12 Friday, September 10, 1982
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Final Tribute to a Founder of Israel and His Unpopular Pacifism
By VICTOR BIENSTOCK
Nations, like people, can
be callously ungrateful to
those who have served them
well and Israel and the Is-
raelis have been shockingly
cruel in their failure to rec-
ognize the contributions
that Nahum Goldmann
made so that the state of Is-
rael could come into being
and, once in being, survive.
Interment among the
Zionist greats on Mount
Herzl cannot compensate
for years of scorn and vilifi-
cation.
Goldmann, who died Aug.
30 at the age of 87, was
probably the last of the
great generation of Zionists
who took Theodor Herzl's
dream and brought it to
fruition in the recreation of
the Jewish state in the Holy
Land after 2,000 years. But
almost alone of the world
Zionist leaders who lived to
see Israel established, he
never made his home there.
Always the loner in the
sense that he could never
command a mass follow-
ing as did David Ben-
Gurion and the others
who assumed positions of
power in the new state, he
was too independent to
fit into the Israeli politi-
cal picture and too much
the cosmopolitan in spirit
and outlook to lose him-
self in the maze of party
politics that disfigures
Israel's political system.
More than any other
Zionist leader of the day,
with the possible exception
of Chaim Weizmann,
Goldmann was at home in
the corridors of interna-
tional diplomacy, whether
at the old League of Nations
in Geneva, among the
NAHUM GOLDMANN
foreign ministers assembl-
ing at the United Nations or
in almost every capital in
the world.
His primary interest was
to assure civil rights for all
Jews everywhere and to ad-
vance the Zionist cause but
he did not blind himself to
other issues and movements
on the world stage which he
was able to appraise and
evaluate and, on occasion,
utilize to further his objec-
tives.
His cosmopolitanism was
a quality not always ap-
preciated by his Zionist col-
legues, most of whom
tended to ignore develop-
ments they did not perceive
as directly impinging on
Jewish national aspira-
tions. But it was
Goldmann's overview and
his role in the international
community that gave Israel
the means to survive the
economic crisis in which it
was born and which
threatened to engulf it in
the first struggling years of
its existence.
Israel entered state-
hood in 1948 virtually
bankrupt, short of
money, short of food,
amply provided only
with immigrants coming
in by the boatload need-
ing all the necessities of
life; it was difficult to see
how the new state could
survive.
One of Goldmann's col-
leagues came up with the
idea of seeking reparations
from Germany for the
Jewish people with Israel as
the heir to those who had
perished and the rightful
owner of the billions in as-
sets the Nazis had plun-
dered from Europe's Jewry.
- It was a dangerous idea
politically; it smacked too
much of blood money, of for-
giving the German people
for the Holocaust in ex-
change for money. The idea
tore Israel apart as it did
Jews everywhere. Prime
Minister Ben-Gurion
wasn't ready to take the
political risk but agreed fi-
nally to let Goldmann begin
discussions on reparations
on his own responsibility. If
an outcry resulted,
Goldmann would be disav-
owed and would have to
bear the consequences.
Goldmann began talks
with his friends, President
Theodore Hess and Chan-
cellor Konrad Adenauer.
The negotiations were long,
difficult and frequently
stormy. When they were
completed, West Germany
had agreed to pay Israel
$800 million over a 14-year
period, another $80 million
to the Jewish Restitution
Successor Organization and
restitution and reparations
to the Jewish survivors.
Those payments over the
years — a substantial part
of which went to Jews resid-
ing in Israel — have ex-
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Whether the state of Is-
rael could have survived
without the German re-
paration payments is
very doubtful. But from
the bitter attacks that
have appeared against
Goldmann in the Israeli
press in recent years, it
would appear that many
Israelis do not know
what the state owes to
Goldmann or don't want
to give him credit.
Younger Israelis, particu-
larly, are not able to forgive
him for his insistent belief
that Israel cannot survive
unless there is rapproche-
ment with its Arab
neighbors and the lengths
to which he was prepared to
go to achieve that rap-
prochement, not excluding
talks with the Palestine
Liberation Organization.
In his later years he was
not deterred from express-
ing his views by- attacks
labeling him an enemy of
the state and worse.
Goldmann was convinced
that Israel could not survive
as an enclave in a hostile
Arab sea and that if the
Jewish state was to survive
and accomplish its goals, it
had to have peace and coop-
eration with its neighbors.
As the years passed, he be-
came ever more discouraged
by the trend of events and
Israel's reliance for its secu-
rity primarily on military
strength.
He voiced disappoint-
ment, too, over the trend
to make Israel a state like
every other state without
the distinguishing qual-
ities he thought Jewish
morality and ethics
would give it.
He was considered tough
and cynical — as indeed he
was in many respects — but
the knowledge he acquired
of the world never destroyed
in him the belief that,
somehow or other, the Jews
were a race apart who could
rise to higher levels and
whose state would be a
model for the world.
As his autobiography re-
veals, he envisaged the
Jewish state as a center of
Jewish religious and cul-
tural thought for the Jewish
communities scattered
throughout the world, as a
center for the fruition of the
Jewish genius and as a
home for the Jews who
needed a refuge. It was to be
an entity to which Jews
everywhere could profess
and practice loyalty without
in any way minimizing
their loyalty to the land of
their birth or adoption.
He was intensely con-
cerned over the fate of the
millions of Jews in the
Soviet empire and fearful
that they be lost to Judaism.
A Jewish state such as he
envisioned would be accept-
able to the Soviet
authorities since it would
not require the Jews in their
land to divide their loyal-
ties.
Goldmann was essen-
tially a man of com-
promise. In the tumult-
ous days of the dying
British Mandate he urged
at the King David in 1952 in
recognition of his triumph
in the restitution negotia-
tions with West Germany.
Prime Minister Ben-Gurion
was the principal speaker.
Barnett Litvinoff told the
story in his book on Ben-
Gurion:
"One might have ex-
pected thanks in this case to
be undiluted by criticism,"
Litvinoff wrote, "that
Goldmann, of all Jews, was
fully justifying his contin-
ued existence in the Dias-
pora. Yet Ben-Gurion chose
this moment to reprove his
fellow-Zionist for not taking
the plunge and returning
`home'.
" 'He is a great Jew,' said
the prime minister, 'but his
one defect is that he is not
fully identified with Israel.
Here and here alone,
Jewishness and Zionism
begin.' "
Goldmann, in the first
years of statehood, was
eager to be a part of it. I was
in Jerusalem in 1949 when
rumors of a government
shakeup were the main
topic of discussion.
Friends of Goldmann
were making intensive
soundings at his request
VICTOR BIENSTOCK
as to the possibility of his
being invited to assume a
tion.
He never gave up the Cabinet post if he settled
dream of a Jewish state ac- in Israel. But the Ben-
cepted by the world, de- Gurion who later chided
militarized and protected by him for not having come
the Great Powers — a neut- "home" treated him so
ralized oasis in the Middle savagely at a Jerusalem
East. He held that dream for session of the Zionist
years and suffered the General Council as to
wrath of Israeli journalists make it quite evident that
three years ago when he as long as Ben-Gurion
again publicly advocated Is- held the reins, there was
rael's demilitarization in no place for Goldmann.
Goldmann, I believe, ac-
articles here and abroad.
He proposed then that Is- cepted the fact that he could
rael be neutralized within not be part of the Israeli
its pre-1967 borders which leadership but he refused to
would be guaranteed by the cease his own activities on
United States, the Soviet behalf of Israel as an indi-
Union and a selected United vidual and as president of
Nations force. "Israel could the World Jewish Congress.
then become more fully His private diplomacy
what it should be," he wrote angered Ben-Gurion and
then in Foreign Policy mag- his successors, particularly
azine, "a safe, territorially- his contacts within the Arab
limited national home for world and his publicized at-
those Jews who wish to set- tempts to meet with
tle there and a religious, President Nasser of Egypt
cultural and intellectual and Yasir Arafat of the
center for all Jewish Palestine Liberation
Organization.
people."
ailing,
Aged
and
This was not a new or
quickly arrived at concept; Goldmann took his last con-
it was one that Goldmann troversial public position in
July, a protest against the
had pondered for years.
In his autobiography Israeli use of force in Leba-
published in 1969 he had non and a plea to Israelis
proposed a Middle East and the Palestinian Arabs
federation, including Is- to seek coexistence based on
rael, as a solution to the self-determination. He was
Arab-Israeli conflict and, joined in this appeal which
alternatively, the neut- was supported by a moder-
ralization of the Jewish ate PLO official, by Pierre
Mendes-France, the former
state.
The state, he said, must French Prime Minister, and
be neutral "if all Jews are to by Philip M. Klutznick,
be able to maintain emo- former president of Bnai
tional and spiritual ties Brith and of the World
with it irrespective of their Jewish Congress.
For Goldmann, the
nationality and political
orientation. Any political Jewish state was not an end
alignment on the part of in itself. It was to be an in-
such a state makes it dif- strument, in his own words
ficult and sometimes im- "to preserve our people's
possible for the Jewish citi- special identity and to re-
zens of certain other coun- shape Jewish life so that our
tries openly to profess their survival may be not merely
secure but justified and the
allegiance to it.
They gave a _dinner in future be worthy of the
honor of Nahum Goldmann past."
the Jews to accept part
tion of Palestine to per-
mit establishment of a
Jewish state without
bloodshed. He pleaded
for delay in proclaiming
statehood to give Ameri-
can diplomats time to try
to work out an accept-
able agreement with the
Arabs. For this he was
denounced as a defeatist
but his objective was to
see the state established
in friendly relations with
its neighbors. He
envisaged the eventual
possibility of the Jewish
state becoming a member
of a Middle East federa-