Report on 2015 Visit to Israel
Xu Xin
The second half of March 2015 saw my other visit to Israel. The primary purpose of the visit was to attend the Allied Powers’ Response to the Holocaust Conference, organized and sponsored by InFath Community Foundation, Israel Council on Foreign Relations, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, and The World Jewish Congress. This year is the 70th anniversary of the victory of the WWII. The Holocaust, the destruction of six million Jews, was the greatest shock to the entire world when it became known to the world. 20 distinguished scholars with different perspectives from Poland, the United Kingdom, Israel, Canada, the United States and China to reflect on this very topic to develop new sources of knowledge and to improve the understanding of the issue. As the sole Chinese participant I presented a paper: “Response from Afar: Chinese Responses to the Holocaust.” The abstract of the paper is as following:
Generally speaking, the Chinese public knew very little about the Holocaust because there were relatively fewer reports in China about what was happening to the European Jewry than in Western countries between 1933 to 1945 as the Chinese were facing the invasion of Japan and its full scale war against China. Their country was in a great danger and they had too much to worry about themselves. However, this does not mean that China totally ignored the Holocaust as China belonged to the Allied Powers during WWII. This paper intends to discuss Chinese responses to the Holocaust in three aspects: 1. the intellectual circle, as Chinese scholars were the main source to provide information for the Chinese about the Holocaust, to show that Chinese intellectual circles denounced the Nazi Germany’s persecutions against Jews; 2. popular level to see comments or actions made by those Chinese who learned about the Holocaust through newspaper articles and other publications; and 3. response of the Chinese authorities by examining documents from the Second Historical Archives of China. The third aspect response is the focus of this paper. Those documents reveal that Chinese Government as well as Chinese people were very sympathetic to the sufferings of Jews in Europe and took actions to assist them by proposing a plan to set up a settlement in Yunnan Province, Southwest China in 1939, which was less known in the world. The paper will intend to provide the background and analyze the reasons behind their responses.
The paper aroused some interest among participants and audience.
I took this opportunity to broaden my visit and extended my stay in Israel for one more week, which allowed me to involve the following activities.
While in Jerusalem, I met Dr. Laurence Weinbaum, Director of Israel Council on Foreign Relations and Chief Editor of The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, who made the arrangement for me to meet with Robert Singer, CEO and EVP of The World Jewish Congress (WJC). The WJC is organizing with the Council of Overseas Chinese, a state department of China, a big international event to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the ghetto in Shanghai. The news was publicly announced a few days before I came to Israel. We had a good lengthening discussion of it. I was lucky to have a chance to visit the library and archives of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, and obtained copies of letters of Begin and documents regarding the relations between China and Israel in late 1970s.
I also visited the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and met with its president, Dr. Dore Gold, as well as Dr. Joel Fishman and of the JCPA. The meeting helped me to have a better understanding of current situation in this region.
The second week of my visit was in Tel Aviv.
Recommended and arranged by John Fisher, Manager General of the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation, I visited The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an independent, nonpartisan professional think tank outside the governmental political and security establishments. At the Moshe Dayan Center, I was greeted by Prof. Uzi Rabi, Director. We discussed possible collaboration between our two institutions, most likely a conference on Middle East in China in 2016. I also had a chance to use the center’s library and archives.
At the INSS I had meetings and discussions with a number of experts on Mid-East Affairs. They are Dr. Oded Eran, Ambassador, Director of the China Forum at INSS, who head of Israel’s negotiations term with the Palestinians, Professor Zaki Shalom, Senior researcher at INSS, who had visited the Glazer Institute in 2014, Dr. Ephraim Kam, who served as deputy director of INSS for 20 years, and Uzi Eilam, senior Research Associate of INSS and a retired general, who had served as lead of military R&D at IDF headquarters. Their insights on many issues such as Iran nuclear program, peace process with the Palestinians, China’s role, relations between China and Israel, broadened my vision. I collected quite some materials during the visit.
At the invitation of Dr. Gad Isay, Department Chair of the East Asian Studies I travelled to Tel-Hai College, a college in North Israel. Besides giving a talk on “Why Chinese Are So Interested in Jews and Their culture,” I was showed around of the campus and its surroundings, such as boarders of Israel and Liberian and Golan Heights.
I was invited to stay Varda Yoran’s apartment in Ramat Aviv. Varda and her late husband, Shalom, are a longtime friends and generous supporters of my Institute. My wife and I translated Shalom’s book, The Defiant: A True Story, into Chinese and made his personal fighting story available for Chinese readers 10 years ago. Varda, now a New Yorker, came back to Israel to vote as well as to participate in the American Friends of Tel Aviv University Mission to Israel 2015. To stay with her allowed me not only enjoying the comfort accommodation, better than a 5-star hotel, but also enabled me to attend a number of the dinner gatherings of the mission. The friendship and passion of those TAU friends to the University reflect, as lest in my mind, the attitude of American Jewry towards Israel in general and that of individuals towards education in Israel in particular. It was quite a unique experience for me and I enjoyed them tremendously.
I also made a best use of my stay to visit the Beth Shalom Aleichem in Tel Aviv. 2016 will be the 100th anniversary of the passing of Shalom Aleichem. Scholars in China, especially in Shanghai, intend to hold an international symposium to mark the event as China celebrated the centennial of his birthday in 1959. The mission of the visit is to seek collaboration with the Institute. Leonid Roitman, the secretary, was kind to receive me, showed around the Museum and presented me a copy of the album of the life of Shalom Aleichem, published by the House. He is very interested in our suggestion and will report it to Prof. Avraham Noverstern, the director of the House.
My activities did not end up there. I was interviewed by The Time of Israel on Jewish Studies in China and had a great pleasure meeting with Ronit Dotan, Senior Director of VIP Department and Speakers Bureau, Israel Office of the Jewish Federations of North America, and William Gross, Judaic collector of Jewish artifacts and books of Judaism.