God bless the Jewish tradition in journalism and the
Would you define yourself as a Jew?
JL: "Not at all."
"Does your father [also a writer] define himself as a Jew?"
JL: "More than I do. I never went to synagogue regularly. In fact, I
think I have been in more churches than synagogues. For me, Judaism is
more a historical background. My father says you are a Jew because the
people who want to murder you define you as such. Well, if someone
wants to slit my throat because I am a Jew he is a raving idiot – that
will not turn me into a Jew."
In the period your book covers, that approach definitely turned many people into Jews. [I.e., the Nazi indifference to whether Jews were assimilated] How does that affect your views?
JL: “My reading of what you call ‘Holocaust’ is also less Jewish and
Judeo-centric than that of my father. I think that what happened was
far broader than a narrow issue of ‘Germans killing Jews.’ The English
word ‘holocaust’ is certainly the wrong term to describe what happened.
It is a religious term, rife with non-historical meaning. I don’t think
the word ‘shoah’ is any better. It’s a controversy among historians.
Raul Hilberg described it as ‘the destruction of European Jewry,’ but
he encountered criticism because that was also the Nazi terminology…
JL: Ulrich Herbert calls it the ‘National-Socialist extermination
policy,’ and I find that a far more accurate description because it
also includes the extermination of the homosexuals, the Gypsies, the
disabled and other minorities.”
Indeed, according to Littell, the “National-Socialist extermination
policy” was “only one of the several big genocides that have happened
in human history.” But doesn’t the unprovoked nature of the destruction of the Jews,
the underlying ideology, the apparatus that was created to implement
it, its scale, make it exceptional in human history?
JL: “I personally understand the arguments for the exceptionality of
the Holocaust, but I don’t agree with them. The basic argument is that
the Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews, but I don’t see the difference
between that and an extermination policy that was aimed – and
implemented on a large scale – at groups such as the peasants in the
Soviet Union or in Cambodia. Every genocide is exceptional.”
Littell says that one of his aims is to show “how it happened.” But
he also wants to show that it is not just a problem between Germans and
Jews. “If you reduce it to that, then everyone else can say, why should
we care about it? That’s what I find dangerous in the whole Jewish
centeredness of the commemoration. It leaves many other victims outside
the equation.”
But the Nazi ideology was aimed explicitly at the Jews as a race.
“I think the extermination of the Jews is a universal problem, I
think it concerns everyone. Beyond that, I think that today the issue
is being used for political purposes in Israel.” There was one event
that “shocked me horribly,” he relates. “I went to Birkenau and spent a
couple of days there for the research. One day I was up in the tower
over the entrance. Just then a few buses of Israeli kids – around 16, I
think, schoolkids – arrived. I watched the whole thing and it was
amazing. First they entered under the arch at the camp entrance. Then
they unfold these huge Israeli flags. They march down to the end, where
the gas chambers were, and stay there for three minutes – the teacher
probably explained something about the place. Then they march back,
waving their flags, and fold them again under the arch. The boys start
smoking cigarettes and slapping the girls’ asses, and then they leave.
That ceremony has nothing to do with what actually happened in
Auschwitz. It is more like, you know, ‘Listen up, young future Israeli
soldiers, this is why you are going to fight.’ It is political, a
mechanism. It has no connection to what actually happened. The
Holocaust, I think, is being exploited politically, in a way that the
Nazi extermination policy against other groups – Russians, homosexuals,
Gypsies – is not.”
A few quick comments. Out of deference to Richard Witty I did not title this offering, “Flirting at Birkenau: The Political Use of the Holocaust in Israel.” I am trying to use non-provocative titles, though provocative titles are used everywhere by bloggers to build traffic. Elie Wiesel was against including gypsies in the Holocaust Memorial, as Isabel Fonseca states in her beautiful book, Bury Me Standing. The Bronfman study last year stated what we all know, the Holocaust is having less and less hold on young Jews in the States. This conversation will not end until Mike Desch is invited to the Center for Jewish History to talk about the uses of the Holocaust in American policymaking. I don’t even know if I agree entirely with Desch, or Littell for that matter; I’m not well-enough-informed, and my friend Larry Zuckerman disagrees with Desch–a dialogue I promise to post soon. But the most important thing about Littell and Desch is that intelligent people must discuss these things openly if the U.S. is to deal honestly with Middle East policy, and the rage in the Palestinian world at being made to pay the price for the devastations of the Holocaust. This is not just a European story, or an Israeli one. The Israel lobby (and the silence that surrounds it) is licensed by Jews in America out of Holocaust feelings, including the belief that American gentiles didn’t do enough to stop Hitler….
"My father says you are a Jew because the people who want to murder you define you as such."
nonsense to blame others. one's actions, one's words do the defining. maybe "blaming others" is the defining characteristic of jews – so says my experience.
nonsense, ","
Oh, come on Slomo. You just read someone by a wonderful human being. And he says this for you too.
It is much more important how the larger scenario can be de-escalated.
Phil, I start to understand your obsession with the Israeli-flag-symbolism-obsession. I couldn't see what you mean the first time, you showed it.
***********************************************
*Norman Finkelstein Petition* by: Canadians for Justice & Peace in the Middle East
http://tinyurl.com/68gdoy
***********************************************
& Richard Silverstein has written a gem of an article:
"I have a dream…for Israeli democracy.
http://tinyurl.com/67w3xk
I agree that the holocaust is of universal significance, and now 63 years following its institutional end (it is just persecution without the institutional trapping), it is in the memory of fewer and fewer people.
In my current family, it is real history. There are still a brother and sister (my mother-in-law) alive to witness to their experiences.
The dismissal of the significance of the holocaust (only universal significance, not validly tribal or tribal history) is a revision, a rationalization.
The chain of events that the holocaust caused include the war(s) in Europe, the iron curtain/cold war, the post iron-curtain nationalist wars, Zionism as actuality rather than as utopia, the nakba, and then the forced removals of 700,000 Jews from Arab lands.
A direct sequence, a causal chain.
All predicted in some fashion.
Its better to not revise history, but to form better conclusions in the present, from new information, new capabilities.
I read Phil's description of the history of the Israeli wars a week or so ago (while I was reluctant to get in the heat of posting).
Frankly, I was appalled.
1948 – Israel described as having military advantage, solely a land-grabber.
A large lie, with some small supporting truths.
1956 – That we agree was a stupidity, more of a pander to England and France (whom Israel was then dependant on for arms).
1967 – Described as solely Israeli opportunism. What a lame rationalization. It probably was avoidable, but to state that it was solely unilateral is only revision. (Somehow militarily blockading Israel's only Asian port is not a provocation, not an act of aggression.)
1973 – Described as a solely limited attempt to redeem face.
I was living on a commune in Oregon at the time, without electricity or newspapers.
In Israel itself, the prospect of loss (not just the loss of face) was so pronounced, and the degree that the Arab world acted to harm anyone in the world that supported Israeli in word or deed, "in solidarity", was THE most prominent cause that led to the change from socialist Labor party control to Likud.
In Israel at the time, the Israeli labor party was peer to the democratic socialist parties in Europe that committed to social welfare. And, it held the political position that the West Bank and Gaza and Golan were under the temporary care of Israel, with the intention to transfer to Arab governance in an environ of peace. Definitely a bargaining chip, but NOT an annexation.
In 1973, there were 1500 settlers. They could have been moved. Now there are 450,000, and the assumption is that the settlement blocs are Israel, a difficult assumption to change with 400,000 in the largest towns and suburbs.
All a direct chain from the holocaust. Significant. Even 63 years in its wake, the waves still bounce off.
Better that we see clearly, and make good decisions from seeing clearly, rather than rationalize and revise. (I mean revising the actual – falsifying – as distinct from learning – revising a falsification).
Richard, have you ever heard the expression you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig? Your teasing minor points into the major points reminds me of how the greedy anti-American investment banking community wrapped up sub-prime morgages with responsible securities to hide the whole, and milk the people.
Can you summarize your understanding of the major points, Charles?
"My father says you are a Jew because the people who want to murder you define you as such."
i selected this sentence because i have seen it too many times from too many 'suffering' jews whose hands are "pure".
becomes sickening.
5 dancing,
I'm sorry that that phrase offends you. But, in the case of the naziis and all persecution, that is what occurs.
OTHERS define.
Liberty is self-definition.
One aspect of Zionism is the transformation in the self-identifying Jewish people of other-definition to self-definition.
In the non-Zionist diaspora, a similar transformation occurred, but without the land.
What is it that we are?
What is it that we are a part of?
(Incredible String Band from the Hangman's Beautiful Daughter – I forgot the song)
Littel's thoughts are some of the most perceptive I have ever read about The Subject.
I would only quibble with him over etymology of the word 'holocaust': I always thought the word basically applied to the physical conditions at the centre of a raging fire ie, "an engulfing holocaust of flame".
It's real simple Richard, look to Geronimo. Then, look to the Nuremberg Trials. Notice the time line. Next?
Not exactly an informative description Charles.
Phil,
You noted "Elie Wiesel was against including gypsies in the Holocaust Memorial, as Isabel Fonseca states in her beautiful book, Bury Me Standing."
Did you understand his reasoning for that? I haven't read the book you referred to, nor any statement by Wiesel on the issue. Have you?
Do you mean to imply that it was for some denial of nazi abuses of Gypsies, or for some superiority, or monopolized relevance?
It was an attempt to monopolize the relevance, Richard, so as to maximize the Holocaust's™ marketing effectiveness on behalf of the Jewish state. The legal departments at Disney and American Express do the same thing with their trademarks.
BTW, here is Weisel on the Nakba: "Incited by their leaders, 600,000 Palestinians left the country convinced that, once Israel was vanquished, they would be able to return home."
link to thenation.com
Richard, speaking of "making good decisions" based on history, are you of the opinion that pre-emptive war is a legitimate response to fear of attack? Because inquiring minds in the IDF (Iranian Defense Forces) would really like to know what's legal and justifiable in today's world. Ditto with China and Russia.
Phil, as you said, you are self-censoring at the behest of Witty, and the bloc he represents which only wishes you would shut the f*ck up. I predicted this. You're listening to commenters (myself included) too much.
Personally I felt the "provocative" title was much more accurate, and engaging. You want people to come read your words, and that's perfectly fine. It seems to me there are many who wish just the opposite, that your blog remain a curiosity read only by a few. Please don't surrender to that sentiment.
Witty keeps having one-liner messages like this:
"Not exactly an informative description Charles."
Which makes me think he is Magneto.
I worked for Elie Wiesel's nephew, son of Wiesel's older sister. Thirty years ago. They both told me then that the majority of what Elie wrote is fraudulent history and they laugh at him and tell him 'don't give us that shit' during seders. "We're not gullible Americans." [These were really really really funny Roumanian/Transylvanians; great senses of humor, and I could never repeat half their stuff here.] I never went to the family seders, but I was in the office the Monday following both times when they went into paroxysms over "what Elie [had] tried to pull," mocking him right down to forehead in hands and intoning nonsense that they repeated and howled at, and told him to stop, for god's sake, stop.
To give you a sense of the scene, the nephew and his girlfriend walked into the office laughing about Elie's performance over the weekend. Mama, Elie's sister, showed up later in the morning, and they'd start laughing again, pissing their pants over Elie's schtick. (Somewhere I have contemporaneous notes, written later both days. They were surprised I even knew who he was.)
They told me it "takes Elie a couple of days to forget what he made up everytime he comes up here from Boston." His nephew said "He made it all up. he's a bullshit artist!" Elie's sister said his Paris accounts post-war were complete fabrications, and she was there. Elie's sister and nephew do not spell their name the same way.
[I swear the above is what I heard.]
Elie's sister and nephew do not spell their name the same way as Elie Wiesel.
What neocognitism said.
When a performer starts responding to his peanut gallery, he's toast.
Blogging is a kind of performance art. It's less cerebral and detatched than literature, but more evocative and opinionated than real journalism (the endangered species). Bloggers create in real time, and the timing and the wording are pretty much everything.
I have ridiculed Witty from the start because I see his intent as exactly that: Schmooze the muse, to lose those blues.
And with guilt, no less: such an enlightened form of manipulation.
Notice something: Witty has never (since I've been reading at least) used HUMOR to illustrate his points. His audience here, despite his occasional comments to me and others, seems to be solely: Philip.
I dialog with those that dialog with me. (Consider that Saif and I had a heated, but also respectful dialog on two occassions.)
Phil is broadcasting here, so his comments are always the subject of comment. Phil is a public figure, published in prominent magazines, who is also a personal friend.
In person, he has encouraged me to be assertive in my comments, even with him.
I assume a responsibility to convey my reasoning in doing that, that name-calling or ridicule is insufficiently convincing. (Fun for the converted, but devoid of content.)
You aggrandize yourself, Witty/Magneto. I'm not telling you to change anything or even addressing you at all, I was exhorting Phil to not change because of or appease sentiment like yours.
By all means please keep saying everything you're saying, it serves as a good example of what Zionism critics are up against but didn't know it, since it was never openly discussed.
On a side note, I find your anti-intellectual response to perhaps the central issue facing Israel and her creation narrative to be, well, appalling:
"1948 – Israel described as having military advantage, solely a land-grabber.
A large lie, with some small supporting truths."
Yes, we are aware that your generation needs to dismiss this truth, but don't try and pass your words off as an actual argument.
Evolution? A large lie, with some small supporting truths!
I may be able to sell that spin to the Creationists. It works well. $$$ here I come.
I'm sorry that that phrase offends you. But, in the case of the naziis and all persecution, that is what occurs.
Posted by: Richard Witty | June 01, 2008 at 12:28 PM
no. this occurs only with zionist persecution. jews hate palestinians and muslims for being.
I'm sorry that that phrase offends you. But, in the case of the naziis and all persecution, that is what occurs.
Posted by: Richard Witty | June 01, 2008 at 12:28 PM
no. this occurs only with jewish persecution of others. jews hate palestinians and muslims and christians for being.
The means are the ends.
5 dancing– Do you hate Jews? You sound like you do.
And no, I'm not a Zionist. I think the ideology is the Jewish equivalent of America's "Manifest Destiny"–basically a way of rationalizing land theft. But this isn't unique to Jews or Americans either. A large part of human history is all about acts of conquest (the polite term for theft) and how people rationalized it.
"Richard, speaking of "making good decisions" based on history, are you of the opinion that pre-emptive war is a legitimate response to fear of attack?"
Extremely rarely.
Not the US in Iraq.
There are few active threats to large portions of US civilians. There are more than few to Israeli, so more of their incidents require pre-emptive intervention.
"Not exactly an informative description Charles."
Which makes me think he is Magneto.
D.e.f.i.b.r.i.l.a.t.o.r…pleeease…
Michael Desch has written an interesting article in American Conservative.
Here is a quote to get one thinking about the sophism of the Zionists and how they use the Holocaust…
"Critics ignore the fact that in addition to 6 million Jews, the Nazis exterminated 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, 3 million Polish civilians, and at least 10 million Russian non-combatants, not to mention scores of others. Thus, Hitler had no compunction about killing gentiles, including large numbers of Polish Catholic clergy and laity; Pius XII could not have spoken out without risk to millions of Catholics in Europe. The evidence from the Netherlands, where the local Catholic clergy spoke out against the deportation of the Jews and the Nazis retaliated by deporting Jewish converts to Catholicism, suggests that the Church’s intercession would not have saved Jews either"
link to amconmag.com
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Isn't it ironic and disgusting that Zionists never tire of reminding us of the Pain of the Jewish people caused by the Holocaust..
And with a wave of the hand the Pain of the Russians,Poles,et al are brushed aside.."
Nice people–Zionists!!
HL
To my mind there are three historical/present realities that can NEVER be forgotten in the math of the politics of Israel/Palestine:
1. Terror on Israeli civilians by Palestinian "resistance" and Islamicists.
2. The holocaust.
3. The historic and continuing nakba.
ANY omission of these three in political position, inquiry, or assertion, is a moral negligence.
They are not significant for the evocation of sentiment, but for the actual geography of trauma.
My sense of Phil's math, a rational assessment, is
1. That the holocaust is past and deserves respectful acknowledgement but not fuel.
10%
2. That the terror on Israeli civilians is largely conditional on Israeli expansion, and that if the occupation of the West Bank and isolation of Gaza were renounced, the terror would nearly disappear.
40%
3. That the nakba (undeserved tragedy/suppression/assault, as far as living Palestinian civilians is concerned) continues without attention and without change.
50%
That math is reasonable. I hope that I represented his proportions accurately. He can clarify the relative weight and other relevant inferences.
My math, looking coolly at the conflict, is similar.
Phil's thesis. Walt/Mearsheimer's thesis. Pat Buchanon's thesis. Ron Paul's thesis. the posse's thesis is different, a bit skew to the Israel/Palestinian/geo-political conflict.
That is that the subject of discussion is not Israel/Palestine, but the politics within the US.
Overly charitably stated, that the primary questions are "What should happen in the US. What are America's interests?"
And, the posse gets angry that Israel/Palestine is the subject of discussion, that the only valid role of that content, is to illustrate the manipulation and excessive influence of Jews.
The American Conservative. Started by Pat Buchanon, prospectively with continuing editorial and other influence.
I personally don't know if Phil publishes there by choice, an indication of advocacy of neo-neo-conservatism, or by default (whomever will pay), or some other motive.
Buchanon's, Paul's thesis, Lindbergh's thesis, is that "European intrigues" are none of the US business, that our business is on our side of the lake.
But, with NO strategy of energy independance (from middle east oil primarily), financial independance (from middle east oil money and Chinese state capitalist), and no program of addressing class issues in the US, no program of free education (increasing the skill and wisdom of civilians), the Buchanon, Paul thesis is a thesis of negligence, rather than a thesis of reform.
"My father says you are a Jew because the people who want to murder you define you as such."
This is the core rationale for Judaism, which in actuality, like Nazism, is merely highly evolved tribalism. Before the Holocaust, it was also the rationale. The Holocaust merely provided another talking point…the final "proof." Had the Aryans won WWII, they probably would have, over a long period of time, "evolved" into a widely despised Jewish-like network, but one less fixated on money.
Many Jews like to complain about Nazism while ignoring their own tribe's parallel behavior, which is the true final "proof." Evolved tribalism will inevitably lead to a holocaust of one sort or another, which is one of the points of Christianity. The Jews at the top who have a financial stake in perpetuating Judaism understand this, but they're happy with the way things are, and always make contingency escape plans and maintain bank accounts for the inevitable eventuality when the chickens come home to roost. Deep down inside, they probably laugh at the "suckers" who got caught up in the Nazi holocaust, and congratulate themselves on being more deft and fleet.
Littel seems to understand all of this: "My reading of what you call 'Holocaust' is also less Jewish and Judeo-centric than that of my father. I think that what happened was far broader than a narrow issue of 'Germans killing Jews.'…"I personally understand the arguments for the exceptionality of the Holocaust, but I don't agree with them. The basic argument is that the Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews, but I don't see the difference between that and an extermination policy that was aimed – and implemented on a large scale – at groups such as the peasants in the Soviet Union or in Cambodia. Every genocide is exceptional."
Oh, but the Nazis were trying to exterminate an entire “race,” cry the Zionists. But isn’t that what Jews were trying to do to the Christians in the Soviet Union prior to the Holocaust? What comes around, goes around. The Jews at the top understand this, but they don't want Joel average to; the Holocaust, like 9/11 for certain connected Americans, is a far too valuable commodity.
'Liberty is self-definition.'
Well, it's more than that, but I agree that the right to self-determination is crucial for a community's liberty. The Palestinian community has been denied that right by Israel for many years, and while I understand your eternal concern that the 'rights' of the occupiers be considered, it would be nice if you could see your way clear to agreeing that the 450,000 facts on the ground you mention upthread will have to move off that ground if the Palestinians are to be afforded that universal right.
'One aspect of Zionism is the transformation in the self-identifying Jewish people of other-definition to self-definition.'
Palestinians cannot 'self-define' without their connection to the land they have occupied 'from time immemorial'. If it's good enough for the goose it's good enough for the gander.
'There are few active threats to large portions of US civilians. There are more than few to Israeli, so more of their incidents require pre-emptive intervention.'
There are and will be far more active threats to US civilians in coming years, much of this courtesy of partisans of Israel. Not just increased risk of terror, but economic meltdown driven by war expeditures. Perhaps these threats require pre-emptive intervention'.
'Terror on Israeli civilians by Palestinian "resistance" and Islamicists.'
Those inverted comma scare quoptes around the word resistance really make my blood boil Richard. Exactly what sort of liberal or progressive can you be with such a contemptuous (and contemptible) attitude to the legitimate aspirations of dispossed and oppressed people? Imagine the self-righteous magma that would flow from you if anyone dared refer to the Warsaw 'resistance' in such a way.
You can't help letting the mask slip every so often, can you?
Signed, a less than gruntled member of 'the posse' (more revealing, and offensive, nomenclature)
this still don't tell me if they exterminating jews