Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Hidden Article

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Zionism can no longer rely on the support of Europe's Jews

Guardian | 20.06.2006 21:28 | Repression | World

Pretty soon - and they realize it - the violent, supremacist Cult known as Zionism will be forced to stand on its own two feet, and represent itself, as opposed to claiming to represent "the Jewish community".

With any luck, this will end their Reign of Terror very quickly. Let's just hope they don't do something terrible on the way out ...

Israel can no longer rely on the support of Europe's Jews

The feeling is growing that Jewish honour and heritage have been more convincingly preserved in the diaspora

Max Hastings
Tuesday June 20, 2006
The Guardian

Whatever the outcome of the current Palestinian chaos, meaningful negotiations with Israel seem unlikely. The most plausible scenario is that Ehud Olmert will proceed unilaterally to draw new boundaries for his country, which will absorb significant Palestinian land, and institutionalise such dominance of the West Bank as to make a Palestinian state unworkable.

If this is the future, it is likely to yield fruits as bitter for Israelis as for Palestinians. The world, far from becoming more willing to acquiesce in Israel's expansion, is becoming less so. The generation of European non-Jews for whom the Holocaust is a seminal memory is dying. With them perishes much vicarious guilt.

Younger Europeans, not to mention the rest of the world, are more sceptical about Israel's territorial claims. They are less susceptible to moral arguments about redress for past horrors, which have underpinned Israeli actions for almost 60 years. We may hope that it will never become respectable to be anti-semitic. However, Israel is discovering that it can no longer frighten non-Jews out of opposing its policies merely by accusing them of anti-semitism.

There is also evidence of growing disenchantment with Israel in the Jewish diaspora. Feelings have changed since 1948 and the days when Jews around the world thought it a duty to support "their" nation in the promised land right or wrong, in good times or bad. David Goldberg, the former rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London, has just published a book that will rouse plenty of wrath in Israel. Entitled The Divided Self, its theme is that in modern times the Jews of the diaspora have preserved the honour and heritage of the Jewish people far more convincingly than Israel's citizens.

Goldberg, whom I should acknowledge as a friend, rejects the Zionist conceit that the only proper place for Jews is in Israel. He discerns an unhealthy artificiality about the society constructed beside the Mediterranean since 1948: "to assert itself, it must be rigid and inflexible". He notes that while genealogy has become a popular enthusiasm of diaspora Jews, Israelis prefer archaeology, "pursuing the distant past to authenticate an ancient connection with the land" in the absence of any more recent claim.

He tells a good story of returning on a boat from Israel to Marseilles in 1958, after a stint on a kibbutz. His efforts to make headway with pretty blond American passengers were thwarted by the presence of a tanned, muscular Israeli paratrooper, who effortlessly cut him out. When the boat stopped at Naples, this hero of Sinai announced that he was off to buy a watch. Beware of fakes, advised Goldberg, magnanimous in sexual defeat. The soldier ignored him, and was later seen hurling a worthless purchase into the sea.

If we were talking about Christians here, it might be called a parable. Goldberg believes that Israel has allowed military prowess to blind it to wisdom: "the Jewish fox knows many things, the Jewish hedgehog only one big thing". Or you may prefer a Talmudic saying: "better a live dog than a dead lion".

Goldberg defines the virtues of diaspora Jews, "adapting to novel circumstances and responding to changing times", in terms that would rouse the contempt of many Israelis. "Two thousand years of powerlessness have honed the antennae to detect where self-interest lies, what is on or not on ... The experience ... of learning to live circumspectly among more numerous and powerful neighbours is a surer guarantee of survival than the triumphalist illusions of a mere 50-odd years of statehood."

Some Israelis would say that this is the language of the ghetto, reflecting a willingness to defer, even to cringe; of exactly the kind their state was created to remove from the Jewish psyche. Yet Goldberg's book reflects a declining willingness among many diaspora Jews to write blank cheques for Israel, either literally or figuratively.

It is a painful experience for some Jews who achieve good and even great things in their own societies to find themselves cast as sin-eaters for the Jewish state. Most are reluctant to speak out as frankly against Israel's West Bank policies as Goldberg has, and as did the late and great Rabbi John Rayner, who came here from Germany with the kindertransport. But with each generation the emotional distance between Israel and the diaspora is growing.

In some respects, this reflects a situation Amos Oz prophesied. "People like you," he said to me almost 30 years ago, "who want Israel to go on behaving like a European society, are heading for disappointment. Israel is becoming a Middle Eastern country. In future, I hope that it will not behave worse than other Middle Eastern countries, but I doubt that it will behave any better."

As long as Israel retains US support, its rulers may feel they can shrug off the alienation not only of non-Jewish Europeans, but also of growing numbers of European Jews. Yet if David Goldberg is right that diaspora Jews today contribute far more to the "universal values" of civilisation than the people of Israel, then the Jewish state has a far more profound problem than that of frontiers.

 comment@guardian.co.uk

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1801566,00.html

Guardian

Comments

Display the following comment

  1. The Guardian is a Joke — Bill

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech