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Israel’s International Squadron and the “Never Again” Mentality
Abstract
Israel’s International Squadron 120, founded in 1964, embodied the “Never Again” post-Holocaust imperative of Israel’s identity ahead of its adoption on a national level. Beginning with an airlift mission to Yemen’s northern highlands in 1964, the squadron emerged as the long arm of Israel’s foreign policy during the nation’s “golden era” of the 1960s and subsequent decades. Through the continued influence of its early members, many of whom were survivors of the Holocaust, the squadron assumed the forefront of international humanitarian aid and rescue efforts. This article tells the story of this squadron through the oral histories of five of its original members.
... As noted, many of its founders and crew members were Holocaust survivors. 64 Israelis also feel great pride in the fact that whenever there is some natural disaster anywhere around the world (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis typhoons, floods, massive fires), or other humanitarian catastrophes, airborne Israeli aid delegations, composed mainly of the Israeli military, are always among the first and the most efficient forces to provide help, which is often disproportional to Israel's size and economic resources. The lessons of the Holocaust are habitually referred to as the underlying impetus behind this rapid humanitarian mobilization. ...
The sense of historical victimhood is indubitably a focal part of the Jewish and Israeli historical legacies. Three such legacies are reviewed: Victimhood as a perpetual density; victimhood as imposing supremacist separateness from non-Jews, and victimhood that necessitates caring for the oppressed ' strangers.' These varied and often incompatible legacies entail four existential and moral obligations (following Yehuda Bauer, 2002). They are: Never be a passive victim; Never forsake your brothers; Never be a passive bystander; and Never be a perpetrator. These moral directives, which range from exclusive concern for the security of the ingroup even at the expense of outgroups, to the protection and correct treatment of ingroup enemies even at the expense of the ingroup's security and well-being, are clearly at odds with each other, and they are unequal in their prominence and prevalence in Israeli society today. Many of the dramas in Israel public life can be characterized as a function of the interplay between these conflicting victimhood-born obligations. Four such cases would be mentioned: The persistent annihilation anxieties, the ambivalence towards the Diasporas, the treatment of African asylum seekers, and the dealings with the Palestinians.
... Klar et al. (2013;Klar, 2016;Schori-Eyal, Klar, Roccas, et al., 2017b) suggested two forms of such obligations: protecting and helping other currently victimized groups, and never becoming perpetrator or fear of victimizing (FOV) the group's current adversaries. In the spirit of moral obligation to non-adversarial groups, Israel has extended foreign aid in several cases of humanitarian crises around the world (Orkaby, 2015). Rarer are social actions driven by FOV among past victimized groups currently involved in a violent protracted conflict, as in the case of Breaking the Silence, defining itself as 'an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories' 1 (see Klar et al., 2013). ...
... This is a 'we should know better' sentiment emanating from the past victimized group itself. For example, Japanese American community members who still harbor memories of internment and prejudice during World War II supported Muslim Americans' civil rights after 9/11 [40]; Jewish Americans disproportionally joined the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s [37]; a special squadron in the Israeli Air force with Holocaust survivor pilots and crewmembers was commissioned to provide humanitarian aid to disaster areas in the world as an embodiment of the 'never again' spirit [41]. ...
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