[nasional_list] [ppiindia] 'I don't consider them monsters'
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- Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:45:20 +0100
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**http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/686646.html
'I don't consider them monsters'
By Tom Segev
Uri Avnery returned this week from a demonstration in Bil'in, and
immediately sat down to write his weekly article, as he has been doing for the
past 50 years, as opinionated and energetic as a colt. The former editor of
Haolam Hazeh (a now-defunct weekly newspaper) is 83 years old, writes on the
Internet now, and says he has never had as many readers.
Former MK Avnery was surrounded by admirers beginning in the 1950s, but
most of the time he was condemned and cursed, and even harmed physically,
because he was considered a dangerous traitor. He was one of the first Israelis
who understood that an Arab state should be established on the West Bank and in
the Gaza Strip, and initiated talks with Palestinian leaders, including Yasser
Arafat. During that period, the PLO refused to recognize Israel, and Israel
refused to recognize the PLO. As the years passed, there was an increase in the
number of Palestinians and Israelis who understood that the path represented by
Avnery was the correct one. What was once considered in Israel to be lunatic
extremism, and was even outlawed, became the country's official policy. That is
why there is reason to ask Avnery about Hamas.
"We have returned to exactly the point where we were when the PLO refused
to recognize Israel and Israel refused to recognize the PLO," said Avnery this
week. "Total deja vu."
In
In that case, do you suggest talking to them, as you did in the past?
"Absolutely. I suggest that the Israeli government declare its
willingness to conduct negotiations with the recognized representative of the
Palestinian people, on the basis of existing agreements. If they want to come -
fine. If they don't - we haven't lost anything."
But they are religious; doesn't that make negotiations with them more
difficult?
"More difficult and better: It's like the saying that only the Likud can
make peace. The advantage of Hamas is that it doesn't have Hamas as an
opposition. Whatever you conclude with Hamas will be acceptable to everyone.
They will bring Islamic Jihad under control, just as [the Jews] did in the case
of Lehi [a pre-State right-wing extremist group].
"Religious belief does not have to prevent them from adopting a flexible
policy, if they so desire. Islam forbids them to give up the Land of Israel,
but it allows for a hudna - i.e. a cease-fire, even for 100 years. I have
always been opposed to temporary agreements, but from a religious point of view
there is no reason not to sign a temporary arrangement even for 5,000 years. We
can start with one year, for the purpose of negotiations. At most, we will
write in the preamble to the agreement that we are not surrendering our right
to the Land of Israel from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, and
they will say that they are not surrendering their right to the land from the
river to the sea."
And what about the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which are mentioned
in their convention?
"The convention is nonsense. Nobody reads such conventions or knows what
is written in a convention. The PLO officially abolished its convention years
after the signing of the Oslo Accords.
"I don't need a declaration that they recognize the State of Israel;
their very willingness to talk with us could be considered recognition. We can
talk to the PLO, rather than with Hamas itself, we can talk to the president -
there are all kinds of ways. I am encouraged by the fact that they are talking
about withdrawal to the 1967 borders. That's the same as the PLO."
And the terror?
"The demand that they stop the terror is a reasonable condition, in my
opinion: I believe that Hamas can stop the terror of Islamic Jihad, and if they
don't do so - there will be no talks. But there won't be terror, because Hamas
is attentive to Palestinian public opinion, which does not want terror. The
fact is that they stopped it before the elections. Therefore, there is also a
chance that Hamas will agree to talks with us, if we want them, because this is
an organization that wants to remain in power."
They said the same thing about the Nazis.
"That's completely baseless. It's like comparing the snow on Mt. Everest
to the snow on Mt. Tabor, only because both are mountains. There is no place
for such a comparison."
Are you familiar with Hamas?
"I'm not familiar with [Ismail] Haniyeh, but I do know Mahmoud al-Zahar.
Don't forget that Gush Shalom [the Israel Peace Bloc, founded by Avnery] began
in the wake of the expulsion of 415 Hamas members to Lebanon. At the time we
set up a tent opposite the Prime Minister's Office, we sat there for 45 days,
even in the snow; after a year they brought them all back. They invited me to
Gaza, they wanted me to be a guest speaker. I got onto the platform with two
little flags in my lapel, one Israeli and one Palestinian; I spoke in Hebrew. I
saw about 500 black beards in front of me. Mine was the only white one. They
invited me for a meal. I saw that they were not monsters. There are all kinds,
just as in Shas: If their rabbi wants, he curses and condemns, and if he wants
- he becomes very flexible."
What happened to Adolf?
Manus Diamant, who died this week at the age of 83, was a machinery
importer from Ramat Gan, but he was one of those Israelis with breathtaking
stories: Adolf Eichmann?s three sons owe him their lives.
Eichmann escaped, but in 1947 his wife and children were still living in
Austria. Some Holocaust survivors decided to catch him. Diamant managed to
become friendly with Frau Eichmann, in the hope of discovering her husband's
hiding place through her. At a certain point, he became a kind of family
friend, and played with the sons: "What an irony of fate!" he later wrote in
his autobiography ("Hamesima Eichmann"; "Mission Eichmann," published by Yaron
Golan): The son of the man on whose order about one and half million Jewish
children were killed, sat on my lap and I caressed him." The children called
him "Uncle Henry."
Once he found himself on a boat, in the middle of a lake, with Eichmann's
three sons. He considered drowning them in revenge, or even kidnapping them, in
order to force Eichmann to come out of hiding. His friends, Asher Ben Natan -
who was living in Vienna in order to smuggle Holocaust survivors to Palestine -
Simon Wiesenthal and Tuvia Friedman convinced him that harming Eichmann's
children could only cause damage.
On the other hand, Diamant managed to become friendly with one of
Eichmann's friends, a woman by the name of Maria. He pretended to be a Nazi
from Holland, an amateur photographer, and he won her over. Once he was sitting
in her house, showing her photographs of his, and she showed him her photo
album. "For the most part, they were close and distant relatives," wrote
Diamant. "Suddenly she stopped and called my attention to the figure of a man
with a sharp nose and pursed lips: 'That's Adolf,' she called out, sighing: 'My
Adolf. Who knows what has happened to him.'" Diamant sent the police to her,
and they confiscated the album.
There has been a longstanding and passionate debate over the question of
who did what in order to "capture" Eichmann; apparently there is no debate over
the fact that the photo that Manus Diamant managed to extract from Maria was
the first, and for a long time the only picture that Eichmann?s pursuers had.
Diamant was one of the founders of the Masua Institute for Holocaust
Studies at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak. In the Haaretz archives there are letters he
wrote to the editors condemning the playing of Wagner's music and trips by
Israeli presidents to Germany. The number of people like him is declining fast:
"We are attending their funerals one after the other,? said one of the
participants in the funeral. But among those who eulogized him was a young
woman who spoke in the name of The Sons of Nasha Grupa, or ?Our Group.? Diamant
was one of the founders of this group, which helped Jews to be saved: The Sons
of Nasha Grupa, most of them native Israelis, live this story as though it were
their own.
Kaddish in spite of him
In the Yemin Moshe neighborhood in Jerusalem there is a small conference
hall that bears the name of Konrad Adenauer, who was the first chancellor of
West Germany. This week, several dozen people gathered there for one of the
ceremonies that is worth remembering in the history of Israeli culture.
Everything was run properly, in the spirit of European culture, beginning
with the pretty taped song sung in German. When the moderator asked who in the
audience was not familiar with the song - only two hands were raised, and the
moderator, Yigal Lossin, understood that there was no need to explain. Lossin
is the Israeli biographer of Heinrich Heine, the poet who died 150 years ago
this week. The event in the Konrad Adenauer auditorium was described as a
"memorial service." Yosef Tsur read from his translations into Hebrew, Orna
Porat read them in German, there were also a singer and a pianist - and then
came the climax: Prof. Yehuda Friedlander, former rector of Bar-Ilan
University, came on stage to say the Kaddish prayer for the deceased.
Heine was born a Jew and converted to Christianity, but in recent years
Israel decided to bring the prodigal son home, as though he had not been
serious when he converted: Municipalities have named streets after him and a
stamp was issued, one reason being the pressure by one of his admirers, former
MK Geula Cohen, who came to the service and to the Kaddish.
The invitation cited several lines written by Heine:
No mass will be sung,No Kaddish will be said,
Neither saying nor song On the days I lay dying.
Lossin said that they decided to do it to spite him, and Friedlander
promised the audience that there are arbiters of halakha (Jewish law) who have
ruled that it is possible, permissible and desirable to recite Kaddish even
over converted Jews: he mentioned Moses Isserles - the Rama (a major 16th
century Ashkenazi rabbi), and many Hasidic rabbinical leaders. They consider
him a Jew even though he sinned, and that is more than the Law of Return does:
The law does not apply to Jews who have converted to another religion.
But Heine's admirers in Jerusalem want him to be one of them. One after
another they stood up, bowed their heads, and with extraordinary seriousness,
even grief, mumbled the words of the Kaddish the way they had hummed the song
of the Lorelei previously, as though it were just yesterday that the deceased
had left us
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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