It is not a given... Last year Hungarian Television aired a film about the Parents’ Circle by Hesna El Ghaoui (the Hungarian Ilana Dayan), and it aroused a wide range of passionate reaction. In the wake of the screening, Bassam and I were invited to give a week-long round of lectures all over the country, in schools and universities. And in the context of this journey, after the organizers of the trip found out about my Hungarian heritage, incredibly graciously, they arranged and dedicated an entire day to exploring the remnants of my roots there. Kisvarda, a sleepy town in northeast Hungary, a few kilometers from the Ukranian border, the birthplace of my late father and the place from which his extended family set out on their final journey. Of that large and lively center of thousands of Jews, not a living soul remains… only the elegant synagogue, now a museum with a memorial corner to the victims, a Torah cover draped on an empty wall, no ark, but a graveyard… And that’s how I found myself last Sunday, walking slowly among the silent headstones of the ancient Jewish cemetery, together with my brother, Bassam, who joined me in this noble tribute. For a Palestinian to express solidarity with the Holocaust remembrance of his Israeli partner is not a given, as far as I’m concerned. I know that the Palestinians have difficulty with the institution of Holocaust remembrance. They had no connection to this crime. And it’s hard for them to accept and to understand the fact that the League of Nations granted their land to the Jews, at the expense of the Palestinians, as compensation for the injustice inflicted on the Jews and as a way of somewhat assuaging their anguished consciences and their massive guilt feelings… But this is this special man’s way — to recognize the pain of the people who conquered his land and who jailed him for seven long years. A way that began when he was in prison, and he saw Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” out of a desire to take some pleasure in the misfortunes of the oppressor, yet here he was instead, crying at the sight of the suffering of these beaten and humiliated people, standing naked on their way to extermination, and they did not resist… his way continued to Holocaust studies and a Masters degree at the University of Bradford in the UK. To a visit at Buchenwald with his eldest son… and to Bassam’s practice of calling my late father each Holocaust Remembrance Day to find out how he was doing, to talk with him, to honor him. I say kaddish. Bassam answers “amen,” after me. Afterwards, we descend the little hill to the small home of the cemetery watchman. A tiny and rickety shack — abject poverty, misery and wretchedness. His wife, with enormous, doleful eyes, forces us to drink, to eat. In the second room a girl and a boy watch television, play on the computer. The man of the house, expressionless and silent. On the wall, a picture. We ask, and the organizers translate: “Who is that?” “That’s our son, 18 years old, killed in a traffic accident two years ago…” Hit and run. Rich guy, never brought to justice for what he did. No insurance. No nothing. The woman breaks out in rolling Hungarian, “What kind of world is this? I hate god! I want to die! I don’t have the strength to live anymore!!” Complete silence. Everyone looks down. Then rapid talk in Hungarian — they tell her who we are and what happened to us… terrible weeping. It’s contagious. Heartbreaking… Bassam gathers her into his arms, with his soft voice, he soothes her, stroking with his ineluctable charisma, he explains to her that it wasn’t god who killed her son and our daughters. It was human beings! And she needs to continue to fight for her justice, to continue to live for her remaining children, for her husband…. just the way we do… and in the end, she calms down. Reconciles herself. Smiles… Promises to take care of herself. They accompany us to the gate. What an eerie experience. And apart from that? What else did we have? We set out by way of Ben Gurion. At the sight of the Palestinian passport, the security woman calls her supervisor who asks us what the connection is between us. We’re brothers, I say. She draws herself up. What, are you trying to pull one over on me? I show her a card. No, she’s never heard of the Forum. It interests her a lot. Her cousin was killed in the latest war in Gaza… Please, go ahead. We go ahead. In Brussels, they took us to the Atomium, and when the manager of the place heard who we were, she came running over to see the miracle. We were treated to the VIP tour, and overall, it was a little embarrassing… they interviewed us there for Belgian television, and the reporter said that if it’d been up to her, she would have awarded us the Nobel Peace Prize… From there we ran to lunch with Leila Shahid, the Palestinian ambassador to the European Union. A remarkable woman, colorful and lively, who made it her business to collar every waiter in the restaurant to emphatically relate our story to him so that everybody there would hear it… down to the last detail and to display to everybody the great wonder of Israelis and Palestinians who call each other brother. In Antwerp we were the guests of honor at the book release ceremony of “Hotel Pardon” by Jan De Cock, one chapter of which is dedicated to the activities of the Forum. Jan has devoted his life to aiding prisoners. He goes from prison to prison, spending time in the darkest cells of the worst prisons in the universe, in Russia, in Africa, in Brazil… the experiences he tells about are chilling, unbelievable. We spoke, each of us in turn, hundreds of guests listened raptly, and honored us with a standing ovation. We flew to Budapest on a flying bus… unassigned seats, scandalous prices for every piece of luggage. A scam. Three Hungarian gals, each one prettier than the one before, were waiting for us at the airport, with limited English which sounded just like Hungarian. We didn’t understand a word… Bassam immediately nicknamed one “Samira,” and we constantly imagined what Robi would’ve done if she’d have been there with us… The three of those angels, Marianna, Annamarie, and Claudia, accompanied us from school to school, from university to university, as we spoke with hundreds of people, university students and elementary school kids, journalists, politicians, anarchists… tirelessly they arranged interviews on television and in the papers, they translated, liaised, explained, smoothed, and saw to every need we had before we even knew we had it. With immeasurable sensitivity, they initiated the trip to Kisvarda, set up and arranged a meeting with the heads of the Jewish community in Nyíregyháza and a visit to the synagogue there. The highlight was the meeting at the Palestinian embassy in Hungary, where we were received with boundless warmth and respect. It was very exciting. If only the Israeli ambassador would’ve hosted us that way... In Europe there’s an enormous thirst to hear our special message. There’s a desire to find the sparks of hope in the darkness that shine out from beyond the media screens. There’s a willingness to listen and a yearning to act. In every place we went, we were greeted with warmth, love, and respect. And in every place, when we were asked, “What can we do?” here’s what we answered: Seventy years ago, when here in Europe, the Jews were taken away for extermination, the civilized and free world stood by and didn’t lift a finger. And today too, when these two insane peoples are mercilessly massacring each other, the civilized and free world is still standing by and doing nothing. And standing by as a crime is being committed is a crime in itself! We are not asking you to be pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli. We demand that you be pro-peace! And anti-war! Anti-injustice! Anti-Occupation! And I added (as a jew with the utmost respect to my people and my tradition): Ruling and oppressing and humiliating and dominating and occupying millions of people without any democratic right is not Jewish. Period! and being against it is not anti-Semitism! Thanks to Gali Grace Freedman for the English translation
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 20:04:55 +0000
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