april 2005
the J people
and the J spot
Gilad Atzmon
Many of us, the critical voices of Zionism and Israel, have already realised something: it is advisable to avoid using the ‘J’ word. Once you use the ‘J’ word you had better expect some serious trouble. But in fact, this is not entirely true. You can safely apply the ‘J’ word, you just have to make sure you say the right things. For instance no one is going accuse you of being a racist for flattering the ‘J’ people with some incredible positive superlatives. No one will cause you any trouble for saying that the J’s are very intelligent or a nice bunch of people. You can even lie and say that they are extremely good looking and by far the kindest people on earth. It is only when you say what you really think that the real trouble starts. As soon as you become slightly genuine you will have to face an orchestrated smear campaign, you will be then called an ‘anti Semite’, a ‘new historian’ and even a ‘holocaust denier’. If you happen to be a ‘J’ yourself you will probably end up being labelled a ‘self-hating J’, no doubt a pretty prestigious club to be a member of.
All of the above depicts a very obscure picture: as it seems, the ‘J’ people do not mind being collectively categorised, they do not mind racial generalisations as long as they come out looking good by it. For instance saying that the J’s are the greatest and the most clever people on earth won
’t be taken by them as an outrageous racist remark. But then, as soon as you mention that some of them may appear to be just slightly greedy at times, this is when trouble starts. One may wonder how is it possible, clearly, the two statements are equally racially outrageous, equally categorical. Both statements attribute qualities to a specific racial group and yet only the latter is seen as inflammatory.
Rather than address this riddle, I would prefer to dismiss the issue altogether. In fact, none of these remarks should be considered racist, because the ‘J’ people aren’t a race. Not only are they not a race, they aren’t a class, they aren’t a nation, they aren’t a tribe, they aren’t an ethnic group, they aren’t victims, they aren’t even the oppressors. They are none of these but they can easily become any of them whenever it is convenient.
The J’s are the ultimate chameleons, they can be whatever they like as long as it serves as some expedient. As soon as you criticise their expansionist militant national beliefs (Zionism) you hurt them as a race (Semites), they would insist that anti Zionism is in practice a form of anti Semitism. When you condemn their racist tendencies, they are transformed immediately into an innocent cultural identity (merely chicken soup consumers). When you criticise their exclusive cultural leanings, they then become a race again (it isn’t me it’s all down to my mother, she is Jewish, I am just a consequence of her racial belonging). But it goes further, when you scrutinise their racist and supremacist religious law (Talmud) they remind you that most of them are in fact secular (true by the way), but then, when you question their secular philosophy, they would immediately confess that, in fact, there is no such philosophy. You may push your luck and ask them what stands at the core of their ethnic belonging. A readymade answer would be given instantly: ‘it is Hitler rather than Moses who made us into J’s’. Hitler never asked for our religious beliefs, he killed us just for being J’ s.’ When you remind them that Hitler is no longer with us, they would assure you that a new one is just about to be born. Basically you can never win. But neither can they.
You can never win because you don’t really want to win, you just enjoy exploring a unique bizarre and yet a very powerful and victorious identity. For you it isn’t about winning, all you want is to help the Palestinian people in their right and justified battle. For you it isn’t about a clear practical gain, you want to make this planet just a bit nicer of a place to live in. But for them it is a different matter altogether. For them, it is all about winning, they are set to win, unconditional success is brewed into
their spirit both culturally and religiously. But they can never win, by the time they win they get lost. They stop being victims. Occasionally it looks as if they are almost there, you can see them running the show, running American political life, running American show business, running the ‘new middle East’, running the Communist revolution but then, as it appears, something always goes wrong. Suddenly, completely out of the blue, everyone around is standing up against the plot. As it seems, they always win the battles but somehow manage to lose the war, very much like contemporary America. Is it a coincidence? I don’t think so.
Sadly enough for them, not only can’t they win, as tragically as it may appear, they can’t lose either, they can never be defeated. Thus even their lowest moments are transformed into a glorious political manoeuvre. By the time millions of European J’s were facing murderous Nazi brutality, Ben Gurion was already capitalising on their imminent deaths. By now, within the J’s common worldview, the holocaust is recognised as a justification and a pillar of self righteousness. Rather than being a moral lesson, the holocaust stands as an excuse. Rather than use the tragic event as a moment of reflection, at least in the eyes of the Zionist J’s it is transformed into a militant expansionist philosophy backed with hundreds of nuclear weapons.
As it seems, they can neither win nor lose, Thus they are doomed to wander around engaging themselves in an endless metamorphosis. They move forward and backwards, from left to right, from right to left, from spirituality into materialism, from orthodox Marxism into hard capitalism. They are always at the cool side of game, when it was right to be a Socialist they were right there in the forefront of the Bolshevik revolution, now when it is hard capitalism that sets the tone, you read about them in the Wall Street Journal, they are the new prophets from Manhattan. Life is never
boring for ‘J’ people.
But then, let me tell you, there is only one thing they can’t cope with, one thing that drives them mad. Something that never settles peacefully in their well protected binary world. It is called love. If you love them you kill them. Love shakes their confidence, for them it is far easier to be detested. The only way to destroy Zionism, to dismantle ‘J’ power, is to embrace them to your heart, to make love to their ‘J spot’. To worship them exactly when they anticipate your ultimate aversion. Always overwhelm them with affection. A brief look into their history makes it very clear. By the time they were fully emancipated by their European host nations, they invented Zionism. When anti Semitism was thrown out of the window, it was the Zionists who reintroduced it. By the time Israel was praised by the world for its military success and murderous strategies, Zionism was in ruins.
We must learn to accept everything they do. When they flatten a Palestinian village, rather than protesting, just look in their eyes and assure them that your love is unconditional. When they throw a bomb on a school in Gaza, just hold them close to your heart and express your sincere understanding. When their right wing American zealots take the West into war against Iraq, Syria or Iran just remind yourself that sooner or later peace will prevail. Don’t you ever forget, they are doing all those horrible things not because they are that horrifying, they just feel an urgent need to remind you that you really hate them. When you meet them in person you learn that they are not that vicious, they are just slightly immature beings due to the fact that they are not very competent in social life, they are born chosen. They live in a segregated mental ghetto. They never learned how to handle human company, they know very little about empathy. In the end of the day, they don’t live among others. They prefer to live alongside.
Love is the way to redeem the ‘J’ people and hopefully to save the world. It isn’t easy, some would even say that it is pretty impossible. But as sad as it may sound, love is the only weapon against those who are fuelled by negation.
And by the way, don’t you ever use the ‘J’ word.
http://www.gilad.co.uk
Ariel Sharon's Zionist Political Propaganda imperils Jews Worldwide?
But now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism, but they are marginal. There's plenty of racism, but it's directed against Blacks, Latinos, and Arabs are targets of enormous racism. Those problems are real but anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That's why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue. Not because of the threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East. With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it 'exclamation', what's called propaganda when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism, he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel. So there's no difference between criticism of policies of the State of Israel and anti-Semitism, because if he can
establish 'that then he can undercut all criticism by invoking the Nazis, and that will silence people
Noam Chomsky
.
To Sit in the Dark
By Gilad Atzmon
A talk at the SOAS Palestinian Society 23.4.2005
I am sure that some of you are familiar with the old Jewish joke: What does it take for a Jewish mother to change a light bulb? Then impersonating an elder Jewish mother, applying a high pitch east European accent you spit it out: ”no vorries I vill sit in the dark”. As it seems, the Jewish mother embodies the essence of modern Jewish existence. To be a Jew is to sit in the dark, to be a Jew is to be a victim and to enjoy your symptoms. If we analyse this bizarre tendency in the light of Freud’s pleasure principle, we might mistakenly deduce that the Jewish mother finds pleasure in inflicting pain on herself. Some may even diagnose the Jewish mother as a mythical masochistic figure. In fact, it is the other way around, The Jewish mother doesn’t enjoy her own suffering at all. The Joke is supposed to reveal a very different message. The Jewish mother, instead of improving her general state of being, rather than enjoying reading the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ in the light, she voluntarily offers to sit in the dark, she gains satisfaction initiating some feelings of remorse for the Other, whoever the Other is. Usually it is her beloved kind (son) but it can as well be her partner, the neighbour, the social worker, the Swiss banker or even the United Nations. The Jewish mother vill sit in the dark as long as someone there is happy to feel guilty for her sitting in the dark.
To be a proper Jewish mother means to daily exploit the entire victim vocabulary. But it isn’t only the Jewish mother, as it seems, victim mentality is occupying the hard nucleus of modern Jewish identity. As we all know many of those who call themselves Jews are far from being religious. Some are even atheists. Many of our Jewish friends are far from being Zionist, (at least that’s what they say), some are even anti Zionist ; but then once a Jew drops his victim status he becomes an ordinary boring human-being. To be a Jew is to believe in the holocaust, to be a Jew is to believe in a historical narrative constructed around endless merciless sagas of persecution and harassment. To be a Jew is to believe that all that suffering is far from being over, in fact a new holocaust may be re-launched tomorrow morning, why tomorrow, today, this very minute. To be a Jew is to set oneself in a state of self imposed paranoia. Thus, to be a Jew is to believe in ‘they and us’ rather than in just ‘being amongst others’. To be a Jew is to believe that anti-Semitism is an irrational tendency intrinsically symptomatic to Gentile existence. But who are the Gentiles? Ladies and gentleman, the Gentiles are the human family ; thus I would deduce that to be a Jew is to believe that the human family behave irrationally, at least when it comes to Jews.
But then, what is so appealing in being a ‘victim’, I assume that most people would be embarrassed when being blamed for victimising themselves or even suspected to be paranoids. Somehow, this wouldn’t happen with most Jews. A Jew would be offended if it was suggested he victimised himself. Moreover, an accusation as such would be perceived by him as a clear anti-Semitic assault not to say a form of a ‘holocaust denial’. When it comes to Jewish common self-perception, to be a victim is not an act, it is rather a state of being. Within the contemporary Jewish world view, the Jews are the only real ultimate genuine sufferers. If this is not enough, the fact that they are ‘the true real and only genuine sufferers’ is now legally imposed. To suspect this very fact may result in a court case. For instance, in case you happen to be a new historian, and you may doubt some facts to do with the latest Nazi-Judeocide, you probably might find yourself behind bars or just removed from your academic post.
When it comes to the unique case of the Jewish family, the Jewish mother's strategies are found to be very effective. Sitting in the dark ‘pays off’. The Jewish mother maintains her absolute hegemony within the family cell. Consequently, the guilt ridden Jewish child (no doubt the real victim) will attend medical or law school just to keep his mother happy. He will bring home the highest possible marks just to ease her sitting in dark. By the time he finally realises that he himself has been the real victim, he is ready to join his father's business. In any case, he is too old to rebel. By now he himself becomes a victim and the rest of the world should feel guilty for him. But then, he is far from being happy, rather than being out there amongst others, he is now pushed back to the ghetto, tied for the rest of his life with a clannish knot. Amusingly, this is enough to make him a neurotic character as well as an astonishingly good accountant or psycho-analyst.
Looking at the Jewish family cell we see a successful operating machine; the parents volunteer to take on some insignificant suffering, and in return, the guilty young generation bring home excellent academic results. But then, this very mechanism goes far beyond the Jewish family cell or even the segregated Jewish community. In fact, post WW2 Jewish western affairs are based on the very same philosophy. This may also be the hidden ideological layer of the current misleading contemporary presentation of the complementary Judeo-Christian bond: The Judeo subject insists he is the ultimate victim and the Christian world enthusiastically endorses the opportunity to celebrate guilt. As bizarre as it may sound, in 1948, while the Israelis ethnically cleansed the Palestinian population, the ‘guilty’ West was sitting and praising ‘Jewish heroism’. Very much the same happened following the miraculous Israeli victory in 1967. For many years, ‘guilt’ became the core of the European parliamentary Left's blind support of Israel. As revolting as it may sound the modern Jewish identity is copying the role of the Jewish mother, and the European parliamentary left is taking the role of the Jewish guilt ridden toddler. Take a look at British contemporary politics: On the Right we find the Christian prime minister, Mr Tony Blair, the guilty Gentile, being the leader of a once socialist political party ; he is now publicly supporting a bourgeoisie racist, nationalist, colonialist state. Michael Howard, on the very same course, being a secular Jew, wouldn’t bother to share with us some deep spiritual Jewish insights, instead, he is telling us about his Jewish grandmother, the Holocaust victim.
Today I am talking about Jewish Identity. In practice, I am talking about Jewish identification, I leave out Judaism, or any reference to Jewish cultural heritage. I don’t even talk about the Jewish people. Instead, I ask what does it mean to be a secular Jew. I try to ask what Jewish secular people identify with when they call themselves Jews. I would argue that as far as contemporary Jewish identity is concerned two major ideological schools are offering a clear answer. One is Zionism and the other is Jewish Left-wing politics.
Let’s start with the Zionist school.
Following the 19th century European national awakening some Jews decided that Jewishness is actually a manifestation of nationalistic aspirations. Although European nationalism intrinsically associated the patriotic subject with the land he dwelled on, Jewish nationalism was based on a mere fantasy. The early Zionists popular slogan at the time was: ‘a land with no people for a people with no land’. While many historians justly ridicule the above statement proving beyond doubt that the land of Palestine was in fact overwhelmingly occupied with indigenous Palestinians, the main problem with such a slogan has to do with the fact that a 'People with no land' can never establish a genuine nationalistic movement. Zionism was and still is, as groundless as, let’s say, an Italian claim for ownership of the land in England - just because England was once a part of the Roman empire. Jewish nationalism was always an ideologically baseless utopian belief. It is an invalid nationalistic movement simply because the Jews are not a nation. More over even in their alleged ‘home land’, they are just about to become a minority. And yet, Zionism was a sign of a change, the Jews decided willingly to change their doomed fate, to become ‘normal’ people, people who love their land, people who engage with nature and live in nature. The Zionist Jew desired to redeem himself from the state of victimhood. The Zionist Jew desired to take his own fate in his hands. This myth held till 1967. Until then the newly reformed Zionist Jew regarded himself as a proud self sufficient colonialist. Until 1967 the Holocaust had merely an instrumental role, it was something to capitalise on, rather than a major tragic event. If anything, for my parents generation, the holocaust was something to be ashamed of. The image of ‘cattle led to the slaughter’ filled them and even my generation with contempt of anything that smelled like Diaspora.
Tom Segev was very articulate in conveying the story of Israeli's disdain towards the ‘Seventh Million’ (those who managed to survive the war). Needless to say the current state of Israel now clearly reveals how unsuccessful Zionism proved to be. The transformation of the Jewish people into a modern western civilised society failed completely. The Israelis are far from being attached to the land which they apparently shred with apartheid walls. Not only is it that Israelis did not manage to erect a civilised society, it is hard to think of any current modern state as morally corrupted and racially motivated as the Jewish state today. And yet, Zionism was an attempt to transform the Jew into a dignified being, A strong, blond athletic productive subject rather than one who prefers voluntarily to sit in the dark.
The alternative Jewish ideological answer to Zionism is provided by the Jewish Left thinkers. On the surface it sounds poetic and peaceful but in practice it is, at least, as devastating as Zionism. The Left-wing Jew would roll his eyes up and state with sheer defeat that “it was Hitler rather than Moses who made him into a Jew”. Basically, it is the Other, the gentile, who makes the Jew into a Jew. As funny as it may sound, most of those righteous Jews would argue with the same breath that the Palestinians should enjoy the right of ‘self determination’. I do ask myself how is it that when it comes to themselves, those Left Jews are far from being generous. Somehow, so it appears, the Left-wing Jew is reluctant to seek self determination. Apparently, for the Left Jew, WW2 has never ended, day by day, they are all defeated by Hitler, or more generally speaking by the Gentile world. But isn’t it absurd? In fact, there is no Gentile world. The Gentile world is in itself a Jewish invention. Gentile people do not identify themselves as ‘non Jews’, there are far more interesting predicates to embrace. Hence, we can clearly see that Jewish Leftism is in itself a form of ‘sitting in the dark’; it is an exercise in victim practice. In short, like the Jewish mother they are sitting in the dark (probably not too far from their mothers). They are self appointed victims. Thus, we must admit then that it is not Hitler who turn them into Jews. They are Jews because they enthusiastically endorse the Jewish identity. They prefer to be victims. It is their own preference not to change the light bulb.
But then why is it necessary? Surely the Jewish Leftist knows that these days he can express his calling without presenting any ethnic traces; we are supposed to live in a multicultural society. Your voice is supposed to be heard regardless of your ethnic origin, your religion, your sexual preferences, or any other social grouping. I would argue that the voluntarily tendency to sit in the dark is the new Jewish religion. It is a sophisticated ideological mechanism that makes the Other, the Western Gentile, estranged from any political discourse to do with Palestine. In practice it locates the Jews in the centre of Palestinian international affairs. But then, in practice it also serves Israel with an ideological shield. The victim strategy is the latest and most sophisticated form of Jewish supremacist segregation. Not only that I surround myself with walls, I even make the other feel guilty for me, by building those walls around myself. (I don’t know whether you noticed but within the Israeli discourse it is the Palestinians who are to be blamed for the Jews building the apartheid wall).
You can take his religion from the Jew , you can take away the chicken soup, you can even put ‘sea fruit’ on his plate, but once you take away the victim tendency, the Jew isn’t a Jew anymore. Once you lift the colossal threat of Hitler then the Jew becomes an ordinary boring human-being.
www.gilad.co.uk
Letter from e-mails: Zvi Bar'el
(Israeli writer) factually and objectively discusses the
anti-Semitism phenomenon, used by the state of Israel and
the international Zionist movement to achieve their
political goals over the last 6 decades or so.
Whose hatred?
By Zvi Bar'el
Gamal al-Ghitani, editor of Akhbar al-Adab (Literary
News), which is published in Egypt, has taken action. He
asked Dr. Ali al-Ratit, an expert in international law,
to translate into Arabic the law on controlling
anti-Semitism that was signed by President George W. Bush
shortly before the elections in the United States. Since
its passage in October, the law - which among other
things determines that the U.S. State Department will
have the authority to identify and keep track of
expressions of anti-Semitism everywhere in the world -
has been the subject of a fascinating discussion among
Arab intellectuals. Most of the Arab anger is directed at
the monopoly that the Jews have claimed on the concept of
anti-Semitism, when it is the Arabs who are the largest
Semitic people in the world.
"The concept of anti-Semitism according to the gang
that is ruling today in the White House boils down to
Israel as a state, and not even to the Jews as a race or
a religion," says Ghitani. According to him,
anti-Semitism is nothing more than politics, and if it is
about politics, then the Arabs also have to be in the
game.
On the practical side, two weeks ago Egypt succeeded in
convincing the heads of the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to appoint a representative
of their own to keep track of hatred of Islam, along with
the other "inspector" of anti-Semitic
phenomena. At a seminar that was held at Sharm el-Sheikh,
and after extensive Egyptian lobbying among the countries
that are members of the organization, the current chair
of the organization, from Bulgaria, agreed to accept the
Egyptians' position that it is necessary to identify and
track all the discriminatory phenomena in the world - not
just anti-Semitic phenomena.
In Egypt they related to the decision as a huge
diplomatic achievement on the way to "equalizing
rights" between hatred of Jews and hatred of Arabs
or Muslims. Two years ago the OSCE decided that
"anti-Semitism is a threat to the stability of
societies and is liable to engender violence," and
this is the organization's rationale for dealing with the
phenomenon. The decision of two weeks ago broadens the
scope and in particular gives the Arabs and the Muslims
the right to official international standing when it
comes to hatred of the other.
Alternative theory
The problem, according to many Arabs, is that the Jews
have an undeniable "asset": the Holocaust.
Attempts to question the truth or to shatter the mythical
number of 6 million Jews who perished in it have crashed
in the faces of Holocaust deniers. Therefore, the
discourse about numbers has had to be replaced by a
different one, and political discourse about the racism
of the State of Israel and of the Zionist movement has
been found to be a worthy substitute.
Ghitani exemplifies the change well in his explanation in
his article: "Sometimes, a number of Arab writers
raise questions as to the accuracy of the numbers of Jews
who were annihilated in the Nazi concentration camps. We
say that these questions are an injustice. Humanity is
not only numbers. A single soul is the essence of all
humanity, and the annihilation of a single soul is like
the annihilation of a million or millions of souls."
But his own conclusion from the moral statement also
raises questions, as "the annihilation of a single
human soul is a universal crime, the meaning of which is
not lessened if the number of those annihilated is small
and does not become any greater if the number of those
annihilated is large." And when the extent is not
the determinant of the differentiation between murder and
holocaust, and after the moral position has been
expressed with the appropriate sharpness and the question
of the numbers has been called "stupid," it is
possible to move on to the main point.
According to Ghitani, when Arab intellectuals talk about
numbers, "they are diverting attention from a real
holocaust, like the one that is occurring in our region
day by day, the one that is occurring in Palestine and in
Iraq." This is the comparison that the U.S. wanted
to make invisible in the new law, says Ghitani. This is
the heart of the politics that stands behind the
complaints of anti-Semitism.
The adoption of political anti-Semitism, of the sort that
sees Zionism and the State of Israel as the excuse for
anti-Semitism, is perceived by some Arab intellectuals as
a worthy, and certainly more convenient and respectable,
alternative to dealing with "the theory of
numbers." But for them, too, it is hard to shake off
the need to attribute deeper roots to the behavior of the
Jews.
"The Jews were not the only ones who fell victim to
the Nazis. The Gypsies and the Slavs and the Russians
suffered equally. It is true that a large number of Jews
were killed by Hitler in the concentration camps, and
there is a dispute as to the exact number. But we are
more interested in the inhumane approach of the ethnic
cleansing than in dealing with the precise number of
those who were killed," wrote a Saudi Arabian
commentator Suraya al-Shahri last week.
After the "scientific" analysis of the essence
of anti- Semitism and the classification of the races of
the world according to their early ancestors Ham, Shem
and Japhet, Shahri moves on to the real point of the
article. "Israel's interest is to maintain the fear
of persecution and annihilation in the hearts of all
Jews. This was the aim of the Jewish leaders - to prevent
them from assimilating in order to preserve their ethnic
purity. The Jews needed to be convinced that they are
living among other nations temporarily, until they enter
the promised land (Palestine). This is the explanation
for the reports of Israel's involvement in the
organization of persecutions of Jews in various parts of
the world .... The founders of the State of Israel knew
very well that the shared religious ties among Jews would
not suffice to ensure the existence of a Jewish political
entity .... Therefore they found the cultural common
denominator in the image of a community that is
persecuted in a racial context."
This is already an argument that is likely to be accepted
by a broader public; it is a "quasi-scientific"
analysis of the Zionist identity and its difficulties in
organizing its community. These are things that are well
understood in communities where the rulers decided how
the people should behave and what they should feel.
Asset vs. asset
In this perception, anti-Semitism does indeed exist and
Jews (in debatable numbers) were indeed annihilated, but
in fact this is a political game intentionally encouraged
by the Zionist movement, which wanted to exploit
anti-Semitism in order to build a state that would
eventually become cruel "like those who harmed the
Jews." This is already a relatively sophisticated
idea relative to the position set forth by Muhammad
Suwan, which he published in the Syrian newspaper
Al-Ba'ath. Suwan posits simply that "it is Israel
that has implanted the `guilt complex' in Europe for
seven decades, during which the Zionists have succeeded
in plundering the Europeans financially, culturally and
psychologically .... All this happened before the
establishment of the European Union, when the countries
of Europe were divided and without a unified
policy."
The editor of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, Ibrahim
Naf'a, formulated his opinion of anti-Semitism a year
ago, when he stated: "Israel and the Zionist
organizations are becoming increasingly dependent on the
weapon of anti-Semitism .... They have succeeded in
manipulating the Semitic ethnicity so that it will be
unique only to Jews, and thus they will be able to accuse
the Arabs of anti-Semitism as well, even though the Arabs
are the majority of the Semitic peoples." On the
basis of the "corrections" of the Zionist
distortion, Naf'a entitled his article "Israel's
Anti-Semitism," and enlisted to his aid detailed and
ugly statements by Israelis about Arabs, which he
gathered from Israeli Internet sites like Walla and that
of Maariv.
For example, in reaction to the United Nations report on
the state of human development in the Middle East (a
report published last year that was devoted to the
deplorable state of education and technological
development in the Arab countries), which was published
on the Walla site, some Israelis responded thus:
"Here is another object for the genetic garbage
can," "an atomic bomb will solve the problem
forever," and also "the Arabs are garbage - the
report proves what kind of people we are dealing
with." In response to the continued bombardments of
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Israelis responded:
"Bravo to Sharon who has gone back to the days of
[Paratroops] Unit 101." And "When are they
going to realize that there cannot be peace as long as
there are Arabs?"
"All of this racist venom, with its tone of
genocide, reflects the despicable poison that Israeli
political and religious leaders have been spewing for
years," wrote Naf'a in explanation of why there is
also Israeli anti-Semitism.
Now OSCE will also be tracking "Israeli
anti-Semitism." "Anti-Semitism versus
anti-Semitism - that's what they want," says an
Egyptian intellectual. "Asset versus asset. This is
the kind of war that our intellectuals are engaged in.
What is their next step going to be? To kill 6 million
Arabs so that the numbers too will be identical, or
perhaps they will also want to convert? Must we always
conduct our struggle against American imperialism through
Jerusalem? Doesn't every people deserve to have its own
disasters?"
In Sight of Yad Vashem….
Jews and Deir Yassin Remembrance
By Paul Eisen
"The central part of Deir Yassin is a cluster of buildings now used as a mental hospital. To the east lies the industrial area of Givat Shaul; to the north lies Har Hamenuchot (the Jewish cemetery), to the west, built into the side of the mountain on which Deir Yassin is located is Har Nof, a new settlement of orthodox Jews. To the south is a steep valley terraced and containing part of the Jerusalem Forest. On the other side of that valley, roughly a mile and a half from Deir Yassin and in clear view of it, are Mount Herzl and Yad Vashem. "
By Dan
McGowan from "Remembering Deir Yassin"
Deir Yassin is as important a part
of Jewish as it is of Palestinian history. Deir Yassin,
coming in April 1948, just three years after the
liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945, marks a Jewish
transition from enslavement to empowerment and from
abused to abuser. Can there ever have been such a
remarkable shift, over such a short period, in the
history of a people? Deir Yassin also signalled the
ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians leading to their
eventual dispossession and exile and was just one example
of a conscious and premeditated plan to destroy the
Palestinians as a people in their own homeland. For the
fifty-odd years since the establishment of the state of
Israel, successive Israeli governments whether Labour or
Likud, and whether by force as at Deir Yassin, or by
chicanery as at Oslo and Camp David, have followed the
same policy of oppressing and dispossessing Palestinians
to make way for an exclusively Jewish state. Even now,
when Israel could have peace and security for the asking,
Israeli governments persist in their original intention
of conquering the whole of Palestine for the use of the
Jewish people alone. And all this was done, and is still
being done, by Jews, for Jews and in the name of Jews.
But should we, as Jews, feel
ourselves culpable? After all, these are the crimes of
Zionists not of Jews committed in a different place and
time. Are we, Jews who were not there, who were not even
born at the time, to feel responsible for these deeds?
And anyway, not all Jews committed these crimes, so
surely not all Jews need accept responsibility? But
Zionism and the state of Israel now lie at the very heart
of Jewish life and so many Jews have benefited from the
associated empowerment. So many Jews, even if
unaffiliated officially to Zionism, have still supported
it in its aims. Indeed, almost the entire organised
Jewish establishments throughout the western world, in
Israel, Europe and North America have used their power,
influence and, most importantly, their moral prestige to
support Israel in its attempts to subjugate the
Palestinians. And not only have they offered their
support for these crimes. These same groups and
individuals are also telling the rest of the world that
it's not really happening, that Israel is not the
aggressor, that Israel is not trying to destroy the
Palestinian people, that black is white. And not only do
they deny this reality, anyone who dares say otherwise is
branded an anti-Semite and excluded from society.
This militarization and
politicisation of Jewish life, this silencing of dissent,
this bowing down before the God of the state of Israel,
is this the tradition that was handed down to us, and
what does this leave us to pass on to our children? If we
are really honest with ourselves, should we not, as
suggested by Marc Ellis, replace every Torah scroll, in
every ark, in every synagogue in the Jewish world, with a
helicopter gunship? Because, as Ellis says, "what we
do, we worship".
That the relationship with
the Palestinian people is fractured is self-evident, but
what of the relationships within our own community and
the relationship with our own history and tradition? Are
these also not affected? And how does one repair a
fractured relationship? As with an old friend whom one
has offended, but to whom one has never acknowledged the
offence, surely only the absolute truth will do.
So, for the sake of the future of
Jewish life, there can only be one solution - a complete
and full confession that what we Jews have done to the
Palestinian people is wrong and what we are doing to the
Palestinian people is wrong, and, with that confession, a
resolve, as far as is possible, to put the matter right.
And where better to begin than at
Deir Yassin - the scene of the crime against the
Palestinian people, the place of transition from
enslavement to empowerment and from abused to abuser? For
Deir Yassin, in clear sight of Yad Vashem, the symbol of
our own tragedy, is the symbol of the tragedy visited by
us on another people. Where better to begin this process
of confession and restitution? But will they come? Will
Jews come to commemorate Deir Yassin? For the
overwhelming majority, the answer is a resounding
"no". Jews will not come to Deir Yassin. Jews
will not confess to the Palestinian people. For most
Jews, commemoration of Deir Yassin is tantamount to
siding with the enemy, to conspiring to destroy Israel
and the Jewish people. Buoyed up by their own propaganda
and blinded by their sense of innocence and victimhood,
most Jews will not join with Palestinians in
commemorating Deir Yassin.
But there is a fringe of
Jews who do not take this view, Jews who do not share
this vision of the Jewish establishments. These Jews, who
generally make up what is known as the "Peace
Camp," do not wish to see the complete destruction
of the Palestinian people but, instead, wish to come to
some kind of accommodation with them. These Jews, whilst
also uneasy about coming to Deir Yassin, will at least
talk about it. What of them? These Jews will often say,
"Yes, we will join Palestinians in commemorating
Deir Yassin when Palestinians join us in commemorating
Maalot" or "We will remember Deir Yassin when
Palestinians remember the more recent Sbarro Pizza Bar
bombing", We then point out that we don't
commemorate Deir Yassin because it was a massacre. (If we
did, we would be commemorating every day of the week,
every week of the year since there were plenty of
massacres, on both sides) We commemorate because Deir
Yassin is a symbol of the Palestinian catastrophe rather
as Anne Frank is a symbol of the Holocaust. After all, as
Anne Frank was just one child so Deir Yassin was just one
village.
So then these Jews say,
"Okay, we shall commemorate Deir Yassin when
Palestinians commemorate Auschwitz". To this we have
to say, "Yes, but Palestinians didn't do Auschwitz
to us; we did do Deir Yassin to them". These Jews
also don't want to admit that what they have done to the
Palestinians is wrong, and what they are doing to the
Palestinians is wrong. Nor do these Jews really want to
make restitution to the Palestinians. These Jews, just
like those who flatly refuse to come to Deir Yassin and
make no apologies, these, more moderate Jews, also want
to assert their power. But, unlike the others, they want
to keep their innocence as well. And this is not easy. At
one time they simply told themselves that it had never
happened, but now, largely thanks to the new Israeli
historians, this is no longer possible. So they dress it
up in what Professor Walid Khalidi has called "the
sin of moral equivalence". They say, "This is
not a case of one people trying to destroy another, of a
victim and a perpetrator; this is a conflict, a conflict
between two rights and both sides have suffered terribly.
If only both sides would understand each other's
suffering, all will be well." So these Jews say that
they will come to Deir Yassin and, once there, will say
to Palestinians, "Okay, we've suffered; you've
suffered, let's talk". To which we have to say,
"No, it's not we've suffered, you've suffered, let's
talk"; it's "We've suffered and we've caused
you to suffer; NOW let's talk". Deir Yassin is
surely about peace and reconciliation, but the peace
cannot be the peace and quiet for the victor to go on
robbing the victims, and the reconciliation cannot be the
reconciliation of the victims reconciling themselves with
their victim-hood.
But for those few Jews of
conscience who do make it to our commemorations, for that
tiny remnant who do wish to remember and to confess, what
will they find? First, they will encounter a people and a
narrative that they may never have met or heard before.
For most Jews, Palestinians remain stereotyped as
biblical shepherds, refugees or terrorists, and their
story is largely unknown. To encounter the Palestinian
community, as so many Jews did for the first time at our
London commemorations, is to encounter a community not
only human and diverse, but, most importantly, so very
like their own.
They will also be witness to
Palestinians remembering their own tragedy. For many
Palestinians, particularly those old enough to have been
present at the events being remembered, Deir Yassin
commemorations can be very emotional. Silently to
accompany these people as they remember their tragic
history is, for any Jew of conscience, a deeply moving
experience.
Thirdly, and so importantly, they
will encounter a story of dispossession and exile so
reminiscent of their own. For any Jew, the Palestinian
father who was dragged out of his home in Deir Yassin, as
re-enacted at the London 2001 commemoration, could so
easily have been a surrendered ghetto fighter in Warsaw
1941, and that bourgeois Madame, in her now-bedraggled
fur coat trudging the road out of Jaffa and into exile,
was nothing if not a Berliner boarding a train for Riga
in 1942.
Finally, they will have the
opportunity and the privilege to say, loud and clear,
with no ifs and buts, "what we have done to the
Palestinian people is wrong and what we are doing to the
Palestinian people is wrong. Let us now work together to
put it right."
Paul Eisen
dyr@eisen.demon.co.uk
January 2003
Paul
Eisen is the London-based director of Deir Yassin
Remembered