Executive director of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, three months ago, Argentine-Israeli diplomat and economist Dani Dayan, 66, says he was naive about anti-Semitism.
In 2016, when he arrived in New York as Israel’s consul general, a position he held until 2020, he did not expect to have to deal with so many cases of attacks on Jews, graffiti and vandalism in Jewish cemeteries, supremacist marches and even a massacre of 11 faithful in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Today, he is not optimistic. He considers anti-Semitism a disease without a cure, demands more actions from social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok and claims that the issue can take governments of the left and right, like the current Brazilian one, even when they declare themselves friends of Israel.
In Brazil, Dayan’s name became known in 2014, when then-President Dilma Rousseff rejected his nomination for Israeli ambassador in BrasÃlia. The reason, never clarified by Itamaraty, would be the fact that the diplomat led, from 2007 to 2013, the Yesha Council, which represents Israeli settlers in territories in dispute with the Palestinians, and that he lived in one of these settlements.
In his first interview on the subject, Dayan, who was born in Buenos Aires in 1955 and immigrated to Israel when he was 15 years old, tells leaf who left the “unfortunate episode” behind, satisfied with the improvement in the relationship between Brazil and Israel after the Dilma government.
What is Yad Vashem’s biggest challenge nearly eight decades after the end of the Holocaust? We are entering a period in which, unfortunately, there will be no more survivors to share their experiences of the Holocaust. Recorded documents and testimonies must serve as a witness. It will be a much more important and vital task in keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive.
What is needed to fight anti-Semitism? I tell all leaders who come to visit Yad Vashem that there are two main lessons. One is the existential importance of an independent, sovereign and strong Jewish state. If there had been such a state in the 1930s and 1940s, the Holocaust would not have occurred. And the second is that no anti-Semitic act should be tolerated. Anti-Semitism must be vehemently fought from the very first sparks. The whole world paid a heavy price for tolerance of the Nazis by world leaders. This is true for social groups and also for governments. The Iranian regime, for example, preaches the destruction of the State of Israel. This cannot be tolerated.
There is a strong impression that, in the last five years, anti-Semitism has exploded in the world. Is it just an impression? No. When I went to New York as consul general, I was naive, I didn’t think anti-Semitism would be one of the most important issues on my agenda. But then began the cases of desecration of cemeteries in Philadelphia and Rochester. Then the neo-Nazi protests in Charlottesville. I saw the Nazi flag flying in the streets of a big city and heard the cries of “Jews will not replace us.” But nothing prepared me for the Pittsburgh slaughter when 11 Jews were murdered in a local synagogue. I realized the game had changed.
In Europe, anti-Semitic parties are growing, and there are again Nazis in the streets. Why? Anti-Semitism needs no reasons. We see places where it breaks out even when there are hardly any Jews. Recent evidence is the anti-Semitic march in Kalisz, Poland, where not a single Jew lives. Anti-Semitism is a virus that has accompanied Europe and the world for millennia. It changes shape: sometimes it is religious, sometimes national, sometimes racial, sometimes political. But it’s an incurable disease.
Currently, with the multiplication of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, do you see a way to eradicate them? I don’t know if it’s possible to eradicate them, but they must be fought. There’s no doubt that social media is part of the problem. They are subject to all kinds of unthinkable opinions: extremism, racism and anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, we don’t see enough action from Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other companies. They have not yet reached the level of responsibility required of them.
​You should have been Israel’s ambassador to Brazil, but you were not accepted by former President Dilma. How has the episode affected your life? The decision was unfortunate and unfounded. I think even people who thought like her at the time understand today that it was a serious diplomatic mistake. But it’s a thing of the past. Ms. Rousseff was removed from her post and, to my delight, relations between Israel and Brazil are flourishing. I was happy to receive an apology on behalf of Brazil.
From whom did you receive an apology? President Bolsonaro made a statement to that effect before he was elected and, on several occasions, has said, publicly and in other ways, that Brazil apologizes.
After its rejection, Israel sent to Brazil the now former ambassador Yossi Shelley, who became a personal friend of President Jair Bolsonaro, which divided the Jewish community. It was a mistake? As soon as I was rejected, I stopped following what happens in Brazil. But the role of an ambassador is to strengthen ties between Israel and the country in which he is located, especially if the local government demonstrates friendship with Israel.
Cases of anti-Semitism and apology for Nazism are growing in Brazil. Some of them took place under the Bolsonaro government. Roberto Alvim, now former Secretary of Culture, released a video with excerpts from a speech by Joseph Goebbels, for example, and Bolsonaro received the far-right German parliamentarian Beatrix von Storch, whose grandfather was Hitler’s finance minister. How do you explain this paradox? All I can say is that anti-Semitism can exist in right-wing or left-wing governments. It is an often irrational phenomenon and difficult to explain.
X-ray
Dani Dayan, 66
Executive director of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, from 2007 to 2013 he led the Yesha Council, which represents Israeli settlers in disputed territories with Palestinians, and was Israel’s consul general in New York from 2016 to 2020. to be nominated for ambassador to Brazil, but was not accepted by Dilma Rousseff
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