Paraphrasing the famous quote by German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller – who after initially welcoming the Third Reich, realized that it was a dictatorship and became its most outspoken opponent – President Isaac Herzog last week at the opening in Tel Aviv of the 10th annual conference of the Israel Bar Association, speaking in relation to the spiraling number of murders in Arab-Israeli society, called the murders “civilian terrorism,” adding “there is no such thing as governance vacuum. Wherever we do not have a presence as a state, as governing authorities, crime will take over. Today it is at my neighbor’s. Tomorrow it will be at my (house). This is a national emergency.”What Niemoller said with fateful prescience was:
“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”
■ IT APPEARS that Herzog is intent on playing a major role in Middle East diplomacy, in addition to the usual role that the presidents of Israel play in enhancing Israel’s diplomatic relations with other countries. His meeting last week with King Abdullah of Jordan was indicative of that, as was the earlier exchange of letters between Herzog and King Mohamed VI of Morocco, and before that Herzog’s presence at the opening of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.
Although Herzog has stated that he will not be involved in diplomacy per se, meetings with leaders of other countries and with diplomats are all part of diplomacy and coordinated with the government. In fact, Herzog will soon be accepting credentials of new ambassadors, which is part of his presidential role, and is coordinated with the Foreign Ministry. The tentative date for his first batch of credentials from a group of new envoys is September 13.
Last week, he also hosted the annual pre-Rosh Hashanah reception for the diplomatic corps. Many of those who attended had already met him at his inauguration at the Knesset, among them Kosovo’s Charge d’Affaires Ines Demiri, whose Twitter account reads like an open diary. Since the opening of Kosovo’s embassy in Jerusalem in March this year, Demiri, who is the daughter of Votim Demiri, the president of Kosovo’s tiny Jewish community, has been extremely busy.
Also present at the pre-Rosh Hashanah reception was Abderrahim Beyyoudh, the Moroccan charge d’affaires who Herzog mentioned in his address, albeit not by name. Beyyoudh brought with him a copy of the signed letter the king of Morocco sent to Herzog last month.
■ IN A pre-Rosh Hashanah interview with KAN 11’s Michal Rabinovich, Herzog was pointedly asked whether he would pardon former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the ex-prime minister is convicted of the crimes for which he has been indicted. Herzog evaded the question, saying that the matter is presently theoretical. In addition, he stated that it had never come up for discussion between him and Netanyahu. The usually genteel Rabinovich was quite aggressive in her questioning – yet another example of the Israeli media’s tendency to engage in conspiracy theories. One can only imagine what will transpire if Netanyahu is acquitted. A conspiracy theory that did the rounds was proved to be groundless with the release of the report by State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, who was said to be Netanyahu’s yes-man. Englman had no hesitation in being critical of the way the Netanyahu administration had handled the pandemic crisis.
■ JOURNALISTS ARE as fallible as anyone else and occasionally make mistakes, as happened in this column last week with the mention of the late Jerusalem Post editor and reporter Louis Rapoport, who passed away in 1991, and not as published. He had been mentioned by former Soviet Jewry activist Pamela Braun Cohen at the launch of her book Hidden Heroes. She had spoken of him in connection with an impressive article he had written about Soviet Jewry.
The event took place at the home of Yosef Abramowitz, another former Soviet Jewry activist. Among other Soviet Jewry activists who were present was Toby Klein Greenwald, who was delighted to be reunited with Sasha and Anya Kholmyansky, as was Braun Cohen. Greenwald, who is best known in Israel for writing and staging musical plays on religious Jewish themes for women by women, is also a journalist, and interviewed the Kholmyanskys in 1988, soon after their arrival in Israel with their nine-month-old daughter Dora. Originally from Estonia, where Sasha taught Hebrew and Anya learned to speak it fluently, they were constantly harassed by the KGB and came to international attention for their long hunger strikes. Sasha was also arrested on fabricated charges of possessing a gun. The family had been “adopted” by Kibbutz Rosh Tzurim in Gush Etzion, whose members were at the airport to greet them when they finally realized their dream.
■ BECAUSE THE 20th anniversary of the 9/11 catastrophe, which was the most heinous act of terrorism on American soil, falls on Shabbat, the annual memorial held in Israel will take place on September 12. Co-sponsored by the Jewish National Fund and the US Embassy, this year’s memorial ceremony is by invitation only in compliance with Health Ministry guidelines, and each guest will have to present a Green Pass.
In 2009, JNF/KKL dedicated the 9/11 Memorial Plaza with a cenotaph in its center to remember and honor the victims of the September 11 attacks. The cenotaph is made of granite, bronze and aluminum and takes the form of an American flag, waving and transforming into a flame at the tip. A piece of melted metal from the ruins of the Twin Towers forms part of the base. Around the plaza are the names of all the victims, including the five Israeli citizens. This is the only site outside of New York that lists the names of all the victims.
In the absence of a US ambassador to Israel, the key representative of the US Embassy will be US Charge d’Affaires Michael Ratney, a 30-year veteran of the State Department, who from 2012 to 2015 was US consul-general in Jerusalem, leading a mission of 600 Americans, Israelis and Palestinians responsible for the US political, economic and cultural relationship with Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. There has not been a US ambassador in Israel for almost nine months, and there is presently a controversy over the possible reopening of the consulate.
Apropos the US Embassy, it can now take over the Diplomat Hotel in Jerusalem, which for many years served as a home for elderly immigrants, mostly from the former Soviet Union. It took quite a long time for alternate accommodation to be found for the residents, but they have now all been housed in the former Crowne Plaza hotel near the entrance to Jerusalem. The hotel, which is part of the Africa Israel Group, was divided in two, with one half becoming the Vert hotel, which operates as a regular hotel, and the other half, with separate entrance and a dividing wall, a retirement facility for senior immigrants whose accommodation is paid or by the Aliyah and Integration Ministry. The Diplomat Hotel was purchased by the American Embassy in June 2014, and it kept renewing the ministry’s lease year after year.
The need to find alternate accommodation for the residents became more acute after the embassy moved to Jerusalem in May 2018. The new sheltered living venue may suit its residents far better than their former abode. They love to shop in Mahaneh Yehuda market, which is fairly close to their new home and also within walking distance of the Yitzhak Navon railway station, the light rail and the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. It has not yet been announced when the Americans will begin construction on the site of the Diplomat Hotel.
■ VETERAN SINGER Miri Aloni, 71, had her right leg amputated on Thursday of last week at Ichilov Hospital following a severe life-threatening infection. When doctors told her that she might need an amputation, Aloni initially went into shock, but realizing that her life and her income were dependent on her voice and not on her leg, she took a more stoic, optimistic attitude. One of Israel’s leading vocalists, she was rehearsing for a musical The Station, which is based on an army radio station and produced by the Haifa Theater, almost up to the time that she was hospitalized. The show is scheduled to open in November. Aloni was due to appear during Sukkot at Yossi Alfi’s annual storytelling festival, which this year will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of Givatayim, but it is not certain that she will be sufficiently recovered from her surgery in order to attend.
Aloni is best known for singing the “Song of Peace” at the rally that preceded the assassination in November 1995 of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. She later fell on hard times and could often be seen performing at the entrance to Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market. Like several other performing artists of her generation, she made a successful comeback. She is not the first Israeli performer to lose a leg. The late Hanna Meron lost a leg in a terrorist attack in Germany in 1970, but did not allow that to prevent her from continuing with her career as a stage and screen actress. She kept going almost until her death in 2014 at age 90.
■ ALTHOUGH THERE is still a question mark over Aloni’s participation in the Storyteller’s Festival, Leah Koenig, who is almost a regular, and at age 91 is considered to be the queen of Habima Theater – appearing in leading roles in several productions in the one season – is scheduled to appear at the festival in a one-woman show in Yiddish.
■ ISRAEL’S PUBLIC Broadcasting Corporation has been working hard to provide quality programs on radio and television in order to improve its ratings. But all its efforts may be in vain unless it changes its policy regarding commercials. Just how many times should listeners be punished by hearing the same commercial in the course of an hour? The most annoying case in point was that of Yoav Simchi, the chairman of Histadrut Leumi – as distinct from the more veteran Histadrut labor federation. Simchi, who has a far from radiophonic voice, in conveying New Year’s greetings, also made a pitch for employees throughout the country to join his organization. That’s perfectly legitimate at 15-minute intervals but not when it’s aired every few minutes. It’s not the only commercial aired too frequently for days on end. There really should be better coordination between KAN’s editorial and advertising departments.
■ ALTHOUGH HE has announced that he wants to close or privatize Army Radio, Defense Minister Benny Gantz has apparently given the station mired in controversy a temporary new lease of life by appointing journalist Galit Altstein as its interim commander in chief. Alstein previously worked as chief news editor at the station and subsequently became chief news editor of Calcalist, the financial supplement of Yediot Aharonot. The appointment is a revolutionary move in that Army Radio, which in its 71 years of existence has never had a woman in the top job, although there have been women anchors, editors and reporters – the most famous of whom is Ilana Dayan. For more than 30 years, a series of defense ministers and chiefs of staff, including Gantz and current IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi, have attempted to close down Army Radio. The station has consistently received a last minute reprieve, though there is consensus, including from people whose media careers started there, that it has outlived its purpose and has become too political. Altstein’s challenge will be to restore political balance, though this bothers Gantz less than the fact that some 18-year-old can approach a government minister and ask probing questions. Dayan was particularly good at this when doing her army service, and a long line of successors have followed her lead. Army Radio alumni say it was the best possible training ground for journalism.
■ IT’S AN interesting fact that the Israeli Paralympics team always does much better in the medals department than the regular Olympic team. This was again the case in Tokyo last month, but with the difference that the first gold medal was won by Arab-Israeli swimmer Iyad Shalabi, who despite multiple disabilities proved to be a true champion and made history by being the first Arab to win a gold medal for Israel at the Olympics. All of a sudden, animosities between Arabs and Jews in the Jewish state were forgotten as the bulk of the population rejoiced in his victory and heard wonderful things about him from sportscasters and other team members. But Shalabi’s win did more than create temporary national unity. It also proved the Herzlian motto “If you will it, it is no dream.” The same holds true for the rest of the team regardless of whether or not they came home with medals. Each and every one of them overcame enormous difficulties in order to prove their prowess in the sport of their choosing, a factor tht should alert society to be more inclusive of people with disabilities, and to accept them for what they can do, rather than exclude them for things they can’t do. A moving story in this respect appears in the current issue of The Jerusalem Report, the glossy magazine that is part of The Jerusalem Post group. It tells the story of Captain Yehonatan Cohen, the son of former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, who despite cerebral palsy, being confined to a wheelchair and unable to move his hands, fought tooth and nail to be admitted to the IDF. Rejected again and again because people with disabilities are generally exempt from service, he refused to take no for an answer and was eventually accepted into the Special in Uniform program, which enables young men and women with disabilities to volunteer in the IDF. It did not take long for his intellectual abilities and his talent as a teacher to be recognized, and he was sent to an officer’s course. His parents were always totally supportive and sent him to a regular school and not a special education school. This gave him the self-confidence he needed to be where he is today. His father recently joined the leadership of Special in Uniform.
■ NOTWITHSTANDING PANDEMIC and war, young Israeli and Palestinian singers have not stopped meeting – they have continued engaging in deep dialogue and writing original songs that give meaning to their realities in this time and their dreams for the future.
The world premiere of these songs and the stories behind them will be heard around the world in the coming days. Guest stars who will be joining and encouraging these young people include, among others, Ziggy Marley, David Broza, Mira Awad and Achinoam Nini, who will all participate in the gala global concert of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus in which Jews and Palestinian Arabs harmonize together. The date is Sunday, September 12, and the concert will be held at 10 a.m. in San Francisco, 1 p.m. in Washington, 6 p.m. in London, 7 p.m. in Geneva and 8 p.m. in Jerusalem. Although the performance will emanate from Jerusalem, viewers and listeners can access it from almost anywhere in the world not only by livestream, but also by joining or hosting an in-person watch party in their city. Organizers can help to make that possible by putting interested people in touch with each other.
For further information or to get involved, contact JYC Executive Director Miriam Sharton at miriam@jerusalemyouthchorus.org
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