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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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that moved me deeply. Others came spontaneously to
offer their help and became good friends: the well-known journalist Yoella
Harshafi; Simha Holzberg, known as the comforter to all Israeli war wounded.
I must have been quite a sight, pregnant "up to the neck," buttonholing
officials in the handsome locales where the German-Israeli greetings were
taking place, urging that Israel put pressure on Bonn for ratification. I held
a press conference. I warned the Israelis that the real Germany is not at all
like Willy Brandt, that he himself is losing the power to get his way with the
Social-Democrat party, most of whose leaders are interested only in one thing
– to remain in power, whatever the price. To see Brandt and the Israelis
arm-in-arm was impressive and pleasing to both sides, but this beautiful
friendship would erode in times of trial; it was too facile, too superficial.
Israel has only one trump to play against the German will to follow where
self-interest leads (Arab oil, Arab markets, Arab dollars) . That trump is to
insist that the German people face up to its responsibility regarding the
Jewish people. The only hope for Israel to have loyal friends in Germany and
western Europe rests on the Germans having the will to assume their
responsibilities, which I as an individual am trying to fulfill. It is only by
real sacrifice in favor of the Jewish people that Germany will be morally
rehabilitated.
This cannot be accomplished so long as Israel muddles
along improvising policy day by day, with frequent small victories and grave
setbacks, leading from "special relations" to "specific relations" and at last
to "normalization" just before becoming bad. Israel must make plain what she
expects from Germany and must help change the German people so they stop
thinking that not doing harm is the same as doing good. And what a great deal
of good must be done when one has done so much evil!
Some months later,
during the Yom Kippur War, the Brandt government protested the shipment of
American arms to Israel over German territory. Kneel in the ghetto of Warsaw
and then refuse arms to the survivors of that very ghetto? And yet it is easier
for West Germany than for other countries to resist Arab blackmail. They need
only recall the martyrdom inflicted by the German people upon the Jewish
people. This moral priority has considerable political power; I believe my
whole history proves this. What could I have accomplished alone without it?
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WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
© 1972, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 287 |
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