In a comment on this site the other day, journalist David Samuels took a neat swipe at me. He said the figure on 1.1 million Jews killed in the destruction of the second temple period comes from
the Roman historian Flavius Josephus, whose book The Jewish Wars
remains the only authoritative historical account of the Roman wars
against the Jews — which Josephus saw first-hand both as a Jewish
rebel general and then as a Jewish collaborator with Rome. Phillip
Weiss would find it interesting reading, I think, once he's finished
with his current stack of Palestinian memoirs about the Nakba.
Cute. And self-involved. The reason I find Nakba memoirs so compelling is that they speak to a suppressed history. The history of Jewish persecution and genocide of Jews is established history. Until Jews come to terms with the history of the expulsion in '47-'48, we're in the swamps. I speak as someone who was deeply engrossed in Holocaust history when I was young, when it was a revelation, who was deeply affected by it. This imbalance is the same reason I am a tubthumper on issues of Jewish power. It's not the only story, at all. It's the untold part of the story– that young Jews must get their heads around.
By the way, my religious correspondent Mark, who defenestrated Spengler the other day for his vicious statement about "more barbed wire, more killing" for Arabs, agrees with Samuels (over me and my friend Tony Schmitz) re ahistorical Americans.
BTW, I tend to agree with your correspondent at Jewcy that Americans
are anti-historical. I think, probably along with Spengler, that that
attitude comes from the dominant Protestant form of Christianity, which
Spengler calls a "Judaizing heresy." Your friend who points out
American fascination with genealogy and with early American history
misses the main point. Americans are anti-historical in that they
believe that peoples can easily transcend culture and history and
remake themselves. While they're interested in pop American history,
they tend to be radically ignorant about the forces that shaped
America, and that leads to radically unrealistic expectations of what
can be accomplished in history. That would be Spengler's critique of
the neocon fantasy that they can spread democracy throughout the Middle
East overnight following a short, sharp military campaign. Americans
have a track record of unrealistic optimism in such ventures, followed
by crashing disillusionment–which is not always totally warranted, but
is the result of unrealistic expectations.
