Reaching back to Hitler’s prewar correspondence, a preeminent Holocaust scholar warned world leaders at a state dinner at the Israeli presidential residence Wednesday night that anti-Semitism “is not a Jewish illness, but a non-Jewish one” that threatened all their countries with a “deadly cancer.”
Jerusalem was overflowing with Western presidents, premiers and potentates, all descending on the Holy City to recall the Holocaust and speak out against anti-Semitism some 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz.
But an event that might seem to be focused squarely on the past has been caught up in controversies and concerns of the present, with violence against Jews on the rise in Europe and North America, and with a noisy row between Russia and Poland over their roles in the start of World War II playing out this week on Israeli turf.
Yehuda Bauer — a 95-year-old historian and adviser to Yad Vashem, the hillside Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem — told the monarchs, presidents and premiers at the dinner that Hitler had pushed for war not to give Germany living space, or “lebensraum,” but because he believed war was inevitable to prevent “all of humanity” from being subjected to “international Jewry.”
“A central Nazi motivation for the war was a hatred of Jews,” Bauer said. “This was no propaganda, but a deeply held belief that demanded action to prevent the physical annihilation of the German people at the hands of the chimera he and millions of others believed, and still believe in — of a secret cabal, of an invented international Jewry, that controls both East and West.
“ISIS and Qaeda disseminate this today,” Bauer added, using an alternate name for the Islamic State. “World war was a result.”
Noting that World War II had killed some 35 million people, of whom only about 5.6 million to 5.7 million were Jews who died in the Holocaust, Bauer said: “Some 29 million were non-Jews from Europe and North America, who died in large part because of the hatred of Jews — and the majority of these victims were Soviet citizens.
“Anti-Semitism is not a Jewish illness, but a non-Jewish one,” he continued. “It is a cancer that kills and destroys your nations and your societies and your countries. So there are, my friends, 29 million reasons for you to fight anti-Semitism. Not because of the Jews, but to protect your societies from a deadly cancer.
“Don’t you think,” he concluded, “that 29 million reasons are enough?”
‘Leave history for the historians,’ Israel’s president said.
The ongoing battle among Russia, Poland and other nations over the history of the Holocaust and responsibility for World War II, which overshadowed the gathering in Jerusalem, came in for pointed criticism from Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin.
“Historical research should be left to historians,” Rivlin said in remarks at the start of the state dinner Wednesday night. “The role of political leaders is to shape the future. Leave history for the historians.”
Rivlin — who shared a head table with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the monarchs of Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg — urged that the point of the Holocaust forum not be lost in the noise of such nationalist-tinged disputes.
“I hope and pray that from this room, the message will go out to every country on Earth: that the leaders of the world will stand united, will stand united together in the fight against racism, anti-Semitism and extremism,” he said.
“In defending democracy and democratic values,” he added. “This is the call of our time. This is our challenge.”
Those in the soaring reception room, repurposed to accommodate a state dinner, included only a handful of senior Israeli officials: the foreign minister, Supreme Court chief justice, military chief of staff, speaker of Parliament and mayor of Jerusalem. Others were relegated to an outside tent.
The Israeli opposition leader, Benny Gantz, who is battling Netanyahu in a third straight election in March, was seated next to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who officials said had been invited by Rivlin’s office in an acknowledgment of the importance to Israel of maintaining bipartisan ties to the United States.
The two would seem to have plenty to discuss: Pelosi has the impeachment process against President Donald Trump, while Gantz is seeking to dislodge Netanyahu at the ballot box and has vowed to deny him parliamentary immunity from prosecution on outstanding corruption charges.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser on matters including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was expected to attend the Rivlin dinner but canceled, citing bad weather in Davos, Switzerland, where he participated in the World Economic Forum.
The kings of Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands, Britain’s Prince Charles and the presidents of Russia, France, Germany, Italy and Ukraine are among those leading nearly 50 delegations attending the events. They culminate in an afternoon ceremony Thursday at Yad Vashem.
Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi death camps, was a vast complex in occupied Poland near the town of Oswiecim that received some 1.1 million Jews and 200,000 Poles, Russians, Roma and others between 1940 and 1945, of whom 1.1 million were killed.
For Israel, the participation of so many world leaders is a point of pride: Only the funerals of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and former President Shimon Peres attracted more, officials say.
But the turnout also points to the seriousness with which anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence is viewed in the West and in Israel — and offers representatives of countries considered hotbeds of anti-Jewish hatred a chance at least to demonstrate their revulsion for it on an international stage.
The event at Yad Vashem will feature speeches by representatives from four of the main Allied powers: Vice President Mike Pence, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Prince Charles and President Emmanuel Macron of France. Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has called World War II a “German crime” and apologized for the Holocaust, will also speak, as will Rivlin, Netanyahu and event organizers.
Jerusalem is only the first stop for some of the leaders participating. The actual anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Red Army troops, on Jan. 27, 1945, will be observed, as it is each year, at the site of the infamous death camp Monday. In addition, Rivlin is to address the German Bundestag, in Hebrew, at Steinmeier’s invitation Jan. 29.
As Poland and Russia duel, Israel is caught in the crossfire.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, was invited to the Jerusalem gathering but declined to attend over a perceived snub: He was not given a speaking slot, though Putin was.
The two have been engaged in a bitter dispute for months, with each accusing the other of trying to rewrite — and weaponize — history: Putin has sought to portray the Soviet Union as having saved the world from Nazism and to ignore its own 1939 nonaggression pact with Germany, and has framed Poland as more a perpetrator than a victim of the Holocaust. Duda argues that the Soviet agreement with Germany paved the way to war and that Putin is reviving old Stalinist propaganda as a modern-day cudgel.
“I am sorry to say this, but President Putin is knowingly spreading historical lies,” Duda said in an interview with Israeli public television that aired Tuesday.
Fueling speculation that the Jerusalem gathering was being given a pro-Russian tilt is that its main organizer is Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, a Russian-Jewish billionaire with close ties to Putin. His group, the World Holocaust Forum Foundation, held similar events in Poland in 2005 and 2010, Ukraine in 2006, and the Czech Republic in 2015.
But Yad Vashem’s chairman, Avner Shalev, said in an interview that Kantor had not exerted any such influence: “It’s not true.” Decisions on who would speak were made many months ago, he said, and to bend to accommodate Duda would be untenable when many other leaders were denied similar requests.
Shalev said he believed that having so many heads of state, government and parliaments making such a collective demonstration of resolve to fight anti-Semitism was well worth it, though he acknowledged that the Russia-Poland crossfire has been a headache.
“We’re in the business of historical truth,” he said. “We don’t want to play any political game.”
A last-minute casualty of the dispute was President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, who pulled out of the Yad Vashem event Tuesday, reportedly in solidarity with Duda. Nauseda has joined Duda in accusing Putin of trying to sanitize Russia’s 1939 pact with Hitler.
Rivlin and Netanyahu shared a head table with the monarchs of Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
The Israeli opposition leader, Benny Gantz, who is battling Netanyahu in a third straight election in March, was seated next to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who officials said had been invited by Rivlin’s office in an acknowledgment of the importance of Israel’s maintaining bipartisan ties to the United States.
The two would seem to have plenty to discuss: Pelosi has the impeachment process against President Donald Trump, while Gantz is seeking to dislodge Netanyahu at the ballot box and has vowed to deny him parliamentary immunity from prosecution on outstanding corruption charges.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser on matters including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was expected to attend the Rivlin dinner but canceled, citing bad weather in Davos, Switzerland, where he participated in the World Economic Forum.
Israeli bodyguards get a French earful, in English.
President Emmanuel Macron of France erupted at Israeli security officers late Wednesday before entering a French church in the Old City of Jerusalem, apparently angered by something that had occurred outside.
Witnesses said he demanded to enter the Church of St. Anne, a 12th-century Roman church near Lion’s Gate that was restored by the French government after the 1967 Six-Day War, with his own security only, and not with Israeli bodyguards.
“Please respect the rules,” Macron said in English, his voice at times rising into a shout. “They are for centuries. They will not change with me, I can tell you. So everybody respects the rules. Please.”
Macron appeared to be objecting to something that occurred before entering the church. “I don’t like what you did in front of me,” he told Israeli security officers. “Go outside. I’m sorry. But we know the rules. Nobody — nobody has to provoke. Nobody! OK?”
The French presidency said later Wednesday that Macron had reacted to an “altercation” between French and Israeli security forces but that there was “nothing serious” and that his visit had continued without further issue.
The French Consulate in Jerusalem is the protector of French holy sites and religious communities in the city, among them the Church of St. Anne. France formally treats Jerusalem as a “corpus separatum” with special legal status under United Nations Resolution 181, dating to 1947, a consulate spokeswoman said.
The fracas was reminiscent of a scuffle between Israeli police and then-President Jacques Chirac in 1996, in which he accused them of aggressively pushing and shoving his entourage and preventing him from mingling with bystanders. The rough treatment drew an apology from the young Israeli prime minister, then in his first year in office: Benjamin Netanyahu.
Among the monarchs assembled was the King of Jerusalem.
That is not a mistake.
In a little-known historical footnote, King Felipe VI of Spain is the current holder of that title, a holdover from the Crusader era.
The short-lived Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded in 1099 by Godfrey of Bouillon, who called himself “Defender of the Holy Sepulcher.” His successor, Baldwin I, was the first King of Jerusalem.
The kingdom collapsed with the fall of Acre in 1291, but the title bounced around through the centuries, passing from one European noble house to another, then spawning competing claims by royals as far afield as Cyprus, Naples and Austria. It currently rests with King Felipe.
Chosen to speak on behalf of the gathered dignitaries Wednesday night, Felipe invoked Spanish-born Jewish philosopher Maimonedes, saying that “all the great evils” originate in ignorance.
He called on other world leaders to show an “unyielding commitment” to fighting “the ignorant intolerance, hatred and the total lack of human empathy that permitted and gave birth to the Holocaust.”
“There is no room for indifference in the presence of racism, xenophobia, hate speech and anti-Semitism,” he added.
Police and diplomats prep for biggest visit in years.
Tiny Israel has never had to tend to so many VIPs at once, complete with overnight stays and scores of elaborate schedules, and its diplomatic corps, police force and other government agencies were scrambling to prepare. (Leaders who attended the Rabin and Peres funerals mostly flew in and out on the same day.)
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs employs only five protocol officers, but many others were pitching in, including retirees. At Ben-Gurion Airport, the ministry’s director-general, Yuval Rotem, was running from plane to plane to greet officials as their planes landed.
Some 10,000 police officers were being deployed to provide security and direct traffic, more than a third of the 29,000-strong nationwide force.
Asked on television what he feared most, Ofer Shomer, a local police commander, replied, “Fear is not a word that exists with us.” The Israel Police force, he said, was prepared for every scenario, from freak weather to sabotage.
King David Street, with its luxury hotels housing many leaders, was being “hermetically sealed,” police said. And no-fly zones for all aircraft, including drones, were established over the main gathering points: Yad Vashem, the Israeli president’s residence, and the Crowne Plaza hotel, where Pence will be staying.
At the presidential residence, the turnstilelike parade of important visitors made for broad comedy when there were logjams: Macron, leaving a meeting with Rivlin, grabbed a camera and played photographer as the president of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, took his seat.
Residence officials, meanwhile, detailed the preparations for Wednesday’s dinner with breathless detail, noting even that “the grand piano has been tuned.”
But the home’s modest proportions were not enough to accommodate all 250 attendees. Only 60 ranking guests were to be seated indoors, in a soaring room showcasing 1970s-era Israeli art. Their “plus-ones” were to dine in a tent outside.
The gathering came smack in Israel’s wintry rainy season. And with heavy downpours and even some flurries drenching Jerusalem on Tuesday, the president’s aides also mustered hundreds of portable heaters to keep the luminaries stuck outside from freezing.
The spotlight is landing on a country in political turmoil.
For Israel, the gathering comes at a somewhat awkward time, when its political system is paralyzed by a deadlock that has prevented the country from forming a new government. Two elections last year each ended more or less in a tie.
A third ballot is set for March 2, and Netanyahu, the longtime right-wing leader, is again being challenged by Benny Gantz, a centrist who was once the army chief of staff. Netanyahu, who awaits trial on corruption charges, remains at the helm of an interim government.
At a campaign kickoff Tuesday night, Netanyahu resumed inciting against Arab Israelis, saying Gantz would need their support to form a government. “What’s worse: A fourth election or a left-wing government dependent for its survival on parties that support terrorism?” he asked.
Netanyahu also sought to make the most of a series of bilateral meetings with leaders in Jerusalem for the event, officials say.
At breakfast with the French president, Netanyahu said in a video he posted afterward, he pressed Macron to “deal with” the murder of Sarah Halimi, 65, a French Jew who was killed and thrown from her Paris window in 2017. A French court ruled in December that the killer, a native of Mali, was “not criminally responsible” for his actions. French Jews are a small but growing constituency in Israel.
Gantz, who also met with Macron and was expected to sit with Pelosi as well, has been courting right-wing support, and Tuesday he sought to match Netanyahu’s pledge to annex the Jordan Valley, a strategic strip of the occupied West Bank.
But Gantz said he would only do so in coordination with the international community, and then dared Netanyahu to act on his own promise to prove it was not just empty campaign rhetoric.
The one-upsmanship prompted Nikolay E. Mladenov, the United Nations special envoy to the region, to warn that Israeli annexation would deal a “devastating blow” to the chances for reviving peace talks and to the prospects for a two-state solution.
Some hope that courting Putin could spring an Israeli from a Russian jail.
Many Israelis were hoping that Putin, the Russian leader, would arrive bearing good news about the fate of one young woman.
The country has been gripped for months by the plight of Naama Issachar, an Israeli American citizen who was arrested before boarding a connecting flight at the Moscow airport on her way home to Israel last April when authorities found a few grams of marijuana in her luggage. She was sentenced in October to 7 1/2 years in prison on drug possession and smuggling charges, prompting an outcry in Israel.
It soon became clear that Issachar, 26, had become an unwitting player in a proposed international prisoner swap involving a Russian hacker who was facing extradition from Israel to the United States on computer crime charges, and whom Russia wanted back.
The hacker has since been extradited. Issachar remains in a Russian prison.
Netanyahu, who spoke by phone with Putin last week, said he discerned a “genuine readiness to reach a solution” and anticipated talking about a pardon for Issachar in a meeting with the Russian president set for Thursday.
Reports on Wednesday, citing an unnamed Kremlin aide, said Putin was to meet Issachar’s mother during his visit to Israel on Thursday.
Speculation about the price Israel could pay for a pardon, or at least for Issachar’s transfer to Israeli detention, has centered on historical Russian claims to valuable properties in downtown Jerusalem or in the Old City, or an Israeli show of support for Putin in his current dispute with Poland over World War II history.
Israel and Russia have also been working to ease simmering tensions over a crackdown in Israel on Russians entering the country as tourists, then overstaying or seeking asylum in order to work. In a tit-for-tat, Israeli tourists have been held up at Moscow airport.
Israeli officials maintain that quiet diplomacy is the best way to free Issachar. Her mother, Yaffa Issachar, urged activists campaigning for her daughter’s release not to hold protests and to treat Putin “with respect.”
Israel is also paying deference to Russia with a symbolic gesture: Putin will speak Thursday morning at the dedication of a monument in Jerusalem’s popular Sacher Park to the victims of the German siege of Leningrad, a 900-day ordeal that led to the deaths of some 1 million civilians and left enduring scars on the Russian national psyche.
Some Israelis take umbrage at the festive atmosphere.
The partylike mood created by the gathering in Jerusalem, despite its somber purpose, gave rise to a good deal of bitterness and ridicule from some in Israel.
Reports that only 30 or 40 Holocaust survivors would attend the centerpiece event at Yad Vashem — out of nearly 800 guests in total, including many politicians and wealthy donors to the various organizations involved — led several government ministers to offer up their seats to survivors.
About 215,000 survivors are living in Israel, 45,000 of them below the poverty line, according to the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel.
An editorial cartoon in the newspaper Yediot Ahronot depicted one survivor in a decrepit room, a debt notice beside him, warming his hands on a space heater and watching a red-carpet arrival on television, saying, “How nice that the leaders are coming to honor us.”
The hosts of a public radio show derided what they said had become the “Holocaust forum holiday,” including a reception being held by the mayor of Jerusalem, complete with a DJ and an after-party, in an ancient cave beneath the old city. “I think we’ve lost it,” said one, Assaf Lieberman.
His co-host, Kalman Liebskind, complained about the doting coverage of a chef preparing food for some of the world leaders. “I thought of my mother, who in October 1944 was in Birkenau, she was naked and starving,” he said.
“If she were sitting in front of the television, alive, yesterday,” he said, “she would explode.”
And Shoshana Chen, a survivor’s daughter, said in a radio interview that world leaders needed to do more than give lip service to fighting violence against Jews. “It’s not enough to say never again,” she said. “What are the steps they intend to take to combat anti-Semitism? The honorable Mr. Macron, what exactly is he doing to root out anti-Semitism in his country? Paris Jews are afraid to walk in the street.”
c.2020 The New York Times Company
