British historian Arnold J. Toynbee accepted a challenge yesterday from Yaacov Herzog, Israel Ambassador to Canada, to a public debate on assertions which he made in addressing several hundred students last Thursday at the Hillel House of McGill University, comparing the Jewish treatment of Arabs in 1947 with the Nazi treatment of Jews and stating that the establishment of Israel had subjected Jews in other countries to a conflict of loyalty.
The public debate between Prof. Toynbee and Ambassador Herzog is scheduled to take place on Tuesday. The assertions voiced by the British historian at the Hillel House provoked a storm of protests. A statement issued on the same day by Ambassador Herzog declared:
“Prof. Toynbee’s statement bears no relationship to morality or to facts. The truth will not tolerate distortion at the hands of anyone, no matter how eminent. The events of 1947 and 1948 do not belong to distant periods which require historical conjecture or analyses. The record of the United Nations and of every other objective observer at that time totally refutes Prof. Toynbee’s allegations. In view of the gravity of Prof. Toynbee’s statement, I wish to invite him to a public discussion with me in any public form he finds appropriate.”
Saul Hayes, executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, also took issue with Prof. Toynbee’s statement that the right of Jews to Israel could be questioned. “One does not have to go into historic matters at all,” Mr. Hayes said. “One starts with the United Nations decisions and the preponderant opinion of the large majority which created the State of Israel.” He stressed that the UN decision to establish Israel was “supported by both East and West.”
Mr. Hayes described as a “canard” Dr. Toynbee’s assertion that Jews outside of Israel might face a “conflict of loyalties” and added that Canadian Jews had “amply demonstrated in two World Wars where their loyalties were and today they demonstrate each and every day their paramount loyalty to Canada.” The CJC executive director made it clear that he was expressing his personal views.
REGRETS USING THE WORD ‘FOSSIL’ IN REFERENCE TO JEWS
In his two-hour discussion with students of McGill University at the Hillel House in Montreal, Prof. Toynbee said that the Jewish treatment of the Palestine Arabs in 1947 was a human reaction to the Nazi persecution of Jews but that “it was particularly tragic because the Jews suffered the same sort of treatment at the hands of the Nazis. At one point in the discussion, a student asked Prof. Toynbee if he himself was anti-Semitic and he retorted, “some of my best friends in England are Jews.”
He also declared that the Arabs were not acting humanely or sensibly in not settling Arab refugees in the Arab countries and that he had advised Arab friends to that effect. He said the Arab countries could help refugees while still retaining any “claim” they had on “territorial Palestine.”
He described his use of the word “fossil” in reference to Jews as “unfortunate” and explained he did not consider the Jewish people dead but rather as a survival, a continuing group from a time and place where other peoples had died out. He also said that the “diaspora condition” of Jewry during the past thousand years would be a model for the world society in the atomic age. In the new world, he said, there was no place for sovereign nations, only for minority groups under local governments which would have municipal powers but no power to wage war or commit aggression.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
