On 6/30/07, Michael Pugliese <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Meretz USA blog, (oops, http://www.meretzusa.blogspot.com/ )
Friday, June 29, 2007
Antisemitism or anti-Israelism?
On Tuesday night, Meretz USA screened the excellent PBS documentary,
"Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence." I spoke
afterwards, leading into a discussion by making reference to my op-ed
article in The Forward, "Reconsidering Antisemitism," which critiqued
a conference at YIVO, four years ago.
As the film depicts, the violent European events of late 2000 and on,
with the 2nd intifada, clearly have an antisemitic element. Still, the
trigger is not the existence of Jews but rather painful images of
Palestinian Arab suffering at the hands of Jews and televised into
people's homes. To be sure, more fair-minded media would show the
suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians and provide proper
context, but European Jews were targeted as surrogates for Israel, not
simply because they are Jews.
In making this point, historian Tony Judt (among others) makes good
sense, but he can't resist making one anti-Zionist swipe, that not
only do antisemitic attackers identify random Jews with Israel but
that Israel claims to represent all Jews. I doubt that the latter
abstract ideological point figures into their thinking. The most
impressive talking heads were two young thoughtful Muslim writers:
Reza Aslan and a woman whose name escaped me; she made the unoriginal
but important observation that corrupt and authoritarian Muslim
leaders have used Israel and antisemitism to deflect opposition to
their rule.
As Bernard Lewis indicates, Jewish life under Islam was not idyllic
and occasionally bad, but not usually as bad as under Christianity.
The film also contends (with justice, I think) that hardcore
ideological antisemitism is a Christian import into the Islamic world
-- brought by 19th century missionaries and Nazi penetration in the
1930s and '40s.
The following are snippets in quotes from my article, with some
current observations: Leon "Wieseltier [the YIVO conference keynoter]
restated the common conclusion that antisemitism is more about
Jew-haters than Jews, that there is no 'Jewish problem' as such but
the moral problem of non-Jews who buy into age-old prejudices and the
illogic of scapegoating and demonization. Hence, there is nothing that
Jews can do to modify the opinions of antisemites. ...
"This is a hard truth when related to hard-core antisemites, but not
in relation to masses of people who react to news events and visual
images, or the manipulation of same. ...
But antisemitism was "on the wane until reignited by scenes of the
intifada[.] We have forgotten — or never really knew — how much of the
Arab world established a level of relations with Israel during Oslo's
halcyon days. How many of us recall Saudi expressions of compassion
for the Israeli victims of a wave of suicide bombings in early 1996?"
I suggest "that we envision the Oslo peace process as a near success
instead of merely a bloody failure. It would be useful to engage in
what-ifs: What if Baruch Goldstein had not begun the on-again,
off-again cycles of terrorism and counter-violence that marred the
Oslo years? [It's instructive that Yihya Ayyash, the innovator of the
suicide belt, the Hamas master terrorist known as the engineer, was
motivated by the Goldstein massacre to become a terrorist.]
"What if Yitzhak Rabin had survived to maintain his experienced grip
on the tiller of government? [I think Rabin, although far from
perfect, was a steadier and more prudent leader than his successor
Peres.] What if Benjamin Netanyahu had lost the fateful prime
ministerial election of 1996, instead of winning by a tiny margin?
[When elected he didn't end but he slowed down the peace process,
delaying the final settlement and raising pressures of impatience
among Palestinians that eventually fed their return to violence. And
we should remember that it was Peres's decision to okay a Shin Bet hit
on Ayyash, the engineer, that triggered the wave of suicide attacks in
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, killing 60 people, and raising Netanyahu 20
points in the polls.]"
I include more 'what ifs' in my article, but my point is that Oslo was
a near miss:
"If Oslo had succeeded, the odious convulsions seizing Europe and the
Islamic world would not be happening. Racist and especially
theological antisemitism would endure, but increasingly on the
margins. Since most of the anti-Jewish or anti-Israel occurrences we
deplore are reactions to a changed political landscape, is it really
best understood as antisemitism?"
Looking at these words four years later, my point is not really to say
that it's not antisemitism, but that the old adage that antisemitism
is a disease that has nothing to do with Jewish behavior and can't be
affected by anything that Jews do is too rigid, dogmatic and
self-defeating. Yitzhak Rabin himself knew this. His inaugural address
to the Knesset as prime minister in 1992 was to reject the premise
that "the whole world is against us." He knew, very wisely, that if
Israel's statecraft is steeped in the view that most of the world, and
the Arabs in particular, are unalterably and inevitably antisemites
with whom we can never reconcile, this leads to a self-fulfilling
prophecy — state policy that never seriously even tries to reach
peace.
To sum up: These events depicted in the film had more to do with
Israel than Jews as such. The Arab world was beginning to change in
its attitudes toward Jews through Oslo, but this trend was stopped and
reversed when Oslo crashed and burned.
READ MORE...!
posted by Ralph Seliger @ 12:35 AM
--
Michael Pugliese
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