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Last update - 10:49 04/05/2008 Unwilling to stand idly by By Tzafi Saar Tags: Women in black "It's too bad Hitler didn't finish the job," a passerby shouted at the women who took part in a Women in Black protest in Haifa. Among them was a woman of about 80, a Holocaust survivor with a number tattooed on her arm. "You don't scare me," the old woman replied. "'Specialists' scared me." Over the years, remarks like "Your mother was a kapo" or "Go back to Poland" have been hurled at many women in the ranks of this movement, which is opposed to the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank - an experience shared by other women's peace movements, says sociologist Dr. Tova Benski, head of the Behavioral Sciences Department at the College of Management. This phenomenon was just one of the reasons why Benski decided to conduct a study on the role of daughters of Holocaust survivors, and of female Holocaust survivors themselves, in the Israeli peace movements. When Benski began interviewing various peace activists about their motives and emotions, the first answer that came up, she says, was: "We have to act and take part because another people is being oppressed here and I'm standing by and watching, like the Nazis watched." Another explained: "At least no one will be able to ask me: And what did you do?" The female activists against the occupation do not believe that the situation of the Palestinians in the territories, as bad as it may be, is comparable to the Holocaust that befell the Jews, but their family trauma still propels them to take action against the trampling of human rights, whatever the circumstances. Advertisement Benski's study, which contains numerous interviews, was preceded by about 20 years of research among female peace activists that started, she says, "in 1985 with the establishment of Parents Against Silence, which was often referred to as 'Mothers Against Silence,' and then with Peace Now, Yesh Gvul and the Women's Peace Coalition. The whole time, there were signs of a connection to the Holocaust issue. Since I myself am the daughter of two survivors, it seemed natural to me. I didn't see anything unique about it. Maybe I didn't really want to confront it." After the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa intifada, Benski began researching the public's reactions to the Women in Black protests. According to her analysis, these revolved around themes of gender, nationality and sexuality (one of the most common insults directed at the women was "Arafat's whores"). The comments about commiserating with Hitler for not having the chance "to finish the job" are what "made the penny drop for me," says Benski. "It was very obvious that most of us were Ashkenazi. All this impelled me to reexamine all the material I'd collected over the years." And then she wondered how she hadn't ever noticed before that many female peace activists were the daughters of Holocaust survivors. Many of them, in interviews conducted by Benski, as well as in interviews she found in the press and in books like "Ahayot Le-Shalom" ("Sisters in Peace: Feminist Voices of the Left"), edited by Hedva Isachar, attest to this biographical fact being a significant factor in their becoming activists for Palestinian rights and against the occupation in the territories. But why women in particular? What about the men who were born to and raised by Holocaust survivors? This is where one of the gender differences of the second generation comes into play, Benski replies. While women who are the children of survivors respond in a depressive way, harbor guilt feelings and identify strongly with their mothers, for instance, men generally react in a more aggressive manner, along the lines of "We need a strong army," she says. What these women do, she adds, is essentially overturn the usual Holocaust discourse. "These women grew up in Israel at a time when the Israeli perception of the Holocaust as a 'national shame' was being shaped," she says. "I remember being ashamed of my parents because 'they went like sheep to the slaughter.' The hegemonic discourse was that Israel has to be strong and the army has to be strong so the Holocaust won't happen again. Begin's statement that 'the alternative is Treblinka,' is just one of a whole series of similar statements by Israeli leaders. The subject of the Holocaust serves to justify a security-centered outlook. "But unlike people who say to them, 'What do you want - for there to be another Holocaust? For them to throw us into the sea?,' these women transform their traumatic personal-family experience into a universal message of preserving human rights, of others' human rights, too," Benski continues. "They're divided into two categories: Those whose parents were saved by non-Jews, Germans and others, operate out of a sense of... Just as others helped their parents survive, they must help the Palestinians who are suffering. And there are those who refuse to be occupiers and refuse to have things they consider unacceptable being done in their name." Thus, the memory of the Holocaust is not merely one of the foundations of Israeli security-mindedness, but also one of the motivating factors behind the peace movement. As noted, Benski herself is the daughter of Holocaust survivors: Her mother, who comes from Transylvania, survived Auschwitz while all the rest of her family perished there. Her father was interned in a forced labor camp, escaped and went into hiding. The family came on aliyah in 1951 and settled in Yokneam. Benski tells of a household that contained a big secret no one was allowed to talk about, and where "tons of reserves of food" were stored. "My father died before he ever talked about it," she says. "My mother only began talking about it after his death." As for the connection between her family history and her research, she says, "I've yet to finish my personal reckoning on that." In the course of the work, she says, "Every time I feel like I'm losing myself as a researcher, I step aside a little." She is planning to continue with a more in-depth study on the subject and to write a book about the dynamic of the "feminist" or "feminine" peace camp in Israel; "I haven't yet decided which term to use," she explains, "because not all of the women are feminists and not all of them were like that from the beginning." She herself, she says, has been a feminist since childhood: "In a school essay I wrote that I wanted to be the first woman on the moon." In Daphna Banai's home, they did speak about the Holocaust - a lot. The family of Banai's mother narrowly escaped from Berlin in 1939. Many relatives perished in the war. Banai, an activist in Machsom Watch (Women against the occupation and for human rights), Re'ut-Sadaka (The Jewish-Arab Youth Organization for Peace and Democracy) and other organizations, says: "I got completely hooked on the Eichmann trial. I was 11 and for two years I didn't study or play. I was affixed to the transistor radio. I was caught up in the testimonies." Like Banai, Edna Toledano-Zaretski, a veteran peace activist and currently a member of the Haifa city council for the Hadash party, says that the Eichmann trial, and the Kastner trial before that, had a profound effect on her. "I asked myself - How could people say they didn't know? People are disappearing and the others don't know, they didn't see, they didn't do anything about it. The attitude in Israel was to blame the victim, and I thought that instead it should be to examine the aggressor. And I never thought that we are immune. Indifference is the lurking evil. And you need to take responsibility to know what's happening," says Toledano-Zaretski. Banai stresses that "it's impossible to compare the outcome of the Holocaust to what's happening in the territories. What's happening there is terrible, but it's not at all similar to the Holocaust. However, we're denigrating the memory of the Holocaust if we don't compare the processes that led to it. I feel a need to act so that such things don't happen. To simply remember is to sin against the memory of the Holocaust. We have to learn from it, about ourselves first of all. Last week, for example, a soldier threatened to shoot a woman from Machsom Watch. Afterward, she asked him: 'Tell me, would you really have done it?' And he told her: 'If I received an order, yes. I'll obey whatever order I get.' "Another activist from Machsom Watch," continues Banai, "told about how her aunt, who was in Auschwitz as a teenager and worked in a sewing workshop, said there was a young German soldier who used to whisper to the Jews from time to time, 'It'll be over soon. The Russians are getting closer.' It's impossible to describe how much this encouraged them. The Jews didn't know the soldier's name and among themselves they called him Moishele. 'You women,' the aunt told her niece from Machsom Watch, 'You are Moishele.'" Bookmark to del.icio.us   Security first Foreign Minister Livni tells the PA to ensure terrorists don't exploit Israel's gestures. 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