One of my touchstones for trying to understand Israel is something Tony Kushner said to me a year ago: that most American Jews' idea of Israel is a "fantasy built on a delusion." They have little idea what it's really like; it represents Jewish dreams of power and persecution. When I went to Israel last summer, I was struck by two large sad impressions: the militarism, and the fact that Jews had as little to do with Arabs as possible. The bottom line for me came when a friend said, "They don't want us here; so we must accept that we will have one war after another..." Despair.
The tragedy of the Israel lobby is that Americans are prevented from considering this reality, of a cycle of violence that has brutalized both sides, because the only message we get is: The Palestinians are terrorists, Israel is a democracy. When in fact, Israelis have a far more open debate about these matters than we do.
This is a long preamble to a shocking interview in Ha'aretz with Avrum Burg, a former speaker of the Knesset, who lately published a book in Hebrew called Defeating Hitler that says that Israel has taken on many of the characteristics of the fascist regime that sought to wipe out the Jews. This interview is evidently the talk of Israel. In fact, I learned about it from Daniel Gordis's blog. I disagree with Gordis right down the line, but to his credit, the interview has plunged him into soul-searching. Indeed, the Burg interview is so stunningly prophetic--"the Law of Return," he says, "is the mirror image of Hitler. I don't want Hitler to define my identity"--that it should be in the New York Times and on synagogue pulpits. It isn't. Thanks to the Israel lobby.
What follow are excerpts that underline arguments I've made in this blog: 1. The post-Holocaust west is a utopia for Jews. Jews must recognize this and celebrate this, and deal with the consequences. Herzl's vision of political Zionism was based on a belief in the undying antisemitism of the west. It just ain't true. 2, Political Zionism has run its course. A state based on the idea that I can move there tomorrow and a Palestinian born there has no right to move home is dedicated to an outmoded ideology. 3, Zionism is exacting a terrible price on Jewish identity.
But I'll shut up now.
Ari Shalit: So you confirm that you are no longer a Zionist?
Burg: Already at the First Zionist Congress, Herzl's Zionism was victorious over the [cultural] Zionism of Ahad Ha'am. I think that the 21st century should be the century of Ahad Ha'am. We have to leave Herzl behind and move to Ahad Ha'am.
Does this mean that you no longer find the notion of a Jewish state acceptable?
It can't work anymore. To define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite.
And a Jewish-democratic state?
People find this very comfortable. It's lovely. It's schmaltzy. It's nostalgic. It's retro. It gives a sense of fullness. But 'Jewish-democratic' is nitroglycerine....The Law of Return is an apologetic law. It is the mirror image of Hitler. I don't want Hitler to define my identity... Of the three identities that form me - human, Jewish and Israeli - I feel that the Israeli element deprives the other two... I say that as of this moment, Israel is a state of trauma in nearly every one of its dimensions.Are you concerned about a fascist debacle in Israel?
I think it is already here....Look at the fence. The separation fence is a fence against paranoia...What is the thinking here? That I will erect a big wall and the problem will be solved because I will not see them....The fence physically demarcates the end of Europe. It says that this is where Europe ends. It says that you are the forward post of Europe and the fence separates you from the barbarians. Like the Roman Wall. Like the Wall of China. But that is so pathetic. And it is a bill of divorce from the vision of integration. There is something so xenophobic about it. So insane. And it comes just at a time when Europe itself, and the world with it, has made such an impressive advance in internalizing the lessons of the Holocaust and has fomented a great advance in the normative behavior of nations.
The truth is that you are a salient Europist. You live in Nataf but you are all Brussels. The prophet of Brussels.
Completely. Completely. I see the European Union as a biblical utopia. I don't know how long it will hold together, but it is amazing. It is completely Jewish.
In Hitler's Mein Kampf he has a disturbing passage in the chapter, "Subjects and Citizens." Nota Bene, in 1924 the U.S. passed a restrictive immigration law which tried to preserve the predominance of Northern and Western European immigrants by discriminating against immigrants from the rest of Europe. This closed the safety valve which could have saved many victims of the Holocaust. This discrimination was based upon deeply flawed I.Q. testing, making it "scientific."
"I know that people do not like to hear all this; but anything more thoughtless, more hare-brained than our present-day citizenship laws scarcely exists. There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the American Union, in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigration on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalization, it professes in slow beginnings a view which is peculiar to the folkish state concept.
The folkish state divides its inhabitants into three classes: citizens, subjects, and foreigners…."
I'm not familiar with Gordis, but I read his post on the Burg interview and anyway, Gordis strikes me the way many Israelis strike me–narcissistic, exactly the way Americans are. Maybe this is unfair, but he's living in a state that is Jewish because of ethnic cleansing, based on an ideology that proclaimed "a land without a people for a people without a land" because that was a comforting thing to think, and the society has been practicing a particularly brutal form of apartheid for decades and with all this, what comes through is that, yeah, Israel has its problems, but the main problem is that its enemies are crazy.
Not that I feel any inclination to defend Palestinian political culture either. The US obviously wanted this civil war (perhaps with a different outcome, but I'm not so sure they're not happy with the split), but it wouldn't have happened if there weren't a fair number of corrupt greedy Palestinians who want power at any price.
What the two sides badly need are a huge majority of people capable of serious self-criticism. Not that America can set any kind of example in that department.
The US immigration law of 1924 was perhaps the most progressive piece of social legislation in American history. It was supported by Jewish labor leaders like Samuel Gompers who recognized that mass immigration was a weapon of capital against the working class.
See:
link to prudentbear.com
The Immigration Act of 1924, which largely restricted immigration to the richer countries of northwest Europe, produced the greatest social leveling the United States has ever seen, with the Gini coefficient declining by around 10 points between 1920 and 1965, the years of its salience (the 1924 Act replaced previous restrictions introduced during World War I.)
After 1965, immigration policy was reversed, to encourage a larger flow of immigrants, primarily from developing countries. Initially, this had only a modest economic effect. Then the 1986 amnesty encouraged low skill immigrants, allegedly now numbering 12 million, to try their luck with the overstretched immigration bureaucracy. Even large companies, knowing that immigration laws would not be enforced, seized the chance for some cheap labor.
Whatever the economic effect of moderate amounts of skilled immigrant labor, almost certainly positive, the economic effect of large amounts of unskilled immigrant labor is very clear: it drives wage rates down to rock bottom levels, particularly in personal service sectors where training is minimal and employment informal. That's why a haircut costs less in real terms now than it did 30 years ago, it's why even modest middle class households now have a cleaner and a gardener, which they usually didn't 30 years ago and it's why enormous numbers of dubiously constructed houses appeared when finance became available in 2002-06.
Some Confusions
Burg has not really read Asher Ginsberg (Ahad Ha`am).
Cultural Zionism was just a way of being more circumspect or sneakier about the ultimate goal of stealing Palestine from the native population. Ginsberg worried that precipitous Zionist aggression would cause an Arab reaction that would destroy the Yishuv while it was small and weak. By the 20s when the Yishuv had grown and was less vulnerable, Ginsberg is a mainstream Zionist and consultant to Weizman.
German proto-Nazis or early German Nazis borrowed many ideas from Max Nordau, who championed eugenics and national revival through racial purity. Nordau also condemned racial or ethnic mixing as the cause of cultural degeneracy.
One could easily make the case the Herzl, Nordau and Jabotinsky were the three primary leaders and thinkers of Zionism at the Fin de siecle. (Stanislawski discusses their role in his book Zionism and the Fin de Siecle.)
Zionist leaders and thinkers of the 20s, 30s and 40s either avoided learning Arabic or treated Arabs like the fossils of a classical or dead civilization whose remnants could be casually swept away. (S.D. Goitein belonged to this category.)
Yet, if Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim transcended their racist attitudes and entered into a dialogue with Arab intellectuals in the 20s and 30s, they would have found a welcome for ethnic Ashkenazi emigration to Arab countries as long as Ashkenazim renounced Zionism and the goal of making Palestine into a Zionist state by stealing it from the native population.
I have read precisely this idea in the writings of Islamically inclined Lebanese like Shakib Arslan, who was a pan-Islamist of Druze background, Syrian nationalists like el-Baroudi and numerous Egyptians.
Gandhi may have been right. If German Jews and ethnic Ashkenazim had on the whole rejected Zionist criminality, many more Jews would probably have survived the 40s.
The editor of the Forward, J.J.Goldberg, had a telephone interview with Avraham Burg a propos of his earlier interview with Ari Shavit (published on 13th June).
In this Burg comes with a slightly clearer statement on what he means by the 'law of return' being the 'mirror image of Hitler'. This is what he said to Goldberg:
"the Law of Return is an answer to the Nuremberg Laws. That’s not its actual origin, but that’s how it has come to be seen. Whomever Hitler would have killed, we will accept as a Jew. And I say Hitler will not define me and who I am.” Hence the book’s title, “Defeating Hitler.” "
Also, the English translation of Shavit's interview seems to be an abridged version of the Hebrew original. According to Goldberg that is what he said in the original version (but not the English one) about the state:
" "A state in my eyes is a tool,” not a spiritual or religious value. “To define Israel as a Jewish state and then to add the words ‘the first dawning of our redemption’” — a quote from the chief rabbis’ Prayer for the State of Israel, and the core principle of settler messianism — “is explosive."
Incidentally, Burg has accepted French nationality. Whether he indeed plans to settle there at this stage is unclear.
But it seems that,like another distinguished Israeli, Amos Elon, Burg has opted for being a European Jew again. Shavit also interviewed Elon at one stage. This is what E. said then about his decision to leave Israel (in his case for Italy)in his old age:
"And the reason is very simple. It's also related to my leaving Haaretz. Nothing has changed here in the last 40 years. The problems are exactly the same as they always were. The solutions were already known back then. But no one paid attention to them. And I found myself repeating them. I found myself saying the same thing all the time. And I started to bore myself. The dialogue wasn't fruitful. It was a useless dialogue. I was a lone voice in the wilderness."
Burg has denounced Israel in its present form before (originally in Le Monde, I think). Then too his words created a stir. But have they changed anything there? It looks as if his voice too remains a 'voice in the wilderness'.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/
Phil, I reread Dan Fleshler's statements again and wonder if I have to locate you in any of the two groups he defines.
I have to impression you don't belong in any? Is this a wrong impression?
shit, I should reread my messages.
I have "the"
The Law of Return as a mirror image of the Nurnberg Laws?
______________
One should maybe first state that the Nurnberg Laws were a mirror image of the Jewish law of endogamy.
According to my Catholic prayer book and especially concerning the necessary "cleanness from guilt" for Holy communion, I had to confess, when I was eight years old, every contact with people of other faith, thus the church must have considered this a sin. I never checked if it was only a mirror image of Nazi politics or if it had been there longer. Now that is even a step further than your endogamy, dear Klaus, don't you think?
my endogamy?
____________
Hitler is on record to have admired the Jews for having been able to keep their 'racial purity' by enforcing endogamy – which was fast eroding in Germany.
Races should not mix! Outlaw intermarrige! Model Germany as a 'pure Aryan Volksgemeinschaft' on the Jews.
There were prominent Jews who thought the main threat to their existence was intermarrige and therefore welcomed Hitler's 'separation of races'. Ironically, they thought he would save(!) the Jewish people.
Your Catholic thing looks simular but is different. To see the difference: Compare the Vatican to Israel.
LeaNder,
When I wrote an article decrying Jewish bans on intermarriage–Conservative and Orthodox are severe on this front–a Reform Jewish intellectual friend said to me, All religions are like this, you have to compare and contrast policies.
I never did the homework, though a close Catholic friend said that he grew up with this kind of teaching, in the 60s–You must marry a Catholic!–but it went by the boards in the 70s and 80s and now few Catholics that he know really care…
Not very scientific, but…
Arie thank you for getting Shavit's name right, and for the further reference…
The fatwa of Khaled Abu el Fadl of UCLA at link to scholarofthehouse.org
may be of relevance to this discussion.
A fatwa serves more or less the same role in Islamic jurisprudence that a teshuvah does in Jewish law or a responsum may perform in Canon law.
Phil, I have to "confess" that I might be a bit biased concerning Germans writing a sentence like this:
"One should maybe first state that the Nuernberg Laws were a mirror image of the Jewish law of endogamy."
But if I consider his following note, I guess I will give him the benefit of doubt. The stunning story about the Protocols is that the blame mirrors the envy; The "Jewish power" clearly is something the writers would love to have themselves.
BUT: Ironically Avrum Burg decided to move to France, not long ago Ariel Sharon told French Jews to better make aliya, since antisemitism was clearly rising in France.
I think it's good you do not censor voices here.
my endogamy cont.
_________________
It wasn't only intermarrige that was decried but also baptism. "On hundreds of thousands of Jewish graves in Germany there are now Christian crosses. That's a huge loss of Jewish lives" wrote Rabbi Joachim Prinz of Berlin in October 1933. He welcomed that Hitler would put an end to that also. To him, intermarrige and baptism was the threat to Jewish existence not Hitler's anti-Semitism – at least not in October 1933.
The Vatican and Israel
_______________________
The Vatican state in Rome doesn`t have a Law of Return. Would it make sense? – We Catholics return to the land of our forefathers?
There is always this confusion/deception with the Jews being/claiming to be an ethnic and simultaniously a religious group. Michael Walzer was honest to spell this out. – See Phil`s entry on him.
my last comment
________________
I think, Zionism will end up on the trash heap of history as a low key version of Nazism.
Good luck ànd all the best to the `donkey of the messiah`.
"an ethnic and simultaneously a religious group"
Michael Neumann has a good passage on this.He called it:
"the venerable shell-game of Jewish identity: "Look! We're a religion! No! a race! No! a cultural entity! Sorry–a religion!" When we tire of this game, we get suckered into another: "anti-Zionism is antisemitism! " quickly alternates with: "Don't confuse Zionism with Judaism! How dare you, you antisemite!" "
One person who took the firm view that Jewish identity was based on religion was Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of Balfour's cabinet.
He was firmly, almost tearfully, opposed to the Balfour Declaration which he considered to be an anti-semitic document, because it told him that he didn't belong in Britain.
Montagu, whose family had been settled in Britain for generations, took the view, as he stated in a memo to Balfour's cabinet, that he was a jewish Briton just as there were catholic Britons – and that he had as little in common with a jewish Frenchman as a catholic Briton had in common with a catholic Frenchman.
He was the Secretary for India and in a cabinet meeting in October 1917 he asked how he could act as a Minister in India if his colleagues were telling him that his real home was somewhere "in Turkish territory".
Montagu's suspicion about the anti-semitic inspiration of this document was not altogether unfounded – especially as far as Balfour himself was concerned. This then Prime Minister had earlier that century been responsible for introducing the Aliens Act which was specifically meant to keep Jews fleeing from persecution in Eastern Europe out of Britain. He had also referred to the Jews as a "people apart" in a speech that was decried as anti-semitic.
Montagu must have also been aware of suspicions about the role of the Jews in revolutionary Russia. This is what the British paper The Independent said about this in an article on the 26th of May 2005.
"There were British Conservatives, too, who believed that the Jews were part of the 'Bolshevik revolution' " in 'some cases' as Professor Rose wryly says, 'rightly' given that a majority of the members of the first Soviet politburo were Jews. The co-incidence of the drafting of the Balfour Declaration with the Russian revolution must have encouraged among such people the idea that Jews would be better out of the way."
The confusion of ethnicity with religion among Jews is a result of the exceptional sitution of ethnic Ashkenazim in E. Europe where people who were Jewish religiously were almost invariably ethnic Ashkenazim, and ethnic Ashkenazim never practiced any religion other than rabbinic Judaism. No other Jewish community in history had or has this characteristic.
I suspect that without the immigration of ethnic Ashkenazim into rump German areas of Germany and Austria, German Jews, German Protestants and German Catholics would have eventually lost all religious boundaries as religion became a much less significant aspect of one's life.
Certainly this process was ongoing with the develop of reform and even German Modern Orthodoxy, and there were occasional backsteps in the process — anti-Semitic moments in Saxony or Berlin that would exclude German Jews or the Kulturkampf directed against German Catholics.
In the case of German Jews the final ethnic merging with German Protestants and German Catholics did not take place because of immigration from Austrian Poland and German Poland. Ethnic Ashkenazim brought a very different connection with Judaism. (It is probably significant that Avrum Burg is in fact of Yekke/German Jewish background and has referenced his father's German Jewish background in his decision to reject Judaism.)
Immigration of Slavs with attitudes similar to ethnic Ashkenazim into rump Germany and Austria also took place, and many of the anti-Semitic politicians were also anti-Slav, but Slavs, whose native languages were so different from German, had much more difficulty in succeeding in Germany or Austria and generally did not marry into elite economic strata of the population.
Immigrant Slavs assimilated into the German and Austrian Catholic culture. Immigrant ethnic Ashkenazim disassimilated the native German Jewish population.
"It is probably significant that Avrum Burg is in fact of Yekke/German Jewish background and has referenced his father's German Jewish background in his decision to reject Judaism."
It should have been:
"It is probably significant that Avrum Burg is in fact of Yekke/German Jewish background and has referenced his father's German Jewish background in his decision to reject Zionism."
The suburbs of my SW American city have recently received flyers entitled 'Missing' with a photo of a caucasian child. Below the photo is the legend, "a future for White children." The lessons of the Twentieth Century will have to be relearned, but nuclear armed nations will be an obstacle to achieving an outcome similar to 1945's.