Jews Can No Longer Call Themselves Victims

The following is an excerpt from Global Terrorism and the Role of its Victims--a speech given by Arnold Roth, whose daughter Malki was killed by terrorists.In 2001, he and his wife Frimet started the Malki Foundation to honor her memory. They also write a blog, This Ongoing War

The damage caused to us Israelis by the shallow and cowardly practice of journalism of this sort came home to me quite sharply in an encounter of which I was part in Europe. In February 2004, I was invited to join a small delegation of Israelis, all of us victims of terror because of things done to us or our loved ones by terrorists. The purpose of the delegation was to go to a first-of-its-kind event – an international congress of victims of terror from many countries, organized in a major European capital and intended to provided a voice for the victims – a voice, as all of us know, that is rarely heard. And in particular to let the voices of Israel’s victims be heard.

In the week before our departure from Israel, word came back from the organizers of the conference, hearing that we were about to arrive. They said: If you plan to come as a delegation representing Israel, it would be better not to come. If you insist, then you will be invited to pay at the door and to take a seat in the audience, but we have no desire for you to speak or to be official recognized. It would be better for everyone if you stayed home.

Needless to say we went, and on the morning of the congress, I found myself sitting in a hall with nearly two thousand people, most of them victims of terror. Some minutes before the proceedings got underway, a man I now know to be a prominent political figure in that European country walked over and introduced himself. He said he could arrange for me to take a seat in the opening panel which was about to address the congress and asked me if I was willing. I said "certainly", and he said "But please don't make it political."

The truth is there are many things I want to say to and about victims of terror, but they're not political things. I readily agreed and took my place on the stage a few minutes later, the sole speaker to be without a sign stating name and country. Those before me, representing France, Colombia, Algeria, Spain, Ireland and the fire-fighting department of New York City, addressed the congress in terms which were, to my ears, sometimes political. When my turn came, I rose and spoke about the silence that all of us know in our homes after the murder of a loved one; about the friends who turn away when they see us coming; about the isolation, the confusion, the pain. When I finished, I found myself surrounded by a small group of widows, terror victims by reason of the murder of a husband, and who, in a language I do not speak, told me via a translator how much they appreciated hearing someone who seemed to speak for them after years of lacking a voice.

At the end of the two-day congress and after many meaningful and moving encounters with people with whom we had little in common but for being victims of the same kind of hate-based barbarism, we came face to face with the secretary of state for foreign affairs of that country. One of my Israeli colleagues lapelled him and said in words which I shall simplify: "For turning us into persona non grata, while simultaneously inviting to this congress as VIP observers the ambassadors of Lebanon and Syria and the Palestinian Authority, you ought to be ashamed." The man is not a politician for nothing and he promptly and calmly invited our group for a discussion of this complaint in his country's foreign ministry the following day.

It turned out that the meeting included several of top-level officials in the foreign ministry of that European country. It was, as diplomats like to say, a full and frank exchange of views; not an easy conversation. Towards the end, the secretary of state told us that, for the next such congress of terror victims, his government would take steps to bring a delegation of Palestinian victims of Israeli terror. In this way, he said, both sides of the argument would be presented, rather than just ours. I rose to the challenge, and said that if they managed to bring Palestinians who would link arms with the rest of us, as we had the day before, and declare total rejection and opposition to terror in any form, then we would all be the beneficiaries; Palestinian Arabs, Israelis and even the citizens of that European country.

This was not the response the politician wanted, I guessed. He retorted that we Israelis were not really suffering from terror at all but from a political situation that demanded a political solution. The real victims of terror, the innocent victims, were the people of his own country. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the perpetrators had nothing but hatred on their minds. He added that steps like Israel's building of a security barrier (he called it something else) and armed security checkpoints were making the situation in our country worse and not better. My response was to point out that terror is no respecter of international boundaries and that the innocent of his country were neither more nor less innocent in the eyes of the terrorists than us Israelis. This, again, was not a view he seemed to want to hear.

Four weeks later, the trains exploded in Madrid. The government of Spain fell in an election three days later. Spaniards learned to their great sorrow that the curse of jihadism and of Islamic terror has other countries on its agenda beyond little Israel.[emphasis added]

Read the whole thing.

We have gone from Holocaust Denial to Terrorism Denial.
Now, Israelis are being killed by politics. No wonder terrorists can now be called activists.

Technorati Tag: Terrorism.