I'm the last to know, but this is great news. On October 28 Macmillan will publish former Speaker of the Knesset Avrahum Burg's book, "The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes," which caused such a stir when it came out in Hebrew a year back. Beautiful title, huh. The promo:
Burg argues that the Jewish nation has been traumatized and has lost
the ability to trust itself, its neighbors or the world around it. He
shows that this is one of the causes for the growing nationalism and
violence that are plaguing Israeli society and reverberating through
Jewish communities worldwide. Burg uses his own family history–his
parents were Holocaust survivors–to inform his innovative views on
what the Jewish people need to do to move on and eventually live in
peace with their Arab neighbors and feel comfortable in world at large.
I was shocked by Burg's interview in Haaretz 15 months ago in which he said the Law of Return mirrored Hitler. So was David Remnick. Excerpts of a Burg interview in the Jerusalem Post in August:
The question of this future generation will
not be about pogroms and anti-Semitism. Rather, it will be about
whether the Jewish people can survive without an external enemy. Do we really trust the world?…That's the beginning of
the conversation,
because I do. This is so difficult for Israelis to accept. I say, let's
move slowly but surely – not overnight – from trauma to trust. ..
Look at a thousand years of European history.
Europe was a continent of bloodshed, where everybody killed everybody
else. It is therefore a very biased description of history to say that
all of them were against us. Especially since, during this 1,000 years,
most of the time, the conversation
between the Jews and the world was very impressive and positive. Can
you understand Western civilization without grasping that Jesus was
born as a Jew, crucified as a Jew and buried as a Jew?
Brings tears to my eyes. What a great man. Says this too:
survived throughout the ages is that we simply screwed the system. The
system never trusted us and, in return, we never trusted it – never
fully merged into it. We always survived by going around it somehow.
This completely explains the relationship of Marty Peretz/Israel and the United Nations. We'll grab partition then expand on it, and ignore every condemnation for the next 60 years because these are the people who wanted to screw us.
And this explains destroying Lebanon when two soldiers are catpured:
The problem lies in the psychology of trauma. It is not about
the Holocaust,
per se, or about 1967. It is about the years between 1945 and 1948 -
three years between the end of Auschwitz and the beginning of Israel's
War of Independence. And what we did was to take this one three-year
period out of our entire past, so that whenever Palestinians kill
someone, it's not just one victim. It's one victim plus six million
plus 2,000 years.
'What a great man'
I remember having a similar reaction to a Haaretz editorial of his a few years ago. He is a great man; so is Uri Avnery. Amira Hass is a great woman. Gideon Levy, Neve Gordon, Sternhell… there are lots of them, but like America, Israel can't ever seem to place any of them within a bull's roar of the sort of power that could compel change.
It's a good sign that such a prominent Israeli can publicly diagnose the pathologies of Zionism. It joins other recent positives – Olmert's regrets, the schoolgirl resisters, some settlers' outspoken support of the Palestinians their brothers oppress, etc.
But the settlements and the oppression continue; in fact they are trending upward too, perhaps in response to the increasingly likely prospect that a weakened US will not be able to drive the ME according to Israeli priorities for much longer.
"And this explains destroying Lebanon when two soldiers are catpured"
4 were killed prior to the 2 captured, and Hezbollah shelled Israeli towns before and after.
The criticism of the Knesset report of the Lebanon effort was that because it was unfocused and unplanned (in spite of the accusations by dissenters that it had been planned for a year), its scope extended beyond any rational military mission.
Accurate summary is more useful than rhetorical.
Avraham Burg has used the term "never again", so the question is one of degree.
How far?
An important question. But not a black/white one, and one that INCLUDES Israeli welfare and safety in its math.
"Beautiful title, huh?"
Not as beautiful as the original Hebrew title (which I don't think was used, for obvious reasons): "Hitler Won." Now THAT is an amazing & incendiary title.
Ah, the bard of Seattle is heard from again. Perhaps Samir Kuntar could pay a visit to you and your family. You could discuss the middle east with him.
Since both, Richard Silverstein and Phil Weiss are the most prominent bloggers on the topic they should be assigned assigned reviews.
Should we hold our breath, Swordie?
So,
Phil, Richard S, Sword,
What did you learn on Yom Kippur?
So, Witty, what did you learn on Yom Kippur?
Did you make verbal confession or vidui? What's the result of your soul-searching and verbal articulation of your misdeeds? What commitment have you made to your future improvement to earn God's forgiveness?
What with the credit crunch and the collapse of the political pornographic feature film paper market, I will have to read Burg's book in snippets, as Phil quotes from it over the coming years. Help me out, Phil.
I think the new English title though is extremely appropriate in the current American political climate. While W&M tip-toed around and actually pooh-poohed zionism; I have a feeling, based on the interview Haaretz published a while back, that Burg's will be a real conversation.
Hitler Won would've been a shocking title no doubt… My book on American zionism in the age of corporate consolidation would be called Goebbels Won.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon was planned between top Israeli officials and members of the Bush administration. On June 17 and 18 [of 2006], former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with Vice President Dick Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado. There, the impending Israeli invasions of both Gaza and Lebanon were discussed. After receiving Cheney's full backing for the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, Netanyahu flew back to Israel……
SOURCE-
MM: Bingo!