Tommy's Granny
By Uri Avnery
01 June, 2004
Gush Shalom
Sometimes
a person "buys his world in one moment," as the ancient Hebrew
saying goes. This was done by the Minister of Justice, Yosef ("Tommy")
Lapid, when he uttered the words: "This old woman reminds me of
my grandmother!"
This old woman,
an inhabitant of the Rafah refugee camp whose house was demolished by
the Israeli army, was immortalized by the camera while rummaging through
the ruins of her home in a desperate search for her medicines. Two days
later, journalists found her at the same place, still looking for her
medicines under the debris.
Tommy's grandmother
perished in the Holocaust. He himself was born in a Hungarian region
in the north of Yugoslavia and survived the Holocaust in the Budapest
ghetto. When he mentioned "my grandmother", it was quite clear
that he meant a victim of the Holocaust.
The phrase kicked
up a storm. It may well have been the straw that broke the camel's back
and induced the government to call a halt to the ongoing atrocity in
Rafah.
Of course, the situation
was ripe for that. The pictures of the killing and destruction in the
poor town filled the TV news bulletins and newspaper pages throughout
the world. The Al Jazeera TV station showed them several times every
hour to tens of millions in the Arab world. In the Western world, too,
the screens were full of them. The accumulated impact was terrible -
the Israeli army was shown as an inhuman machine that destroyed the
lives of hundreds of families without even noticing. The picture of
a small boy struggling with a huge suitcase in an attempt to save some
of his family's belongings says more than a thousands words of the official
army liar.
The tank that was
filmed shooting at unarmed protesters, who marched and clapped their
hands in unison, brought the glass to overflowing. The pretexts and
explanations by the official propaganda mercenaries only made things
worse. One could sense the world shuddering.
But the military
and political leadership was action-drunk. They announced that the operation
would continue on an even larger scale. Forces amounting to a reinforced
army division were concentrated to deliver the coup de grace to Rafah.
The intention - as testified by Lapid himself - was to demolish 3000
homes.
It seems that the
Americans were active behind the scenes. George Bush is having enough
trouble with Iraq. His policy is collapsing. The pictures from Rafah
blackened still further the image of the Americans, Sharon's friends
and partners, in the eyes of the Iraqis, whose heart goes out to the
Palestinians. For the first time, the US representative abstained from
vetoing a Security Council resolution criticizing Israel (even if in
ridiculously moderate language). Undoubtedly, telephone conversations
were held in basic American, rebuking Sharon much more harshly.
Inside Israel, too,
the opposition gathered momentum. Day after day the radical peace organizations
(almost alone, unfortunately) confronted the police in the cities and
even broke through a roadblock on the border to the Gaza Strip. The
Israeli media could not ignore these demonstrations anymore and grudgingly
devoted some seconds to them. (Al Jazeera showed them for ten minutes,
repeated again and again).
In the country's
leadership the conviction gained ground that the military operation
was a dismal failure. Apart from satisfying the thirst for revenge,
no actual objective was achieved. Some tunnels were indeed discovered
(two according to one version, four according to another) - but, for
that, a few companies would have been enough. The "wanted"
men got out of the area when they saw the preparations for the gigantic
operation. The division sowed death and destruction without achieving
anything.
In this situation,
Lapid's utterance broke the dam. The action was stopped in the middle.
As could be expected,
rightists attacked Lapid violently. How dare he offend the memory of
the Holocaust victims? How can one make such a comparison This is a
vile manipulation by Lapid of his being a Holocaust survivor! (In Israel,
it is customary that only rightists have the right to warn of a Second
Holocaust, so they can compare Arafat to Hitler and the Palestinians
to the Nazis.)
Lapid tried desperately
to defend himself. He had no intention of making a comparison, God forbid.
He had not mentioned the Holocaust at all. Besides, his second grandmother
did survive the Holocaust.
So why did he utter
the words in the first place Cynics found many explanations: Lapid is
a masterful demagogue. For years he has appeared in a TV talk-show and
become famous for his abusive attacks on leftists, Arabs, orthodox Jews,
oriental Jews and poor people. One remembers, for example, an unemployed
blond woman who appeared on his talk-show and complained about her miserable
circumstances. Lapid interrupted her rudely: "So where did you
get the money to dye your hair?"
According to the
cynics, Lapid feels that the wind is changing and so he is adapting
himself. He wants to prove that he is not Sharon's poodle, as many believe.
He wants to shake off his responsibility for the atrocities committed
by the Sharon government.
All this may well
be true, but I feel that the phrase about the grandmother escaped him
in a moment of real agitation, without calculation. Underneath all the
diverse strata of Lapid's personality, the woman in Rafah touched the
deepest of all. Buried beneath the politician and the TV entertainer
there is the child from the Holocaust, and it is he that broke through
at that moment.
There are moments in the life of a human being, when his most hidden
quality is exposed, free from interests and calculations. I believe
this is what happened at that moment.
The influence of
the Holocaust on the character of the survivors, their children and
children's children, is a complex phenomenon. Once, a high-school principal
gave me the compositions written by his pupils, boys and girls, after
a visit to Auschwitz. The reactions divided into two groups.
Most of the pupils
wrote something like: "After seeing what the Nazis did to the Jews,
my conclusion is that the defense of Israel and the Jewish people is
the highest commandment, and for this end, everything is permitted."
A minority of the pupils wrote something like: "After seeing what
the Nazis did to the Jews, my conclusion is that the Jewish State must
be more humane than any other and set an example of how to behave towards
minorities, so that this can never happen again."
It seems that in
the heart of Tommy Lapid both these reactions exist side by side. In
ordinary times, the first reaction manifests itself in his behavior.
But it must be said in his favor that, in a moment of truth, a moment
of profound agitation, the second reaction got the upper hand.
"Tommy's grandmother" became a symbol this week. Let's hope
that it becomes a signpost.