of the Jewish State of Israel may have been a colossal geopolitical mistake! I think it was, and that is why I have changed my mind – from being an admirer and supporter of Israel to being an opponent of its very existence as a Jewish state, one that has been accused by the United Nations as being in the process of committing genocide against the Palestinian people.