José Pablo Feinmann is a philosopher. He is also an enthusiastic supporter of the present government of Argentina, just as he was of the previous one, and writes articles about its activities and policies for the newspaper Pagina/12. He has also written several novels, plays and collections of film criticism and is a regular on television programmes dealing with cultural matters. A better example of the term “public intellectual” you’d look hard to find.
He has been publishing a history of the Peronist movement in weekly parts for the last several months in Pagina/12 and the newspaper has just put the first 20 online here. I’ve previously had cause to comment on certain elements of this undertaking here in English and here, here and here in Spanish.
In part 16 of this mammoth project he is expounding on the philosophy of Heidegger when he says,
An element of antisemitism has been correctly noted in these severe Heideggerian thoughts. The Jew is the wanderer par excellence. (Not today, obviously. The Jew has subjected the Palestinian people to wandering, to the absence of a native place, a national home and a Heimat. This is not our subject here. It’s enough to mention it and mention also this painful paradox; the essential wandering people, today, when it has a State, is subjecting another people to the rootlessness which it used to suffer from itself. Suffering, far from having taught the lesson not to inflict it on others, seems to have taught the contrary one.
There is really a lot that could be said about this. I’ll just say just two things.
Note that it’s not Israel that is “subjecting the Palestinian people to wandering”, it’s “the Jew”, a kind of eternal essence going deeper than the opinions or beliefs of individual Jewish people or the actions of the state where a good number of them are exercising their right to self determination.
Note that the Palestinians are portrayed as passive actors in their own history, their only role to serve as an object for the malevolence of “the Jew”.
In essence, by pinning Israel’s actions on “the Jew,” Feinmann is saying that Israel can be considered representative of the whole Jewish people.
But isn’t that what Zionists have been claiming all along?
BTW, I don’t agree by any means with such a view.
“Feinmann is saying that Israel can be considered representative of the whole Jewish people.”
Had he wanted to say that, he could have said it and we could have discussed it. What he did say was quite different.
I still don’t get it.
When I read the Argentinian is discriminatory by nature, or THE ARGENTINIAN IS RACIST and, what’s worse, he’s a racist who denies his own origins, I don’t see any reference to “a kind of eternal essence going deeper than the opinions or beliefs of individual Argentinian people;” I realize that the use of the singular is simply a stylistic option and is not intended to attach any cosmological wickedness to the Argentinian essence.
If you believe that Israel is the country of the Jews, you can’t complain about the actions of its citizens being attributed to “the Jew,” any more than you can complain about the actions of individual Argentinians being attributed to “the Argentinian” in the examples above.
If you can’t reocognise language worthy of Der Stürmer then there’s not much I can do to help you.
“But isn’t that what Zionists have been claiming all along?”
No. It’s actually the anti Zionists, like Toni Judt who have claimed this. The very same anti-Zionists who like to fantasize that “”all Jews are silenced by the requirement to be supportive of Israel, and all non-Jews are silenced by the fear of being thought antisemitic”.
you can’t reocognise language worthy of Der Stürmer
Maybe because I never read Der Stürmer. But fortunately you’ve opened my eyes and I now realize that Mr. Feinmann is a bigot and his hateful discourse is very dangerous for Argentina and its Jewish community. Just today I saw a friend of mine in the street carrying a Molotov cocktail. “What are you doing?,” I asked. “I’m going to torch the synagogue on Paraguay street.” “But you used to like Jews.” “Yes, but now I’ve read Feinmann’s article.”
I thought of writing a long paragraph about gratuitous victimhood and the overblowing of trivialities, but I’ll summarize it: give me a break.
Maybe because I never read Der Stürmer.
None of us do, Ibrahim. That’s because it was a particularly poisonous rag published by the Nazis under the editorship of Julius Streicher. The same Nazi Party which, incidentally, Heidegger, who is quoted by Feinmann, was a member of. I am reliably told it has ceased publication.
The fact that you evidently haven’t heard of it (although there’s every chance of your writing a follow-up comment hastily claiming that you had, and that you were just being facetious) tells me that you are pontificating about a subject of which you know nothing.
If I were you, I wouldn’t be so quick off the mark to joke about Jewish buildings in Buenos Aires being being attacked - or have you forgotten the AMIA bombing?
“I never read” was meant to be in the past. Maybe I should have written “I’ve never read,” which I think would sound more natural to a British English speaker. I don’t know; I speak English as a second language and make frequent grammar mistakes.
The joke was not about a Jewish building in Buenos Aires; it was about a Jewish building in Rosario. This one:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=21574993&postcount=208
The AMIA bombing was international terrorism inflicted on Argentina, not home-grown violence. Antisemitism is a very minor problem in Argentina.
Ibrahim, your English is fine. Much better than my Spanish. But the point stands: if you are unaware of Der Sturmer, and unsure of what it represents, how are you able to place contemporary antisemitic discourse in any context?
Also, by what method do you judge something to be a “very minor problem”?
“The AMIA bombing was international terrorism inflicted on Argentina, not home-grown violence. Antisemitism is a very minor problem in Argentina.”
As the dogs on the streets here know, there was extensive cooperation given to the bombers by elements in the local security forces. Ribelli, Telleldín et al were aqcquited because of illegalities in the investigation not because anyone in their right mind thinks they were innocent.
In Argentina you can get a cop to do any kind of dirty job, provided you pay him adequately. Granted, it was home-aided violence — but not home-grown.