Another Small Crime in the State of Israel

I had some bad news over the weekend about someone who has been very dear to me for more than a decade now. It was just over ten years ago that I began researching the story of an astonishing man. Frank Foley was the MI6 Head of Station in Berlin during the 1930s. He witnessed the rise of Nazism in all its appalling forms and was horrified by the way in which the Jews were treated in Germany. Foley’s cover as Chief Passport Officer allowed him to circumvent the rules to help Jews get out Germany, very many of them to what was then known as Palestine.

Foley had no diplomatic status, very few MI6 officers did at the time, yet he allowed Jewish leaders who were on the run from the Germans to brief British and American journalists in his apartment, hid around five or six other Jews a night there and went into concentration camps to get others out. One of those he extracted from a camp, fronting up the guards with a visa that contravened the rules he was supposed to apply rigidly, was Gunter Powitzer.

Powitzer was 24. He had been arrested by the Gestapo at the beginning of 1937 for ‘race defilement’, after getting his non-Jewish girlfriend pregnant. He was given an 18-month prison sentence, during which time his son was born. Powitzer was then taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin.

Sachsenhausen had already acquired a gruesome reputation. A month earlier, the Berlin police took 62 Jews to the camp and handed them over to the SS, who forced them to run the gauntlet of two lines of guards wielding spades, clubs and whips. The beatings went on for half an hour, at the end of which twelve of the Jews were dead, their skulls smashed. The eyes of others had been knocked out, their faces flattened and shapeless.”

Powitzer was put to work in the camp’s brick factory. One day, he was tipped off not to go to work, to say he was ill. He was sent to the camp kitchen where a guard forced him to run around with a sack of heavy potatoes on his back. Returning late at night to the hut, bruised and tired, he found it empty. When he asked where everyone was, he was told simply: “They tried out a new machine-gun today.”

A few days later, he heard he had a visitor. An SS officer took him to the camp office and left him alone with a small bespectacled man who said: “My name is Foley. I am from the British Consulate in Berlin. Tomorrow you’ll be free. There are papers at the consulate for you to travel to Palestine.” “What about the child?” Powitzer asked. “Don’t worry, he is also registered on the papers,” said Foley. The next day, Powitzer was taken to collect his young son. A few days later, they were on their way to Palestine.

Quite how many people Foley saved is not clear. Hubert Pollack, one of his Jewish associates, a man who assisted in both his espionage and his efforts to save Jews, said Foley not only saved “tens of thousands of Jews” he also knew the full details of the Jewish escape lines smuggling Jews into British-controlled Palestine but ignored them.

When Foley died in 1958, his passing went almost unnoticed in Britain but in Israel a group of Jews got together to put up a small memorial to Foley, at Kibbutz Harel, just outside Jerusalem. They planted a grove of pine trees. More than 2,000 people each paid for one tree to mark Foley’s rescuing of their own life. A memorial stone placed in front of the grove read simply: ‘Major Francis Edward Foley, England, Memorial Grove’.

When the stone was unveiled Benno Cohn, former chairman of the Zionist Organisation of Germany, reminded those present that they had gathered to pay tribute to a British official who saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. “He was the Pimpernel of the Jews,” Cohn said. “Day and night, he was at the disposal of those who sought help. In those dark days, he restored to many of us our faith in humanity.”

Shortly after my biography of Foley was published Yad Vashem announced that they were making Foley Righteous Among Nations, the highest Jewish honour for a gentile. Powitzer’s son Ze’ev, and I travelled out to Kibbutz Harel to try to find the stone. It was a highly emotional visit. We eventually found it forgotten among some woodland and scrub, cleared the dirt and rubble away from the stone and together thanked God for this man who had ensured that Ze’ev and his father, and so many others, lived as free men.

In a letter to the Jerusalem Post, welcoming the decision to make Foley Righteous Among Nations, one of those he helped wrote: “I myself have five children and 18 grandchildren, none of whom would ever have seen the light of day had I not lived. There must be countless men, women and children today who would never have been born but for Foley.”

But still both here, the country of his birth, and in Israel, Foley’s name is barely known. Last week, Ze'ev went back to the see the memorial stone, together with Hubert Pollack’s son Adi and a friend of mine Udi, who translated Foley’s biography into Hebrew. They found that it had been ripped from its mounting and smashed to pieces. Udi is going to have it repaired and temporarily placed outside his house in Tel Aviv, which is on the main road to the beach, in the hope that those passing ask about it and learn about Foley and something can be done to properly restore the memorial grove. 

It is difficult to know what to say about the person who vandalised the stone. I personally am distraught, Udi says that it left the three of them feeling “deeply ashamed”. It seems doubtful that whoever did it knew what Foley had done. It seems pointless to be angry. Jewish gravestones are still routinely smashed by mindless thugs in this country and elsewhere across Europe. Last week, as Jews celebrated Passover, Muslims the prophet’s birthday and Christian’s Good Friday, the Israeli army threatened to occupy Gaza to end Palestinian rocket attacks and Iran warned that Israel was “on the road to elimination”. As I write this nine people have died in a Palestinian suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv.

Amid all that, the smashing of a stone commemorating a long forgotten Englishman who helped to restore people’s faith in humanity in a previous dark era might appear to be of little consequence. But somehow it seems to have stripped away the last layer of faith I had in the willingness of those who control the current situation, whether in Tehran, Washington, Tel Aviv, Ramallah or indeed London, to act like Foley - with true humanity rather than brutal, and vandalistic, self-interest.

Comments

[tommy]

Yet more storytelling, replete with the usual copious details.

[JAG]

Tommy, you soul-less twit. Obviously you value no human life, much less someone's of a different culture of your own. My mother lived through NAZI occupied Europe and told us kids her stories of the occupation's atrocities. What if your dad or mom were directly impacted by Hitler's Reich, you might not be here today.

[Chuck Unsworth]

I'm not too sure what 'tommy' may regard as storytelling. It doesn't actually matter. There will always be those who would prefer to ignore the overwhelming evidence of man's inhmmanity to man. But, with luck, they will continue to be a poisonous minority.

For leadership and moral guidance we should not look to our politicians who, after all, have spent decades following their own ends by the time-honoured means of deception, obfuscation, and even downright criminality. When disasters occur look at those who emerge as heroes - how many of them are politicians?

Real inspiration comes from those, such as Foley, who when faced with appalling odds and great dangers, deliberately choose to do what they regard as the decent and humane thing. This is about personal standards, integrity and morality, and the courage to take responsibility and action - often at great personal risk.

I believe that those fine characteristics still exist within our people. There is still an instinctive understanding of right and wrong, good and evil - although it may be difficult to perceive at times. Look at the heroes of the 9/11, the London bombings the Madrid bombings and so on. Almost without exception these were not politicians, just ordinary people who understood and ignored the danger, and did what they believed to be the 'right' thing.

Your friend Udi is right to pick up the banner from where it has fallen, and to fight on. And if we want to live with our consciences we should all, in our own way, do that.

True, it is disturbing to note that our leaders do not set such high standards for themselves - and that is the root cause of the terrible and widespread cynicism and disillusion which is so manifest today. But I think that the British people (and many others) are sufficiently astute to clearly recognise the difference between politics and real life - and politicians of all classes and the rest of humanity....

[Linda]

As a despised breed (!) I have spent the last few nights canvassing on the doorsteps of my prosperous and very attractive ward. For most of my constituents their biggest worry is potholes. But I have become increasingly alarmed at the number of people who now openly declare their support for the BNP. And so the horror of the story Mick has told, and the perhaps justified attitude towards politicians articulated by Chuck, fills me with despair. For the first time I have found myself getting angry on the doorstep. Angry with those whose total obsession with their own well being leads them to think the BNP will offer them Nirvana, angry with those who mouth off about politicians whilst never as much as giving a thought to those who have not been blessed with their good fortune, angry with those who can't be bothered to vote. Our democracy is flawed, I hope not yet fatally, but surely if history teaches us anything it is that the alternative doesn't bear thinking about. The story of the holocaust is one which must be told again and again, but the story which has evolved into one of a persecuted people who then dehumanise and persecute another people is equally chilling. Perhaps I am naive, but whilst I have breath in my body I feel I have no alternative but to continue to take every opportunity to try to make a difference, however small - and if I get slagged off for being a bloody politician - well so be it!

[Frank Schnittger]

Thank you, Linda, for your courage and commitment. You have said the words that most people dare not. We get the politicians we deserve, and frequently don’t even deserve them. Those who moan and mouth off the most do the least to help others and themselves. They expect everything to be done for them, and don’t give a damn for everyone else. They take for granted what has been achieved for them by others and claim it as a birthright. They call in the BNP when they see others enjoying the same benefits. They never filled in a pothole in their lives. Keep up the good work!

[Anthony Cormack]

Although I don't hold any particular brief for the frock coats, I do think there's a substantial chunk of truth in the notion that we get the politicians we deserve.

On the Foley issue - and the broader issues it raises - I can only add to the general chorus of upset and sympathy. One wonders, frankly, just how some people's minds work, what goes on in their heads.

Tangentially related to the matter of heroes making a difference, one of my personal versions of "Rumsfeld's Rules" that I like to regale my friends with is the notion that if you're planning a counterinsurgency campaign and success or failure hinges on the average man on the street acting like a hero, you're pretty much shafted. But then I suppose if everyone acted like a hero there wouldn't be any such thing, if you get what I mean.

On the BNP issue, I'm somewhat tired of seeing politicians coming on TV and saying how awful it is and how important it is to expose the BNP for what it is. It's not like its nature is well hidden for anyone who cares to look with open eyes. The point is not that people don't know, it's that they increasingly don't actually much care. The blame for this in my view splits between the punters themselves, who should get a grip (and who are widely ignorant on a whole raft of issues), and the political class who have, until recently, generally responded to concerns regarding illegal immigration and a lack of cultural assimilation by branding everyone who raises them as a racist (sometimes entirely justifiably, often not).

[MM]

I take strong exception to Linda's comment "evolved into one of a persecuted people who then dehumanise and persecute another people". I presume that she means the Arabs currently occupying the Gaza Strip, some of the West Bank & maybe the rest of Israel.
I think she'd be better focusing on how the proud Arab nation treats its own, such as at "Black September" 1970 or Kuwait, S.Arabia etc. after Sadam's defeat. This nation has consistently refused financial offers to resettle the refugees in some of the vast areas that the Arabs command - & which incidentally, they have pots of money to support.
These refugees -or at least their ancestors - resulted from the Arab nations desire to drive the Jews from the Jewish homeland in 1948.
Basically, when you start a war - e.g the Intifada - you should accept the consequence; this seems not to be the case with the Arabs who blame everyone else but themselves. Thankfully, every war the Arabs have initiated, they've lost. The moral is: don't start wars - & let people live in peace.

[Anthony Cormack]

I think MM is closer to right on Israeli attitudes post-Holocaust than Linda, though it's important to note that it's not entirely black and white. The fact of the matter is that although Israeli stances toward the Palestinians have sometimes bordered on the racist, I'd argue that ongoing Arab military offensives and Palestinian terrorism have as much to do with it as the experience of the Holocaust. There's no doubt that if you look back to 1948, many Israelis were extremely radical, extremely desperate, extremely ruthless and sometimes downright immoral. Although massacres of Palestinians during the 1948 war did occur (and there are numerous recorded incidents of Israelis employing Palestinian civilians as human shields when fighting the British security forces during the mandate period), they did not do so on anything like the scale sometimes alleged by pro-Palestinain activists and revisionist historians and it is fair to posit that had the other side won, what the Jews had done to the Arabs would have been as nothing to what would have happened when the victorious Arab armies swept in. The rhetoric coming from people like the grand mufti of Jeruslem was just plain blood curdling. Additionally, the history of Arab anti-semitism and anti-Jewish pogroms substantially predates WW2. The point is not to set up the Israelis as saints here, but to note that Arab behaviour has been consistently dodgy, usually more so and that frankly if one side is to be blamed for brutalising the other (though over the years there has been plenty of blame to go round) I think it's fair to argue that current Israeli attitudes are more a result of Arab actions in the past than vice versa. Finally, I'd note that the Israeli peace camp has always been larger by an order of magnitude than its Arab counterpart.

I think it is fair to note - regardless of how one feels about current and past Israeli policy (I personally think the settlement policy is both morally iffy and strategically not particularly sound) - the fact, often ignored, that actually the Palestinians have played the power politics game every bit as enthusiastically as everybody else over the years. The difference is simply that they've managed to lose consistently. Had they won in '48, or indeed at any point along the line I think it is reasonable to suggest that the lot of the Israelis would be substantially worse than that of the Palestinians right now. I think it's also important to point out that the brutalisation and dehumanised attitudes of many Palestinians stem almost as much from the policies of the Palestinian Administration itself (antisemitic indoctrination in the Palestinian Education system, funded by EU money, is an absolute scandal that nobody seems to want to talk about [and which does not have a parallel in Israel]) as from Israeli action. And yes, a lot of Arabs do actually treat their own people substantially worse than the Israelis treat the Palestinians and yes, it's hypocritical for people to largely ignore it and focus exclusively on the iniquities (real and imagined) of Israeli policy.

I'm aware that this is a contentious issue and equally I don't want to sound as though I'm somehow handing the Israelis a clean bill of health. The point is simply that on both sides of the Atlantic the "narrative" is skewed in my view. In the US there are too many people who assume that because Israel is a democratic outpost in the Middle East it should have a more or less blank cheque. However, in Britain I think there are frankly too many people who have bought quite uncritically into the Palestinian version of events (I'm astonished at how entrenched this has become within the public consciousness over the past few years, in spite of the fact that large slabs of it have no real basis in empirical fact).

Unhappily, I largely share Mick's view. It's hard not to feel that every time a step forward seems possible, something turns up to bring the whole thing crashing down. I also suspect that the notion that there's an external settlement just waiting to be imposed if only George Bush, the EU, Uncle Tom Cobleigh and All could be spurred into action is a pipe dream.

Of course, it's all far too complicated to deal with in a blog comment and I haven't done a very good job of it at all. That said, having typed away busily for the last five to ten minutes of so, I'm rather reluctant not to click "Post"...

[Frank Schnittger]

MM - what you forget is that the "Jewish homeland in 1948" was mostly a Palestinian homeland - so why should they be resettled elsewhere? Indeed why does Palestine have to be exclusively either Jewish or Palestinian – why can the entire area not be governed as a secular, democratic state? There is no just carve up of the area between the two peoples – and no possibility of creating two racially and religiously based states that will not be at loggerheads with one another. You would just be entrenching the antagonism.

But would Israelis be prepared to live in a democratic, secular Israeli/Palestinian state if a Palestinan led coalition came to power? Such a transfer of power happened successfully in South Africa but somehow I feel that both Israelis and Palestinians are too hung up on having it all their own way for it to be possible in Palestine.

[MM]

In response to Frank: the Jewish Homeland I refer to was precisely that - a land promised by the League of Nations to the Jews. The Brits had the Mandate for all of Palestine & pretty promptly (& illegally) carved orf 80% of it as TransJordan to which Jews were prohibited BY LAW. It's a fact that in 1948, there was a majority of Arabs but that's as a result of the improvements in living standards engendered by the Jews, encouraging immigration from poverty-struck Syria & Egypt. Additionally, when one says "Palestinian" in the context before 1970, it refers predominantly to Jews, as, for example, the 30K+ Palestinian Jews who fought in the British army, sanctioned by Churchill (whilst their Arab compatriots exclusively supported the Nazis, up until VE Day). We have Arafat to thank for "inventing" the "Palestinian Nation", his main claim to fame after international terrorism.
Your mention of a "secular, democratic state" is completely unrealistic. For a start, Islam is moving in big time, cf Hamas, Iran, Europe. At the same time, democracy, a western concept, is scorned by the Arabs who are essentially a mediaeval society who can't tolerate each other, let alone Jews. As an example of the fate of non-Muslims in Muslim society, Christians are persecuted in Saudia, Bahias in Iran, Christians in Indonesia; in particular, Lebanon has seen an enormous exodus of Christians whilst since Oslo and Arafat's return, the Christian populations of Bethlehem and Ramallah have shrunk by some 80%. If Christians can't survive in such society, do you seriously think that Jews, the subject of unprecedented political, religious & media hatred for the last 70 years could do so?
As an aside, I was intrigued to read recently that the Arab League held its 70th annual conference of the "Boycott of the Jews" fairly recently. That predates the establishment of Israel by some 15 years.
Given the predominance of Arabs, their undisputed land ownership (over 100X that of current Israel), their oil resources, just why logically should Israel yield one sq cm to those who hate her and only seek her destruction, even at the cost of their own suffering?

[Frank Schnittger]

Thank you MM for a considered reply to my post. I'm surprised, because usually I just get abuse (“anti-Semitic”) if I in any way question the absolute righteousness of the Zionist cause.

In some ways your arguments mirror those of white South Africans under apartheid - Blacks were regarded as communists, terrorists, and sub humans who could not be trusted with even a share of power. To some extent it’s a chicken and egg situation, if you treat people like animals……

I take your point about Islamic countries persecuting Christians, and not having the same concept of Democracy. However if you take this point to its logical extreme then Europe should expel all Moslems on the grounds that they are not part of the Christian, democratic, European culture –an argument that appears to appeal to a Zionist poster on David Aaronovitch’s blog.

I suppose if you are going to be consistent, and you believe in Liberal Democracy and all that entails, you can’t then logically exclude religious or ethnic minorities (and potential majorities) just because they don’t necessarily share your values. Our history includes some pretty repressive theocratic Christian states in medieval and more recent Fascist times and it can be argued that the concept of the separation of church and state – and the development of secular democratic polities – is the highest achievement of Western Civilisation.

Now if you are going to judge Israel by those standards (which it claims to uphold) then you have got to find it wanting. Not only is it basically a religiously/ethnically based state, but it has systematically excluded most of the Palestinian Arabs who might otherwise form the democratic majority (in much the same way as South Africa sought to create an artificial white majority by claiming most blacks were citizens of the Bantustans).

If, on the other hand, you judge Israel by the standards of many of the Islamic regimes in the area – as you appear to do – then there is no doubt that it is, comparatively speaking, a shining example of western style democracy.

[Chuck Unsworth]

The discussion has taken on a life of its own, clearly. Nice to see a (partial) meeting of minds anyway. I'm intrigued by the notion of different kinds of Democracy.

Surely if there are varying 'degrees' of Democracy then we've lost the concept? Or do we believe that, within a Democratic society, self-imposed rules may limit the extent of the Democratic Process?

If so, then that begs the question - 'What is Democracy?'. And that in turn leaves the door open for governments of any hue to call whatever processes they may choose to impose on their populace - 'Democracy'.

[Frank Schnittger]

It’s a very long time since I studied political philosophy so I can't give you a precise definition of "Democracy" or rule by the People.

Obviously most countries have a written constitution which defines how it works and it tends to be a little bit different in each country. At the extremes you have "The Democratic Republic of the Congo" who have it in the title no matter what dictator is in power.

Communist countries often had a high degree of democracy - within the party - but of course only one party was generally allowed - as in Cuba today. So my rough working definition of liberal democracy would be something like:

"A system of Government where all citizen's have the vote and the right of free association to form and stand for election as members of various parties and where there are constitutional checks and balances to protect the human rights of individuals and minorities - such as the freedom to worship, equality before the law, an independent Judiciary, freedom of expression etc. - and where no one religious, ethnic or political group is endowed by superior rights."

In practice there is often some regulation to limit free speech (slander, blasphemy) and some political parties may be illegal (fascist, communist) without these restrictions being regarded as undemocratic. Parliamentary representation is often limited to those parties with a certain minimal threshold of votes (e.g. 5% of the National vote) to avoid the political process becoming too splintered. Some Electoral systems are “fairer” than others – in the UK it is often possible for one party to claim an absolute majority of Seats with less than 40% of the vote. In the US it is so expensive to run for office that only the rich or those beholden to special interests can, in practice, get elected. Low voter turnouts (and making it difficult for some minorities to register for the vote) can result in highly motivated/well positioned minority groups getting disproportionate representation.

Note that the definition does make provision for the rights of individuals and minorities so democracy is not unalloyed "majority rule" as Unionists in the Northern Ireland have sometimes asserted. Often the definition of the "Demos" or people is critical - with past attempts to limit the franchise to particular ethnic, property, or religious groups - or to manipulate the electoral process to favour of one group "gerrymandering".

At the extreme you have ethnic cleansing or the forced movement of entire populations in order to ensure an artificial majority for one ethnic or religious group, or the drawing of Borders in such a way as to ensure one group will always be in Power. Northern Ireland is often called “Ulster” by Unionists even though it only includes 6 of the nine counties of Ulster. The other three were excluded as otherwise Nationalists would be too close to forming a majority. The most northerly part of Ireland (Donegal) is actually in the “South” as unionists refer to the Republic.

So to some extent democracy is what those in power say it is. I'm sure if you Google it you'll come up with many more elegant definitions......

[Joseph]

Linda: do you know any history at all. Do you know that the Jews lived in Hebron for 1000 years (as long as the Arabs did--after your ancestors the Crusaders were defeated) and were massacred in 1929--and I could tell you a 100 more stories about Arab atrocities in Israel in the last 100 years. And everytime a opportunity for peace is offered-look at the response. Israel evacuated 100% of Gaza--and the response--daily missle attacks. Of course the border is closed, and Israel is fighting back. Tell me, how much aid was transfered to Germany after Dresden was fire bombed. You people are so ridiculous with your self righteous rules for war--but when your back was up against the wall--there were no rules. Just massive killing. Remember, in just one night you murdered 100,000 people in Dresden. So no lectures please.

very good information-its helping me with a school report. thank you.