Every day now I dip into Kafka, because he was so intelligently engaged with the Jewish question in Europe at a time when Zionism enthralled Jews, because it seemed to be the answer. Kafka was both a Zionist and not a Zionist. He obviously saw Zionism as a way out of European antisemitism, but his ambivalence about Zionist gatherings is evident in everything he wrote on the subject. From his diary in 1912, on a friend, Dr. K, who is emigrating to Palestine:
This is the same division that Jewish life is dealing with today, between the chauvinists who are called to Palestine and those who are not. Because they are the guardians of Israel, and Israel is under existential attack, the chauvinists, coming back into the cave at night with blood on their cudgels, have dominated communal Jewish life for at least 40 years. As Abe Foxman astutely observed the other night at the 92d Street Y, after the '67 war, non-Zionism disappeared from organized Jewish life.
Now it's back. This is why Gaza is the anti-'67 War. It is revolutionizing American opinion, and probably revolutionizing young Jewish opinion too. We are dividing on our response to Gaza. David Zellnik, the non-Zionist playwright, who went to the Caryl Churchill's Gaza play last night in New York, was upset by Gaza. Whereas Jeffrey Goldberg, who hates Caryl Churchill's play, also defended the Gaza slaughter. Goldberg served in the IDF and has Maccabees forever in his mouth--and has been the most important Jewish journalist for the last six or seven years.
The pleasure of Kafka's diary excerpt is that it gets at the discomfort that people (Zionists like Dr. K) have when they cannot explain everything they believe to an audience, because that audience won't accept what they are saying and they know it. This is happening today. The Jewish community is doubting the chauvinists' wisdom on political questions. Look what they gave us: Iraq, Gaza, the idea of permanent war. They have "Maccabees forever in their mouths and want to take after them." We must defeat that idea to get past this ancient opposition.
What would the parallel statement to Kafka's consideration of Zionism a hundred ago?
What utopian effort would you consider inquiring into?
ON Zionism.
Zionism is no longer a fantasy. Its a reality. It would take revolution or some external force in some form for it to not exist.
The prospect of the intellectual force of sufficient merit to argue for another solution than the two-state (allowing Zionism), to motivate and to achieve confidence of actual improvement, is remote.
"The Mockcabees" are another Jewish motorcycle gang we sometimes "rumble" with. The emnity builds as the imprecations fly beneath the freeway, our Baalbostas holding our caftans, helmets and leathers while we fight. A regular Vast Side Story!
Fuck Zionism and the Jewish Establishment.
We need a revolution. And the idiots running your Satanic State, Witty, will facilitate that end-game.
Wonderful, Mooser. I need to make this visual:
But I am starting to consider the dialogue between Phil & Richard more and more interesting. Since I read Ari Roth's with Jeffrey's. It made me realize, it may in fact have always the dimension you bring in here.
The respective dialogues sure do ape each other–thanks to Citizen for the url referent.
Stefan Zweig, a humane writer who also considered himself a Zionist (as well as a pacifist), should probably also be examined in this light. I wonder if he foresaw the sorts of evils Zionism could lead to.
Then there's Franz Werfel. The immediate reason he wrote The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, about the Armenian genocide of 1915, was because he and his wife Alma had seen survivors of the genocide when they visited Syria in the 1920's. But I'm sure he also saw what was in store for his own people, the Jews.
I'm sure he was capable of sympathizing with Palestinians facing a similar fate.
Zweig, in his Schachnovelle [translated title: The Royal Game], has his protagonist the victim of subtle mental torture by the Gestapo (solitary confinement) that was far more gentle than what the U.S. has done in places like Guantanamo. I wonder how the treatment the Israelis have been meting out compares to what the Gestapo did to Dr. B.
I read the USA neocon torture program students were trained by Israeli agents.
Logical Fallacies #451: The "Suzanne".
Giraffes have four legs.
My coffee table has four legs.
Therefore, my coffee table is a giraffe.
otherwise known as an "undistributed middle." This refers to the fact that the middle term of the syllogism, in this case, four-leggedness, is wrongly used.
Ok, I like mooser's humor, but I was a bit disrespectful concerning Richard's fear. Considering the raw emotions large parts of the US exhibit towards death penalty combined with some of the voices we read here, it may not be completely unjustified.
He made quite a few sensitive statements somewhere else
I hereby apologize to Richard Witty.
For god's sake, 'Leander', or 'No leader', or whatever you want to call yourself, don't encourage the fatuous old windbag. He needs no encouragement, unfortunately.
LeaNder,
Fear is information. Its useless when habitual, and useless when ignored.
OMG, it's the new, fearless Witty, or should I say Mitty:
"We're going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us through," they said to one another. "The Old Man ain't afraid of hell!" …
I think we can help LeaNder's quandry. Let's just ship all the Israelis to Germany–might cause a bit of dislocation on Germans, but, hey the ethnics from the East did it after the war (with a bit of dying and prodding), and the Germans did it again to some significant financial extent when the wall came down. Bavaria can be renamed Israelaria. That should save the Americans some treasure and blood, no? Gives the natives what they want in Palestine. Lessens arab fears of the Other, hence fear of the West, especially Uncle Sam with his proven track record. It's morally and poetically most symmetrical, no? Eliminates the third parties on both sides who have born the brunt of the conflict results as between Germans and Jews, no?
Witty and LeaNder can hold hands through the whole process.
Sound good, fair, most moral solution? LeaNder can apologize everyday for the sins of his ancestors, and Witty can accept that, just a natural result of the most spiritual aspects of Zionism, an affirmation
of getting rain in its thirsty time.