Sintesi personale
La predominanza ebraica nel movimento anti-apartheid è innegabile e Mandela affermò: "Ho trovato che gli ebrei sono di più larghe vedute rispetto alla
maggior parte dei bianchi per quanto concerne questioni di razza e politica, forse perché sono storicamente vittime di pregiudizi. "Questo
è stato certamente vero per gli ebrei che Mandela ha incontrato durante la
lotta contro l'apartheid, ma non è un'affermazione applicabile alla comunità ebraica
sudafricana nel suo complesso. Né
un retaggio di pregiudizi può adeguatamente spiegare l'eroismo della
minoranza - anche se può ben spiegare l'apatia e la quiescenza della
maggioranza.Il
fatto è che tutti i sudafricani ebrei hanno beneficato dell' apartheid e la
maggioranza tacitamente l'ha sostenuta (mentre votò , per lo più, contro
il nazionalismo afrikaner.) ,SAJBOD, l'organo di rappresentanza della comunità ebraica , era risoluto nel suo rifiuto di condannare l'apartheid e non fece nulla per sostenere le famiglie dei membri della comunità
che erano stati incarcerati o esiliati. La prima condanna esplicita all' apartheid è stata nel 1985, quando in Sud Africa il razzismo era già allo stremo.Non
è difficile da capire la posizione di SAJBOD, che ha espresso con
precisione l'atteggiamento della comunità nel suo insieme (ad
esclusione, ovviamente, dei tanti attivisti anti-apartheid). Agli inizi
del 1960 (la maggior parte dell' immigrazione precedette
l'Olocausto di
diversi decenni), la maggior parte degli ebrei del Sud Africa erano
prosperi ma insicuri. I ricordi del palese antisemitismo che aveva
caratterizzato il nazionalismo afrikaner negli anni Trenta e negli
anni Quaranta erano ancora vivido . Allo
stesso tempo la comunità era appassionatamente pro-sionista (forse la comunità ebraica più sionista della diaspora) e assunse un'atteggiamento favorevole nei confronti del regime
quando il Sud Africa e Israele sancirono la loro partnership militare negli anni Settanta.Così,
l'atteggiamento di SAJBOD e di gran parte della comunità è stato
determinato da tre fattori intrecciati: il successo economico della
comunità ebraica in Sud Africa, la paura dell' antisemitismo e l'influenza
del sionismo : l'apartheid era positivo per gli
ebrei. Non
per tutti, ovviamente L'esempio
della comunità ebraica sudafricana non supporta ipotesi di Mandela che
essere vittime di pregiudizi nel passato crea anticorpi . Semmai è vero il contrario come ben sappiamo dalla nostra esperienza israeliana. Il vittimismo può altrettanto facilmente desensibilizzare come sensibilizzare. Il timore di risvegliare i demoni del passato può creare i propri orrori. Per lo meno può portare a una cecità morale. La comunità ebraica sudafricana era prospero ,ma moralmente in bancarotta.I membri della comunità che hanno combattuto contro l'apartheid andavano contro corrente. Essi
erano motivati più dall' ideologia (il comunismo, il socialismo ecc) di quanto non fossero dal retaggio di pregiudizi e di
sofferenza. Nel
1930 operai e artigiani ebrei avevano posizioni di leadership nel
fiorente movimento sindacale , la maggior parte dei maschi
ebrei ,che continuavano a opporsi all' apartheid, si era unito ai volontari dell'esercito
sudafricano per combattere contro il fascismo nella Seconda
Guerra Mo ndiale. Mio
padre, Jock Isacowitz, è uno
dei fondatori della Springbok Legion, l'organizzazione di ex-militari
che voleva garantire i diritti di tutti gli ex soldati, a
prescindere dalla razza.Lo Haskalah (Illuminismo ebraico), il
socialismo e il sionismo sono stati importati in Sud Africa
dagli immigrati. Queste
ideologie fiorirono in terra africana creando forti movimenti sia socialisti che sionisti . Mio padre è stato uno dei pochi a unificare le due cose. Arthur
Goldreich, che aveva combattuto con il Palmach nel 1948 prima di tornare
in Sud Africa è stato un altro. Ma la maggior parte dei loro colleghi considervano il sionismo come una forma di colonialismo . Com'è
triste che Israele stia seguendo l'esempio ottuso e
indifferente della comunità ebraica sudafricana e dia ragione ai critici .Roy Isacowitz is a writer and marketer living in Tel Aviv. He spent many years working for the Israeli and foreign media.
The predominance of Jews among the older generation of
white anti-apartheid activists is unmistakable. As my father once put
it, there was a minyan for every political discussion in Pretoria
Central Prison after the imposition of martial law in 1960 - though
never for the purpose of prayer, as far as I know. Most of the
old-timers were comfortable in their Jewishness, but their rituals had a
lot more to do with Marx than with the Almighty.
That Jewish asymmetry was on display this past week as South Africa marked the 50th anniversary of the 1963 police raid on Lilisleaf Farm,
near Johannesburg, which served at the time as the headquarters of
Umkonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the underground African National
Congress. It doesn’t take much perspicuity to notice that all five of the white defendants in the subsequent trial were Jewish. (Another two Jews – one of whom, Arthur Goldreich, lived in Israel
until his death in 2011 - escaped from detention before the trial.)
Similarly, fully half the white defendants in the earlier Treason Trial
(1956) were Jewish, as was the lead counsel.
The
head count of white opponents of apartheid reads like a census list
from one of the old shtetls in Lithuania (from where most South African
Jews originated): Joe Slovo, Harold Wolpe, Ruth First, Albie Sachs, Ronald Segal, Dennis Goldberg, Rusty Bernstein, Solly Sachs, Helen Suzman, Ray Alexander, Ronnie Kasrils,
Raymond Suttner, Ray Simons, Wolfie Kodish and many others. Some, like
Ruth First, paid with their lives. Others were permanently disabled
(Albie Sachs) or spent years in jail. Several, including Slovo, Kasrils
and Albie Sachs, went on to fill senior positions in post-apartheid
South African governments.
It
is not only we hyper-sensitive Jews who pay attention to the Jewish hue
of the white opposition. The apartheid regime also took note and made
hay of it regularly. And Nelson Mandela (whose first employer, at a time
when few companies would employ blacks, was my neighbor Lazar Sidelsky)
remarked on it in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, when he
wrote: “I have found Jews to be more broadminded than most whites on
issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have
historically been victims of prejudice.”
That
was certainly true of the Jews Mandela encountered during the struggle
against apartheid, but it did not apply to the South African Jewish
community as a whole. Nor does a legacy of prejudice adequately explain
the heroism of the minority – though it may well account for the apathy
and quiescence of the majority.
The
fact is that all South African Jews benefited from apartheid and the
majority tacitly supported it (while voting, in the main, against
Afrikaner nationalism.) The South African Jewish Board of Deputies
(SAJBOD), which remains the representative body of South African Jewry
to this day, was resolute in its refusal to condemn apartheid and it did
nothing to support the families of community members who had been
banned, jailed or exiled. The Board’s first explicit condemnation of apartheid came in 1985, when South African racism was already on its last legs.
It’s
not difficult to understand the stance of the SAJBOD, which accurately
expressed the attitude of the community as a whole (excluding, of
course, the many anti-apartheid activists.) By the early 1960s (the bulk
of the Lithuanian immigration predated the Holocaust by several
decades), most South African Jews were prosperous but insecure; the
memories of the overt anti-Semitism that had characterized Afrikaner
nationalism in the Thirties and much of the Forties were still vivid. At
the same time, the community was passionately pro-Zionist (perhaps the
most Zionist Jewish community in the diaspora), which both distanced the
Jews from South African politics (their emotional involvement being
with Israel) and inclined them favorably towards the regime when South
Africa and Israel forged their military partnership in the Seventies.
Thus,
the attitude of the SAJBOD and much of the community was determined by
three, interwoven factors: The economic success of the Jewish community
in South Africa, the fear of anti-Semitism and the influence of Zionism.
The Board saw its role as doing what was good for the Jews – and, for
much of the 20th century, apartheid was good for the Jews. Not for all
of them, of course – the Board was able to avert its collective eyes
from those in jail, in exile or underground – but for most.
The
example of the South African Jewish community does not support
Mandela’s assumption that being victims of prejudice in the past creates
antibodies to prejudice in general. If anything, the opposite is true –
as we know well from our Israeli experience. Victimhood can just as
easily desensitize as sensitize. The fear of reawakening the demons of
the past can create its own horrors. At the very least, it can – and
does – lead to a moral blindness. The South African Jewish community was
prosperous but morally bankrupt.
Those
members of the community who fought against apartheid swam against the
stream. They were motivated more by ideology (communism, socialism and
Bundism) than they were by a legacy of prejudice and suffering. By the
1930s, Jewish laborers and artisans occupied leadership positions in the
burgeoning South African trade union movement and the majority of the
Jewish males who went on to oppose apartheid had joined the
all-volunteer South African army to fight against fascism in World War
II. My father, Jock Isacowitz, got his political toes wet as one of the
founders of the Springbok Legion, an ex-servicemen’s organization that
fought for the rights of all former soldiers, irrespective of race.
The
Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), was strongly rooted in late 19th
century Lithuania and its ideological offshoots, primarily socialism and
Zionism, were imported ready-made into South Africa by the immigrants.
These ideologies flourished in the African soil, resulting in a strong
cadre of dedicated socialists, on the one hand, and a dynamic Zionist
movement on the other. My father was one of the few who managed to
combine the two. Arthur Goldreich, who fought with the Palmach in 1948
before returning to South Africa and joining the armed underground (he
was the official lessee of Liliesleaf Farm) was another. But most of
their colleagues regarded Zionism as a colonial enterprise. How sad that
Israel should be following the blinkered and indifferent example of the
South African Jewish community and proving their critics right.
Roy Isacowitz is a writer and marketer living in Tel Aviv. He spent many years working for the Israeli and foreign media.
Allegati
Israele e l’apartheid: un matrimonio di convenienza e di potenza militare
Commenti
Posta un commento