The French writer Bernard-Henri Levy made an absurd assertion on the anniversary of Kristallnacht this week: that just as Jews ignored the warning signs in 1938, they are ignoring signs of a coming “storm” posed by anti-Zionism today.
“Anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel” are among the “black stars which are above our heads, which are still under control for the moment but which could be the prelude to the worst,” he told a New York synagogue congregation.
Levy is a frequent guest at New York synagogues, and on Tuesday night, he was interviewed by Rabbi Elliott Cosgrove at the Park Avenue Synagogue during a commemoration of the 1938 pogrom in Germany.
Levy said the warning signs were all there before Kristallnacht, but the world turned a blind eye and even Jews were “caught by surprise.” And he sees the same signs today:
This unpreparation of the Jews [for Kristallnacht] is for me a great mystery, a great source of sorrow, and a great source of concern and mobilization today. Because today in Europe, in the rest of the world, including America, we see signs which are accumulating of storm. One day we see them, one day we choose not to see them…
We have to see the signs without panic, without too much anxiety but without turning a blind eye to what is happening. What do I mean? Denial of Holocaust, anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel, stupid and dangerous plots and conspiracy theories, stupid theories about competition between victims and between suffering and memories. All that — the idea that Jews were warmongers… plutocrats. You have an accumulation of black stars which are above our heads, which are still under control for the moment but which could be the prelude to the worst. We have to know that. With calm, with pride, with moral strength but without political weakness.
Rabbi Cosgrove did not push back in any way on this risible claim. But then, this is the new agenda of the Israel lobby, claiming that leftwing criticism of Israel is disguised Jew hatred, and it is coming on us like climate change (as the ADL says).
Speaking of warmongering, Levy also took time to argue that the United States should have stayed in Afghanistan.
I was so surprised to see the debate in America around the idea of endless war. You had… bipartisan consensus saying that American has to get rid of endless war. Except that it was not an endless war, Afghanistan. It was a military deployment, which is very different. Since 18 months there was absolutely zero casualties. Since 6 or 7 years, the American soldiers… were in a non-combat mission. So it’s not peace or war– and this way of feeding the public, the audience with this armageddon false dichotomy is bad job. The reality in Afghanistan is that we had a sort of political symbolic moral presence of a great country, America, with a great creed, democracy, and this was sufficient… to keep at large… the Talibans and to prevent them from killing, deaths, stoning the women, and closing them in burqa.
Again, no pushback from the rabbi on this neoconservative vision of exporting democracy at gunpoint or worse, on Levy’s claim of “zero casualties.” That’s a hideous statement when you consider that more than 1600 Afghans died just in June, July and August. Reporter Jane Ferguson says the one good thing amid the humanitarian crisis now unfolding in Afghanistan is that war is over. “I think that we have to remember that the one bright ray of hope for now is the lack of fighting, the lack of violence on a war level. I don’t know how long that will last, but I can feel in some rural areas people starting to breathe.”
“But then, this is the new agenda of the Israel lobby, claiming that leftwing criticism of Israel is disguised Jew hatred…”
Well, how about criticism of Israel coming from Israeli elites, people who have high positions in the military and government? The number of these people is astonishing, for example (emphasis mine):
https://www.timesofisrael.com/joint-israel-west-bank-reality-is-an-apartheid-state/
“If Obama intends to ignore the looming ‘apartheid cliff’ on his visit, he’d be better off staying home, adds Alon Liel, who also served as Israel’s envoy to Pretoria…As long as there is no Palestinian state and Israel rules over the West Bank, Israel is a de facto apartheid state, a former top Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday, using a highly contentious term usually employed only by radical anti-Israel activists.”
The Conservative (upper case C) movement of which Rabbi Cosgrove is a leading figure is beyond hope. Unlike his neighbor Rabbi Buchdahl over at the Reform Central Synagogue, this rabbi felt no need to speak up for the young Jews in his synagogue who question Israel. The Conservative movement is ideologically wedded to breaking the Palestinian people.
They’re backing the wrong horse if they want to be around in the future. The Conservative movement is hemorrhaging members and being forced to close its synagogues everywhere.
Up to a point anti Zionism is a self-inflicted problem. Treat Palestinians as human beings and things might change. I am of Jewish background AND anti Zionist too.
The insane handwringing of these so-called intellectuals in a shameless attempt to defend the indefensible actions and policies of Israel is nothing short of kabuki theatre.
Newsflash! All the warning signs of the eve of Kristallnacht ARE here, but it’s not coming from the Left who and their valid criticism of Israel’s Zionist colonial Apartheid regime. Anyone paying attention to the last four years under Trump can tell you that. Attacks on synagogues, brownshirts in the streets with tiki torches chanting “Jews Will Not Replace Us!”, Trump loving Y’all-Qaeda insurgents storming the Capitol wearing white supremacist, Nazi, and ‘Camp Auschwitz’ t-shirts, and overt anti-Semitic tropes and Protocols of the Elders of Zion coming from the mouths of Trump and his allies.
Yet for these “intellectuals”, the greatest threat to ALL Jews is BDS, college students and human rights activists talking about social justice for human rights abuses and more than half a century of military occupations and oppression?
Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burns comes to mind, and they will have no one to blame but themselves when the shit hits the fan
The misguided belief that Israel is the safe haven for the Jewish diaspora they keep trying to sell is dangerous! It’s not. The ultra religious right wing Zionist Evangelical powerhouse in the US that pledges its undying blind devotion to Israel, is pledging its support and devotion to the LAND of Israel not the people of Israel, the Evangelical Christian control of Israel NOT the Jewish control of Israel. The idea of the Jewish diaspora fleeing en masse to Israel for their ultimate conversion to Christianity is their warped apocalyptic wet dream come true!
This ugly statement by Levy is a libel on German Jews in the 1930s:
“This unpreparation of the Jews [for Kristallnacht] is for me a great mystery, a great source of sorrow. . . ”
Levy is wrong. 1) Many German Jews had already left. 2) Many others wanted to, but other countries would not take them in.
True to form, Levy distorts history to win cheap publicity for himself.