This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
I have lived with Hannah Arendt’s thought since my teacher, Richard Rubenstein, introduced her to me in the early 1970s. Like Arendt, Rubenstein was a fascinating amalgam that has all but disappeared from the academy. His now classic, After Auschwitz, published in 1966, and his Cunning of History, published in 1975, are heavily indebted to Arendt. Both books are too passionate for our present day “professionalized” academy.
As one of the first Holocaust theologians, Rubenstein argued Arendt’s controversial understanding that viewing the Nazis as primarily Jew-haters was a huge mistake and, again following Arendt, that a compliant and misguided Jewish leadership enabled the Nazis machine of destruction. Rubenstein agreed with Arendt that the Nazis were able to murder Europe’s Jews because they subordinated the limited range of anti-Semitic hoodlumism to a legal structure that rendered Jews stateless.
Once defined as stateless, violence could be pursued against Jews without limitation and without penalty. Following Arendt, Rubenstein saw this as the defining paradigm of the twentieth century. Once stateless, Jews were defined as superfluous, therefore a burden on society. Doing away with superfluous Jews was the next step in a century where hundreds of millions of people – perhaps billions now in the twenty-first century – would be so defined.
For the Jewish establishment, the cardinal sin of both Arendt and Rubenstein was their view that Europe’s Jews served as a cautionary tale, paradigmatic for others, rather than an exclusive, Jews-only, tragedy.
The Jewish community ultimately followed the liturgical rendering of the exclusively Jewish Holocaust by a fellow reporter at the Eichmann trial, Elie Wiesel. Wiesel goes unmentioned in the film Hannah Arendt. But Wiesel’s ascendancy just years later through his liturgical rendering of the Holocaust is crucial. Therefore the film fails to capture the main confrontation and turning point that the Eichmann trial represents.
What is missing from Hannah Arendt is the understanding that the Eichmann trial was the beginning of the end of the Jewish Left in the United States and Israel and the end of any possibility that Israel would assume a normal presence as a small Jewish state in the Middle East. Using the Holocaust and Israel as central starting points, the Eichmann trial becomes the launching pad for the material and narrative construction of Jewish empire in the United States and Israel.
When Arendt goes silent soon after the Eichmann trial the die has already been cast. Arendt understands the trajectory of Jewish life, realizes that her further interventions are worthless and spends the rest of her life on marginalia. Arendt’s writings after Eichmann in Jerusalem are notes written in the margin of her life’s work.
In his memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Wiesel recalls seeing Arendt at the Eichmann trial. His view of Arendt isn’t flattering. He describes her as aloof and egotistical. Wiesel aspired to be a Jewish leader of the future and came into his role by mystifying the Holocaust and the state of Israel. By extension, he claimed dissent about either event as tantamount to blasphemy. Wiesel helped create the climate Arendt cautioned against.
Where has the Jewish establishment Holocaust narrative brought us? Hannah Arendt is silent on the future that is already arriving at the Eichmann trial.
The Holocaust memorials that follow are only part of the story. What Arendt feared is that the Holocaust – and Israel – would shut down Jewish thinking. Instead of being rebellious and insightful thinkers seeking justice in the world, Jews would become servants of empire. As servants of empire, Jews would become dependent on empire. Instead of being refugees like Arendt, Jews would help create refugee populations.
Of these refugee populations, Palestinians are most obvious. But if we look at the recent wars Jewish commentators have been eager to embrace, whether it is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the saber rattling over Iran, there seems little reluctance on their part. Are these commentators unaware of the “collateral” damage these wars cause? Safely ensconced in America and Israel have we forgotten what it means to be refugees?
The empire cycle we live within was predicted by Arendt. Hannah Arendt only glimpses the dark road ahead. Now that we have fully arrived, it is difficult to watch the film without shuddering – if we can still think outside the confines of the empires we enable and benefit from.
Or are we so deep within empire that we can admire Hannah Arendt without realizing how far we have fallen?
I can identify with Samantha’s catharsis. Years ago on an internet forum I apologized profusely to an advocate of the State, with whom I was arguing in a way that was respectful, sympathetic and persuasive, but also strong and factual on the topic of Palestinians’ hardships.
My reaction was caused by the person’s constant, aggressive onslaught over several months in this dialogue; by an ungrounded, excessive fear of repercussions by whatever forces- government or otherwise, for the discussion; and by a belief that Israelis have also been wronged and are partly acting defensively (eg. the Wall was allegedly built to protect from attacks). Another factor in my reaction was also my natural sympathy and care toward the Jewish people, for their general liberalism and especially due to the Holocaust.
US higher education takes the mandate “Never Again!” as of universal application. More Arendt, than Wiesel. But look who has always received all the attention in America. Further, his work is pushed as of universal application, and he has catered to this to enhance his career–few Americans look closely at his real creed, lying in the pattern of his deeds–and lack of them.