A Christian Fan of Israel

One of my late friends was the well-known writer and translator, Clara Svendsen (1916-2008). She was the private secretary of Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen for many years, but some time after her death in 1962 she got a new and more international surname and became Clara Selborn. As to Clara's personality she was a deeply engaged, devout and philosophical woman who at one point in her life became a Catholic although she wasn't born one. 

Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), to the left, and her loyal secretary, Clara Svendsen (Selborn), to the right, buying flowers on Højbro Plads in Copenhagen

It has been said about Clara that she had two passions, namely Lord Byron and Karen Blixen, but actually there were three, as she also had very deep feelings for Israel, and especially, Jerusalem. She often visited this historical city and came back to Denmark in a sort of "refuelled" state, praising the spiritual input of what to her were holy places, chosen by the God she believed in. Sometimes we discussed Israel, and I remember how she argued that "the Jews had bought the land they now lived in and thus had all the rights to it they needed." I never held any strong opinions on the subject, but all in all, I felt that the Palestinians had been let down and robbed of their ownership by everybody concerned, especially the Brits. After Holocaust the sympathy was for the homeless Jews who claimed to have a historical "right" to what they saw as "The Promised Land", but I felt that religion and old myths were too feeble statements of ownership. Actually, I argued for the idea that the survivors of the Holocaust should claim a large part of Germany as their rightful inheritance and compensation. Palestine, on the other hand, belonged to the Palestinian people who had worked the land for centuries, and not the Jews/Zionists, who sort of came in through the backdoor. I'm sure the religious and ancestral perspective meant a lot to Clara, but not to me: I never had much respect or veneration for Yahwe. 

Clara would have found it very hard to understand the reality of this kind of incidents. Some Christian visitors have been harrassed, even attacked physically, and that would have been a shock to her. Actually, I don't think she would have believed it, so she would have been devastated at watching the video evidence, that really is shocking because of the Israeli cruelty. Spitting on Christian tourits or residents, burning defenceless Palestinians in their tents, burying some kids alive would have appeared to her to be lies. However, we see much of it by press released videos here in 2026, although it by now is difficult for foreign journalists to get impass everywhere in the area which has been barred to them.

     

Yes, there were heaps of shoes, clothes and other belongings of the murdered Jews in the kz-camps, and this is a reminder of that fact. It may not be the intention or the main purpose, but it makes one think of all those innocent people that were murdered in WWII. At that time, the general sympathy for the persecuted Jews was strong. The tragedy of what happened to these innocent people was totally unfathomable, so difficult to work into an overall picture of the world at that time that many decent and well-meaning people forgot the fact that the so-called "Promised Land" was the homeland of another people, namely the Palestinians. Many were disposed of or displaced which one may argue means that they were regarded as disposable, somebody of no influence. A very unpleasant thought, also because these people are being turned into the same kind of victims as the Jews of WWII were. Clara would have been very sad indeed to see that these wrongfully persecuted Jews have turned into mirror-images of those who hunted them down and murdered them. 

 

https://globalis.dk/konflikter/israel-palaestina

 

https://faktalink.dk/emner/israel-palaestina-konflikten 

 

https://www.dragoerhistorie.dk/livshistorier/baronessen-i-strandstraede/  

 

https://boobytrapec.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-killing-of-god.html 

 

For comprehensive background context, see the Council on Foreign Relations tracker or read the BBC historical overview. 

 

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict