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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Zionists Out of the Peace Movement: Shahak on Lying About Judaism

This blog entry contains the following important quotation from Israel Shahak's book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, which Marc Ellis included in his book Reading the Torah Out Loud: A Journey of Lament and Hope. Marc Ellis is the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University.
Nor was [Martin] Buber alone in his attitude, although in my opinion he was by far the worst in the evil he propagated and the influence he has left behind him. There was the very influential sociologist and biblical scholar, Yehezkiel Kaufman, an advocate of genocide on the model of the Book of Joshua, the idealist philosopher Hugo Shmuel Bergman, who as far back as 1914-15 advocated the expulsion of all Palestinians to Iraq, and many others. All were outwardly 'dovish', but employed formulas which could be manipulated in the most extreme anti-Arab sense, all had tendencies to that religious mysticism which encourages the propagation of deceptions, and all seemed to be gentle persons who, even when advocating expulsion, racism and genocide, seemed incapable of hurting a fly – and just for this reason the effect of their deceptions was the greater.

It is against the glorification of inhumanity, proclaimed not only by the rabbis but by those who are supposed to be the greatest and certainly the most influential scholars of Judaism, that we have to struggle; and it is against those modern successors of the false prophets and dishonest priests that we have to repeat even in the face of an almost unanimous opinion within Israel and among the majority of Jews in countries such as the USA, Lucretius' warning against surrendering one's judgement to the declamations of religious leaders: Tantuii: religio potuit suadere malorum – 'To such heights of evil are men driven by religion.' Religion is not always (as Marx said) the opium of the people, but it can often be so, and when it is used in this sense by prevaricating and misrepresenting its true nature, the scholars and intellectuals who perform this task take on the character of opium smugglers.

But we can derive from this analysis another, more general conclusion about the most effective and horrific means of compulsion to do evil, to cheat and to deceive and, while keeping one's hands quite clean of violence, to corrupt whole peoples and drive them to oppression and murder. (For there can no longer be any doubt that the most horrifying acts of oppression in the West Bank are motivated by Jewish religious fanaticism.) Most people seem to assume that the worst totalitarianism employs physical coercion, and would refer to the imagery of Orwell's 1984 for a model illustrating such a regime. But it seems to me that this common view is greatly mistaken, and that the intuition of Isaac Asimov, in whose science fiction the worst oppression is always internalized, is the more true to the dangers of human nature. Unlike Stalin's tame scholars, the rabbis – and even more so the scholars attacked here, and with them the whole mob of equally silent middlebrows such as writers, journalists, public figures, who lie and deceive more than them – are not facing the danger of death or concentration camp, but only social pressure; they lie out of patriotism because they believe that it is their duty to lie for what they conceive to be the Jewish interest. They are patriotic liars, and it is the same patriotism which reduces them to silence when confronted with the discrimination and oppression of the Palestinians.

In the present case we are also faced with another group loyalty, but one which comes from outside the group, and which is sometimes even more mischievous. Very many non-Jews (including Christian clergy and religious laymen, as well as some marxists from all marxist groups) hold the curious opinion that one way to 'atone' for the persecution of Jews is not to speak out against evil perpetrated by Jews but to participate in 'white lies' about them. The crude accusation of 'antisemitism' (or, in the case of Jews, 'self-hate') against anybody who protests at the discrimination of Palestinians or who points out any fact about the Jewish religion or the Jewish past which conflicts with the 'approved version' comes with greater hostility and force from non-Jewish 'friends of the Jews' than from Jews. It is the existence and great influence of this group in all western countries, and particularly in the USA (as well as the other English-speaking countries) which has allowed the rabbis and scholars of Judaism to propagate their lies not only without opposition but with considerable help.
Joel Kovel provides an anecdote about Martin Buber in Overcoming Zionism on pp. 219-220.
As for Martin Buber, his subsequent behavior does not square with the aura of sainthood that embellishes his memory. By 1958, Buber had washed his hands of the one-state idea and said so at a lecture: "I have accepted as mine the state of Israel, the form of the new Jewish community that has arisen from the war. I have nothing in common with those Jews who imagine that they may contest the factual shape which Jewish independence has taken."21 This may have been the product of profound philosophical speculation, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that coarser motives were involved as well. The eminent philosopher had been a tenant in the fine Jerusalem home owned by, of all people, Edward Said's Family. In 1947 a dispute arose that ended up in court. Bubber lost, and upon handing over the keys to Said's father, ominously said, "Mr. Said, you just wait. I will be back." And after the Nakhba, indeed he was, with a deed from the Jewish Agency, to claim the house as his own for the remainder of his days. It seems that even deep thinkers can engage in ethnic cleansing, and adjust their beliefs accordingly.22
Buber was neither an orthodox nor a traditional Jew. His willingness like that of most Zionist Jews to benefit or to profit from ethnic cleansing results from a combination of opportunism with racism, and Shahak overstates his case when he claims that the most horrifying acts of oppression of Palestinians grow out of traditional Jewish religious fanaticism.

The State of Israel is characterized by murderous and highly dangerous extremist ethnic fundamentalism, which is practically universal among secular Israeli Jews and represents the predominant thinking among "religious" Israeli Jews. For the vast majority of modern Jews (including the Orthodox and Haredim) traditional Jewish religion was long ago replaced with a combination of ethnic narcissism, holocaust obsession, and worship of the State of Israel.

The title of Shahak's book is most unfortunate and is symptomatic of the lies that Jews -- apparently including Israel Shahak -- tell themselves. Rabbinic and Karaite Judaism are new religions younger than both Islam and Christianity, which represent important currents of 2nd Temple Judaism and are far closer to that religion than any form of modern Judaism however traditional it may be.

The following lecture, articles and blog entries provide discussions of the history of Judaic religions and of Jewish communities since the classical period:

Summaries
Classical JudaismJewish Arabs
Ethnic Ashkenazim
Judonia and Zionism (Christian or Jewish)
Anti-Semitism
Holocaust and Ashkenazi Genocidalism
End Notes

21. Martin Buber, "Israel and the Command of the Spirit", Israel and the World (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997), p. 257. He goes on to hope for "cooperation" between the peoples, an empty claim given his endorsement of the Jewish state.


22. Uri Davis, "Martin Buber's Paths in Utopia-The Kibbutz: an experiment that didn't fail?" Peace News, no. 2446, March-June, 2002. Davis' larger point is to make a very sharp critique of Buber's famous paean, in Paths in Utopia trans. R. F. C. Hull (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958 [1946]), to the kibbutz, Zionism's most famous contribution to social organization. "The uniqueness of this Zionist co-operative venture is not, as Buber alleged, in that 'it alone has proved its vitality in all three spheres' of 'internal relationships, federation and influence on society at large,' or that in establishing the Jewish village commune 'the primary thing was not ideology but work.' Nor is the uniqueness of the venture represented in its ability to constantly 'branch off' into new forms and new intermediate forms.' Rather, the unique feature of the Zionist co-operative enterprise was and remains: a) its utility as a strategic colonial instrument directed to alienate the indigenous Palestinian Arab population from their lands, and b), its racism ̶ membership in these co-operative village communities was (and remains) only open to Jews .... It is clear to me that the Zionist co-operative movement in Palestine has been a primary driving force in the development and consolidation of Israeli apartheid; playing a role similar to that played by the Dutch Reform Church in the development and consolidation of South African apartheid. In recent decades the falsehood of Buber's assessment of the Zionist co-operative venture in Palestine has became progressively transparent. The Kibbutz collective dining room has now become a paying cafeteria and, under privatisation, sections of the Kibbutz membership (e.g., the elderly) have been pauperised to the extent that some are not able to pay for a full meal. There have been reports in the Israeli Hebrew press of elderly Kibbutz members covering their meat portion with a heap of rice in order to save money at the till. A ‘signal non-failure,’ as Buber would have it.

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Posted by Joachim Martillo at 6:57 AM
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