Not far from Davar Rishon headquarters in Kiryat Shalom, Tel Aviv, lies Zigelbaum Street. This modest street commemorates a great man: Shmuel Zigelbaum, a Polish-Jewish public figure who managed to escape Warsaw just after the Nazi occupation. As the emissary of the Jewish population trapped in Polish ghettos, Zigelbaum attempted to demand of the world’s nations to intervene and prevent the genocide of his people. In vain.
We dedicate the entire edition of Friday, 16th of December 2016, to the developments in Syria and Aleppo. We do so in protest
On April 19, 1943, Passover eve, the Nazis assembled at the entrance to the Warsaw Ghetto and began annihilating it. The heroic rebellion of the ghetto’s 70,000 remaining inhabitants, led by Zionist youth movements, took the Nazis by surprise but managed only to delay the destruction. On May 12, 1943, before the dust had settled over the destroyed ghetto, Zigelbaum took his own life in London.
In his suicide letter, which was addressed to the heads of the Polish government-in-exile but in a deeper sense was addressed to humanity’s conscience, he wrote: “My comrades in the Warsaw Ghetto fell in their last heroic stand. I wasn’t permitted to fall like them, with them, but I belong with them, in their mass grave. I want my death to express my deepest possible protest against inaction,as the world watches and permits the annihilation of the Jewish people.”
The fighters within the Warsaw Ghetto apparently never received news of Zigelbaum’s efforts. They also were not informed that at the very same time as the Nazis passed from door to door with flamethrowers, killing everyone, British and American diplomats were convening in the balmy Bermuda islands. There the diplomats explained to each other that in the complicated reality of the Nazi occupation, there was nothing the superpowers could do to help the Jews. The concluding report of the Bermuda conference, at the end of April 1943, noted with satisfaction the “progress” and “the hope of aiding as many refugees as possible”.
Yitzchak (Antek) Zuckerman, assistant commander of the Jewish Fighting Organization of the Warsaw Ghetto, said after the war that the inhabitants of the ghetto lived under the illusion that the outside world did not know of the horrors inflicted upon the Jews. Inside the ghetto it was believed that had the world known, they surely would have done something. “Roosevelt knew, the pope knew… We learned that the world is big and filthy”, said Antek.
For those being murdered in Aleppo, alongside their children and the elderly, there is no illusion that the world does not know. This week, social media and television networks were filled with the terrified faces of the people of Aleppo, some under bombardment and under fire. “Remember us after we are murdered” they called out in despair, “maybe you can still do something for the others”. Women, men and children trapped between the hammer and the anvil of evil, between murderous ISIS jihadists and the murderous regime of Assad and his allies in Tehran, Dahieh and Moscow.
And the world is silent. In the face of the evil raining down, the silence of the world is deafening. In August 2013, after the Assad army’s appalling chemical attack against its civilians in Ghouta, an attack which killed thousands, including hundreds of children, it seemed as though the line had been crossed. But the British parliament rejected their prime minister’s proposal to attack Syria, and Obama and Kerry backed down from their intention to intervene militarily. The United States and Russia reached an agreement that supposedly enabled disarming the Assad regime of its chemical weapons. Obama stressed that further use of chemical weapons would provoke a harsh American response. But since then there have been many more instances of chemical attacks against civilians, and other horrors, and in the words of Bialik: the sun shone, the acacia blossomed, and the butcher slaughtered. In Syria’s case – the butchers.
The world yawns in apathy; leafs through its papers in vain, not yet having found the clause on whose basis ISIS can be charged in the international court. Hundreds of thousands murdered, tens of thousands raped, children who have lost their families and their childhood – all this has not inspired the world to act.
So what can we learn from all this? Is the lesson we should learn, and teach our children, that the world is, indeed, large and filthy? That the lords of war are motivated only by the intrigues of commerce and politics, and that the world is ruled by narrow interests, and that there is no room for morality? That we can trust nothing at all but our own brute force?
It seems to us, at Davar Rishon, that these lessons have been learned well, maybe too well and too fast, in our own Israel. In preparations for publishing this edition, we searched for someone who believes that Israel must act to prevent the massacre taking place so near to us, across the border. We didn’t find anyone. Israelis are proud, justifiably, of humanitarian efforts undertaken by Israel and by Israeli organizations, often in secret. But there is a consensus that in the complicated reality of the war zone, there is nothing we can do to help those being murdered. And suddenly, we too are part of the world and its silence. Even the Jewish state finds its place in the tapestry of cynical interests, a nation like all other nations.
We at Davar Rishon object to this state of affairs. We are dedicating today’s entire edition, Friday, the 16th of Kislev 5777, December 16, 2016, to the events in Syria and Aleppo. This is our protest – a protest against evil, against the despicable murder of innocent people, our brothers and sisters in the human family, members the Syrian people; this is a protest against the superpowers’ criminal apathy and their aid to the murderers, each superpower and the murderers who advance its interests. But it is also a protest against our own apathy, and a plea – our Israel must not be silent; Israel must act, and whatever it has done, it must do more.
There are, of course, many important topics we wanted to address this weekend. The national budget, the state of poverty in Israel, and the great challenge facing Israeli society surrounding the Amona outpost crisis. It surely would have been more comfortable to relax and read lighter news this weekend, like culture and sports. We have no doubt that looking at the events across our northern border is not a pleasant experience.
Theodor Herzl described his feelings as he read about the Kishinev pogrom in the newspaper in 1903, in his article “Kishinev and the Sardines”. His words are fitting today.
“One reads: Pogroms in Kishinev. Among the telegrams, the reports on the travels of the British king, among the stock market summaries, the reports of those accepted by the German Kaiser and those not accepted. You are so accustomed to reading about tragedy, about murder and plunder, that you foolishly pass over such news.
Our daughter relates to this matter much more gravely. Today it was she who first picked up the newspaper. She is not interested in any other article but this one. She does not calm down, whether I speak or am silent. She cannot understand my passivity. I am irritated at being disturbed during breakfast, after all there is more bad news every day…. As usual, I spread butter on my bread and add a tender sardine. Its pleasant smell wafts up to my nose. But the girl stops my hand from bringing the bread to my mouth. Daddy, didn’t you read? They took a child from his mother and killed him in front of her. I put down the bread with the sardine, and looked at my daughter. Her eyes were filled with tears. I stroked her cheeks, flush with emotion. When she felt my hand, she pressed it as if asking for help. Then a current flowed from eye to eye, from soul to soul. We had no need for words in order to understand one another. Now we are both in Kishinev. A band of savages has invaded our garden, which is bathed in warm sunlight. We fight for our lives. I defend my wife and children to the best of my strength. All this lasts only a few moments – but I see clearly the life-and-death war that my brothers and sisters are fighting in Kishinev. My life is their life and their child is my child.”
Herzl ends the article by addressing the murdered victims:
“Rest in peace, you tortured martyrs, members of the ancient, millennia-old Hebrew race. You have not died in vain. Your death throes will be a warning bell, a call to war, which will reach the ears of millions. Your deaths will lead us to life. In your names we will arise and take action.”
And what will we say to those murdered in Aleppo and Syria? And what will we say to ourselves?
