 |  |
Click for Contents
|
P.O. Box 1805,Jerusalem 91017 Tel. 972-2-531-5440, Fax: 972-2-537-9489 Advertising Fax: 972-2-531-5425, Email Editorial: [email protected] Subscriptions: [email protected] Web site: http://www.jrep.com |
The Back Page with Noah Flug: �We Jews, in particular, must be careful with our language�
The comments by Boim, who later backtracked, prompted a wide range of responses from Israeli politicians, with condemnations from much of the left and center and demands that he resign, and some criticism of Boim from within his own Likud party. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, for instance, opined that, "There are things that simply shouldn�t be said, or even thought." And Likud colleague Ronnie Bar-On asserted that, "The terrorism is being perpetrated by murderers deliberately and viciously, not because of some birth flaw."
But there were also voices in the Knesset that went further than Boim. Shas�s Nissim Ze�ev, for instance, was emphatic that "The Arabs have a real genetic problem." And Yehiel Hazan, leader of the Likud�s settlement faction, declared that "Arabs have been massacring Jews for decades. You can�t trust an Arab even if he�s been dead for 40 years. It is in their blood -- murdering Jews is a natural act." The Arabic website of Israel�s Hadash party promptly loaded onto its homepage, beneath the headline, "The Genes, Once Again," photographs of Boim, Hazan and Hitler.
The Report asked Lodz-born Noah Flug, 79, an Auschwitz survivor who came to Israel in 1958 and chairs the roof Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel to react to the comments and the outcry.
The Jerusalem Report: What do you think of the suggestion that some genetic deficiency may be prompting Arab terrorism?
Noah Flug: I find these kinds of generalizations unacceptable. I endured a period when it was said that Jews were racially flawed. We are a people who were singled out as being worth less, as belonging to a race that didn�t need to live, as people who didn�t deserve to live. It was said that we were polluting the superior race, the German Ayran race ... such characterizations had very practical consequences. Take Poland, where I grew up, and where there were 3 or 3.5 million Jews before the Nazi occupation. Of those who were in the camps and the ghettos, only 40,000 survived.
Do you see a danger that this kind of thinking, and these kinds of statements, among Israeli leaders, will lead to Israel taking extreme actions against the Palestinians, against Arabs?
I don�t see that happening, no. But there is always a danger about where this kind of thinking will lead. So I would greatly warn against it. Jews, in particular, we who have had similar generalizations made against us, must be careful with our language.
Should Boim resign or be asked by the prime minister to resign?
No. But he should make clear that he didn�t mean it. I think he didn�t really mean what he said. Or at least that he didn�t consider it well enough.
I actually know Ze�ev Boim, and usually he is a man who chooses his words carefully. [Boim said subsequently from the Knesset podium that he had been merely asking legitimate and vital questions about Islamic extremism. "I asked where this phenomenon was rooted. I used question marks, not excalamation marks," he said. Former Meretz leader Yossi Sarid retorted that "there are questions that contain the answer within them. He should say �sorry� and not be disingenuous." In a later TV interview, Boim said he did regret his reference to a genetic flaw, which had "slipped out" and which he did not believe. Faced by the relentless and appalling phenomenon of the suicide bombings, he said, he had "run out of words" to deal with what Israel has been going through.]
Do you think many Israeli Jews feel there is something fundamentally different about Arabs?
Most survivors certainly don�t feel this way. But I do see a tendency, a trend, because of these despicable murders, the suicide bombings: I don�t believe there is hatred of all Arabs, but there is a bafflement. How can it be that young men and women, that fathers of children, that mothers, are doing things that are not acceptable to the civilized and enlightened world. It raises many questions.
And how do you answer them?
Of course, there is something unacceptable to me in suicide bombings and murder. But to say that this is a trait among all Arabs, that it is the consequence of a genetic flaw....
[What is happening here] is a function of the situation, of education. They live in these conditions that are hard to live in. Life is cheap. There are ideologies and organizations that push them into violence and indoctrinate them and tell them that paradise awaits them. There is the absence of a political solution. There is abuse of their religion. I don�t think all Muslims are murderers and suicide bombers. But there are Hamas and Al-Qaeda and others, who pervert religion and exploit the naivety of those they indoctrinate.
And the answer to all that is that we must find a way to separate peaceably, and hope that over the years this will bring normalized relations. And despite everything, I�m still optimistic.
March 22, 2004
Israel
|
 |
|
© The Jerusalem Report 1999-2004 |  |