David Hirsh has weighed in on the event at London University’s Goldsmiths College which advertised a seamless link between the Warsaw Ghetto and the current situation in Gaza.
“The Nazis herded the Jews of Warsaw and its surroundings into a few city blocks as the first stage in organizing their murder. Some were murdered by starvation and others were murdered by gas. But they all, except for a handful who escaped, ended up dead. The Nazis were executing a plan to kill the Jews of Europe. The Nazis killed about six million Jews in a set of events which are now often known as the Holocaust. Some Jews were able to get out of Europe and to escape with their lives.
For the previous century or so there had been heated debate on the Jewish left as to how to oppose antisemitism in Europe and Russia. Some, who called themselves ‘Zionists’, thought that the problem of antisemitism was best addressed by a Jewish movement for national self-determination. Others thought that Jews should remain in Europe and should defend themselves against antisemitism as part of the European socialist and emancipation movements. Most Jews were unimpressed by either of these two radical responses and preferred to carry on trying to live their Jewish lives without bothering anybody else. Neither strategy proved very effective in the end, against Nazism. Not many Jews went to Palestine and those who had put their faith in European civilization to keep Jews safe were politically defeated.
The huge material transformation of Jewish life in Europe, the Holocaust, changed everything. It is understandable that Jews, running for their lives from Europe and largely barred from the rest of the world, having seen their friends and families, their children and their parents killed, embraced the nationalist idea that they should build a state with which they would have the capacity to defend themselves and in which they could feel at home. In 1948 The United Nations partitioned Palestine and gave a little statelet to the Jews.”
And:
“It is true that conditions in Gaza are extremely difficult. The borders are tightly controlled by Israel and by Egypt. The de facto government in Gaza, elected in January 2006, which later took total power in a coup against the Palestinian President, promises war against the Jews of Israel to the end. The Israelis pursue the Hamas fighters into the streets and housing estates of Gaza, resulting in the inevitable and routine deaths of civilians. In Gaza there is agonizing poverty and shortages, for example of medical supplies. There is little freedom of movement for Gazans. But talk about Gaza being a prelude to a ‘final solution’ is just false.
But it is more than false. It is vile. Why can’t you see that the designation of ‘Zionists’ as Nazis is vile? Why don’t you feel it in your political bones? Why doesn’t it set your internal racism alarms ringing?”
David is addressing these comments not to those of us who agree with him, but to those who regard “Zionism” as a global metaphor for oppression and racism. So if anyone reading this post does think that, do yourselves a favor and click on the link above.
I have an Italian Catholic friend. He told me that the last time he went to visit his elderly mother in Evelino, Italy, he told her he had this Jewish family for close friends. Her response was shock and indignation: Did you tell her, did you tell her that the Jews murdered our Jesus?
In my eyes, the crowds which David Hirsh addresses are just as dogmatically-locked and hermetically-impenetrable as the old lady, no matter how many Vatican II’s there are. Facts, histories, contexts, simply are not heard or attended. They know the truth and no amount of rational and factually-based instruction is going to provoke any sentience in their paralysed moral nerves.
German kids, [left-wing] activists destroy anti-Nazi exhibit
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1226404730069
The British writer Denis MacEoin has posted a posted some comments on that same thread that are worth reposting here.
I hope he won’t mind if I repost them in full as well as offer a link to the original as I believe his commentary is brilliant. Not only does he object to the use of false analogies and dichotomies but speculates succesfully, I think, on the possible origin of the use of such faulty analogies:
Here is the link:
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=2217
And here is his comment:
Denis MacEoin posted on November 15, 2008 at 06:40:18 PM
This tiresome series of analogies (Jews=Nazis, Israel=apartheid South Africa) are, in one sense, remarkable. They are manifest fiction, yet large numbers of well-educated academics, writers, intellectuals, and commentators believe in them with an almost religious fervour. This Warsaw/Gaza comparison strikes me as particularly painful. It has also alerted me to where the root of this may lie. If I put on my hat as a fiction writer, I can see it straight away. Putting a plot together can be great fun, especially if you are writing stories that incorporate fact (I write thrillers, but this is true of other genres, notably historical fiction). I may take one fact, then read more about the subject and stumble on another, unrelated, but fictitiously useful fact, then be led to a strange Wikipedia article that draws my attention to something else that can be fitted in. As the plot itself develops during writing (and this is the crucial thing), it acquires richness, and this richness allows me to embed quite disparate information within it. For the purposes of authorship, the writer ‘believes’ in his characters and plot elements, and as new ‘facts’ enter the story, the whole thing acquires a believability that makes the novel resonate with readers. More than once, I’ve had letters from readers declaring how wonderful I am in ‘knowing the truth’. It’s pure fiction, of course, but if it has been crafted well, there is a verisimilitude that provokes the classic suspension of disbelief.
This happens with conspiracy theories, in which often genuine fact is blended with hearsay (4,000 Jews stayed away from the twin towers) to persuade the gullible to screw up their lives trying to secure ‘justice’ or retribution for a supposed crime. While some conspiracy theorists may be intelligent, it is rare to find mainstream academics, lawyers, scientists and others among them (I think I’m right in saying that).
But the IDF soldier/Nazi stormtrooper analogy and all the others that cluster around this trope have become the conspiracy theory that has been made respectable by intellectuals and academics worldwide, to the point where patently false history has been allowed to replace archived records as the basis on which political decisions are take. I have worked with historical controversies in the past, and I believe I know how to distinguish between, say, hagiographic accounts and those formulated on the basis of eye-witness statements an do on. The processes that have taken Benny Morris from his earlier positions to his present views (based on a more complete engagement with archive resources) are ones I recognize. Whatever debate emerges from all that is a manageable academic debate. But where can we go when academics stray so far from the standards of debate that they use fantasy to bolster their views, much as religious believers use hagiography?
The most worrying aspect of these analogies is their very deliberate juxtaposition of extreme images. Logic tells us that ‘Jew’ and ‘Nazi’ belong at opposite ends of a spectrum. Or that Israel and apartheid South Africa have nothing in common. A balanced approach would say, perhaps, that Israelis sometimes do bad things to Palestinians (how bad depending on debatable emphases) or that anti-Arab discrimination in Israel is a form of racism. But Israel’s (or, more plausibly, Jews’) detractors are not context with a normal discourse. They must grow perverse. And that perversity extends to making the sufferings of the Palestinians hagiographic, even iconographic (especially in the extreme Christian that makes Palestinians the body of Christ, crucified by Jews once more). Large numbers of Palestinians are terrorists who commit dreadful deeds, yet their defenders can only portray them as innocent victims.
Again, this is novelistic. Making the Palestinians ‘fits’ a perverted theology, combining the old view that the Jews killed Jesus with a new dimension, all of which meshes in the believer’s mind because it feels somehow ‘right’. As a novelist, I can make you believe half a dozen bizarre things before breakfast. But at the end of the book, you should awaken from the fantasy and smile a wry smile and move on to the next story. Our anti-Israel academics seem unable to do this. What academic has not made some sort of journey, from the views adopted for his/her PhD to those in his last article? That journey is made by recognizing our mistakes, whether these be misreadings of factual information or misinterpretations of a text or an experiment. Since the arguments currently being used to demonize Israel are patent falsehoods, what is preventing these academics seeing them for what they are and at least moving on to more rational criticisms? Instead, they give lectures at academic institutions, ennobling their conspiracies and doing untold damage to impressionable students. That is where I believe we should focus: on convincing university authorities that students are being subjected to a level of argument that is not a centimeter above the conspiracy theorists that claim Jews and the CIA destroyed the twin towers. Surely someone has a duty to insist that all such talks come with a health warning at least, or a proper rejoinder at best.
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=2217
Fabian from Israel, somebody told me last year when I was in Berlin that many of young Germans who demonstrate against Israel do so because it makes them feel less guilty about what their families did during the Holocaust.
I don’t believe that it was an accident that they trashed a Holocaust memorial at the University.
Yes it is vile.
The old blood libel of Jews drinking the blood of children for Passover had simply been replaced by accusations of Nazism, colonialism, apartheid etc. all of which have one thing in common, there are evils that have to be abolish and had been abolished. And describing the mere existence of a society or its defense, as an evil that has to be abolished is exactly what Nazism did.
The charges against Zionism are driven mostly by intolerance and hatred. It is therefore useless to use logic and historical facts to counter such vicious hatred. We need to expose the underlying ideologies that motivate people like Suzanne Weiss who passes herself off as “Holocaust survivor” in order to spread a Leninist inspired antisemitism.
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=2216
and here
http://www.nion.ca/read-more-weiss.htm
Exposing the ideologies of the right and left, that are at the root of most attacks on Israel, is the most effective way to fight the current plague of antisemitism from Germany to Canada and beyond.
Shriber, how do you suppose we expose the true motives of anti Zionists without using logic and reason?
In my opinion nothing exposes hatred and intolerance better then the desire to annihilate.
Dvar Dea
“Shriber, how do you suppose we expose the true motives of anti Zionists without using logic and reason?
In my opinion nothing exposes hatred and intolerance better then the desire to annihilate.”
You second point is beyond dispute.
The use of logic and historical fact while necessary are not sufficient to counter the vicious hatred that is being disseminated on various websites and at many colleges around the world.
For example, David Hirsh article that describe the real horrid history of the Warsaw ghetto and compares that history to the current realities in Gaza is a fine piece of work debunking the claims made by those who would peddle the false view that the Gaza situation is another Warsaw ghetto.
Blogs like Engage are admirable in that they are fighting such hatred at universities in the UK. They tend to think that gentle persuasion is the best approach. They may be right given their audience is composed mostly of left leaning academics who supposedly value historical fact and logic. This would explain why David in his article appealed to the Trotskyite biographer, Isaac Deutscher’s
However, the article doesn’t answer the question why Suzanne Weiss, who claims to be a Holocaust survivor, would slander Zionism. There is nothing in the article about Ms. Weiss’ real biography or her Leninist affiliations. Was David coy about naming Lenin because of the type or reader he was trying to persuade?
We need to address the existential issues that motivate the anti-Zionist honestly.
This is what I mean by going beyond the use of logic and history.
Truth be told, this is the first I hear of this Suzzan Weiss, but I guess there are plenty of her ilk around, of various backgrounds and excuses for their views. For what is worth (and assuming her story is true) I think it is good to know that holocaust survivors didn’t came out of that inferno forming one view. There were the late Haika Grossman, a left wing Knesset member in Israel’s early years and a civil rights activist, the late Tomy Lapid, probably the most colorful of them all, famous for his atheism, and on his opposite end Israel’s former chief Rabbi Israel Lao, as well as former Under – Commossier Benjamin Ziggel, the most famous cop in 1980’s Israel, major general Yossi Peled, the late California senator Tom Lantos and undoubtedly more.
I recall a survey among holocaust survivors, back in the 80’s, when there were more of them, that found out that the distribution of political opinions is not much different the rest of the Israeli public, with the exception of less tendency towards extremism. So if there are one or two, or a handful others who are anti Zionists, may be that is just statistics. But if she is a liar exposing it will be an edge, and in a war every edge is useful.