Please take a minute to thank the Spectator for an excellent article by Anthony Lipmann in the January 22 edition entitled "How I became a Jew".
The need is all the greater because the Zionist Federation is urging its members to complain to the weekly magazine because of Lipmann's empathy with Palestinians and Iraqis.
The article is at:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=5571&issue=2005-01-22
Extracts:
'What would I have done?' I ask myself. 'What should I be doing now? What am I doing for those being persecuted today - among them the Palestinians, who are suffering at the hands of Jews? But for a turn of fate, could I have been a Nazi too? What unclean thoughts do I have about Islam and our Arab neighbours? What are my thoughts when I see devout Muslims on our streets in traditional dress, speaking poor English? Am I not looking at myself? Are they not just another separated community of black-coated Hasidic Jews? Did my people not look strange, separate and uncompromising in the central Europe of the 1930s?'
As we prepare for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I am more than ever convinced that we Jews must excise hate. Of course, it is easy for one who has never suffered to talk about excising hate, but I nonetheless believe that I have a duty not to hate. It was hatred that caused the Holocaust.
When on 27 January I take my mother's arm - tattoo number A-25466 - I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah. I will pray that each of us who is born of suffering becomes also the end-post for it. If the survivors and their descendants do not lead the way, who will?
This little band of 600 has a terrible responsibility - to live well in the name of those who did not live and to discourage the building of walls and bulldozing of villages. Even more than this, they - and all Jews - need to be the voice of conscience that will prevent Israel from adopting the mantle of oppressor, and to reject the label 'anti-Semite' for those who speak out against Israel's policies in the occupied territories.
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