Jerusalem Post columnists Gershon Baskin and Uri Savir are regularly assailed as “kapos” by certain readers for espousing pro-peace views. One sample from a column by Savir published last March: “Let's put it in simple words even a deluded madman like you or Kapo Baskin can comprehend; ANY JEW WHO WOULD DIVIDE JERUSALEM IS A TRAITOR TO HA'SHEM AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE. KAPO!!!”
The pejorative “kapo” is regularly thrown at peace activists, proponents of a two-state solution of a diplomatic resolution of the Iran crisis, human rights advocates and in general members of the progressive Zionist camp.
I am a target too. Every time I write an article, people start sending tweets labeling me as a kapo. There’s even a hashtag. I can take criticism and brush off insults -- but I do think we as Jews and Israelis should erase this horrible word from our public discourse. Our sages teach us that one of the reasons the Temple was destroyed was “sinat chinum” – gratuitous hatred among Jews. Use of this epithet is a classic example of sinat chimum.
So the charge against dovish Jerusalem Post columnists is that they are the equivalent of Jews who collaborated with Nazis – that they are in effect aiding in the mass extermination of the Jewish people.
As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I worked for many years to create a fitting memorial at the Belzec extermination camp in Poland where my own grandparents were murdered (the memorial was inaugurated in 2005). So I find this accusation deeply offensive.
But this is not about my feelings. Use of this term is also corrosive to our democracy, both in Israel and the United States, which depends on the free exchange of ideas and vigorous debate. By labeling one’s political opponent a kapo, one is in effect saying that person’s views are outside the pale, that he or she is a traitor and a collaborator with Nazis or their modern-day equivalent.
Using that term to smear one’s political opponents is also profoundly arrogant. We all wish to believe that. faced with the impossible choice that confronted the Jews herded into concentration camps, we would unhesitatingly choose death over collaboration. But none of us were there; none of us faced that choice. We hope we would have behaved like heroes, but do we really know? As another Jewish-born sage remarked. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."
Interestingly, Israeli judges who presided over the trials of some accused kapos in the early years of the State of Israel handed down relatively lenient sentences. Author Idith Zertal, in her book, “Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood” writes: “The leniency displayed by the courts, even in the gravest abuse cases, stemmed, one would assume, from the impact of the ghastly pictures … the extreme borderline conditions in which people, robbed of their humanity, were essentially dead while still alive.”
So as I end this blog, I invite readers to comment freely. Please disagree, dispute my facts, rebut my arguments, present counter viewpoints, dissent from my premise, demolish my argument. But let’s debate with civility – and let’s banish this horrible term from our lexicon.