Israelis’ Loss of Trust in State Institutions Is ‘Deeply Troubling,’ Says President Herzog

Sharon Wrobel

Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks as he meets with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (not seen) in London, Britain, November 23, 2021. Justin Tallis/Pool via REUTERS

The recent drop in Israeli public’s trust in state institutions is “deeply troubling” and “keeps me awake at night,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog declared Thursday, citing the findings of an annual survey published by the Israel Democracy Institute.

Herzog said that the prolonged decline in public confidence revealed in the Israel Democracy Index represented a “warning light.”

“There is no substitute for Israel’s democracy, and there is no substitute for its state institutions, and therefore the loss of confidence keeps me awake at night,” Herzog said. “I believe that the growing tension and distrust between authorities — the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary — have brought about a decline in the public’s confidence, seeing and hearing all these brawls and words of criticism; some to-the-point, some less so.”

The 19th annual Democracy Index “reveals a complex picture regarding the level of public trust in key institutions and officials, confidence in the country’s civil service and the overall strength of Israeli democracy,” the IDI stated. The poll was conducted during a year which marked the end of the Benjamin Netanyahu era and the arrival of a new coalition government, after four elections in two years, led by new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and which included an Arab party for the first time in decades. Meanwhile, opposition leader Netanyahu faced an ongoing trial for corruption charges.

Swedish report shows over 1 in 4 hate crimes target tiny Jewish minority

CNAAN LIPHSHIZ

Absolute number of incidents included is lower than 2018 study, but National Council for Crime Prevention says figure may be misrepresentation due to changes in reporting structure
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Illustrative: Supporters of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement hold flags during a demonstration at the Kungsholmstorg square in Stockholm, Sweden on August 25, 2018. (Fredrik Persson/Getty Images/AFP)

Wannsee Conference: The most shameful document of modern history – opinion

SARA J. BLOOMFIELD

The Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, was not about consumer trends, projected profits or shareholder value, it was about life and death. Specifically, systematic death.

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A view of the Wannsee villa. The Wannsee Conference was about systematic death. /  (photo credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum/Gedenkstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz)

The CEO of a major corporation once told me he had visited several Holocaust memorials, but most troubling was a site that resonated with his own life. It involved a group of leaders meeting around a conference table to solve a problem and coordinate the solutions required to achieve their goals.

But the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, was not about consumer trends, projected profits or shareholder value, it was about life and death. Specifically, systematic death: The bureaucratically organized annihilation of European Jewry. The meeting minutes, marked top secret, describe the scope of the problem: A list of 34 European countries with estimates of their Jewish populations totaling over 11 million. The CEO could identify with the business-like approach but could not reconcile that with the monstrous purpose: to plan genocide on a continental scale.

The minutes of that meeting, which took place 80 years ago today, are part of the massive documentation that survived, despite German efforts to destroy the evidence of their crimes. In postwar trials, American prosecutors called these minutes perhaps the most shameful document of modern history.

Although the idea of calmly discussing mass murder at a conference is chilling, what happened before and after are equally important to recognizing the warning signs of mass atrocities and genocide. As noted scholar Mark Roseman points out in The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration, the path from social and economic isolation, and forced emigration of Germany’s Jews to the extermination of Europe’s Jews was a twisted one. There were many warning signs, but no one single straight line from Hitler’s 1925 Mein Kampf, filled with hateful diatribes against Jews, to his 1933 rise to power, to the 1935 Nuremberg (citizenship) Laws, to the 1938 nationwide attacks on Jews (Kristallnacht), and to the wartime mass murders that began in 1939 and escalated in 1941 to the most radical step of all, systematic genocide, resulting in the murder of six million Jews.

Along the way, there was an antisemitic, ethno-nationalist ideology underpinning the Nazi state that was relentlessly promoted by massive propaganda, a complete stranglehold on German Jews’ participation in society, unimpeded German expansion into neighboring lands, military conquest and brutal occupation. These factors help explain the interplay of ideas, events and decisions over those 18 years, but there were critical developments well before 1925.

A PORTRAIT of Reinhard Heydrich is displayed as part of the exhibition at The House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin. (credit: ARND WIEGMANN / REUTERS)

The ideas and political currents that shaped Nazism first emerged in the late 19th century within a Europe undergoing enormous economic and social changes. Industrialization, urbanization and the growth of science and technology served as both constructive and disruptive forces. Darwinian and Marxist ideas were part of an increasing secularization. The rise in education and mass communications enabled the growth of mass political parties and movements.

Popular grievances are always in search of solutions – and scapegoats. Jews had always been used as scapegoats, subjected to persecution for centuries in Christian Europe. But modern times called for modern Judeophobia. The late 19th century saw the rise of ethno-nationalism and eugenics, which led to a toxic brew of scientific racism and new questions: What is our national identity? Who belongs to our nation? Who is worthy of our protection?

Amid two upheavals – World War I, which ended with the collapse of four empires, the creation of new nations, and the Russian Revolution – these questions resonated more powerfully. New ideas for organizing societies emerged: Socialism, communism, fascism, and ethno-nationalism linked to racial antisemitism. Democracy, liberalism, and capitalism were challenged from all sides. As Germany suffered a humiliating defeat, the Weimar Republic was born in 1918. Germany, unified as a country for only 47 years, suddenly became a democracy. Yet, most of the civil service, military and big business did not support it. While many Germans cautiously embraced democracy, others gravitated to the far Right and far Left.

The 1923 coup attempt by a fringe Nazi Party was only one event in a critical year that included threats of a communist coup and crippling inflation. Although these and other crises stabilized somewhat in the latter half of the 1920s, resentments simmered. The 1929 Great Depression put them into sharper focus: Who was the internal enemy that caused our defeat in World War I and created the hated Weimar Republic? Who was behind the communist revolution in Russia? Who controls global capitalism and our livelihoods? What does it mean to be German?

Skillfully weaving a tapestry of late 19th century ideas and early 20th century events, the Nazis offered answers and promised pride, unity, hope and renewal. They would create a racial utopia for pure Germans while removing their racial enemies, the Jews, who posed what they considered an existential threat, and whom they linked to both plutocratic capitalism and communism.

German elites did not necessarily agree with all these answers, which many found extreme, but they believed they could use Hitler to achieve their shared goals of destroying democracy, crushing organized labor, fighting communism and restoring Germany as a great power. They brought him into power believing they had hired him to do their bidding. Although Hitler quickly ended democracy, they had grossly underestimated him: Within his first months, he co-opted military and business leaders, and put Germany on a path to its imperialistic destiny as a racially pure nation that would dominate Europe.

The idea of annihilating European Jewry was not Nazi policy in the 1930s. Then, the goal was the complete isolation and deprivation of Jews, hoping they would emigrate. Although Kristallnacht was an alarming sign of intensifying persecution, it was after German military conquests that Nazi policy evolved toward systematic mass murder. Following the June 22, 1941, German invasion of the Soviet Union, the SS and police, helped by local collaborators, began mass shootings of Jewish men and, a month later, women and children as well. As knowledge of the shootings spread to Nazi officials in Germany and across occupied Europe, “their perception of what was possible also began to change,” notes Rosen. “A psychological threshold was irrevocably crossed.”

The precise date Hitler authorized Nazi leaders to plan the annihilation of Europe’s Jews is not known. What is known is that the purpose of the Wannsee Conference was not to make a decision about what had long been called the final solution of the Jewish question, but to coordinate how it would be done. The conference, called by the deputy of SS leader Heinrich Himmler, aimed to secure the support needed to implement the Final Solution. Participants were from the ministry of Justice, the Four Year Plan (economy), the Interior, Propaganda, and the Foreign Office; others represented the Nazi Party and SS agencies, and focused on racial matters. Almost half the participants held a PhD or an advanced law degree.

As Roseman writes, “Here, in the refined atmosphere of an elegant villa, in a cultivated suburb, in one of Europe’s most sophisticated capitals, fifteen educated, civilized bureaucrats from an educated, civilized society sat about, observing all due decorum. And here they gave the nod to genocide.”

As I discussed with the CEO, the critical point is not just that the Wannsee Conference happened, but what led up to it. When and how could things have been different? In hindsight, there were warning signs along the way. Back at the beginnings of the twisted path, who could have imagined where it would lead? We live in a post-Holocaust world that should have learned the unthinkable is possible. By the time those officials met in their mundane, business-like way, it was too late.

The writer is director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

News From Israel- January 19, 2022

ILTV Israel News

Did the Exodus happen? Israeli scholar tours Egypt to show it did

ROSSELLA TERCATIN

The right approach is to look for signs of Egyptian culture in the Torah, Bar Ilan Prof. Joshua Berman says.

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Tourists look at the 3200-year-old Abu Simbel temple during a daily sound and light show, on the eve of the anniversary of pharaoh king Ramses II’s coronation. / (photo credit: REUTERS/AMR ABDALLAH DALSH)

Over the past few weeks, millions of Jews gathering in synagogues all over the world have been reading about the Exodus from Egypt, one of the founding moments of Jewish history and identity through the millennia.

Bible scholars and especially archaeologists, if not most researchers, though, are skeptical that the narrative reflects historical events with any accuracy. They point to the lack of archaeological evidence in Egypt or in other locations mentioned in the story, as well as to the lack of records outside the Bible itself.

However, according to Prof. Joshua Berman from Bar-Ilan University’s Zalman Shamir Bible Department, some of his colleagues are making a fundamental mistake: They are looking for evidence of the Exodus in Egypt, instead of looking for marks of Egyptian culture in the Torah, the Five Books of Moses.

“The Torah is infused with Egyptian culture and its response to it,” Berman said.

“What I find incredibly fascinating is how familiar the Torah is with Egyptian culture, suggesting that the Israelites were indeed in Egypt, and they were there for a long time, but also that the way the Torah engages with this material is what today we would call cultural appropriation – a people using the propaganda of their oppressors and making it their own,” he said.

Exodus from Egypt (Edward Poynter) (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

“The Lord freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents,” reads a verse in the book of Deuteronomy describing the Exodus.

Over the past few weeks, millions of Jews gathering in synagogues all over the world have been reading about the Exodus from Egypt, one of the founding moments of Jewish history and identity through the millennia.

Bible scholars and especially archaeologists, if not most researchers, though, are skeptical that the narrative reflects historical events with any accuracy. They point to the lack of archaeological evidence in Egypt or in other locations mentioned in the story, as well as to the lack of records outside the Bible itself.

However, according to Prof. Joshua Berman from Bar-Ilan University’s Zalman Shamir Bible Department, some of his colleagues are making a fundamental mistake: They are looking for evidence of the Exodus in Egypt, instead of looking for marks of Egyptian culture in the Torah, the Five Books of Moses.

“The Torah is infused with Egyptian culture and its response to it,” Berman said.

“What I find incredibly fascinating is how familiar the Torah is with Egyptian culture, suggesting that the Israelites were indeed in Egypt, and they were there for a long time, but also that the way the Torah engages with this material is what today we would call cultural appropriation – a people using the propaganda of their oppressors and making it their own,” he said.

“The Lord freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents,” reads a verse in the book of Deuteronomy describing the Exodus.

The expression “mighty hand and outstretched arm” appears multiple times in the Bible, but only in the context of the Exodus. Berman said this is not by chance, as these praises were used in Egypt as well.

“When we look at inscriptions from the period of the New Kingdom, between 1500 and 1200 BCE, roughly the period of the enslavement, these expressions are routinely used to describe Pharaohs and their victories in battle, for instance, ‘Pharaoh defeated the Lybians with a mighty hand,’” he said.
The image was employed to refer to Pharaoh in that specific time. That makes it unlikely the Israelites or a more recent biblical author would have been aware of it centuries later, Berman said.

ANOTHER ELEMENT to support Berman’s theory is a bas-relief depicting what was considered the greatest achievement of Ramses II, the battle of Kadesh, where he scored a huge victory against the Hittites in what experts describe as the greatest chariot battle in history. Ramses II, who reigned in the 13th century BCE, is thought to have been the king of Egypt featured in the Exodus. The bas-relief was carved in the temple dedicated to the pharaoh in Abu Simbel, near the border with Sudan.

“After his victory, images of his war camp appeared all over Egypt,” Berman said. “At the core of it, there was his throne camp, made of two chambers, including a smaller one where Ramses himself would sit.”

“What scholars have noted is that the left chamber has the dimensions of two to one, and the right chamber has the dimensions of one to one,” he said. “Those are exactly the dimensions of the Tabernacle in the Torah.”
The Tabernacle is the portable sanctuary built by the Israelites during their wanderings in the desert, as described in the Book of Exodus.

“The claim is that it was modeled after Ramses’s battle camp,” Berman said.
Another connection between the battle with the Hittites and the history of the Exodus was that the Hittites are depicted as escaping into a river.
In addition, after the victory, Ramses’s troops sing a song of praise dedicated to him.

“In the Exodus, the Israelites also sing a song of praise to God, and the words are very similar,” Berman said. “For example, Ramses is described as consuming his enemies like chaffs, like straw, and the Israelites also say that God consumed their enemies like chaff. There are no other texts featuring this image in the ancient Near East.”

The use of names of clear Egyptian origin in the Torah also suggests the close connection with Egyptian culture, he said.

“Miriam, for example, means ‘beloved of the God Amun,’” he added.
Regarding the absence of evidence of the enslavement and escape of the Israelites in Egypt, Berman said the Egyptians never recorded defeats and negative moments, “in the same way today nobody writes on their resume that they have been fired.”

It is true that many researchers do not believe the Exodus happened, but many others fully support the notion that it did, he said, adding that very often these two schools also reflect different political beliefs.
Berman said while it is true that many researchers do not believe the Exodus happened, there is also a vast camp who fully support the notion that it did. He added that very often these two schools also reflect different political beliefs.

He has personally been researching the topic for the past 10 years.
Last year, he was finally able to fulfill his dream of visiting Egypt and the different sites bearing evidence of what he learned.

On Monday, he set out to Egypt once again, leading a special 10-day kosher trip to visit the same sites.

“I thought it would be cool to bring religious Jews to see where their forefathers were enslaved,” he said ahead of the trip.