#memoirs of an anti zionist jew | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

matan4il · 6 months

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THISTHISTHIS!!!

Like, I personally don't consider myself a "Zionist" in the modern sense. I have several disputes with the secular Herzli-esque Zionist movement (both political and theological), but I certainly wouldn't consider myself an anti-Zionist. I have a lot of respect for much of what the Tzionim have accomplished for the sake of Jews, and for Israel, even if we might disagree over correct methods and motivations.

And I definitely associate myself with the traditional Zion-loving Jewish beliefs (what you called the "Zionist nature of Judaism"). Of course I do. These are core tenants of Judaism that have been around since the days of Avraham, and they're so central that I don't really understand how any Jew couldn't believe them. Wherever in the world we might reside, the piece of land now known as Israel has always been Home.

אם אשכחך ירושלים תשכח ימיני

Hi, lovely to meet you! ^u^

I wanna reinforce your last paragraph SO MUCH. Judaism is so fundamentally tied to the Land of Israel, to Jews loving it, to sanctifying our bond with this place, and I have always felt exactly that: when I'm abroad, I'm never quite at peace, not until I'm back on Israel's soil, and have that sense of I'm home. And it always makes me so happy whenever I hear from non-Israeli Jews, that they feel something similar when they come to visit Israel. It's what I believe all native people feel when they get to experience standing on their ancestral land, whether they live there or not. It's something that allows us to feel connected, not just to the earth beneath our feet, but also to our ancestors who lived here, and to generations upon generations of our people who yearned to return here.

As for the modern political movement that is Zionism, maybe I'll just mention my personal story. I was born in Communist Romania, at a time when the financial situation was incredibly dire, food was rationed, and generally speaking, the regime had control over everything. Its power over the citizens was limitless, and quite a few people who were a part of this regime, were antisemitic. They used that limitless power to persecute Jews, even as Communism supposedly vowed all its citizens would be treated equally. Some of what was done to my family was actually described by my great uncle, Norman Manea, in his memoir, The Hooligan's Return. My life was in danger at one point. At the time, no citizen of a communist country could leave for a western one, which Israel was. Jews could be jailed for simply expressing the desire to leave for Israel (officially recognized here as "prisoners of Zion"). But in Romania, there was a unique agreement achieved thanks to the chief rabbi of Romanian Jews at the time, Rabbi Rosen (who my grandfather and his brother worked with, so he was also the rabbi who married my parents). Israel paid Communist Romania for every Jew allowed to make aliyah. IDK how much Israel had to pay for my parents, for my grandparents, and for baby me, but I know Romania demanded a higher price for people with higher education, which all of the adults in my family had. Most importantly, being brought to Israel, and getting here proper medical and nutritional care after the regime's antisemitic abuse, saved my life. I celebrate my aliyah day every year as my second birthday, because I got a second chance at life on that day.

And at the end of the day, that's what informs my personal view of Zionism, this personal experience. It leads me to feel that if Zionism saved even one Jewish person, it's the right thing to support it. And Zionism actually saved so many more than that, Jews and non-Jews. It still is! We don't talk about it enough, but when Assad regime in Syria butchered its citizens during the Civil War there, Israel got the last of the Syrian Jews out. When the war between Ukraine and Russia broke out, Israel helped to get out Jews from the war zones in Ukraine, as well as Israeli non-Jews (and even a few Arab friends, including from enemy countries, of Israeli Arabs, who the latter asked for Israel to save), as well as the families of Ukrainian Righteous Among the Nations (non-Jews who risked themselves to save Jewish people during the Holocaust). And when the Houthis, the Yemenite terrorist group funded by Iran, endangered Jews in Yemen, Israel got them out.

No political movement is without fault, obviously. But I think all of the above makes Zionism worthy of support. At least mine.

You said, "These are core tenants of Judaism that have been around since the days of Avraham, and they're so central that I don't really understand how any Jew couldn't believe them."

I agree so much! To remove the many Zionist elements of Judaism, right down to its holy language being Hebrew, which is tied to Israel, is to distort it so much, that it's no longer Judaism.

Whenever I come across an anti-Zionist Jew, I try to keep in mind the following things:

They might be pretending to be Jewish. I've seen more than one anti-Zionist online, claiming they can't be antisemitic, because they're Jewish themselves. Beyond the fact that as a statement, that's NOT true (someone can be gay with internalized homophobia, a woman with internalized misogyny, and in the same way, a Jew who has internalized an antisemitic narrative), it turned out in some cases, it was also factually untrue, as the person was eventually exposed as lying about being Jewish.

This phenomenon has also made it into the news at least twice relatively recently, once when high profile anti-Zionist "Jews" from Germany were exposed as non-Jews.

Another is connected to the Twitter account of "Jewish Voice for Peace," an organization that, despite its title, doesn't actually require its members to be Jewish, but uses its title to present itself as a Jewish organization.

A member who operates the Twitter account of JVP accidentally tweeted from his personal account, and so ended up exposing himself as a Muslim tweeting, "As Jews..."

2. Those who actually are anti-Zionist Jews often turn out to be very disconnected from their Jewish identity, except in order to use it to lend their anti-Zionist statements "more weight." (as if a gay man's homophobia should be listened to more, or be more acceptable, just because it's not homophobia coming from a straight person) A really funny example is Ariel Gold, who keeps trying to flaunt her "Judaism" as meaningful to her identity, but in doing so, keeps accidentally exposing how ignorant she is regarding some really basic Jewish concepts. Like that time she was in Iran, and gushed over a picture she took of a menorah... except she didn't know that a menorah wouldn't have 19 branches. She was just gushing over a random, Iranian candelabra.

3. And then to some anti-Zionist Jews, their Jewish identity does matter, but... the sad thing is, they're either very ignorant over what it entails (so they buy into the antisemitic anti-Zionist narrative without knowing better), or they just don't feel they personally need Israel, so they have no issue being anti-Zionists, to be "good Jews." In this context, I always think about this documentary I saw called "Gay Republicans," where they interviewed an openly gay man, living with his boyfriend, who didn't wanna be a dad himself, so he had no issue insisting that gay people shouldn't be allowed to become parents. I guess some fellow straight republicans would say he's a "good gay."

There's probably more to be said about this, but I think this kind of covers a big part of the people I've come across online. But here's the thing: I believe in the value of Jewish solidarity, I know how many Holocaust survivors talked about how that's what saved them back then, and I am gonna stand by that value, and care so much about the safety and well being of groups 2 and 3, even if they don't give a shit about mine.

Take care, and feel free to write me again, if you feel like chatting some more on this. Chag Sameach and Am Yisrael Chai! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

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power-chords · 1 month

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Stern is occasionally aware of how time has frozen over as he refers back to all these lectures. He writes, for example, that he regrets his failure, in the past, to write about National Socialism’s admirers abroad. But there was nothing to stop him making up for this omission in his memoir. The ‘marvellously austere’ James Conant, a former president of Harvard, one of Stern’s mentors for a brief time and high commissioner in Germany after the war, a man whose vigour and knowledge, Stern says, were matched only by Arthur Burns in the 1970s and Richard Holbrooke in the 1990s, might be a case in point. Conant sent delegations from Harvard to various functions at German universities and played host to Nazi officials at Harvard even after Kristallnacht and after German universities had been purged of Jewish academics. (This might have meant little to the president of an Ivy League university since these institutions at the time had few or no Jews on their faculties. The first Jew to get tenure at Yale was Paul Weiss in 1946.) In his role as a leading chemist, Conant advised Dupont not to hire the refugee scientist Max Bergmann because he was ‘definitely of the Jewish type’. Postwar German democracy was nursed along by men like Conant, who weren’t raging anti-semites but the polite sort, the sort who were perfectly happy to lend the prestige of America’s premier university to Nazi institutions. What exactly would Stern have us make of such things?

This brings up the larger question that looms over this book. It is written under the sign of Camus’s The Plague. One ‘should bear witness’, says the epigraph with which Stern begins; one needs ‘to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence’; to teach that ‘the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years … that it bides its time.’ The allegory is all too clear in the first part of the book, as it tells the story of what happens when the political rats are allowed to go forth and triumph. It may well be that Stern’s exemplary life of liberal civic involvement – he supported civil rights causes, opposed the Vietnam War, spoke out against Reagan’s going to Bitburg cemetery, and writes critically of his adopted country’s attack on Iraq and on individual liberties at home – is born of a passion to live out what he learned in a time of pestilence. Certainly, most of his serious historical work is engaged in some way with what went wrong in Germany. But the ideal of active citizenship is very familiar. And the threat of a renewed Nazism seems remote.

Too much of the second part of the book seems disingenuously marshalled under the banner of ‘never again’. Stern was a leader, he proudly reports, of the so-called ‘Stern gang’ – an odd allusion to the 1940s Zionist terrorist group – that opposed making concessions to Columbia students in 1968. Whatever the merits of the case, it is hard to believe that he really thinks, as he claims he did at the time, that the idealistic student radicals of 1960s Columbia shared much with the quite differently motivated Nazi students of 1930s Germany. Although he allies himself with other émigré academics, the fear of a reborn Hitler Youth in 1960s New York has to be more of a post hoc justification of views held for other political and personal reasons than a real motivating force: that his mentor Lionel Trilling nodded approvingly at every point Stern made at a crucial faculty meeting had to count for something. (No one has researched the question of how refugees from Nazi persecution reacted as a group to the student unrest of the Vietnam War era. At Berkeley, the two most important supporters of the Free Speech Movement at the Law School, Richard Buxbaum and Hans Linde, were Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution; the refugee scholar Leo Lowenthal, a leading member of the Frankfurt School, also sided with the FSM students. Others were on the side of the administration at various times or not engaged at all.)

#heat 2 midrash

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eretzyisrael · 1 year

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Why is Avi Shlaim recycling ‘Baghdad bombings’ theory?

Why is Oxford professor Avi Shlaim blaming Zionist agents for forcing the Jews out of Iraq with a series of bombings? The answer lies in his new childhood memoir, argues Lyn Julius in The Jewish Chronicle:

Avi Shlaim, a professor of history at Oxford, has been no stranger to controversy, attracting criticism from his fellow academics.

Benny Morris has called Shlaim “sloppy”, and slammed his work for “one-sidedness and plain unfairness.”

Now in retirement, Shlaim has just published Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew. This is a personal account of his childhood and teenage years straddling three worlds: Iraq, where he was born, Israel where his family resettled, and the UK, where he has lived since 1966.

Aged five, his was a brutal uprooting from a comfortable Baghdad mansion with servants. At a time of rising antisemitism during the 1948 war with Israel, the family fled Iraq to begin new lives in Israel. His father, a prosperous importer of building materials with influential Muslim friends, was completely undone by the move and his much younger wife, once a society hostess, was forced to work as a telephonist.

The marriage broke down. Young Avi brought his emotional baggage to his Jewish school in London, where a friend testifies to the fact he smuggled in non-kosher burgers to spite the headmaster.

During his academic career, Shlaim became more and more stridently anti-Israel. Today he calls it a “colonial settler state”, even though Mizrahi Jewish communities, now comprising over half of Israel’s Jews, predated the Arab conquest and Islam by 1,000 years or more.

The “Arab-Jew” of the title will raise a few eyebrows: the expression is used by some anti-Zionists who deny Jews from Arab countries a separate identity.

But the plaudits have been flowing from reviewers’ pens for Avi Shlaim’s new book. Eugene Rogan, author of “The Arabs” called it the best book he had read all year.

Max Hastings had this to say in the Sunday Times: “This remarkable upside-down tale… A personal story, not a polemic… provocative… His personal odyssey confers on Shlaim an exceptional authority for his words; he can say things that others of us cannot… his thesis deserves to be considered with respect.”

The thesis in question is that “the Zionists” planted bombs in Baghdad to help eradicate the presence of Jews in Iraq. “The shocking truth about the Baghdad bombings of 1950 -51” blares the title of a review by Justin Marozzi in The Spectator.

But Shlaim’s theory is far from conclusive. The only fatal bombing took place in January 1951 (six weeks before the deadline for legal Jewish emigration from Iraq was due to expire) in the Massouda Shemtob synagogue, then being used by “the Zionists” as a registration centre for departing Jews. Three of the five bombs were planted three months after the emigration deadline had passed and caused no casualties.

It is a mystery why “the Zionists” might have thought it necessary to bomb the synagogue when, by late 1950 a backlog of 80,000 Jews, who had already registered to leave for Israel, were stranded in Iraq. Indeed, the Iraqi government toyed with the idea of dumping these Jews on Israel’s border with Jordan or in the Kuwaiti desert because Israel was not shipping them out fast enough.

All the evidence for the bombings points to the nationalist Istiqlal party as the culprit. An Istiqlal member confessed to an Iraqi historian, Shamel Abdul Kader, that he planted the first bomb in April 1950. The Israeli new historian Tom Segev produced evidence blaming the synagogue bombing on Iraqi nationalists.

Iraqi Jews already had reason enough to seek a haven in Israel – rising pro-Nazi sentiment, the memory of a vicious Baghdad pogrom in 1941, the execution of the wealthy non-Zionist Shafik Ades in 1948, arrests, extortion, racist laws persecuting and dispossessing them. A vibrant community of 150,000 is now reduced to three Jews.

But Shlaim claims there was no antisemitism in Iraq until the Iraqis ‘turned on the Jews’ for their alleged complicity with the British invasion of 1941 and the foundation of Israel.

It is a travesty that Shlaim should not only fail to blame Arab regimes for the mass ethnic cleansing of their Jewish citizens, but that his reputation as an Oxford academic should lend ‘exceptional authority’ and respectability to these highly controversial claims,

What lies behind Shlaim’s anti-Zionism? In reviewing ‘Israel and Palestine’ Benny Morris pronounced himself puzzled.

“Many intellectuals, in Israel as in the West, have been moved by the Palestinians’ history and their plight, but at the same time they have remained sympathetic to Israel’s predicament…. In Israel and Palestine, by contrast, there is no sign of any such complex sympathy.

“For Shlaim, Israel and its leaders can do no right. It all begins to seem very personal. What is the source of this bias and this resentment? ‘

It appears that Shlaim’s memoir holds the answer. Israel is responsible for his unhappy childhood, his family’s impoverishment and his broken home.

Read article in full

More about Avi Shlaim

Point of No Return

#Jews of Iraq

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zsterofficial · 2 months

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i have recieved quite a lot of backlash for speaking up on the situation in Gaza recently and making it clear that i am not "neutral" in any way; i am 1000% anti occupation! The Israeli government and its supposed defence force has been built on fascist and overall oppressive grounds like no other, and i refuse to stay silent on the war crimes and atrocities that are being committed against Palestinian civilians right now!

anyway, most of the backlash and hate comments i've received for that are trying call me out on being anti-Semetic or "wanting Jews to be gassed" just bc i listen to and quoted Melanie Martinez. i've just been generally accused of hating all Jewish people and wanting to see them dead, even though i have never said anything anti-Semetic in my life and i was very careful not to use language that would harm innocent Jewish people. i specifically said in my tt that not all Jewish people are inherently bad and people sometimes get that confused. it's genuinely disheartening to see people putting words in my mouth by saying i want to kill all Jewish people.

i'm just clearing up now that i am, by nature, a fighter for equality and i always will be. i am at least a little bit educated on most major religions such as Christianity (i've only ever attended Christian schools and am currently at an Anglican one where i study the religion a lot as part of the curriculum), Judaism (my mother works at a Jewish school), Buddhism (was raised Buddhist and most of my mother's side of the family are dedicated followers of the religion which i'm honestly very grateful for), Hindu (learned about it at school, i work with Lakshmi quite a lot in my practices), Islam (bits and pieces; Malala Yousafzai's memoir, having Muslim family members, and living in WA i've always seemed to have Muslim kids in my school, friend groups & such), etc. i respect and admire all religions and think they are all beautiful, and if u know me u would know i have only ever wanted what's in the best interest for everybody and i always have my fellow people of colour in mind.

Palestine is a Holy Land for quite a few of the religions i've studied, but it's often swept under the rug by Israeli propaganda. By shedding light on what's happening to this beautiful land and people, i have everyone's safety, freedom and culture in mind. i am thinking of the innocent Jewish people i'm constantly being reminded of, and advocating for a ceasefire and an end to the violence will benefit them. i love my Jewish friends, and Zionist and Israeli brainwashing harms their communities as well. There are plenty of Jewish and Israeli people who condemn what the Israeli government and military are doing, because it doesn't benefit the wellbeing of Jewish people at all. The IOF have killed innocent Israeli people (including LITERAL CHILDREN!) as well. Their violence doesn't stop at Palestinians! The hateful people commenting under my videos claiming Israel is the only home for Jews and that if i support the end of their violence towards Palestine, i'm supporting the death of Jewish people, are unknowing victims of the Israeli occupation's oppression and brainwashing propaganda. The sooner everyone realises that Zionism exists to harm all marginalised groups, the better.

#z’s thoughts & ramblings 🖤

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nicklloydnow · 8 months

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“In May 1945 a lone Russian soldier approached the Brinnlitz Nazi labour camp on a horse. He had come to tell the inmates they were free. Delighted as they were — the soldier was rewarded with hugs — the newly liberated men and women were also bewildered. Where would they go now?

Realising that their liberator was, like them, a Jew, the former prisoners peppered him with questions. “Have you been in Poland?” they asked, since that was where most of them had come from. “Yes,” replied the officer, “I’ve just come from Poland.” “Are there any Jews left up there?” The officer told them what was simply the truth: “I saw none.”

So where should they go? The officer looked them in the face: “I don’t know where you ought to go. Don’t go east — that much I can tell you. But don’t go west either.” He paused and added: “They don’t like us anywhere.”

(…)

And it was that — the many hundreds of thousands of displaced Jews with nowhere to go — that played a big role in changing my grandfather’s mind about Zionism. That, and the reflection that the experience of Jews over the previous decade had vindicated much of the Zionist argument.

(…)

As I relate in my recent family memoir, Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad, in 1927 Alfred published a highly successful book based on his travels in Palestine. He argued strongly against the Zionist project. There were, he said, too many Jews in Europe to fit into such a tiny area, the economic ideas of the settlers were utopian, and (he was a considerable Arabic scholar) peace with Palestinian Arabs would be hard to come by. His critics said that his survey of the area was biased and described him as “one of the leaders of German anti-Zionism”.

The great tragedy for the Jews is that while Alfred was right about the difficulty of Jews living safely in Palestine, the Zionists were right about the impossibility of Jews living safely in Alfred’s Berlin. The tension between Alfred’s view that Jews belonged in Germany and the reality of the rise of the Nazis contributed to the nervous collapse he suffered in 1933. It was a challenge to all he had stood for. A challenge to his very identity.

By the end of the war he had gone beyond this. The death and displacement of millions, including so many who were close to him, made him a pragmatic supporter of a state of Israel. It seemed to him obvious that there had to be an answer to the question asked by the Brinnlitz prisoners. Where do we go now? My paternal grandfather, also not a Zionist before the war, felt the same.

So we became a Zionist family, having never been one. We did not move to Israel because (unlike many others) we had alternatives. But we supported its creation, regarding it as an obvious necessity. A century of slaughter and oppression of Jews, culminating in the Holocaust, had made the case for a safe space for Jews unanswerable. And the repeated failings of other states to open themselves to Jews, even when they knew of mass murder, meant that this safe space would have to be a Jewish state.

And the United Nations reached the same conclusion. In 1947, having toured Palestine and visited Jewish refugee camps in Europe, it proposed to divide the land between Jews and Palestinian Arabs with a state for each. The Jews accepted, the Arab states launched a war. And the Palestinians are still fighting this partition plan.

Like my grandfather in 1927, I understand why the Palestinians did not want to share the land. But like my grandfather in 1947, I cannot see any choice but sharing. And while sharing is rejected by the Palestinians I cannot see any choice but to resist — stubbornly and absolutely and, when necessary, with force, even great force. For Israel must be defended. The question of Brinnlitz remains — where else are we to go?

This then is the question to put to anyone who says they are “pro Palestine” or wish a “Free Palestine” or waves the Palestinian flag. Do you mean in a state alongside Israel, within safe borders? In which case, yes, there is much to talk about. Even though it’s difficult and both sides have debating points that are hard to get past, yes, let’s talk. Or do you mean a state instead of Israel? In which case, no, definitely and firmly not.

Forty five per cent of the world’s Jews now live in Israel. Where else are they to go?

The murderous rampage of Hamas, the killing, the raping, the kidnapping, is so shocking, so sickening it seems almost frivolous to say that it was also ironic. The apologists for this action suggest that Israel’s security measures — its fence, its border posts, its searches — are so oppressive that they are part of what is to blame for what has happened. Yet these terrible acts show that the security measures were necessary.

For this invasion was not a protest march that got out of hand. It was not a complaint about living conditions. It was the latest war launched by Palestinians to demonstrate their unwillingness to share the land. And it cannot win. If the world wants peace in the Middle East, it must ensure that what Hamas has done is not rewarded, or compromised with, in any way. Only once the failure of such violence is obvious to them and to the Palestinian people will it ever stop.

(…)

Every year at Holocaust memorial day politicians arrive and say solemnly “never again”. Now is a test of whether they really mean it. Israel has to defend itself. Or where will we go?”

“Have you noticed that Israel is the only country in the world that gets blamed for being attacked?

And that there are people who loathe it so much that they are actually prepared to defend or excuse the deliberate mass murder of civilians, including old women and tiny children?

(…)

The Western prejudice against Israel is most easily detected in the BBC. The Corporation long ago abandoned its impartiality over many issues, most notably man-made global warming.

But it excuses its refusal to call the child-murderers of Hamas 'terrorists', on the grounds that its impartiality is so important.

I have a suggestion for the BBC. I would be quite happy if they called Hamas 'murderers' rather than terrorists.

This is a factual description which does not breach impartiality. But we all know they will not do it.

It is now 19 years since the BBC commissioned the Balen Report into claims that its coverage was biased against Israel.

This document has never been published, and the BBC has spent more than £300,000 of your money on court cases ensuring that it stays secret. So it is not hard to guess what it says, is it?

(…)

It is especially strong here because Britain in 1917 agreed to set up a 'National Home for the Jews' in what is now Israel. And almost immediately we wished we had not done so.

In 1939, we tried to wriggle out of our promise just when it mattered most. That year, when the homicidal Nazi hatred for Jews was already obvious to all, this country's government stopped almost all Jewish migration to Palestine.

This cowardly backtracking closed the only true escape route for those who would soon afterwards be slaughtered in Hitler's pogroms and death camps.

One of the few to oppose this weak, shameful and wrong action at the time was Winston Churchill, then out of power.

(…)

And let us not forget that hundreds of thousands of Jews were ruthlessly ejected from all parts of the Arab and Muslim world. They were mostly forced to leave behind everything they owned. This cruelty was a response to the creation of Israel.

(…)

But Israel is different. Why is it such a special case? These events took place about 75 years ago, in another age. In no case except in that of Israel does a special agency of the United Nations keep the children and grandchildren of those 1948 refugees in misnamed camps, under the supervision of UNWRA, founded in 1949 and now employing 30,000 people.

These places long ago ceased to be actual camps and are now often grim, cramped housing in which discontent and hatred are cultivated like evil plants by the fanatics of Hamas or of some other death cult.

You may well ask why the Arab world, so rich through oil, has made so little effort to integrate the refugees of 1948 and their descendants into their often-prosperous societies, as has been done in all the other cases of 1940s ethnic cleansing.

Is it possible that they prefer them to languish in these places of despair? There are shining exceptions to this stupid policy.

When I visited Gaza a few years ago I was shown excellent new homes which had been built there by the United Arab Emirates, to their immense credit.

It helped me to realise that Gaza, without its malice-filled zealots, could easily be a very pleasant and prosperous place.

But I expect the flats have since been reduced to dust and rubble by Israeli high explosive, or soon will be.

And here I should say that I think Israel's attack on Gaza is a mistake, mainly because it will probably not work, and because it will allow millions of people to start loathing Israel again. They cannot do this at the moment.

As long as the memory of Hamas killers striding into peaceful villages and slaughtering unarmed civilians and even babies still lingers in the public mind, Israel will have the support of millions and most of its opponents will keep their voices down.

And by the way, I do not support those friends of Israel now calling for the arrest and prosecution of those who defend Hamas.

I am very glad that these people have come out into the open and said the disgraceful things they have said.

By doing so, they have warned all civilised citizens that such opinions are truly held by an alarming number of people.

As long as they stop short of actual incitement, then the rules of free speech apply to them, and the rest of us, likewise, are free to tell them what we think of them.

So what can we do about it? Well, we can all ask ourselves what the real reason for Israel's special pariah status is.

Of course, Israel as a country has done and still does bad things. I have written about them often. But so, in truth, do most countries, especially when they are frequently at war.

But take some examples. This is a world which claims to despise appeasement, the giving away of actual territory in return for paper promises of peace.

Yet in the case of Israel, the USA, the EU and most Western public opinion ceaselessly urge appeasement. They call it 'Land for Peace'.

Israel gave up its major conquest in Sinai almost 50 years ago, under US pressure. It has little land left to spare.

At slightly more than 8,000 square miles it is the size of Wales – but not its shape.

At its narrowest point it is nine miles wide – a tank could drive across it in 18 minutes. At its widest point it is 70 miles broad. Everything is very close.

That is why the 'two-state solution', which every Western statesman says he is in favour of, is so absurd.

If Israel had conceded an Arab state on the West Bank of the Jordan, as everyone tells it to do, what guarantee would there be that such a state would not, like Gaza, fall under the control of murderers?

In which case nothing but a wire fence would protect Israel's cities, towns, villages and farms from the sort of blood-soaked, screaming incursion we saw a week ago.

Who, after these massacres and kidnaps, can now really think that a 'two-state solution' is a wise idea? Yet it will not go away, I promise you.

Behind all this folly – the failure to resettle the 1948 refugees and recognise the reality of Israel, the endless pressure on Israel to weaken its defence – lies a guilty secret.

The ancient disdain for Jews is still among us, often masquerading as 'anti-Zionism'.

In my own sad experience, drivelling anti-Jewish phobia can be found among too many Arabs in the region itself. You often find it in people who are otherwise charming, hospitable and educated.

That is why, deep down, Israel is the only nation in the world which gets blamed for being attacked, and is ceaselessly pressured to make itself safer by actually making itself more vulnerable.

Last week, Lord (Daniel) Finkelstein wrote movingly and wisely in The Times about how a Jewish state in the Middle East had become inevitable after the Nazi mass murders.

Most people, including many European Jews, had always opposed such a state.

But when the death camps were opened they reluctantly accepted that if the bad times came again, there had to be somewhere for Jews to go.

There is no real counter to this. It is unavoidably true. And he said this: 'If the world wants peace in the Middle East, it must ensure that what Hamas has done is not rewarded, or compromised with, in any way.

'Only once the failure of such violence is obvious to them and to the Palestinian people will it ever stop.' This is absolutely true.

Whatever happens in Gaza in the next few weeks, the only real hope of peace and harmony, and of better lives for the displaced everyone claims to care about, is Western resolve to stand by Israel.

Weakness and compromise will bring more horror.”

“Indeed, the biggest problems confronting a large ground operation in Gaza aren’t operational. They are strategic. If Israel limits its ground incursion, deterrence against future attacks won’t be established for very long at all. If it decides effectively to level the Strip and kill as many members of Hamas as possible, it might accomplish that goal, but it will then face very difficult choices in the aftermath. Were the IDF simply to withdraw after a maximal campaign, the last surviving member of the Qassam Brigades will, as it were, grab a bloody Hamas flag, wave it for the cameras, and declare victory. The terrible forces that caused the last attack will then reconstitute themselves, very likely even resurrecting the Hamas government. If the IDF remains, in some form of partial (or even full) reoccupation, massive and ongoing challenges will result. Intermediate options, where some third party like the United Nations is asked to backstop a non-Hamas government, are not especially attractive—witness the UN’s indefensible cooperation with Hizballah in Lebanon as Exhibit A for this point.

There is also the hard and terrible truth that, no matter the ultimate objectives of a ground incursion, it is unlikely that large numbers of living hostages will be freed in its course. Meanwhile, any operation will occur with the sword of Damocles—in the form of an ever-threatened, full-scale northern war—hanging over Israel’s head, with Jerusalem depending on the Biden administration’s willingness to deter Iran.

It is a truism that strategic decisions are often made between bad and worse options. But the choices facing Israel in Gaza seem particularly unattractive. Yet something must be done, and it must not be business as usual. Every person with even an iota of responsibility for 10/7 or for shielding its perpetrators afterwards needs the opportunity to investigate what the afterlife has to offer him. Israeli public opinion, not to say justice, will demand nothing less.

(…)

If Israel were to pursue a less predictable course of action, the question of managing the Biden administration will loom large. American assistance, depending on the targets, would potentially be necessary and in all cases helpful. Strikes on Iranian assets would almost certainly bring about war with Hizballah in the north. But barring some dramatic change in Lebanon or the collapse of the Islamic Republic, that war seems certain to come eventually. If Israel were to strike now, it could seize the initiative, and lean into its goals from the outset, rather than wait for the inevitable to occur on Tehran’s timetable. Moreover, when will the Israeli people be better prepared to face the terrible hardships of that war than right now? If Israel could significantly undermine the Iranian regime, lance the boil to its north, and subject Hamas to delayed but undiluted justice, the fundamental strategic logic of the moment could be upended. Israel’s reputation as a determiner of events, rather than their victim, could be restored.”

““I’m driving south to the Gaza corridor, the place Hamas invaded on Saturday,” Yonah Jeremy Bob says in our first phone conversation. “But it’s a straight drive, so let’s talk.” Mr. Bob is an expert on the Israeli shadow war with Iran, the subject of his new book, “Target Tehran,” and he covers the Israeli intelligence agencies and military for the Jerusalem Post. He’s busy tracking down answers to the questions every Israeli wants answered: How could this have happened? What’s the plan? Who will pay?

(…)

Saturday’s shock gave way to rage, “and then rage crystallized into a very steely determination,” Mr. Bob says. “It’s the thing Israel’s enemies never fully understand. They think of Israel as a weak Western state, where people care about their looks and money and all the things that will make them flee rather than fight.” Hamas often scoffs that “the Jews love life.” But that’s why they fight for it.

(…)

Israel has issued one of its largest military call-ups ever, 360,000 reservists. Its comprehensive bombing campaign and siege tactics are laying the groundwork for a counterinvasion to destroy Hamas. “They decided that they need to get rid of the people who are running Hamas, and most of their military force, and most of their weaponry.” Mr. Bob says. But as Aaron MacLean writes in Mosaic, “Were the IDF simply to withdraw after a maximal campaign, the last surviving member of the Qassam Brigades will, as it were, grab a bloody Hamas flag, wave it for the cameras, and declare victory.” Gaza would still be fertile soil for terrorists.

That why’s regime change is on the table, too. Israelis used to worry that it might cost 1,000 soldiers to topple Hamas, and that ISIS could fill the vacuum. But by letting Hamas reign, Mr. Bob says, “We’ve now lost 1,200 people,” and Hamas is no better than ISIS. “So nobody has a hesitancy.”

That doesn’t mean Israelis want to govern Gaza themselves. “I still think Israel feels that it would be more trouble, that more soldiers would die over a long period of time, and it would rather hand Gaza back to somebody else,” Mr. Bob says. But to whom? “The Palestinian Authority was routed there in the past. Why wouldn’t that happen again? If multinational forces in Lebanon and the Sinai have shown that they’re incapable of protecting Israeli interests, why would this time be any different?”

Israel could turn to a hybrid solution, with autonomy for the Palestinian Authority, helped by a multinational group, and the Israeli military in some way involved to prevent a Hamas comeback. “That is utter speculation on my part,” Mr. Bob says. “No matter how hard you push it, officials right now are not hinting what their plans are for afterward. I think it’s because they haven’t decided.”

Perhaps unsure how to win the peace, Israel is focusing on total victory in the field. “Hezbollah is the strategic threat,” Mr. Bob says, and a second front in the north would spell trouble. “Israel would win, but it would look different.”

He says Israeli intelligence believes Hezbollah could fire 6,000 to 8,000 rockets a day early in a conflict, several times Hamas’s capability. “If you’re shooting down 90% of 2,000 rockets versus 90% of 6,000 or 8,000, it makes a huge difference. And probably the intercept rate drops to 80% because of the volume.” No Israeli leader would welcome that conflict, Mr. Bob says, even if it could generate a more decisive victory over the Iranian proxy network.

(…)

Mr. Bob acknowledges that the situation is fluid, and new orders could always come down from Tehran. Ultimately, that’s the point. Israelis may need to think big right now. “Israel will beat Hamas, but there’s still going to be the larger problem of Iran,” a revolutionary theocratic regime devoted to Israel’s destruction.

The Obama and Biden administrations have assumed that the right combination of incentives can moderate Iran’s ambitions. Surely, given a choice between prosperity and hardship, between fellowship and enmity, Iran would do the reasonable thing. It can be hard for Americans, who also love life, to understand a regime that chooses multigenerational sacrifice to make its dream of annihilating Israel come true.

“Iran is aggressively pushing Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah—anybody it can—to fight Israel, to make trouble with Israel, to destroy Israel. It’s giving funding, logistics and training for that purpose,” Mr. Bob says. Even if “nobody has been willing to go on the record and say, ‘Iran gave the order on this day,’ everybody would say that Iran’s fingerprints are on the idea of it, which would happen at some point.”

(…)

Not only proxies will feel the pain. “The Mossad’s abilities within Iran are astounding,” Mr. Bob says, referring to the Israeli intelligence agency. He points to “multiple instances when Israel went into Iran, kidnapped top Iranian officials, interrogated them within Iran, put the videos out, and then left the country without anybody knowing.” Mr. Bob’s years of “working to penetrate to top Mossad sources, all of the chiefs, and a lot of other people” lead him to conclude: “If the Mossad wants to go after someone in Iran, it can.”

Asked what Israel needs from the U.S. now, Mr. Bob rattles off four answers. First, “give Israel bunker-buster bombs.” Second, “declare that the U.S. won’t pressure Israel to prematurely halt its counterinvasion,” even as civilian casualties inevitably follow. Third, “shoot down one Hezbollah or Hamas rocket to show that the U.S. is willing to lean into this, and the naval movements aren’t for show.” Fourth, “move up delivery of the KC-46 refueling planes.”

It’s a plan of action whose meaning would be clear to Tehran. The bunker buster is a “dream weapon” for any potential strike on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. Since Iran knows these bombs and KC-46 planes would “transform what Israel might be willing to risk,” he says, their transfer would make it think twice about ordering Hezbollah into the war. “Do I really want my proxy to do X, Y or Z, which could lead to an overreaction?” he imagines Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asking. “The spectrum of those ‘overreactions’ that Israel could offer would be much greater. And that could affect Iran’s calculations in every zone.”

One effect would be to deter a sprint to a nuclear breakout, which some fear Iran will try while Israel is distracted. Iran “could get to the 90% weaponized uranium enrichment level in either days or a week and a half,” Mr. Bob says.

(…)

Israelis know all too well, however, how fickle the world’s sympathies can be. Half the point of the state of Israel is to free the Jews from dependence on those sympathies. “There was shock when people saw the pictures,” Mr. Bob says, “but that lasts for only so long.” Israel’s assault on Gaza will lead to “new pictures on the Palestinian side” and moral equivocation from the West. That’s when Israel needs the U.S. to stand firm, because no one else will.

Mr. Falk says, “I truly hope, and I actually expect, that the civilized world will support us not only when we’re the victims, but also when we’re the victors here.” Victory might also save the prospects for a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia. “In this neighborhood, the strong survive,” Mr. Falk says. “The main reason that prior peace agreements were reached was because we’re strong.”

But if the peace plan goes by the boards, too bad. As Mr. Bob puts it, “This isn’t the Jew of the ghetto for 2,000 years. This is the modern Israeli army, which will do what it needs to do to defend the state.” Israeli society may be “richer and a little more spoiled now than it once was,” no longer the Jewish Sparta of the early days. “But underneath, there’s a determination that should not be underestimated. That’s what I’ve seen the past few days. You’re going to see more of that.””

#israel #gaza #palestine #hamas #jews #antisemitism #antizionism #holocaust #daniel finkelstein #finkelstein #hitchens #peter hitchens #iran #hezbollah #terrorism

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absolute-immunities · 4 years

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Innocent and Sweet

I’m thinking about Elizabeth Gold today.

Gold is the love interest in John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). She’s a minor character, but we know a few things about her. She is tall, ungainly, somewhere between plain and beautiful, and young, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three. And a Communist.

When people talk about Gold, they usually come back to the same few words. The Guardian calls her “innocent”; The Atlantic, “trusting”; The Spectator, “idealistic”. A Film Comment editor calls her “a sweet-natured librarian who comes to Communism out of youthful idealism”. That’s how the author remembers her, too, as an “idealistic Communist” and "an innocent woman librarian from London".

I think we should rethink that.

Elizabeth Gold joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1954 or 1955. By the time we meet her, she is a Branch Secretary, and relatively untroubled by a request to visit East Germany and meet her counterpart in the East German Communist Party.

Something always troubled me about this timeline. It meant that when Gold joined the Party soon after the 1953 East German uprising and remained a member after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. By then, the realities of Communism were apparent to everyone.

Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech of February 1956 -- printed in full in the New York Times and the Observer that June -- admitted what non-Communists had long known of Stalin’s crimes. It was different for Communists. It was different to hear it from the head of the Soviet Communist Party, the leader of world Communism, and Stalin’s old companion.

The British Communist Eric Hobsbawm wrote about its impact in his memoirs:

What disturbed the mass of their members was that the brutally ruthless denunciation of Stalin’s misdeeds came, not from ‘the bourgeois press’, whose stories, if read at all, could be rejected a priori as slanders and lies, but from Moscow itself. It was impossible not to take notice of it ... Even those who ‘had strong suspicions ... amounting to moral certainty for years before Khrushchev spoke’ were shocked at the sheer extent, hitherto not fully realized, of Stalin’s mass murders of communists. (The Khrushchev Report said nothing about the others.) And no thinking communist could escape asking himself or herself some serious questions.

The CPGB ignored the speech. The party membership found it harder to ignore. Dissenters rebuked the party’s “slavish adherence” to Stalinism, and its “past uncritical endorsement of all Soviet policies and views.” The Secret Speech had challenged their faith: “the exposure of the grave crimes and abuses in the USSR ... [has] shown that for the past 12 years we have made a political analysis on a false presentation of the facts.”

That was the first blow. The Soviet invasion of Hungary that October was the second. The Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution shocked the conscience of even the most committed Communists. “For Communists outside the Soviet empire,” Hobsbawm later wrote, “the spectacle of Soviet tanks advancing on a people’s government headed by Communist reformers was a lacerating experience, the climax of a crisis that, starting with Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, pierced the core of their faith and hope.”

Peter Fryer, the Daily Worker’s reporter in Hungary, was so appalled that he publicly criticized both the repression and the international Communist response. His Hungarian Tragedy, published that December, was about two tragedies: the tragedy within Hungary and the tragedy in British Communism. “It is the tragedy that we British Communists who visited Hungary did not admit, even to ourselves, the truth about what was taking place there, that we defended tyranny with all our heart and soul.”

Fryer wrote to redeem the British Communism, which had “betrayed Socialist principles and driven away some of its finest members by defending the indefensible.” He was expelled. The other dissenters were expelled. Hobsbawm stayed.

British Communism had always been a small world. There were about 30,000 Communists in the early 1950s, and most of them paid little attention to broader world. “My mother ‘wouldn’t have dreamt’ of having a close friend who was not a Communist,” as one old Communist put it. “My own friendships ... were exclusively with Communists or people I was trying to win over.”

The events of 1956 struck this small community with the force of an atom bomb. Hobsbawm remembered the year as a moment of trauma:

Even after practically half a century my throat contracts as I recall the almost intolerable tensions under which we lived month after month, the unending moments of decision about what to say and do on which our future lives seemed to depend, the friends now clinging together or facing one another bitterly as adversaries, the sense of lurching, unwillingly but irreversibly, down the scree towards the fatal rock-face. And this while all of us, except a handful of full-time Party workers, had to go on, as though nothing much had happened, with lives and jobs outside, which temporarily seemed unwanted distractions from the enormous thing that dominated our days and nights. God knows 1956 was a dramatic year in British politics, but in the memory of those who were then communists, everything else has faded. Of course we mobilized against Anthony Eden’s lying government in the Suez crisis together with a for once totally united Labour and Liberal left. But Suez did not keep us from sleeping. Probably the simplest way of putting it is that, for more than a year, British communists lived on the edge of the political equivalent of a collective nervous breakdown.

By 1958, the CPGB had lost a third of its members, a third of the staff of the Daily Worker, and most of the old Communist intellectuals of the 1930s and 1940s. The old Communist and his mother, whose only close friends had been Communists, left the party that year.

Elizabeth Gold stayed.

II.

Elizabeth Gold is Jewish. Gold has anxieties about German antisemitism -- worried that the antisemitic Germans had not been deposited entirely in the West -- but seems unaware of Communist antisemitism, which was pervasive in Communist Europe, and not only in Germany.

Stalin had always been an antisemite -- “In our Central Committee there are no Jews!” he boasted to a visiting dignitary in January 1948. “You are an anti-Semite, you too are an anti-Semite!” -- but Stalinist Russia had not always been officially antisemitic. Jews were useful to Stalin. Poles, Ukrainians and Germans might be nationalists, more loyal to their homelands than Soviet Russia. They might need to be removed or destroyed. They might need to be broken. But Jews had no homeland. They only had Russia.

That changed with the war. Stalin had embraced the Russian nation, bringing Soviet thinking in line with traditional Russian nationalism, with its deep antisemitic currents. That made Jews suspect. If the Soviet Union was rooted in the Russian people, it could not be rooted in the Jews.

In public, the Communists were as explicit as their doctrine allowed. The Soviet Union led anti-cosmopolitan campaigns, anti-Zionist campaigns, or anti-bourgeois nationalist campaigns. The message was the same. The Jews were the enemies of the Russian people.

In January 1949, the Soviet Union stepped up the campaign. Pravda began attacking “cosmopolitans without a fatherland,” “rootless cosmopolitans,” “persons without identity” and “passportless wanderers.” These intellectuals -- sometimes collectively referred to as “the Levins” -- simply did not understand the Russian people. “What notion could Gurvich have of the national character of Soviet Russian man?”

The Soviet Union ultimately murdered more than a few members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. After a secret trial in the summer of 1952, fourteen of fifteen defendants, all Jewish, were executed. The words of the investigating colonel, Vladimir Komarov, revealed Soviet thinking better than anything else: “Jews are low, dirty people, all Jews are lousy bastards, all opposition to the Party consists of Jews, Jews all over the Soviet Union are conducting an anti-Soviet whispering campaign. Jews want to annihilate all Russians.”

The Communist satellites purged their Jewish leaders too. Romania purged Ana Pauker, Czechoslovakia purged Rudolf Slánský and ten other Jewish leaders, the East Germans and Poles did the same. The Slánský trial was public. The Czcechoslovak prosecutors and witnesses did not mince words. Slánský was “the great hope of all the Jews in the Communist Party,” and “Jewish origin” or “Zionist origin” were marks of guilt. Eleven of the fourteen accused were sentenced to death and executed.

During the trial, the Prague Communist press announced that “the Judas Slánský” was betting on “these alien elements, this rabble with its shady past” to perpetrate his Zionist plot against the Czech people. No Czech could have done those crimes: “only cynical Zionists, without a fatherland ... clever cosmopolitans who have sold out to the dollar. They were guided in this criminal activity by Zionism, bourgeois Jewish nationalism, racial chauvinism.”

That was November 1952. The final Stalinist campaign came a few months later, announced in Pravda in January 1953. Three Jewish doctors were accused of murder, conspiring with Anglo-American bourgeoisie, and advancing the cause of Jewish nationalism. The rhetoric was not subtle. This was how TASS announced the Doctors’ Plot in January 1953:

Most of the participants in the terrorist group (M. S. Vovsi, B. B. Kogan, A. I. Feldman, A. M. Grinshtein, Ya. G. Etinger and others) were connected with the international Jewish bourgeois nationalist organisation, ‘Joint’, established by American intelligence for the alleged purpose of providing material aid to Jews in other countries. In actual fact this organisation, under the direction of American intelligence, conducts extensive espionage, terrorist and other subversive work in many countries, including the Soviet Union. The prisoner Vovsi told investigators that he had received orders ‘to wipe out the leading cadres of the USSR’ from the ‘Joint’ organisation in the USA, via a Moscow doctor, Shimelovich, and the well-known Jewish bourgeois nationalist, Mikhoels.

Stalin died in March 1953, before the trial. His successors dismissed the charges. In the Secret Speech, Khrushchev admitted that the Doctors’ Plot had “fabricated from beginning to end,” although he said nothing about Jews, Zionists, or cosmopolitans.

In May 1956, Khrushchev would defend the Soviet Union against charges of antisemitism, but he admitted that the Doctor’s Plot had been “given a Zionist, Jewish colouring.” But even that was not Stalin’s fault. “That was one of Beria’s machinations.”

None of this troubled Elizabeth Gold.

III.

We know a few things about Elizabeth Gold. She’s not a laborer. She doesn’t like organizing. “She hated that side of party work,” she says, “the loudspeakers at the factory gates, selling the Daily Worker at the street corner, going from door to door at the local elections.”

Gold prefers Peace Work. That made sense to her. “You could look at the kids in the street as you went by, at the mothers pushing their prams and the old people standing in doorways, and you could say, ‘I’m doing it for them.’ That really was fighting for peace.”

What was Peace Work? Perhaps the most impressive piece of Soviet cultural diplomacy in the early Cold War. The Peace Movement was Stalin’s baby, and became the leitmotif of his foreign policy. “All the real friends of peace ... the majority of the people in every country,” were friends of the Soviet Union, his Foreign Secretary had said in November 1947.

The Peace Movement itself was launched at an August 1948 “World Congress of Intellectuals” in Wroclaw, Poland. There were several “Peace Conferences” after that, in Paris, Prague, and New York. The Peace Movement itself was led by non-Communist figureheads, but controlled by Communists at the committee level and coordinated with the Cominform. Few critics of Soviet foreign policy were invited, and those that criticized the Soviet Union were shouted down.

The Movement gathered millions of signatures in Western Europe and tens of millions more in Eastern Europe, while the Movement itself pressed home the message that the Soviet Union was for peace, while the United States and its allies were for war. It was powerful message, and one to which Western Europeans were sympathetic.

The demands of the Peace Congresses were the demands of Soviet foreign policy: In 1950, they demanded an immediate end to the war in Korea, including a withdrawal of all foreign troops; a complete ban on atomic, bacteriological and chemical welfare; a peace treaty with a united, demilitarized Germany; and for Communist China to take the Chinese seat at the United Nations.

But those demands were as flexible as Soviet foreign policy. In 1953, after the Soviets tested their first thermonuclear device, the old demand for the “outlawing of atomic weapons as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of people” was suspended. The Peace Congresses followed the party line.

That was the work Elizabeth Gold preferred to do.

IV.

How should we understand Elizabeth Gold? Was she an innocent? Was she an idealist? Maybe that’s how she and her lovers thought of her. I don’t think we should think of her that way.

What does she believe in? "History,” she said. She did not like party work, but she liked talking about that. "It was easy when there were a dozen or so together at a Branch meeting,” she said, to “talk of the inevitability of history.”

What does she mean by history? That “peace and freedom and equality,” defined and proven by the Party, existed outside people. They were facts. They were “demonstrated in history.” And they were inevitable: “individuals must bow to it, be crushed by it if necessary.”

That was what made her a Communist. That was why she defended Soviet foreign policy to mothers pushing their strollers and old people standing in doorways, because she was a member of the Communist Party, and “the Party was the vanguard of history.”

It made it possible to ignore Stalinist crimes and the Hungarian Revolution, and their Communist victims. It made it possible to ignore Communist antisemitism until she saw it in person. (“Jews are all the same,” her guard tells her in East Germany. “We don’t need their kind here.”) History made it possible to ignore everything else.

Here’s how we should understand Elizabeth Gold: She believed in history, the force to which individuals must bow or be crushed. She just wanted to be on the side doing the crushing.

Sources: John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Victor Gollancz, 1963); idem., “The Spy Who Liked Me,” New Yorker, April 8, 2013; Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times (Allen Lane, 2002); Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm (Oxford UP, 2019); Frances Stonor Saunders, “Stuck on the Flypaper,” London Review of Books, April 9, 2015; Peter Fryer, Hungarian Tragedy (Dennis Dobson, 1956); James Eaden and David Renton, The Communist Party of Great Britain since 1920 (Palgrave, 2002); Raphael Samuel, The Lost World of British Communism (Verso, 2017 [2006]); Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, trans. Michael B. Petrovich (Harcourt Brace, 1962); Tony Judt, Postwar (Penguin, 2005); Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Government and the Jews, 1948-1967 (Cambridge, 1984); idem., The Jews of the Soviet Union (Cambridge, 1988); Nikita S. Khrushchev, The Crimes of the Stalin Era (New Leader, 1956); Peter Calvocoressi, Survey of International Affairs, 1949-1950 (Oxford UP, 1953); Guenter Lewy, The Cause That Failed (Oxford UP, 1990).

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chicago-geniza · 3 years

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writing my history final with a vestibular migraine, comparing lucy dawidowicz’s “glaring omission” in the golden tradition--i.e. her implication that russian jewry ceased to exist after the 1917 revolution because she hates communism lol--& the book came out in ‘67--with memoir by russian zionist intelligentsia dude about shimon dimenstein (sp?) that downplayed or denied his actual bolshevism & recounted telling him about a pogrom in kursk, wrote “his *jewish* heart was touched; the man who stood before us was not a communist, not a bolshevik, but a *jew*”; they imagined he harbored “secret feelings of sympathy” for the jewish nationalist cause & projected those onto him in retrospect when he didn’t; compare THAT to american jews making similar projections onto incoming soviet jewish refugees--also the bifurcation of identity, that one’s “jewish heart” can be stirred specifically in response to antisemitic violence (zionist POV, ‘never again’ cultural production complex POV--that bearing witness to such violence or even hearing about it reinforces & strengthens one’s *jewish* identity, & inspires one to either ‘defend the homeland / die for the homeland’ a la der kleyner makabi or “rescue” other jews from antisemitic persecution elsewhere, which in a cold war context often becomes...distorted into another form of anti-communism, and you get the discursive feedback where “anti-zionism = antisemitism” because, IN PART, IRONICALLY, ostbloc countries WERE using “zionism” as a catch-all watchword to give jews a hard time for absolutely no reason)

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avanneman · 5 years

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Ilhan Omar: The strange case of the little girl in the headscarf who noticed that the emperor has no clothes

Oh, Ilhan Omar, what have you done? Yes, speaking the truth in the halls of Congress has always been hazardous to your health, but when little Ilhan, newly elected representative for the fifth district of Minnesota (basically Minneapolis and environs), remarked that “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country” (meaning, of course, Israel), the walls of hypocrisy in DC really began to shake and sway.

From my perspective, it’s perfectly okay to “to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” as long as you’re willing to admit that that’s what you’re doing.1 But U.S. Likudists like Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin—both of whom I vehemently agree with on some issues—insist that, when it comes to Israel, simply making the charge of “dual loyalty”, as it’s usually framed, is in itself anti-Semitism in its purest and most vicious form. Old-fashioned liberal Jonathan Chait, whom I very often praise, writes furiously that “Ilhan Omar’s smearing of pro-Israel activism as a form of dual loyalty” is evidence that anti-Semitism may rip the Democratic Party apart as it has done to the Labour Party in Great Britain.

But nothing is more obvious that many champions of Israel, both Jewish and non-Jewish (e.g., evangelical Christians), insist that the U.S. has a moral duty to support Israel’s interests as defined by Israel, regardless of this policy’s effects on U.S. interests. On the death of Charles Krauthammer, I wrote a piece remarking on his endless efforts to sabotage and wreck the Democratic Party, for the single sin of less than absolute fealty to Israel—for Charlie, like so many Jewish neocons, was quite “liberal” on most social issues and “really” belonged in the Democratic Party.

Chait’s attempt to make the mere charge of dual loyalty a thoughtcrime, and to argue that any criticism of “pro-Israel activism” equates to a charge of dual loyalty, thus making any criticism of U.S. policy towards Israel a thoughtcrime. reflects the larger agenda of the Israeli lobby to take any rational consideration of the relationship between U.S. and Israeli interests off the table. President Eisenhower’s first secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, that great Presbyterian, intoned that “Israel is a millstone around our necks,” a piece of realpolitik that no politician would dare utter today, but much closer to the truth than the usual proclamations regarding the indissoluble ties that bind our two nations together. We kowtow to the Saudis, who are certainly more obnoxious than the Israelis, but who still hold the power to set the world price for oil. Israel, on the other hand, can do us no such favors, “defending” us against countries who hate us solely because we are allied with Israel. Every recent secretary of state, upon retiring, writes a memoir in which she complains about what a pain in the ass the Israelis were, how they never give and always take. But such statements are never made in office—not, at least, since Secretary of State James Baker, serving under George H. W. Bush, uttered the immortal line “Fuck the Jews. They never vote for us anyway.”

The furor over Omar’s comments, nicely dissected/discussed by the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman, “The dishonest smearing of Ilhan Omar” and New York’s Eric Levitz, “Ilhan Omar Has a Less Bigoted Position on Israel Than Almost All of Her Colleagues”, coincides with another Israeli-related furor, the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” movement, directed against Israel, and the anti-B.D.S. movement, pursued by pro-Israeli groups through state and federal legislation, as well as pressure on universities and colleges. I understand that Omar supports B.D.S., which is not an encouraging sign.

I don’t see the point of singling out Israel for punishment when the U.S. (for example) is surely just as wicked, if not more so. The B.D.S. movement, though not entirely anti-Semitic (it seems), is largely so, and appeals to (some) academic types, particularly in the, uh, “liberal” arts,2 who are discovering that, well, nobody gives a damn about what they have to say any more, so they want to start making a racket about something. What (I suspect) mostly worries pro-Israeli groups is that B.D.S. appeals to frustrated academics desperate to prove that they “care”, particularly if they can do so in a way that offends conventional opinion, but, more importantly, in the arguments that will be/are ensuing over B.D.S., publicity will be given to the many less than savory activities that Israel engages in. Under Benjamin Netanyahu and his merry band of Likudists, Israel has slid steadily towards a deeply conservative, anti-secular culture that is bound to offend any woke folk and could significantly tarnish the Israel brand. And so we see a collision between two groups who both want to significantly stifle free speech. Charming!

Afterwords For decades, Israel’s most fervent supporters—The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in particular—took it for granted that no one in Washington would dare defy them. Now they are attempting to claw back by force what they lost through vanity. The Washington Post’s David Von Drehle gives a rundown on the many constitutional issues raised by anti-B.D.S. legislation. The New York Times Catie Edmondson explains Republican strategy in crafting pro anti-B.D.S. legislation in Congress as a device to damage Democrats. The American Conservative’s Kelley Beaucar Vlahos provides more background. I have, on numerous occasions, accused right-wing supporters of Israel (basically, the entire Republican Party3) of trying to promote international tensions around the globe in order to convince the American people that we are in a permanent state of international crisis and need every ally we can get (i.e., Israel), while striving to suppress awareness of this fact.

UPDATE The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, in his column today, confirms Omar's unfortunate (unfortunate and amusingly nuanced) embrace of "B.D.S." and offers copious detail on AIPAC's sins. I very largely agree with what Friedman has to say, except for his notion (Friedman is, of course, Jewish) that Israel's existence is justified on the basis of “the right of the Jewish people to build a nation-state in their ancient homeland,” a “right” that I suspect Mr. Friedman does not extend to anyone else—the Algonquins, for example.

Israel is the solution to a Western problem (anti-Semitism) imposed on a non-Western people, a very clumsy one, excusable only on the grounds that no other feasible solution was available. It would have been much better if the U.S. had just accepted all the remaining European Jews into the U.S. after World War II, but unfortunately that was politically impossible. The Zionist movement created by Theodore Herzl that led to the creation of Israel was premised on the need for safety, not a return to the “ancient homeland”—Herzl, a thoroughly secular Jew, did not propose a return to Israel and the "reclaiming" of Jerusalem. European Jews, after all, had thousands of years to go back to their “ancient homeland” and never made the trip. It was only the rampant anti-Semitism of 20th century Europe, British control of the Middle East following World War I, Jewish political influence in Great Britain (and, ultimately, the U.S.), and, finally, the early triumphs of the Zionists in creating Israel in the years following World War II that led to the creation of the myth to which Mr. Friedman now subscribes.

For many years, the Irish Republican Army, a blatantly terrorist group, was openly financed and covertly equipped with arms by supporters in the U.S. in order to murder the soldiers and citizens of Great Britain, our most important ally. This was dual loyalty with a vengeance. Disgracefully, Democrats and Republicans alike looked the other way while a brutal terrorist group operated openly in the U.S. This shameful episode in our history has never given the attention it deserves. We seem to do this a lot. ↩︎

Yes, I am generalizing wildly. So sue me! ↩︎

In a recent piece loudly not lamenting the demise of Bill Kristol’s mouthpiece the Weekly Standard, I said the following: This is not to say that the neocons' pièce de résistance, the invasion of Iraq, was a “Jewish plot” as is absurdly alleged in some places. During the Clinton Administration, the entire Republican Party had become obsessed with taking out Saddam, aka “The Great Satan”, largely because they had nothing better to do. “We need a war,” said Lynne Cheyney famously. The Bush Administration had Saddam in their sights from the get-go, and the unholy trio who made it all happen were the seriously un-Jewish George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Bill Kristol was only the cheerleader—though he did wave his pom-poms with a passion. ↩︎

#Ilhan Omar #Israel #AIPAC #Jonathan Chait #BDS

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spicynbachili1 · 6 years

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More than a century on: The Balfour Declaration explained | Israel

The Balfour Declaration, which resulted in a big upheaval within the lives of Palestinians, was issued on November 2, 1917.

The declaration turned the Zionist purpose of creating a Jewish state in Palestine right into a actuality when Britain publicly pledged to set up “a nationwide dwelling for the Jewish individuals” there.

The pledge is mostly considered as one of many essential catalysts of the Nakba – the ethnic cleaning of Palestine in 1948 – and the battle that ensued with the Zionist state of Israel.

It’s considered some of the controversial and contested paperwork within the fashionable historical past of the Arab world and has puzzled historians for many years.

What’s the Balfour Declaration?

The Balfour Declaration (“Balfour’s promise” in Arabic) was a public pledge by Britain in 1917 declaring its purpose to determine “a nationwide dwelling for the Jewish individuals” in Palestine.

The assertion got here within the type of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish neighborhood.

It was made throughout World Conflict I (1914-1918) and was included within the phrases of the British Mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

The so-called mandate system, arrange by the Allied powers, was a thinly veiled type of colonialism and occupation.

The system transferred rule from the territories that had been beforehand managed by the powers defeated within the battle – Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria – to the victors.

The declared purpose of the mandate system was to permit the winners of the battle to manage the newly rising states till they might turn into impartial.

The case of Palestine, nonetheless, was distinctive. Not like the remainder of the post-war mandates, the principle purpose of the British Mandate there was to create the circumstances for the institution of a Jewish “nationwide dwelling” – the place Jews constituted lower than 10 % of the inhabitants on the time.

Upon the beginning of the mandate, the British started to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine. Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish inhabitants rose from 9 % to almost 27 % of the overall inhabitants.

Although the Balfour Declaration included the caveat that “nothing shall be accomplished which can prejudice the civil and non secular rights of present non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, the British mandate was arrange in a strategy to equip Jews with the instruments to determine self-rule, on the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.

Why was it controversial?

The doc was controversial for a number of causes.

Firstly, it was, within the phrases of the late Palestinian-American tutorial Edward Stated, “made by a European energy … a few non-European territory … in a flat disregard of each the presence and needs of the native majority resident in that territory”.

In essence, the Balfour Declaration promised Jews a land the place the natives made up greater than 90 % of the inhabitants.

Secondly, the declaration was one in all three conflicting wartime guarantees made by the British.

When it was launched, Britain had already promised the Arabs independence from the Ottoman Empire within the 1915 Hussein-McMahon correspondence.

The British additionally promised the French, in a separate treaty referred to as 1916 Sykes-Picot settlement, that almost all of Palestine could be beneath worldwide administration, whereas the remainder of the area could be break up between the 2 colonial powers after the battle.

The declaration, nonetheless, meant that Palestine would come beneath British occupation and that the Palestinian Arabs who lived there wouldn’t achieve independence.

Lastly, the declaration launched a notion that was reportedly unprecedented in worldwide legislation – that of a “nationwide dwelling”.

The usage of the obscure time period “nationwide dwelling” for the Jewish individuals, versus “state”, left the which means open to interpretation.

Earlier drafts of the doc used the phrase “the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish State”, however that was later modified.

In a gathering with Zionist chief Chaim Weizmann in 1922, nonetheless, Arthur Balfour and then-Prime Minister David Lloyd George reportedly mentioned the Balfour Declaration “at all times meant an eventual Jewish state”.

Why was it issued?

The query of why the Balfour Declaration was issued has been a topic of debate for many years, with historians utilizing totally different sources to recommend varied explanations.

Whereas some argue that many within the British authorities on the time had been Zionists themselves, others say the declaration was issued out of an anti-Semitic reasoning, that giving Palestine to the Jews could be an answer to the “Jewish downside”.

In mainstream academia, nonetheless, there are a set of causes over which there’s a normal consensus:

Management over Palestine was a strategic imperial curiosity to maintain Egypt and the Suez Canal inside Britain’s sphere of affect

Britain needed to facet with the Zionists to rally assist amongst Jews in america and Russia, hoping they might encourage their governments to remain within the battle till victory

Intense Zionist lobbying and powerful connections between the Zionist neighborhood in Britain and the British authorities; a number of the officers within the authorities had been Zionists themselves

Jews had been being persecuted in Europe and the British authorities was sympathetic to their struggling

How was it obtained by Palestinians and Arabs?

In 1919, then-US President Woodrow Wilson appointed a fee to look into public opinion on the obligatory system in Syria and Palestine.

The investigation was referred to as the King-Crane fee. It discovered that almost all of Palestinians expressed a powerful opposition to Zionism, main the conductors of the fee to advise a modification of the mandate’s purpose.

The late Awni Abd al-Hadi, a Palestinian political determine and nationalist, condemned the Balfour Declaration in his memoirs, saying it was made by an English foreigner who had no declare to Palestine, to a overseas Jew who had no proper to it.

In 1920, the Third Palestinian Congress in Haifa decried the British authorities’s plans to assist the Zionist mission and rejected the declaration as a violation of worldwide legislation and of the rights of the indigenous inhabitants.

Nevertheless, the opposite necessary supply for perception into Palestinian opinion on the declaration – the press – was closed down by the Ottomans at first of the battle in 1914 and solely started to reappear in 1919, however beneath British navy censorship.

In November 1919, when the al-Istiqlal al-Arabi (Arab independence) newspaper, primarily based in Damascus, was reopened, one article mentioned in response to a public speech by Herbert Samuel, a Jewish cupboard minister, in London on the second anniversary of the Balfour Declaration: “Our nation is Arab, Palestine is Arab, and Palestine should stay Arab.”

Even previous to the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate, pan-Arab newspapers warned in opposition to the motives of the Zionist motion and its potential outcomes in displacing Palestinians from their land.

Khalil Sakakini, a Jerusalemite author and trainer, described Palestine within the instant aftermath of the battle as follows: “A nation which has lengthy been within the depths of sleep solely awakes whether it is rudely shaken by occasions, and solely arises little by little … This was the state of affairs of Palestine, which for a lot of centuries has been within the deepest sleep, till it was shaken by the good battle, shocked by the Zionist motion, and violated by the unlawful coverage [of the British], and it awoke, little by little.”

Elevated Jewish immigration beneath the mandate created tensions and violence between the Palestinian Arabs and the European Jews. One of many first well-liked responses to British actions was the Nebi Musa revolt in 1920 that led to the killing of 4 Palestinian Arabs and 5 immigrant Jews.

Who else was behind it?

Whereas Britain is mostly held chargeable for the Balfour Declaration, you will need to be aware that the assertion wouldn’t have been made with out prior approval from the opposite Allied powers throughout World Conflict I.

In a Conflict Cupboard assembly in September 1917, British ministers determined that “the views of President Wilson ought to be obtained earlier than any declaration was made”. Certainly, in keeping with the cupboard’s minutes on October four, the ministers recalled Arthur Balfour confirming that Wilson was “extraordinarily beneficial to the motion”.

France was additionally concerned and introduced its assist previous to the issuing of the Balfour Declaration.

A Could 1917 letter from Jules Cambon, a French diplomat, to Nahum Sokolow, a Polish Zionist, expressed the sympathetic views of the French authorities in direction of “Jewish colonisation in Palestine”.

“[I]t could be a deed of justice and of reparation to help, by the safety of the Allied Powers, within the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the individuals of Israel had been exiled so many centuries in the past,” said the letter, which was seen as a precursor to the Balfour Declaration.

What influence did it have on Palestinians?

The Balfour Declaration is broadly seen because the precursor to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba when Zionist armed teams, who had been educated by the British, forcibly expelled greater than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.

Regardless of some opposition throughout the Conflict Cupboard predicting that such an end result was possible, the British authorities nonetheless selected to subject the declaration.

Whereas it’s troublesome to indicate that the developments in Palestine as we speak may be traced again to the Balfour Declaration, there isn’t any doubt that the British Mandate created the circumstances for the Jewish minority to realize superiority in Palestine and construct a state for themselves on the expense of the Palestinian Arabs.

When the British determined to terminate their mandate in 1947 and switch the query of Palestine to the United Nations, the Jews already had a military that was fashioned out of the armed paramilitary teams educated and created to battle facet by facet with the British in World Conflict II.

Extra importantly, the British allowed the Jews to determine self-governing establishments, such because the Jewish Company, to organize themselves for a state when it got here to it, whereas the Palestinians had been forbidden from doing so – paving the best way for the 1948 ethnic cleaning of Palestine.

Notice: This text was printed in 2017 marking the centennial anniversary and has been up to date accordingly

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from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/more-than-a-century-on-the-balfour-declaration-explained-israel/

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guvermint · 6 years

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How Jews Killed Jews In Order To Create The State Of Israel

....

“The new bitterness, which did not previously exist, developed between Jews and Arabs. British support for the Zionists and the British “tutelage” of Iraq was deeply resented by the Iraqi Arabs, among whom grew an anti-Zionist backlash. The British occupied Basra in Iraq on April 12, 1941. They alleged that the local Jews pledged allegiance to them and provoked riots that served as a pretext for intervention and looting by the British army, which occupied Bagdad on May 30, 1941. False rumor was spread that Jews from Palestine were fighting alongside the British against the Iraqi’s near the town of Felujah. By June 2, looting spread to the Jewish quarter in Bagdad damaging 1300 stores and 1000 homes. The British Indian Gurkha units killed some 500 Jews in the streets of Bagdad as a part of the British pacification and occupation of Iraq. Then the Zionists underground was set up in Iraq. The Zionist conquests in Palestine and massacres of Arabs, such as in the village of Deir Yassin, strengthened the anti-British movement in Iraq. In January 1948 riots broke out in Iraq against the British domination. When Israel declared its independence the Iraqis closed the oil pipeline connected to the refinery in Haifa. As a Zionist, Naeim Giladi was imprisoned in Abu-Gharib prison later used for torturing the Iraki prisoners by the CIA fifty years later as described in “One Woman's Army by: The Commanding General of the Abu-Gharib Prison ... - Powell's Books Oct 12, 2005 – The “One Woman's Army” by Janis Karpinski: In an outspoken memoir by Brigade General Janis Karpinski, who received a Bronze Star for service in the Gulf War. The author Naeim Giladi escaped from Abu-Gharib in September 1949. Six month later on March 19, 1950, a bomb exploded in the American Cultural Center and Library frequented by Jews in Bagdad. On April 8, 1950 a bomb was thrown at the Jews into El-Dar El-Bida Café, where Jews were celebrating the Passover and four of them were injured. Leaflets were distributed calling on Jews to leave Iraq immediately. Very many Jews who had no property jammed emigration offices to renounce their citizenship and to apply for permission to leave for Israel.”

#palestine #jews #nazis #stalin #soviet #war #pogrom

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eretzyisrael · 1 year

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British magazine legitimises ‘ Baghdad Zionist bomb plot’ trope

The publication of a memoir by the emeritus Oxford professor Avi Shlaim recycles the tired old trope that ‘Zionist agents’ set off bombs to force the Jews of Iraq to move to Israel. The book has already received gushing reviews in the British press, such as one by Justin Marozzi in The Spectator which gives unwarranted credence to this conspiracy theory promoted by Shlaim, a man with a huge chip on his shoulder. David Collier is first off the starting block to respond in his blog. Expect further rebuttals to come. (With thanks: Michelle)

Justin Marozzi

Marozzi writes:

‘At the heart of this riveting and profoundly controversial book is Shlaim’s investigation into the Baghdad bombings against Jewish targets in 1950 and 1951. Between those years around 110,000 Jews of a population of approximately 135,000 emigrated from Iraq to Israel. Although Israel has consistently denied any involvement in these attacks, suspicion has hung over the clandestine activities of Zionist agents tasked with persuading the Jewish community to flee Iraq and settle in Israel. Shlaim’s bombshell is to uncover what he terms ‘undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks’, which helped terminate the millennial presence of Jews in Babylon. It is quite a charge – and will always be hotly disputed.’

Collier responds:

‘The Jews were persecuted, dispossessed, and forced out of Iraq. Most turned up as penniless refugees in Israel. This is fact, not opinion – and there is overwhelming evidence to prove that this is true. Yet Spectator Magazine has just published an article that gives legitimacy to a disgraceful antisemitic conspiracy theory – one which claims that it was the result of a Zionist plot.

The title of the article by Justin Marozzi is ‘the shocking truth behind the Baghdad bombings of 1950 and 1951‘ (now amended, presumably after complaints, to ‘the shocking claim’- ed). It is a review of a book by the anti-Zionist writer Avi Shlaim called ‘Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew‘.

Avi Shlaim

The review is gushing in clear admiration. Marozzi calls the book ‘beautifully written‘ and says it ‘carefully blends the personal with the political‘. To reinforce the narrative the journalist calls Shlaim a ‘powerful and humane voice‘. Marozzi also focuses on a key claim that Shlaim has long pushed – that a series of bombings against Jewish targets which took place in Baghdad in 1950 and 1951, were set by ‘Zionist agents‘ in order to ‘force them to flee Iraq‘.

The article also pushes Shlaim’s other anti-Zionist lies, such as the idea that the Jews in Arab lands were ‘compatriots’ of their Muslim overlords – and it was Zionism (rather than rising Arab antisemitism and religious nationalisms) which dealt their position a ‘mortal blow‘.

(editor’s note: One wonders what dealt all the other suffering minorities in the Middle East – the Christians, the Kurds, the Yazidis, Assyrians, Armenians, Bahrani, Baloch, Coptic Christians, Druze, etc., their own mortal blow, if these cannot be blamed on ‘Zionist agents’?)

Marozzi even writes that it is difficult to mount a credible argument against some of Shlaim’s ‘conclusions’. Convincing stuff!

Read blogpost in full

More about Avi Shlaim

The post British magazine legitimises ‘ Baghdad Zionist bomb plot’ trope appeared first on Point of No Return.

#Media bias

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hadarmarkin · 7 years

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Constantine – As told to me by my Grandma

One of my favorite books, Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino portrays a surrealistic journey through imaginary magical cities. Despite its actual existence, I have always imagined Constantine, Algeria as one of the cities portrayed in Calvino’s book. Constantine’s ancient history and its dramatic scenery of mountains and bridges certainly justify its legendary appeal. However, my connection to Constanine goes deeper than that as it is the hometown of my grandparents. And even though chances of visiting are slim, Constantine is alive in my imagination through the stories told to me from early childhood and through the flavors and aromas of the dishes prepared in my grandma’s kitchen, such as Algerian couscous (see recipe below).

(Above: A city view of Constantine)

Despite these vivid memories, the story of the Constantine Jewry and the Algerian community in general, one of the largest Sephardic communities, is widely unfamiliar. Growing up in Israel, being of an Algerian ancestry was somewhat exotic. In a country that thrives on stereotypes of different Jewish ethnic groups, there are no jokes about Algerian Jews, simply because they are not widely represented in society. Given various reasons, primarily the weak Zionist infrastructure in Algeria during the first half of the twentieth century and the strong Francophile sentiments, most of Algerian Jews live in France. My family first immigrated to France and then to Israel the 1970’s. A smaller percentage immigrated to French Canada and to the United States and finally Israel.

But even in France, where most of them reside, Algerian Jews go practically unnoticed and often confused with their regional neighbors, Tunisian or Moroccan Jews. Benjamin Stora, a leading historian in France and a native of Constantine, refers to this phenomenon in his semi family memoire-semi historical book, Les Trois Exils. Juifs d'Algérie- The Three Exiles of Algerian Jewry (from French H.M.):

“The image of Sephardi Jews in France is normally associated with the Tunisian Jews in the movie "Truthfully, I am not lying” marching on the shores of Deauville or bustling around the Santier quarter. These are clichés, of course, but they fit the image of (Jewish) people from Tunisia or Morocco ... But where, are the Jews of Algeria? Their "invisibility" in the French society is striking. It is only at time of death that we learn that a certain personality was born there, as it was recently the case with (philosopher) Jacques Derida” (Stora, 9).

Stora argues that the “invisibility” and in some cases the hiding of the Algerian past of well-known figures (including, Nobel price winners, Olympic champions, authors, philosophes, film producers and fashion designers) stems from deep assimilation of Algerian Jews in French society. In fact, it seems that most Algerian Jews, including members of my family, identify themselves simply as French Jews. In order to explain this phenomenon, Stora unfolds his historical thesis, titled like his book, the three exiles or the three major shifts, which gradually pushed Algerian Jews to blend in French culture.

The First Exile, the depart from Jewish tradition, happened in 1871 (approximately 40 years after Algeria was annexed to France) when Algerian Jews were granted French citizenship. The collective naturalization, also known as the Crémieux Decree, opened the door for Algerian Jews to integrate in the French society, and as a result drastically changed the face of the community. Eagerly, Jews fostered French as their main language instead of Judeo-Arabic and Ladino, enrolled their children in French public school, acquired jobs in the French colonial administration, joined the French army, and participated in the national and municipal elections. The exposure to western ideas and way of life gradually diminished the supremacy of traditional rabbinical authorities. The secularization was encouraged by the French state, which imported “modern” rabbis from mainland France to Algeria, and enforced a pledge of allegiance to France in religious institutes. Within this framework, Constantine was the exception. The city, which was known in the pre-French era as “Little Jerusalem” because of its many Talmudic scholars, remained rather respectful to Jewish tradition. Yet, Constantine was not entirely exempted from the general trends, and according local records, eating shellfish post prayer time with the rabbi was a not a rare sight.

(Above: A photo from a French public school in Constantine. My mother’s cousin, Annie, is in the first row, first on the right).

While the mass naturalization presented Jews with great opportunities, it also sparked strong anti-Semitic sentiments among the European settlers in Algeria, who called for the abrogation of Cremièux Decree. The animosity against the Jews was nourished from Old Catholic anti-Jewish myths and later fueled by the racial ideologies spread in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Under this uncomfortable climate, Jews did their best to prove their absolute devotion to France and its ideals. However, they were not successful, as in some cases, the colonial propaganda, spurred hostility between Jews and Muslims. The pogrom in Constantine (August 3-5, 1934) was the most infamous example for that. During three days 23 Jews were murdered by their Muslim neighbors as French law enforcement officers did nothing to stop the violence. In age 93, my grandma still recalls the state of fear while hiding from the Muslim rioters.

The bloodshed in Constantine was a sad prelude to the Second Exile: the bitter rejection from the Patrie or the denial of their French nationality under the sovereign of the pro-Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II. In 1940, Marshal Philippe Pétain, the former World War I hero, who was appointed by the Germans to rule the southern part of France and its colonies overseas, pleased both the Germans and the racist settlers by immediately abolishing the Crémieux Decree, and promulgating a set of anti-Jewish laws, aiming to remove the Jews from positions of power. One of the most traumatic measures was the banishment of Jewish students from the French public schools and universities. My Grandma was one of those students summoned to the principle’s office. When asked if she was Jewish, she proudly shares how instead of feeling ashamed, she lifted her head up and replied “yes”.

(Above: My grandma in Constantine)

(Above: My grandma in constantine, in the second row, wearing a white outfit)

Beyond the legal restrictions, the loss of their French citizenship was mentally painful. Algerian Jews could not grasp how their beloved France, which they served loyally, turned its back to them. One of the responses to the circumstances was the foundation of the French resistance group, which consisted mostly of Jewish members. Fearing a direct German intervention, many young Jews chose to take an active stance and clandestinely assist the Allies’ attempt to establish a new front in North Africa by landing on the shores of Algeria. On November 8, 1942, after months of preparations, the resistance staged a Coup-d'etat, and took over the capital Algiers by neutralizing the police headquarter, several army camps and the local radio station. The successful execution of their plan, assured the smooth landing of the Allies, and in the longer run paved the way for the Allies’ victory in the North African campaign in World War II. Israeli researcher, Gita Amipaz Silber, who studied the resistance closely, argued the members were motivated by their “Jewish pride”. Nonetheless, testimonials of former members, backed by other academic works, show that they operated as French patriots striving to bring France back to its original pre-Vichy values.

The restoration of their civil rights and the fall of the Vichy regime did not end the tragic chapter in the history of Algerian Jews. The postwar era and particularly the emergence of the Algerian National Movement, created an uncomfortable environment for the Algerian Jewry. The hierarchy between Jews and Muslims created by French colonialism, forever tarnished the relationship and created a rupture that is still present in France today (as demonstrated in Maud Mandel’s excellent book, Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict). Therefore, the Third Exile was the physical exodus of Algerian Jews from their native birthplace to their aspired homeland, France. Indeed, the immigration experience was relativity easy as many Jews were able to retain their old positions in French administration (as did my grandfather), and there were no language barriers. Yet, many emigrants kept longing for their original home across the Mediterranean.

Perhaps the one, who captures best this spirit of yarning, is Singer Enrico Macias, an old neighbor of my Grandma in Constantine (so she claims). Macias’ lyrics discuss both the experience of immigration, the actual boarding on the boat and the looking back at the white rocks; alongside the amazement with the new land, and primarily its elegant capital, Paris. In addition, Macias is a virtuoso guitar player, and his melodies inspired by Andalusian and Arabic music traditions, add a beautiful oriental twist to his French singing. One of my favorite songs, Non je n'ai pas oublié- No, I haven’t forgotten (click the hyperlink for English lyrics and video) is an example of the tension between past and present. He is much admired the general French public and he has a special place in the French hall of fame next to Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour.

(Above: Enrico Macias)

Music is not the only reminder for Algerian Jews about their origin. Food also plays an important role in maintaining cultural distinction. Within my grandma’s French bubble in Israel, which included frequently serving endives salad, baguette avec beurre, Camembert cheese and apple tart (not to mention that TV-5 was almost always in the background), there was a special place for traditional dishes. Being located on the southern- western shores of the Mediterranean, the Jewish Algerian Cuisine is heavily influenced by the aromas of the Iberian Peninsula. The repopulation of the North African communities with Spanish and Portuguese refugees after the Spanish expulsion (beginning in the late 15th century) definitely added to this strong Iberian thread, which includes dishes, such as Merguez sausage, sautéed spinach with garbanzo beans, ground beef triangle pastels and fried fish. There are also classic North African dishes, such as Macbooba (burnt vegetable salad), honey dipped dough cigars, Mafroom (potato stuffed with ground beef) and, of course, Couscous (recipe ahead). Thus, in a nutshell, Algerian cuisine can be defined as Sephardic-Mediterranean kitchen with North African accents and a French touch.

And now for the Couscous. Algerian Jews are very particular about their couscous. They will never eat it in a restaurant, or out of the box, and refuse to even taste couscous made by Jews from other North African communities (i.e. Tunisian, Moroccan and Libyan Jews). Their couscous (and I am just echoing everything I heard growing up) is superb because its refined texture resembling tiny sand grains, its minimal seasoning (other than Merguez, Algerian cuisine is not spicy) and its perfectly cooked vegetables (not too mushy- not too hard). In other words, or as they put it themselves, it’s the French version of couscous! It is truly incredible how one dish can encapsulate so much attitude!

In their defense, the making of Algerian style couscous, the way my grandma and my mom cook it, is very laborious. In the few times, I made it myself I used shortcuts, such as substituting a food processor for manually sifting the grains over and over again. In addition to the rewarding nature of the process, the final result is very delicious and hearty. During Friday night dinners at my grandma house, everybody was waiting for this one dish, this white mountain decorated with colorful vegetables in an unassuming glass bowl. Despite the abundance of foods on the table, my grandma and my mother always had to go back to the kitchen to refill the bowl. These days I am glad to witness my young son devouring a plateful of my favorite semolina nosh.

Before finally handing the recipe, a couple of helpful notes:

A. Couscous is a seasonal dish. The cold winter months are ideal for filling your stomach with it.

B. Toppings may change. In my household, we served it with garbanzo beans, turnips, zucchinis and carrots. Hard boiled eggs are also a great addition. Some people like eating couscous with a zesty salad (shredded carrots in lemon) or raw vegetables (radishes) on the side.

C. Sauce is traditionally meat based. However, couscous is veggie friendly, and the sauce is delicious also in its vegetarian version.

D. Clear some time. This is not a quick recipe and even with shortcuts, the process of steaming and sifting the grains several times, is quite long even for experienced cooks.

E. The cooking of Couscous requires a special pot called a couscoussier, a traditional double-chambered steamer. For those who don’t have it, a pasta pot with a steamer or just placing a steamer or a colander on a regular pot should work as well.

(Above: My mother making couscous)

My Family Recipe for Couscous

Couscous Grains

Ingredients:

2.2 Ib. (1 kg) semolina (thick grain)

(About) 5 cups water

5 tbs. oil

1 tbs. salt

Directions:

-Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil.

-Place semolina grains in a big fine mash strainer on top of a large bowl. Pour water over the grains (1 ½-2 cups) and knead the grains, so they will absorb the water. Then sift them through the strainer. Try as much as possible to avoid little balls. Use food processer if you are having difficulty in creating this fine texture.

-Put the grains in the steaming basket on top of the boiling water in the couscoussier (or your alternative pot), cover and cook on medium heat for 30 minutes.

-Remove from heat and place the grains in the strainer again on top of the bowl.

-Once you are done sifting, pour additional 3 cups of water, oil and salt.

-Mix the grains in the bowl and use hands to create tiny little grains.

-Put the grains back in the steaming basket and steam for additional 30 minutes.

-Pour the grains in in a bowl and let cool.

(Repeat the sifting and steaming process for a third time if the grains are too coarse).

Couscous Sauce

Ingredients:

3 cups of garbanzo beans soaked overnight

4 zucchini peeled and cut halfway through

4 carrots peeled and cut halfway through

3 small turnips quartered

2 lbs. meat – beef or lamb (optional)

3 bay leaves

Salt and Pepper

Directions:

-Layer ingredients in a big pot in the following order: garbanzo beans, meat, bay leaves and vegetables.

- Cover with water and bring to a boil on high heat.

- After 40 minutes reduce heat to simmer, add salt and pepper and cook for another 2 ½ to 3 hours until vegetables, meat and beans are soft but not too mushy. Remove bay leaves.

(Above: The different stages of the process)

For serving:

Place couscous grains in a bowl. Arrange vegetables, meat and beans on top and add one or two scoops of the sauce. Basically just to moisten the grains a little bit. Pour the rest of the sauce in a separate sauce for extras.

Bon Appetit!

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eretzyisrael · 3 years

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On a Spring day in 2018 during the March of Return riots, Palestinians at the Gaza border flew a swastika-emblazoned kite carrying a Molotov cocktail into Israel. From the black smoke of burning tires arose another swastika, only this time interposed between two Palestinian flags. (Was it mere coincidence that this occurred on Adolf Hitler’s birthday?) In this context of Palestinian “return,” the kite is a prolific symbol; for example, advertising for National Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) 2018 conference at UCLA featured an image of a bear flying a kite. That SJP adopted this imagery for the conference’s logo – as if it were somehow a child-like symbol of peaceful protest – demonstrates the organization’s willingness to gloss over the arson that Palestinian terrorists have employed with kites.

In any case, the genocidal imagery that accompanied the rioters in Gaza has a sordid history that many anti-Zionist activists conveniently forget — one that some Palestinians embrace entirely.

The Nazis murdered 6,000,000 Jews and sought to destroy every trace of Jewish life having ever existed, yet it’s a common practice for anti-Zionist critics to liken Israel to the Nazis’ genocidal evil. Libels of this sort are quite common on college campuses.

Last June, for instance, Florida State University (FSU) students discovered that the school’s Student Senate President Ahmad Daraldik had created a virulently antisemitic website to explain his (incorrect) argument that “the Holocaust never ended, it just moved to Palestine.” Unsurprisingly, the FSU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) subsequent petition defending Daraldik completely ignores this appalling hatred.

Two years prior, renowned professor of law at Harvard University Alan Dershowitz visited the University of California — Berkeley’s campus to present what he described as his “liberal case for Israel.” Rather than engage in productive dialogue, the student newspaper published a cartoon that depicted Dershowitz stomping on a Palestinian child and propping up an Israeli soldier that had shot a young Palestinian. As Dershowitz pointed out, these sorts of blood libels and ritual murder accusations harken back to the Nazi propaganda tabloid Der Sturmer. To make matters worse, a poster with a swastika scrawled on Dershowitz’s face was displayed outside the law school.

In October 2018, a guest lecturer’s presentation at the University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art and Design featured a slide with side-by-side photos of Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The words “guilty of genocide” were superimposed over both faces.

Ironically, anti-Zionists are correct that the spectre of Nazism indeed haunts the Middle East — only the purveyors of the ideology are assuredly not its Jewish inhabitants.

Antisemitism has always been a part of the Arab world, but after the rise of Nazi Germany, the hatred took on a new meaning to those enraged by the influx of Jewish refugees in then-Mandatory Palestine.

Chief among them was Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, a key founder of the Palestinian national movement and preeminent Islamic jurist who enthusiastically championed Nazism following Hitler’s rise. Relations between the mufti and the Third Reich’s highest-ranking officials went beyond moral support — rather, it was a sadistic partnership.

Reflecting on his time in Berlin as a consultant for Hitler, al-Husseini wrote in his memoirs, “I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: ‘The Jews are yours.’”

A photograph of Hitler and Husseini discussing the Final Solution is, generally speaking, the extent of people’s seemingly limited understanding of their collaboration. Almost without exception, peddlers of the Israel-Nazi comparisons fail to recognize, for example, the mufti’s complicity in (if not responsibility for) the deaths of an estimated 84,000 Jews, including 4,000 children. As the associate director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) Alex Safian has documented, “The Mufti influenced the Germans to directly prevent the escape of Jews who otherwise might have survived the war, and he provoked his followers to violence in the Palestine Mandate.”

Sadly, the mufti’s complicity in the Holocaust left an indelible mark on his people, and his influence can still be found in many elements of contemporary Palestinian society more than 70 years since the liberation of the concentration camps and establishment of the modern state of Israel.

The “Nazi Scouts” organized by Husseini and inspired by the Hitler Youth are no longer, but indoctrinating children with antisemitic ideology remains in Palestinian classrooms. In a 2019 resolution, the United Nations — rarely an Israeli benefactor — condemned these practices and called on the Palestinian Authority to remove “any derogatory comments and images from school curricula and textbooks that perpetuate prejudices and hatred.”

Twelve years prior, Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus published findings that Palestinian textbooks, unsurprisingly, reject Israel’s right to exist and traffic in Holocaust denial. In 2001, German MEP Armin Laschet argued that the hateful content in Palestinian textbooks reminded him of the books published when his country was under Hitler’s reign.

That Hitler’s Mein Kampf was once a bestseller in the Palestinian-controlled territories is especially ironic, given that Holocaust denial is not uncommon in Palestinian media. In fact, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas argued in his 1984 PhD thesis that the Holocaust was grossly exaggerated – that the (entirely correct) assertion that six million Jews were murdered is a “fantastic lie.” In Abbas’ view, the Jews who were killed by the Nazis only perished because the Zionist movement supposedly incited the Nazis.

It wouldn’t be fair to charge the entire Palestinian people with the crime of the Holocaust. But it is important to reckon with the aforementioned historical and contemporary facts and to expose the absurdity, not to mention irony, of Israel-Nazi comparisons tossed around on college campuses.

To falsely equate Jews with their oppressors — all while ignoring actual examples of collaboration with Nazi Germany — is an abberation of justice.

#nazis #palestinians #nazi scouts #haj amin al husseini #grand mufti of jerusalem #jews

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