The news of the Israeli attack in Lebanon1 happened to coincide for me with a return to Auschwitz, as a guide for a group of visitors. The two experiences were superimposed in an agonizing way, and I’m still trying to untangle the reasons for my distress.
The signs of the slaughter of forty years ago in the place where it occurred are still present: they hit you like a hammer. It’s not surprising that Hitler’s massacre solidified the bonds between those who escaped, making them potentially a nation, and that it bestowed on them a prodigious will thanks to which, within a few years, they defeated the coalition of Arab nations and British hostility, miraculously constructing a new state. The terrible violence that was suffered legimatized to a certain extent the violence practiced; in fact, Israel was immediately recognized by all the great powers, by the Soviet Union and the countries of the Eastern bloc first among all. In Israel the Jews of the Diaspora recognized and identified themselves to a greater or lesser degree: it was the country of the Bible, the heir to all the strains of Jewish culture, the redeeming land, the ideal homeland of all Jews.
The decades that followed have eroded and distorted this image. The Arab world, which has been defeated in battle many times, has accumulated toward Israel an intense hatred, perceiving in the new state the cause of its age-old ills, and hardening in its position of denial. As happens, denial has responded to denial; Israel, less and less the Holy Land, more and more the military state, is starting to act like the other countries of the Middle East, with their radicalism, their distrust of negotiation.
The current attack on Lebanon was not unmotivated; the PLO has provoked Israel over a long period of time, it has never agreed to negotiate, it persists in not recognizing Israel (which it continues to call “the Zionist entity”); but the violence with which the attack was carried out frightened the world. I’m not ashamed to admit my own wrenching sorrow. I have a bond with this country, and in a certain sense feel it as a second homeland. I would like it to be different from all other countries, and for that very reason I feel distress and shame for this undertaking. I distrust success achieved with an unprincipled use of arms. I feel indignant toward those who hastily compare the Israeli generals with the Nazi generals, and yet I have to admit that Begin draws such judgments on himself. With dismay I observe the solidarity of the countries of Europe weakening. I fear that this undertaking, with its frightening cost in lives, will inflict on Judaism a degradation difficult to cure, and will damage its image. I sense in myself, not without surprise, a profound emotional link with Israel, but not with this Israel.
The Palestinian problem exists: it can’t be denied. It can’t be resolved in the Arafat manner, by denying Israel the right to exist, but it cannot be resolved in the Begin manner, either. Anwar Sadat was neither a genius nor a saint; he was only a man endowed with imagination, common sense, and courage, and he was killed because he had opened up a pathway. Is there no one, in Israel or elsewhere, who is capable of continuing it?
La Stampa, June 24, 1982
1. On June 6, 1982, Israel, under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, sent troops to invade Lebanon, with the goal of expelling Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.