In my post on all the books coming out on the Israel lobby, I got author Jeff Gates's resume wrong (Senate Finance, not House Finance) and failed to mention a few other taboo-breaking titles. There's Avrum Burg's Jewish-identity-and-Zionism book due out in a week or so from Macmillan on the end of the Holocaust, let us rise from its ashes. The book is endorsed by John Mearsheimer. And here are two titles about non-Zionism and Jewish identity. One of them is The End of Judaism, by a Dutch Auschwitz-survivor, physicist, violin-maker Hajo Meyer:
We are all too familiar with photographs of Germans in
their immaculate uniforms making fun of destitute and frightened Jews.
Jews in Germany could count on such humiliation at the hands of the
authorities and their fellow citizens. The intimidation and harassment
at Israeli checkpoints is not much different from what I experienced in
my youth. I will never forget what I went through in this regard, even
though it is no longer particularly painful. What I do find painful,
however, is the knowledge that the Jews, who are my own people, are
involved in similar humiliation of Palestinians.
Writes Cecilie Surasky of Jewish Voice for Peace: "[Meyer's] admission that the great unhealed trauma for him was being given
one day to pack his bags and leave his home forever (an experience
familiar to virtually every Jewish family), cannot help but evoke the
image of some 3/4 of a million Palestinians fleeing their homes during
the Nakba 60 years ago, many with keys still in hand, and never
returning.
"While unequivocally condemning the killing of all civilians, Meyer
marvels that Palestinians are criticized for resisting oppression by
the very people, Israelis, who, he suggests, have been the most
'critical of the defenselessness and passivity of German Jews in the
face of humiliation and persecution.'" Wow. Fascinating point.
Thanks to Dan Sisken.
