|
Breaking News Stories
These are news stories filed after the publishing of this Word
from.
The NEW Anti-Semitism
...an End Time Factor?
The rise of Jewish
Anti-Semitism in Israel
By Steven Plaut September 13, 2004
One of the great ironies of Jewish history is that the secular Zionism
of the nineteenth century was formulated precisely for the purpose of
offering an alternative to the assimilationism and Jewish "self-hatred"
of the Diaspora.
Zionism arose as a response to both assimilationism and anti-Semitism.
Who then could have dreamed that the fulfillment and realization of
Zionism would be accompanied by the emergence of the most malignant
manifestations of Israeli self-hatred and Jewish anti-Semitism, this in
the state of Israel and the land of Zion.
The very same Zionism that was designed to offer an alternative to
Jewish assimilationism saw in fact the emergence of a uniquely bizarre
movement of assimilationism right inside the Jewish state itself, in the
form of "Post-Jewish Israelism" and "Post-Zionist" Jewish anti-Semitism.
Until very recently in Jewish history, it was widely presumed that
secular Zionism and the establishment of Israel had achieved an
irreversible victory over the movements of Jewish assimilationism and
self-hatred, at least among Jews living inside the Jewish state, but
also to a large extent among Diaspora Jews as well. Secular Zionism
represented a blending of modernity with Jewishness that involved
neither the assimilationism of the radical anti-Orthodox "reformers"
among Jews in the Diaspora nor traditional Orthrodox rejectionism of
modernity.
It had achieved this via the engineering of "Israeliness," which was a
new phase of identity for Jews who lived inside their own Jewish State.
"Israeliness" was ever-so-modern, with high-tech industries cropping up
everywhere like mushrooms, with European standards of living and
lifestyles, with prestigious universities and scientific institutions,
not to mention a military of legendary prowess. And all this was taking
place inside a state whose raison d'etre was its Jewishness, its serving
as a national home for Jews.
Certainly Israeliness had its problems, not least of which was a
dubious, if not outright hostile, attitude towards Jewish tradition.
Israel's intellectual, journalistic, academic and artistic elites long
displayed a deep animosity towards matters of religion and towards
religious people, an antipathy shared by parts of the broader secularist
population. This hostility was fanned in part by resentment at the
powers of the politicized religious Establishment. Anti-Orthodox bigotry
has long been the primary form of bigotry in the country. It escalated
after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a religious law student, and
it found perhaps its greatest expression in the surprising electoral
achievements of the Shinui Party, reconstituted as an anti-Orthodox
Party under the leadership of Joseph "Tommy" Lapid.
Beyond knee-jerk hostility to Jewish religion and tradition, "Israeliness"
also had other dubious roots. There was always a strong "Canaanite"
trend present in Israeli society, especially among its intellectual
elite, which insisted that Israelis represented a new "post-Jewish"
nationality, and so were essentially an altogether non-Jewish ethnic
group. (The "Canaanites" were a movement of Israelis in the 1950s and
thereafter who attempted to detach Israeliness from Jewishness and
create a new "non-denominational" Hebrew-speaking "nationality" of
"Israelis," one that could encompass the Arabs as well.) As such, these
new "Canaanized Israelis" believed they had little in common with
Diaspora Jews and even less with Diaspora history. Many a "Canaanized"
Israeli Jew insisted that he had far more in common with the Druse and
Bedouins of the country than he did with any Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn.
Another of the many forms of backlash against Diaspora Jewishness was a
ferocious hostility to Yiddish, the language of exile.
In the first decades of its existence, the celebration of "Israeliness"
in Israel took many forms, including those that downplayed the role of
Jewishness in the state. The Israeli school curriculum at secular
schools, where the majority of Israeli children attend, was largely
stripped of Jewish content. Jewish history in the typical Israel school
ended at Masada or with Bar-Kochba and then mysteriously rematerialized
at the first Zionist Congress in Basel. Jewish religion, other than the
Bible, was eliminated almost altogether from the curriculum, except in
the religious schools. The result is that today many an Israeli teenager
cannot complete the sentence that begins with the words "Shma Yisrael",
and few can correctly explain what the Amida is.
The celebration of Israeliness was also widely believed to offer the
ultimate path towards resolution of Arab-Jewish differences. After all,
there was no reason why Arabs could not follow the example of the more
"Canaanite" Jews and embrace with enthusiasm the new "Israeliness", an "Israeliness"
that would transcend religion and pre-Israeli ethnicity or denomination.
National challenges and deluded "Canaanitism" aside, until recently few
would have questioned the basic conclusion that secular Zionism was an
unqualified Jewish national success. The leadership in the state of
Israel may have been filled with certain self-delusions, but ordinary
Israelis were not assimilating into any alien gentile ethnicity or
nationality as were so many Diaspora Jews. Israelis would always remain
Jews, even if only deluded Jews knowing little about Judaism. Hebrew was
their everyday language of communications. Jewish holidays were the bank
holidays. Jewish symbols were the symbols of state. Moreover the secular
Zionist merging of JJudaism with modernity appeared to be stable for the
very long run. It was not threatened by modernity even in its most
extreme forms.
The axioms concerning the ability of secular Zionism to overcome the
traditional threats to Jews of anti-Semitism, assimilationism and
self-hatred came crashing back down to earth in the 1990s. There emerged
inside Israel a movement of mass Jewish anti-Semitism, which effectively
exerted its hegemony, first over the radical Left and the chattering
classes of Israeli academia and journalism, and ultimately over the
entire country in the form of the Leftist Ascendancy.
Under this Leftist Ascendancy, the Left has continued to exercise
control over much of national policy making, even when it is in
opposition, indeed even when coalitions headed by the Likud have held
power.
The rapid growth of Jewish anti-Semitism inside Israel during the "Oslo
era" raises serious questions about just how successful secular Zionism
really was. The Oslo era was accompanied by a massive assault on
Israel's pride and confidence by its own leaders. Israeli intellectuals
lectured the country about its original sinfulness. Israeli campuses
were flooded with "New Historians" and "Post-Zionists", pseudo-academics
rewriting history texts and school curriculum to promote the Arab
"narrative" and the Arab version of history, the moral equivalents of
Holocaust Deniers in other countries. Israeli politicians in the 1990s
leapt forward, ready to strip the country of all of its Jewish national
emblems, from the star on the flag to the words of the national anthem.
And after 1300 years of discrimination against Jews by Arabs, Israeli
politicians were implementing "reverse discrimination" programs, under
which Arabs received preferences and Jews suffered quotas.
One after the other, Israeli politicians during the early and mid-1990s
mouthed the post-modernist gibberish of the anti-Israel choruses from
overseas, about how Israelis needed to stop ruling over another
"people," had to learn to understand the "other," had to commemorate the
"tragedies" the Jews had imposed upon the innocent Arabs and so make
restitution. If no Palestinian people had ever existed in history,
Israeli politicians were determined to invent one for peace.
World anti-Semitism exploded as a direct consequence of Israel's own
politicians granting lip service and credibility to the anti-Jewish
canards that had always been the propaganda underpinnings for hatred of
Israel, including Israeli official acquiescence in accepting the
rhetoric of the anti-Semites. Here were Israeli leaders agreeing that
Israel was indeed a colonial "conqueror" and "outsider," an "oppressor"
of Palestinians and the cause of Palestinian "suffering." Here were
Israel's own leaders confirming that Palestinian barbarism and
atrocities were ultimately the fault of Israeli "occupation" and Jewish
insensitivity.
While Jewish assimilationism in the Diaspora has often been termed
"self-hatred", the expression is misleading. Diaspora assimilationists
are generally people who are simply indifferent to their Jewishness and
want nothing to do with Judaism. They generally do not actively wish
Jews harm (although there are some exceptions). Going further back in
history, Jewish assimilationists were in general simply socially-mobile
people, willing to jettison their Jewishness in exchange for opening of
career doors and gaining access to positions of status closed to Jews.
By and large, these were not people who hated other Jews, although of
course there were always some exceptions among these as well.
The Oslo era in Israel, however, saw the emergence, perhaps for the
first time in history, of virulent and literal anti-Jewish bigotry among
the intellectual, media and political Jewish elites of Israel. Israeli
universities became petri dishes for Jewish anti-Zionists and
anti-Semites, "Post-Jewish" leftist extremists openly collaborating with
the enemies of their own country in time of war, people openly
advocating the elimination of their own country and its merger into some
sort of Palestinian state. Israeli campuses became in large part the
occupied territories of the Leftist Ascendancy. There are today Israeli
professors and lecturers who openly serve as Court Jews for the worst
anti-Semites on the planet, including Islamist fundamentalists, neonazis
and Holocaust Deniers. Israeli leftist faculty members tour the world,
denouncing Israel before audiences of anti-Semites as a nazi, fascist,
terrorist, criminal, apartheid country, engaged in systematic human
rights atrocities.
Increasing numbers of self-hating Israeli academics openly call for
Israeli national existence to be ended and for Israel to be replaced
with a single state with an Arab majority and PLO hegemony. Israeli
left-wing professors turn out mountains of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish
political propaganda, often passing it off as "scholarly research." It
is an open secret that on campus, leftist extremists with laughable and
ludicrous publication records get hired, tenured and promoted, as acts
of solidarity by other leftist faculty already inside the system.
Israeli university governance is notoriously corrupt and politicized.
Some of these tenured leftists then tour the world urging anti-Semites
to boycott all of Israel, including the very same academic institutions
in which they are employed and from which they draw salaries.
The campus was not the only headquarters for Jewish self-hatred. In the
1990s the Israeli public school system was also conscripted into
proliferating anti-Israel pro-Arab ideology. Israeli politicians from
the Left and some leftist "academics" seriously proposed that Israel
create a
National "Naqba Day," in which it atone for the very fact of its
creation and the "catastrophe" that this creation caused to Palestinian
Arabs. "Naqba Day" events are increasing common on Israeli campuses and
occasionally in Israeli public schools. Israel is the only country on
the planet in which schools and colleges regularly hold symposia devoted
to expressions of mourning and remorse that the country in which they
live exists at all, and in which they barely hide their desire to see
their country annihilated.
The Israeli media has long operated under the nearly complete hegemony
of the Far Left, a unique form of quasi-totalitarianism operating within
the overall framework of a country with democratic institutions. The
Israeli media have by and large taken their cues from the Academic Left,
and campus Newspeak, including "postmodernist" gibberish, is now a
regular part of the daily journalistic dose. Israel's daily newspapers
have served as regular bludgeons against the country, promoting Arab
propaganda as editorial and Op-Ed opinion and often even as news,
blaming Israeli obstinacy and mistreatment of Arabs for all of the
problems of the world.
Haaretz long ago ceased to be a newspaper or an organ of political
pluralism, and operates as an instrument of far leftist political
indoctrination. Yediot Ahronot is only slight less biased. Maariv is the
only Hebrew newspaper that maintains any semblance of pluralism, and
even it is often much more often a platform for the Left than for the
Non-Left. The three Israeli television stations compete against one
another over which is the furthest to the Left and which can employ the
largest number of leftist political commentators. The main form of
political pluralism in radio broadcasting ended when the Sharon
government shut down Arutz 7.
The main manifestations of the Leftist Ascendancy have been the
universities and the media, but other institutions, such as the Supreme
Court, the intelligence services, and much of the officer class in the
military, have also come under its sway. A large part of the secret of
the success of the Ascendancy is the enormous funding it openly receives
from institutions and people outside the country, those for whom
Israel's best interests are decidedly NOT part of their agenda. Picayune
"organizations," some of them communist front, are flooded with funding
and fill the press and billboards with large political ads.
And Jewish anti-Semitism is more and more openly the driving force
behind the fundamentalist theology of the Leftist Ascendancy. This
obsession with self-flagellation among the ascendant leftists has
produced a situation whereby each and every atrocity committed by Arabs,
without exception, is greeted with calls from the Israeli chattering
classes for more concessions and appeasements. Some, including the
tenured extremists at the universities, go so far as to justify and
celebrate Arab acts of terror as necessary to force Israelis to come to
their senses and make peace.
For the past 12 years the Israeli elites have lived in a
make-pretend world in which Jews are to blame for everything and Arabs
are merely expressing "frustrations" at being "mistreated" for so many
years by Jews. The fact that no Arabs ever launched any intifada in Arab
countries, wherein their treatment by Arab regimes has always infinitely
worse than by Israel (even if all Arab accusations against Israel are
accepted at face value), never seems to matter to any of them.
The psychological war by Israel's elites against national pride, dignity
and self-respect, indeed against national existence, has long been
accompanied by a set of diplomatic policies expressing little more than
self-loathing. Every atrocity by the Palestinians is greeted with new
offers of concessions and goodwill gestures from Israel, which has been
pursuing a policy holding that no act of Arab violence should go
unrewarded. Ehud Barak surrendered to Hizbollah terror and withdrew
Israeli troops from Lebanon, and, in so doing placed all of northern
Israel, including the Haifa Bay and its refineries, within range of
Hizbollah rockets. Israel rewarded decades of Syria's aggression,
Holocaust Denial, harboring of German war criminals, and terrorism
through its Hizbollah surrogates by offering to grant Syria not only the
Golan Heights but also parts of pre-1967 Israel, with access to the
waters of the Sea of Galilee.
The national policy of self-abasement was accepted with equanimity by
much of the Israeli public, hoping against hope that the Osloid
politicians promising light at the end of the appeasement tunnel would
prove correct. The very same nation that had defeated the Arab hordes in
1948-9, in the Suez Campaign, in the Six Day War and in the Yom Kippur
War, now morphed into whining defeatists.
The one avenue for making peace that was declared by the elite as
unthinkable was "Peace through Military Victory"
over the country's tormentors. And all the while Israel's own government
was subsidizing the venomous anti-Zionist extremists at the Israeli
universities and elsewhere.
For thirty years or so after Israel's creation, few would have
challenged the idea that secular Zionism had achieved an unqualified
success in its begetting the "new Israeli." Israeli Jews were at last
"normal" citizens of their own country, patriotic to the point of being
insufferable, proud to the point of hubris, confident in themselves and
in their military, sure of their moral justifiability. And then, just a
few years later, these same Israelis were reduced to begging Yassir
Arafat to allow his terrorist squad leaders to meet with Israeli army
officers in order to maintain the facade of a "peace process" still
operating. Israeli politicians were abandoning any pretense of
conditioning further concessions to the Arabs on their abstaining from
violence. Israeli leaders and intellectuals were endorsing the principle
of Israel paying reparations and tribute to the very same Arabs who had
attacked them and lost.
The 1990s were the era in which it became evident that a great many
Israelis and most of the Israeli elite had lost their will to survive as
a nation. After centuries in which Diaspora Jews maintained the most
militant sorts of pride and self-assurance even while being mistreated,
despised and humiliated, here were the Israelis of Oslo, possessing one
of the great armies of the world, abandoning all pride and explicitly
promoting self-humiliation.
The same Israeli military that had rescued the Jewish hostages in
Entebbe, Uganda, was suddenly incapable of rescuing a wounded IDF
soldier bleeding to death in Joseph's Tomb in Nablus or protecting
children under fire in Jerusalem neighborhoods. McClellenism had
replaced audacity as the calling card of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Here was an Israel unwilling to use force to prevent Palestinians from
firing rifles, mortars and rockets into civilian homes, and instead
asking to hold talks with those doing the shooting, to work out
differences and reach understandings.
An Israel less than two generations after the Holocaust was suddenly
willing to hold "peace talks" with people who deny there ever was a
Holocaust and who insist that Jews use the blood of gentile children to
make Passover matzahs. The same Jews who fought against enormous odds
and won in 1948 were acquiescing in a "peace process" that involved
unilateral peace gestures from Israel in exchange for the Arabs
continuing to make war against the Jews.
Part II: Jewish self-hatred and the Oslo debacle
Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of
israelinsider.
|