Total number of comments: 14 (since 2010-06-07 20:41:36)
Baruch B
I am a native San Franciscan. My parents are Holocaust Survivors. I was raised in the local Jewish children's home. I belong to Jewish Voice for Peace. I have been looking for a job for almost three years.
I am also enjoying this Gunther Grass discussion as a kind of liberation. Being the son of German refugees from the Holocaust and having grown up in the now defunct Jewish children's in the Bay Area, I got my share of anti-Germanism and blind support for Israel while growing up. Though I think my parents have never been as crude as the institutional establishment I had also to take as my parent. Although I had seen many rabbinical student's VW cars at Hebrew Union College in LA for a summer program right after I left high school, I was still living in this world of a pulsating evil Germany that had to be watched. Israel remained the only answer. What changed much of this perception for me? At the end of the sixities I was in New York and I saw the film version with subtitles of Grass' "Cat and Mouse." The film showed young people mocking German authoritarism and the Iron Cross in Danzig, my mother's hometown. That made Germany a real place for me. And I mean Germany became a place where bad things did and can happen. Germany also became a place where criticism could take place and good things could happen as well.
I need to add that I had joined the Socialist Party, USA when Norman Thomas was still alive, Erich Fromm was a member, the contridictory Michael Harrington was a member, and where I learned much about what it means to be anti-war from David McReynolds. I also remember Helena and Ernst Papnek who where in the SP, Ernst had lead the Austrian Social Democratic youth after WWI. Both had set-up childrens homes in Europe to save children from the Holocaust, namely a bakery owner I knew in the Bay Area and likely my uncle by marriage. The SP was in the Socialist Interantional. It was a big thing when the Social Democrats got back into power in Germany with Willy Brandt and we knew Grass had worked hard for this. (Grass I believe had spoken in an apartment on the Upper West Side where I was not invited.)
I want now to get back to what I learned from McR about the anti-war perspective. And I don't mean necessarily in what I learned in detail from McR. I became aware that many in Europe, particularly Central Europe, did not want to be in a battleground for nuclear war. I believe this was an issue in the Social Democratic Party in Germany and part of the reason for the emergence of the Green Party. Many in the old SP and in the Jewish establishment simply saw this as "pro-Communism." I saw this emerging German anti-war position for what it was and is. Large numbers of Germans simply did not and do not want another war on their soil or anyone else. That to me seemed like a more positive basis for political action than anti-Communism.
I am not an expert on Grass and I do not read German. I think his writing has always been anti-war. Grass was not an officer in the German army, he was not a war planner. He was a kid who got caught up in his time. He overcame the world he was given better than most of us. I accept his criticism of Israel, and indirectly of US policy, because he has tact. He acknowleges all that Germany did wrong at one time. Maybe now is the time to thank Germans who not only would protect Jews from the Holocaust, but also who have the courage to say "enough." The Holocaust can nolonger be a crutch for any kind of war or ethnic cleansing. Jews have lived without hope long enough. (Yes Israel's national anthem "Our Hope" is not the song of a hopeful country.) It is time for Israel to engage with its neighbors and disclose its nuclear arsenal. It is time for Israel to work for a nuclear free Middle East and world. Grass has opened up much and I support him.
So if visions of hope mean anything, as Passover is concluding, we should say: "Next year in a shared Jerusalem."
If this is true:
"It recalls Colin Powell's reported belief, in Karen DeYoung's biography, that a "gang" from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs pushed the Iraq war as a means of guaranteeing Israel's security."
Then it seems there are Jews who believe that the security of Israel, and thus the Jews, can only come from risking the security of the whole world. It is as if this is understood and yet cannot be uttered. This view suggests a very limited perception of how to make anyone secure creating a perceived situation with few and risky options. (As well as having a limited view of the perceived enemy, making that enemy more limited in the eyes of the neo-cons than the enemy likely is.)
It is hard to be a human being a in a war crazed society. And it is equally hard to express one's self as a Jew with an "official" community that is so limited in its' perceptions as to how to live in the world.
I just sent the article to the Greek Counsel General in San Francisco, where I have now communicated for the third time this week. The Haaretz article here allowed me to link the two issues in comments I have been wanting to link all week. I hope all find my comments of interest. Thank you.
"Consul General Ioannis Andreades and staff I am in San Francisco: The attached article suggests something radically wrong on both issues. Keynes is certainly rejected in your economic plan. And it is clear the once vision of the Socialist International, that the PASOK is a member of, means nothing today and has nothing to do with the party of Norman Thomas here in the United States that I once joined. Justice for the peoples of the land of the western religions is rejected in your Prime Minister's relations with the Israeli Prime Minister. How does a prime minister manage to sell out his own people and the people of the Middle East in one big effort? This can only come from a colossal lack of vision and a lack of sense of any constructive purpose. The details of correcting these issues can only be destructive unless you develop better set of premises that involve something other than bankers being at the center of the solution, something other than technocratic approaches, and perceiving the avoidance of some other kind of Holocaust in an understanding with the Israeli government. As I have said before, I am the son of Holocaust survivors and Israel does not speak for me. I am currently very disappointed in the leadership of Greece."
When I think of the character Shylock I think of the "Merchant of Venice" film starring Al Pacino. Al Pacino's Shylock to me summed up the the current situation of the "Jewish State" and Zionism. (His Brooklyn accent didn't work for me however.) Shylock has demanded a trial because ships that he lent money for sunk. The owner of those ships couldn't pay back the loan. Apparently the ship owner signed an agreement to have his arm removed (is this proverbial pound of flesh?) in the case that he could not pay. Shylock gives a speech at this trial. If he had kept his speech to the humiliations that the Jews suffered in Venice (the ghetto, when they could come and go from the ghetto, etc.) and that this should stop he would have gained much. If he could have said he could not take another being's arm and asked the court to find another more humane means of restitution, then he would have elevated the situation. Instead Shylock demands the arm in a demented expression. This is how I see the expression of just about any Israeli Prime Minister, of the Jewish State, of Zionism in the United States. And this with greater consequence than one man's arm, one crazy banker, and one ghetto of Jews. The court is this Venice is stacked against Shylock making his behavior all the more stupid. In Israel's case so far the court is stacked in its favor. So far Israel can demand more than the flesh of one arm from Palestinians. And in both cases (Shylock, Israel) are not insisting of a negotiated solution for just concerns. There is a demented view and program accepting that the world is hopelessly unjust and that Jews must get their pound of flesh where ever it can before it may be taken from us again. Surely a great many Jews to not agree with this. (Otherwise why Mondoweiss?) May the day come soon when Jews and everyone in the world realize that this not unusual human behavior of Shylock being among all peoples, becomes more conscious, more understood, and accepted as an example of "not" how to behave in the world.
Goldstone's problem is that he is a Jewish Nation State Zionist. He has suffered exclusion for the courage that he showed in his writing of the report. Since he fundamentally supports an exclusionary state he doesn't like be excluded from that state or its movement. If he cannot see the fundamental flaw of Israel as it was created he can only back away from the report. And as to the question of proportionality, I still ask if Israel has a right to defend itself, do the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves as well? Will Goldstone affirm a Palestinian right of self-defense as well? I never trusted his report. He is a brilliantly confused person in this regard.
I have been listening to KPFA and other news the past several days. If this Libyan Intervention where the Spanish Civil War or the level of weaponry today was no "worse" than pre-World War II, it would be easier for me despite my non-violent background to say there is not much choice. When I think of NATO, the Allies, leaving depleted uranium behind and a host of other generation lasting destruction, I am not sure Libya is being helped. Sure Howard Zinn as a flier in World War II was glad to fight the Nazis. He was, I understand, sad that the young Zinn dropped Napalm near the end of that war and came to understand the horror that other fliers did with the A bomb in Japan. If we had a "Department of Peace" we could minimize the need for the interventions and the Department of Defense (War) might be induced to rethink its weaponry. Surely Libya does not need the most lethal weaponry to save it. Perhaps if those of us who see ourselves on the left and see the need for some sort of help for the Libyan rebels, we might at least reserve a space for qualified, conditional support demanding "idealistically" some qualification of the kind of war, bombing the US/NATO does. Thus I hope at least journalist keep me/us informed as to how this war is being conducted. Otherwise we will drift off one and a time, one war at a time (as I think of Christopher Hitchens) in to working for the opposite of what we set out to do. All in all I have my doubts. What does the "Empire" want out of this?
Philip,
You remind me that when I fill out my two-week unemployment claim I have to allow for federal tax. Ed Meese wanted that added under Reagan. Meese was first as I remember Reagan's domestic affairs advisor. Meese felt that claimants always got a job just before their unemployment ran out and could have gotten a job sooner. Meese was suddenly concerned about white working people not finding work in South Africa when sanctions and the like hurt the S.A. economy. And may I also remember that as governor of CA Reagan signed the liberalized abortion law here and Meese was his aid then as well.
In the Jewish children's home I grew up in Israel was always praised as "the" answer to the Holocaust. Israel made the desert bloom. Israel did miraculous thinks with water and air conditioning, letting recycled waster run down the side of buildings and the like. (In propaganda films. Some truths and some not so true.) The Arabs at best were a back drop, an artifact perhaps. Later during my college years I remember a representative from the Labor Party youth group saying that in the US the government lied to us about Vietnam, but Israel's government didn't lie.
Later I read several books of Norman Thomas' and learned of his relationship with the bi-nationalist Judah Magnes. Both opposed the First World War. And so I began to build my own picture of events distinct from the one I was given. It still amazes and saddens me how many people I run into today (and give me local feedback about my efforts in Jewish Voice for Peace) who really can't fit Arabs into their perception of Jews in the Middle East. And this in true locally where a Jewish business owner does not to my knowledge engage with a business owned by an Arab down the street. Maybe a little local gossip but the real questions that would help them and the world by not avoiding "we each exist as human beings" or "how can we build together" or "Israel/Palestine matters to both of us" is never faced. We are here and they are there. And so it goes...
David thank you for picking out the essence of what I wrote above and expressing it so in a reply. Jews and others have perhaps many reasons for why they must have a "Jewish State", though much of that support is from in my view unreflective conformity. Your view appears to be unburdened by excessive history, unburden by old wounds.
What is the purpose of Zionism? What is the purpose of the Jewish State? Can Jews live and culturally develop in geographic Palestine without the need of a state? The problem is insisting on a state and then saying one can be wiped out if one can't keep it. This suggests an enormous lack of confidence among many Jews and their supporters. This lack of confidence leads to a great amount of violence. Violence in defense of Idolatry of the State. It is this idolatry, this absolutely only solution of Jewish presumed morale building in Biblical Palestine, this violence that upsets Arabs, Palestinians, in their relations with Jews, Israel. When Palestinians defend themselves violently, as the Israelis defend themselves, or the Palestinians defend themselves non-violently as in the village of Bilin, Israelis claim to be threatened. The "crime" here of the Palestinians is to defend themselves at all. Those Jews better versed in Judaism than I am know the prayer shawl and any other Jewish objects can become an idol rather than a means. Why not the same with an idea, with this State? Idolatry blinds the eye, as religious Jews say in Synagogue every week. The State is not the essential part of Jews being in Biblical Palestine. The essential part is Jewish presence there in a cultural flowering for those Jews that want to be there. Surely on day one of serious negotiations the State need not be tossed out. Two states may be necessary for a period given that one state is not attempting to control the other. It may very well be the Jewish population of this area will never be high enough to maintain a unitary Jewish State in the medium term. The only security that can follow from this is to build healthy political, economic and social relations with the Palestine Arabs in one State. That is what at least nearly all the Palestinian Arabs want anyway. What is there to be scared of here? The idolatry should stop, this blindness should stop, and peace pursued.
Tony Judt's reference "...wrong with communism and why ratify it, this goes from an ex-communist." meaning Arthur Koestler makes me think about my experience with the Socialist Party, USA. Arthur Koestler could be an ex-communist and nonetheless remain within the pre-Tony Blair Labour Party and be active against capital punishment. The Max Shackmanites, ex-Trotskyists, Norman Podhoretz and that part of the neo-Cons had to abandon everything because of a bad experience (certainly profound as it was for Koestler) as if what they were trying to change before was suddenly good. I suppose some individuals need to feel something is solved, or the absolute solution is there if only people will just get in line, rather than live in uncertainty. Zionism for some solves Hitler and all the years of anti-antisemitism, so there cannot be any criticism of Zionism. Communism solves the problem of the unfairness of Capitalism, so there cannot be any criticism of Communism. And Capitalism cannot be criticized because Communism lost it's dream. I guess we need times of rest and nonetheless not lose the capacity to keep searching for a third way, something not frozen, something positive.
The Times and Livni give expression to making a mockery of the Patriot Act and lists of groups called terrorists who cannot even be counseled to choose non-violence. It is a situation of a list or lists that in any helpful terms are just category mistakes.
Livni and her party I suspect do not have any comprehension of what it would mean to try a two-state solution. I certainly cannot imagine a Livni government removing most of the settlements and telling some of the settlers they could stay in the Palestinian country. I think she speaks of a fantasy of going back before May 1967 regardless of all the unsolved issues then. She will want too much control over the Palestinians and both peoples in my view of her vision will not live as equals.
I see the view of Jabotinsky, Lehi, Likud, Kadima, and much of the Israeli labor movement as one of hopelessness regarding the human condition. The world cannot get past Fascism so Jews must have their own Fascist country to survive. Survival is the only issue. The revival of Hebrew, Saturday as the day off, are just trimmings in this perspective, no matter how good many people say they feel about these trimmings.
This Zionism is certainly something to be anti. Nonetheless in the present we have real people who understandably want to survive, Jew and Arab. If Zionism is an obsolete word we need to find another word, another movement, another name perhaps for the country, that is more inclusive. Jews in geographic Palestine are not the problem per se. The problem is how the Jews developed Zionism and how they have chosen to live in Israel/Palestine.
I hope the discussion here and elsewhere will get us to a more positive place in terms of Jewish hopes and expectations for humanity as a whole. (As I write on Shabbat.)
In my observation "the Left" is defined by "Official Jewry" as anyone who disagrees with Israel in a profound way. Needless to write perhaps, but one could be on the political left (i.e. socialistic) or on the political right (free market conservative who does not believe in foreign aid) and both are on the left in this case. Whether one is on the left or the right here has nothing to do with political economy.
"Leaving the house" and "Saying it in the community". Who is defining leaving and what is the community? Several years ago in the Bay Area some members of Jewish Voice for Peace wanted us to join the Jewish Community Relations Council. The local JCRC could not get their Bylaws to include us. There is some kind of loyalty oath to use the Jewish Community Center, and the Jewish Film Festival has been told what they can not show if they want Jewish Federation money. This week the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will discuss a resolution calling for an international investigation of the recent peace flotilla events in international waters. The JCRC is telling the Board that such a resolution will split the community. The community "is" divided. The JCRC's, Federations, and Jewish Community centers see themselves as the community. If you do not believe you are worse than Spinoza.
I just want to add that decades ago when I was an officer in Hillel we wanted to bring Elmer Berger in as a speaker because we simply wanted to learn. The national office of Hillel was not pleased and Burger never spoke. I have always thought that the American Council for Judaism was more honest about their feelings about Israel than the American Jewish Committee which to my mind are contrasting organization. I have always wondered what contact the American Council had with the Bi-National Zionists, i.e. Magnes and Buber, and the less reckless Jewish State Zionists, i.e. Sharrett and Goldmann. I have wanted to know what bases Rabbi Irving Reichert, the San Francisco American Council leader who lost a new contract at Temple Emanu-El, touched before a trip he made to Egypt. I guess I should look at this new book about Elmer Berger for starters. In short I think the words of Helen Thomas were ones of anger and perhaps expressing many years of frustration regarding Israel and the "official" U. S. Jewish community. It is natural then to want to review now the old issues pertaining to the American Council for Judaism and the American Jewish Committee. But I want to also ask the American Council for Judaism the questions I have asked and also to learn how they have evolved. They do not appear to me to have be a force in Jewish affairs in recent decades.