"He [Spinoza] had to fight against the Jewish clergy which, itself recently a victim of the Inquisition, became infected with the spirit of the Inquisition."
--Isaac Deutscher, writing about the excommunication of Spinoza by the Dutch rabbis in The Non-Jewish Jew.
Or, alternatively as a headline, Dutch Jews have it tough.
interesting link, thanks Chaos
I generally try to avoid Nazi/Holocaust analogies where I/P and Zionism are concerned, because they tend to be misunderstood and distract from the important topics at hand. A few days ago however, in the course of my work, I came across the Nuremberg Laws and the legal-bureaucratic system the Nazis created to determine, quite literally, “who is a Jew”. The critera were primarily genetic, but also cultural and religious (in the case of those with one or two Jewish grandparents). The analogy with Israel’s Law of Return (and other laws, well-documented by Adalah) is so obvious, that it is not even denied by Zionists, who claim that Israel was created in order to give (corrective) preferential treatment to any who would have been persecuted under Nuremberg. The similarity that really struck me however, is the technical, legal and bureaucratic apparatus (in “neutral”, dry legalese) for determining – by blood, culture and religious affiliation – the status of different “categories” of human beings.
Deutscher’s analogy is worth thinking about in this context (thanks Phil), although the distance of time and culture make his specific statement almost banal.
In Western Europe the reference frames that are most available as things to avoid at all cost are nazism, and then communism. So it’s natural to easily spot analogies with those two cases, and I mean from a point of view of sincere perception, not for namecalling.
This means
- the analogies can be too readily available and overused. A richer set of analogies helps.
- the analogies can be dismissed too easily by using the ‘no genocide’ argument. Well, then nazism anno 1940 wouldn’t be recognized as nazism since no genocide had been committed yet. Or if Turkey had gotten into real trouble with the genocide of the Armenians, causing Hitler to conclude the idea was too tricky. People who use that argument to dismiss the analogy wouldn’t recognize nazism if it were dancing in front of them in a pink tutu. Alright, so it’s a good disguise.
- the analogy is heavily loaded, making it unusable in normal discussion.
Very good points, Tuyzentfloot – including the idea that here in Europe Fascism/Nazism and Communism are both the most immediate frames of reference and practically taboo (both in the common and the original sense of the word).
All true, Tuyzentfloot. But the Warsaw Ghetto analogy seems especially poignant and pertinent.
It’s noteworthy that the new Israeli state did not embody the Nuremberg definition of a Jew in a Constitution, that in fact the impossibility of reaching a consensus on this point was one of the primary reason Israel still has no constitution. Today, with the theocrats in the ascendant, there are a growing number of Jews who are considered Jews by the Law of Return by not by the rabbinical establishment. These people live in a legal no-man’s-land where they are denied many of the human rights of citizens.
Another thing that is noteworthy is the way some Israeli politician – Avigdor Lieberman this time around – perennially arises to pander to this section of society at election time, but stabs them in the back the moment he gets into office and sells out to the religious parties.
The definition of a Jew according to Israeli law has also been “a work in progress”, modified a couple of times to close perceived loopholes and accommodate changing needs, moods and political alliances. That would have been far more difficult had the Law of Return been included in a constitution. Besides, the fact that it is an ordinary, rather than constitutional law, allows those Zionists who feel uncomfortable with the “Jewish and democratic” concept to play it down or make believe that it is somehow “temporary”.
Interestingly, some Jews who would have been persecuted under Nuremberg were excluded from the Law of Return. Edith Stein for example, who was interned and murdered by the Nazis as a Jew, would have been considered a non-Jew according to the Law of Return (1970 amendment). I repeat, that a comparison between the Law of Return and the Nuremberg Laws (acknowledging the differences of course) is chilling, in the way that both bureaucratise “racial” classifications: the number of Jewish grandparents, religious affiliation, etc. The similarities are neither coincidental nor trivial.
I would call it a “work in regress” myself.
I love this essay by Deutscher and have myself cited it before on this blog. One place you can find the essay is in “Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing about Zionism and Israel”, edited by Adam Shatz, which is itself an excellent book. (Mooser, dissident extraordinaire that you are, you would like it!)
The essay can be found online at: link to marxists.org
Was just reading it, and it is extremely reminiscent of Edgar Morin’s Le monde moderne et la question juive.
Call Me Ishmael, thank you for the reccomend. I’ll look out for it.
From Deutscher’s essay, “The Non-Jewish Jew”:
“Finally, all these [Jewish] men, from Spinoza to Freud, believed in the ultimate solidarity of men; and this was implicit in their attitudes towards Jewry. We are now looking back on these believers in humanity through the bloody fog of our times. We are looking back at them through the smoke of the gas chambers, the smoke which no wind can really disperse from our eyes. These “non-Jewish Jews” were essentially optimists; and their optimism reached heights which it is not easy to ascend in our times. They did not imagine that it would be possible for “civilized” Europe in the twentieth century to sink to a depth of barbarity at which the mere words ‘solidarity of men’ would sound as a perverse mockery to Jewish ears.
(…)
“Was then the optimistic belief in humanity voiced by the great Jewish revolutionaries justified? Can we still share their faith in the future of civilization? I admit that if one were to try and answer these questions from an exclusively Jewish standpoint it would be hard, perhaps impossible, to give a positive answer. As to myself, I cannot approach the issue from an exclusively Jewish standpoint; and my answer is: Yes, their faith was justified. It was justified in so far, at any rate, as the belief in the ultimate solidarity of mankind is itself one of the conditions necessary for the preservation of humanity and for the cleansing of our civilization of the dregs of barbarity that are still present in it and poison it.”
I can’t add anything to that profound statement, written on or before 1968. But I can’t help wondering what these remarkable Jewish humanists of yesteryear would think of today’s political Zionism.
It’s a simple matter of mopolization of certain terms, ideas, and historical events. For example, the word “Smite” is reserved for Jews (though the vast majority of them are not descendants of Jacob’s 12 sons – the fact that there are more Semite people among the Arab Muslims and Christians); the word “holocaust” is reserved for the sufferings of Jews only (though over 60 million Russisn and Ukrainian Christians were killed during the Jewish-dominated era of Lenin and Stalin); the word “Black” is reserved for Africans (though the Black-clored people are found in many other continents with no African ancestory); the word “ghetto” is reserved Jewish poor-slums (though there are more poor-slums in India than any other country in the world, and the word “Nuke” is only associated with Iran’s nuclear ambition for power-generation:
Canada and India’s “Smiling Buddha”
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
“Smite” is reserved for the Jews”
What the hell can you say? It all depends on whether you are the smiter or the smitee, huh? But it’s clear you are smitten with the word “semite”. Too bad that “semite” is actually a meaningless word, from a spurious ethno-linguistic division.
It’s used as a term of convenience, because of its use in the term “anti-semitism”, but as far as I know, all the ethno-linguistics it’s based on are quite speculative, to say the least.
BTW, love the way you stick in the little parenthetical “Jewish-dominated era of Lenin and Stalin“, cause that is for sure the way to go. When Americans realise that their Chasidic neighbors are actually tough Russian Gulag Guards and Commissars, Americans will go nuts! And many of them (Jews) are teachers ! Or should that be “teachers”?
And Oy what those schmucks are doing to our precious language!
Mooser wishes to avoid by feeble jokes the historical fact that the leadership during the Lenin and Stalin era–right up to Stalin’s eventual purge of Jews from the high ranks–was disproportionately Jewish.
Of what relevance is it for solving the problem of Zionist aggression today? The leadership of the Inquisition was wholly Catholic. Does this reflect negatively on contemporary Catholics?
I reject the notion of generational guilt. It cuts both ways: modern Jews are no more responsible for the crimes of communists than modern Germans are for the crimes of Nazis.
I agree with you Colin. However, you need to contact Rehmat and Mooser. Rehmat threw out the red herring, and Mooser took it up, and then, so did I.
Mooser did not actually address the historical issue Rehmat should not have brought up, except by way of a (very misleading) joke (his usual custom). I commented in turn just to support a modicum of historical fact.
I agree, and see no reason to constantly search for historical parallels for the actions of Israelis. Among the people who matter, I don’t know who could be unintentionally in the dark about what Israel is.
I also agree with you about generational guilt, and find it odd that many Jews like to constantly kick up dust over the Holocaust, Jim Crow, etc., when they are so vulnerable as a group.
Palestinians accuse Israel settlements of diverting water, Christian Science Monitor