Grapevine July 8, 2020: Blurring of the lines between fact and fiction

Movers and shakers in Israeli society.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
KIM KARDASHIAN and Kanye West in Beverly Hills during the 92nd Academy Awards in Los Angeles. (photo credit: DANNY MOLOSHOK/ REUTERS)
KIM KARDASHIAN and Kanye West in Beverly Hills during the 92nd Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
(photo credit: DANNY MOLOSHOK/ REUTERS)
The true historian must always grapple with fake news in trying to distinguish between fact and fiction, without allowing personal ideology or religious beliefs to get in the way.
One such historian is Yitzhak Noy, who runs a weekly program on Israel Radio’s Reshet Bet in which he hosts a panel usually comprising fellow historians, who speak about a major historical event the anniversary of which falls in that week or that month.
The Holocaust, directly or indirectly gets mentioned in a variety of contexts, occasionally giving Noy the opportunity to speak up about what he considers to be myth – namely, that the Nazis made soap out of Jewish bodies. Yad Vashem has debunked such stories, but they have been believed by many people for years, and even confirmed by Holocaust survivors. As far back as 1990, Yad Vashem unequivocally declared that the Nazis did not make soap out of Jewish bodies. At that time, one of the leading experts on the Holocaust, Prof. Yehuda Bauer, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that ‘the Nazis did enough horrible things during the Holocaust. We do not have to go on believing untrue stories.”
Noy was willing to concede that he might be mistaken and turned to Prof. Dina Porat, professor emeritus of modern Jewish history at the department of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University and the chief historian of Yad Vashem, who not only answered this question, by stating that the Nazis committed terrible atrocities but did not make soap out of Jewish corpses, but she also listed some other myths that do a disservice to Holocaust memory.
Among them were that the King of Denmark, riding his horse and wearing a yellow star, came to comfort Denmark’s Jews at the synagogue on Yom Kippur. Danish Jews were not forced to wear a yellow star.
Another myth, perpetuated by Holocaust survivor and best-selling author Yehiel Dinur, who wrote under the pseudonym of Ka-Tsetnik, was that the Nazis maintained a Jewish brothel in Auschwitz. While officers and camp guards had sexual relations with other prisoners, Jewish women were off limits because they were regarded as less than human.
As for Dinur, Porat said that even though he contended that he had been in Auschwitz for two years, in actual fact he had been there for four months, and many of the horrors and perversions recounted in his books were figments of his imagination.
Noy notes that with antisemitism and Holocaust denial once again becoming rampant throughout the world, it is important that information about the Holocaust be as accurate as possible. The telling of myths plays into the hands of the enemies of the Jewish people.
■ RESTRICTIONS ON the number of people to congregate at both private and public gatherings could not prevent Kazakhstan Ambassador Satybaldy Burshakov from celebrating the 80th birthday of his country’s first post-Soviet president Nursultan Nazarbayev, along with city day, honoring Kazakhstan’s capital, which in March 2019 was renamed from Astana to Nur-Sultan in tandem with Nazarbayev’s decision to step down after having led his country for three decades.
Burshakov hosted a forum and luncheon at the Dan Accadia hotel in Herzliya, attended by two former prime ministers of Israel, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, each of whom has paid several visits to Kazakhstan, and who spoke glowingly of their impressions of the country, their meetings with Nazarbayev and of the flourishing bilateral relationship on many levels. Barak was particularly taken with the architectural beauty and the academic standards of the university in what was then Astana, and Olmert recalled that before he was prime minister, he signed the first trade agreement between Israel and Kazakhstan.
Other guests included several diplomats, most from former Soviet countries such as dean of the diplomatic corps and Ukraine Ambassador Hennadii Nadolenko and Russian Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov, but also a few non-diplomats with close ties to Kazakhstan.
At the pre-forum cocktail gathering, there was a display of enlarged photographs of Nazarbayev’s visit to Israel in 1995, and his meetings with Israeli dignitaries, as well as photographs taken in Kazakhstan of Nazarbayev with Shimon Peres during his state visit in June-July 2009 and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his official visit in December 2016. Although Peres had previously visited Kazakhstan when he was foreign minister, he was the first Israeli head of state to visit the country; and later Netanyahu was the first Israeli head of government to visit Kazakhstan.
Speakers at the forum included Burshakov, Barak, Olmert, former ambassador to Kazakhstan Michael Brodsky, Haim Ben Yaakov of the EuroAsian Jewish Congress, and Victor Rodetsky, who was the official translator for Nazarbayev in Israel and Kazakhstan, and who has worked extensively with a series of Kazakhstan ambassadors.
Prior to the convening of the forum, a trio of Kazakhstan Embassy staff members, aiming for perfection, laid out the large flags of Kazakhstan and Israel on the carpeted floor, and carefully went over them with a steam iron to ensure that there would not be even a tiny crease.
Nazarbayev’s vision for global peace and tolerance was a repetitive theme among the speakers, who were lavish in their praise for his leadership. Olmert went a step further and commended him for making his own decision as to when to retire. He could have carried on, because he was very popular, said Olmert. But it was pointed out by more than one speaker that Nazarbayev decided to step down and let a younger man carry on his legacy.
Another recurring them in the speeches was Nazarbayev’s decision to move his country’s capital from Almaty, which is the largest city in Kazakhstan, to what was then Astana, which was little more than a backwoods hamlet in the middle of a desert. There was tremendous opposition to his decision, but Nazarbayev was resolute. Today Nur-Sultan, formally Astana, is a large forward-moving urban economic center in the heart of Eurasia.
Inasmuch as Nazarbayev reached out to the world and expanded political and economic ties through his diverse forums and congresses, most notably the triennial World Congress of World Leaders and Traditional Religions, initiated by Nazarbayev in 2003, which in addition to Peres was attended by chief rabbis Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger and Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau, his most outstanding act of leadership, according to Brodsky, was to get rid of Kazakhstan’s nuclear arsenal and to promote nuclear disarmament in general.
■ IT’S BAD enough when seasoned journalists keep giving the wrong address for the Prime Minister’s Residence, but when someone of the caliber of Yaron Deckel interviews Health Minister Yuli Edelstein and announces on weekend television that this is the first interview that Edelstein has given since taking office, that’s not only inaccurate but unfair. Edelstein was interviewed by Jerusalem Post Editor in Chief Yaakov Katz within the context of a wide-ranging specially filmed conference that was screened on Tuesday of last week to a worldwide audience. Taking credit when it’s due is fine, but taking credit when it’s not due is a form of larceny.
■ AUSTRALIAN AMBASSADOR Chris Canaan has retweeted a tweet of the Zionist Council of New South Wales in relation to Yuval Rotem, the outgoing director-general of the Foreign Ministry, and a former longtime ambassador to Australia, in which it states: “Yuval Rotem was the consummate diplomat, engaging, passionate, attentive, always willing to listen, and above all, a real mensch. He leaves an indelible mark both on Israel’s standing in the international community and Australia where he is cherished and respected.
■ APROPOS AUSTRALIA, the extended family of Jerusalem Post columnist and former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Isi Leibler has been mentioned several times in this column. Leibler’s parents were community leaders, his younger brother Mark has been a community leader, his nephew Jeremy is a community leader, Isi Leibler’s son Romy, before making aliyah, was a community leader, and other members of the Leibler family have distinguished themselves in various areas of community service and leadership.
Given the many years that Mark Leibler, an eminent lawyer, worked in the interests of the Australian Jewish community and Israel also fought for and defended the interests of the indigenous Australian population, it was in the cards that some Australian author would want to write Leibler’s biography.
As it worked out, the author, who happens to be Jewish, is one of Melbourne’s leading, award-winning journalists, Michael Gawenda, and the book, The Powerbroker: Mark Leibler an Australian Jewish Life, will be launched at a university named for another distinguished Australian Jew, Sir John Monash, who to this day is regarded as one of the most outstanding commanders of the Australian Army. The publisher is Monash University Publishing.
Throughout his career, Mark Leibler has rubbed shoulders with Australian politicians all the way to the top, and in fact a former Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, who has a keen interest in Israel, which she has visited several times, will be among the participants in the online June 20 launch of the book.
Also participating in the launch will be Noel Pearson, a prominent Australian lawyer and academic, who as an aboriginal has fought for reforms to restore the rights and dignity of his people.
■ THE LARGEST Independence Day celebration hosted by the head of a diplomatic mission in Israel is the annual Fourth of July bash at the residence of the US ambassador.
Under ordinary circumstances, Ambassador David Friedman might have hosted an Independence Day-cum-farewell gala at the residence in Herzliya, which has been the home of US ambassadors for well over half a century, and was recently put on the market. Or he might have preferred to host the Independence Day party at his Jerusalem residence in this, a US presidential election year. If President Donald Trump is reelected, Friedman’s tenure will in all likelihood be extended. But if Joe Biden, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, wins, then Friedman has just over six months left in which to complete his tenure.
However, COVID-19 got in the way of any major celebration, and considering that the US Embassy guest list sometimes had more than 3,000 names on it, it was really impossible to decide, in accordance with Health Ministry regulations, who the 50 permissible guests would be.
Instead, there was a video celebration, and Friedman tweeted: “Enjoy our 4th of July video celebrating 244 years of our Declaration of Independence. As stated perfectly by our founders, we are all endowed by our Creator – by God not man – with unalienable rights” that we must always preserve for every American for all time.
■ FRIEDMAN’S IMMEDIATE predecessor in office, former US ambassador Dan Shapiro, during one of the Independence Day receptions that he and his wife, Julie Fisher, hosted, took a selfie of them with president Peres. Fisher says it’s her favorite Independence Day photo – and posted it on her Facebook page.
■ NOW THAT rapper Kanye West has announced that he’s running for president in the 2020 elections, both Trump and Biden may be in trouble, unless West was simply spouting hot air. The announcement, coming in the midst of a Black Lives Matter campaign, could result in West getting even more votes than Barack Obama, providing that there are no legal obstacles to him running.
One of the things he will have to overcome is his predilection for profanities. That’s not how a president of the United States is supposed to talk. If West and his model wife, Kim Kardashian, turn out to be the next to hold sway in the Oval Office, among the Israelis who will be welcome guests will be Kardashian’s good friend Bar Refaeli.
What may help to change West’s mind about taking up residence in the White House is the dirt that the media will dig about him and his wife. Both have page-turner histories, and excerpts of stories from their joint and individual pasts would make for headline news daily.
■ SOME ISRAELIS, including American expats, object strongly to American political parties and to American Jews, as individuals and members of organizations, publicly voicing opinions about Israeli policies – especially those that may affect future relations with the Palestinians. But the truth is that the expats have only the American system to blame.
Other than expats who become diplomats or politicians or are heavily involved in security in their host countries, Americans abroad do not have to relinquish their citizenship and have full voting rights. Former ambassador to the United States, American-born Michael Oren told an AACI audience in Jerusalem that when accepting his appointment, the hardest thing for him was to give up his US citizenship.
Sometimes, what looks like Republican or Democratic interference in Israeli politics is actually at the request of their fellow Republicans or Democrats who live in Israel. For instance, a letter sent to the Democratic Party by a long list of American expats living in Israel who are Democratic voters and are formerly from many parts of the US “respectfully urge Democratic Party leaders to ensure that the Israel-Palestine section of the party’s platform expresses support for the security and rights of Israelis and Palestinians. We believe that the United States must be an honest and active broker in the region. A resolution of the conflict should be based upon a viable two-state solution, and we believe that unilateral annexation will endanger the best interest of Israelis, Palestinians and the Americans. We ask the Democratic Party to make this a central element of its vision for the Middle East in its 2020 Platform.”
The list includes academics, kibbutzniks, rabbis, civil society activists and media personalities. Among the signatories are Prof. Karen Alkalay-Gut, Prof. Bernard Avishai, Dr. Clinton Bailey, Sasha Balabin, Hillel Bardin, Judith Baumgold, Yehuda Beinin, Oded Carmi, Moshe Chertoff, Danya Cohen, Larry Derfner, Louis Frankenthaler, Prof. Galia Golan, Rabbi Arie Hasit, Rabbi Ron Kronish and Dr. Laura Wharton.
Political pundits say it’s too early to write off the Trump era, despite the fact that Trump is lagging behind Biden in the polls. He was lagging well behind Hillary Clinton, but in the final analysis he won the vote.
■ IN THE mid-1980s, long before he became governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer was consulted by then-prime minister Peres, who asked him to help Israel to overcome its severe economic crisis. Fischer, who had been recommended to Peres by US secretary of state George Schultz, who was a noted economist and a former secretary of the US Treasury, rose to the challenge of conquering an annual inflation rate of 400%. Peres never forgot what Fisher had done for Israel, and frequently spoke of this.
In March 2013, as he was completing his tenure as governor of the Bank of Israel, Fisher was awarded the prestigious Chaim Herzog Prize, in recognition for what he had done for Israel’s economy. Peres was then president and at the ceremony confessed that when he had initially turned to Fischer, he didn’t know enough about economics to argue with Fischer, and so he followed his advice and everything turned out exactly as Fischer had said it would. Peres also noted that in accepting the position of governor of the Bank of Israel, Fischer, who was already well established in the US, agreed to work at a much lower salary, and once again rescued Israel’s economy.
Without any disrespect for Finance Minister Israel Katz, who is really trying to find the best solutions to overcome the current economic catastrophe, perhaps it might be a good idea to once again call Fischer to the rescue. He is familiar with Israel’s economy and with the world economy, and if anyone can restore Israel’s status to that of the Promised Land, it is Fischer.
■ THE PEOPLE out front in almost any organization or institution are the ones who carry titles such as president, vice president, chairman, director-general, CEO, chancellor, etc. But the people who do all the work in raising funds for these institutions and organizations are usually in the background or mingling with potential donors. Now that times are really tough in terms of raising money for both investment and philanthropy, lawyer Adi Olmert, the CEO of the Friends of Tel Aviv University, initiated a meeting of the CEOs of Friends Associations and external relations departments from around the country, to see if they could collectively come up with out-of-the-box ideas for fund-raising.
The meeting was actually planned prior to the coronavirus lockdown, but was later rescheduled and given the title “Philanthropy, the day after corona.” Participants were excited to get together in person rather than via Zoom, and brainstormed for three hours, sharing information about personal goals, difficulties and key challenges. Hospitals focused on the need to purchase medical supplies, while universities were concerned about the depletion of student grants for those students in dire financial straits.
Olmert defined the principles of what she does as a journey driven by “human love, the power of people and the power of affluence to bring about change in the world,” emphasizing: “It’s a profession, not a job.” From the attendance it seems that it is a profession geared more to women than to men.
Most of the people present shared Olmert’s attitude, but Yona Bartal of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation said that her motivation came from a different place. “For me, raising money has always been for the state,” she said, referring to the period in which she had worked with Yitzhak Rabin and later with Shimon Peres in presenting the beautiful face of Israel.
Others among those attending included: Shira Ben-Or, vice president and CEO of the University of Haifa; Claudia Harel, partnerships and resource development director, Israeli Friends of the University of Haifa; Vered Grinboim, Sheba Friends Guild; Orly Meskin, Rabin Medical Center; Sigal Shamir, Shamir Medical Center; Vered Roth, Surasky Medical Center; Yael Goren Wegman, Weizmann Institute of Science; Yamit Shannon-Mizrahi, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; and Ofer Simhon of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The initiative was not a onetime phenomenon, but will be continued with the University of Haifa hosting the next brainstorming session.
■ EVEN BEFORE the introduction of the latest COVID-19 restrictions, Rabbi Shlomo Sobol, a 10th-generation Jerusalemite and the founder and president of the Barkai Center for Practical Rabbinics and Community Development, decided that the Shaarei Yona Menachem Synagogue in Modi’in, where he is the spiritual leader, would remain closed until further notice. Sobol says that his main priority at this time is to do whatever possible to keep his congregants healthy, and that he advises other rabbis to do the same.
Since most apartment complexes have balconies adjacent to each other and a lawn in front of the building, arranging a minyan should not be too difficult, and whoever is leading the service can do so from the lawn. This worked quite well during lockdown, and there is no reason why it should not do so again.
These balcony congregations have led people who seldom go to synagogue to participate, simply to feel a sense of community, and in some cases have led to greatly enhanced neighborly relations.
■ THE BRITISH media was agog this week with reports of police pulling black champion athletes Bianca Williams and Linford Christie from their car and roughly detaining them. Christie later posted a video of the incident on social media. Police claimed that the couple were driving at high speed on the wrong side of the road. But in actual fact the couple were stopped because they were driving an expensive Mercedes car, which most members of the black community in Britain could not afford, and they were therefore suspected of drug dealing. The couple have accused the police of racial profiling and institutional racism. Their three-month-old baby was in the car with them. When the couple were pulled out of the car, Williams could be heard screaming on the video that her baby is in the car. Police can be heard telling her to calm down.
But it may not be racial profiling. It may simply be that police are not properly profiled when they join the force. On Israeli television this week, there was a video of a policeman kicking and bashing a young man in Tel Aviv who was going to a party and wasn’t wearing a mask. The young man was asked for his ID, and was reaching into his pocket to get it when the policeman became uncontrollably violent. His partner tried to stop him, but urging him to let go was to no avail, until the young man was so badly bruised that he needed medical attention.
It’s a very tense period for the police, and they’re human like anyone else, but if it’s noticed that there is a tendency to violent reaction to any given situation, it should be reported before the violence gets out of hand.
greerfc@gmail.com


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