danadana
26.10.03, 11:01
-----Original Message-----
From: Wolfgang Plarre [mailto:wplarre@bndlg.de]
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 1:22 AM
To: Al-Awda-News; listsaver-of-oiap@yahoogroups.com; MEW@yahoogroups.com;
Palestine in my Heart; MewBkd-owner@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [palestineinmyheart] Abusing 'Anti-Semitism' - Missbrauch von
„Antisemitismus“ (AS) - by Ran HaCohen
interesting
Ran HaCohen is teaching at Tel Aviv university
translation to German attached - deutsche Übersetzung angefügt
_______________________________________________________________________
http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h-col.html#
Letter from Israel by Ran Ha Cohen
September 29, 2003
Abusing 'Anti-Semitism'
by Ran HaCohen
The eve of the Jewish New Year is an excellent occasion for what Jewish
tradition calls Kheshbon Nefesh, or soul-searching on so-called
"anti-semitism", which has now become the single most important element
of Jewish identity. Jews may believe in God or not, eat pork or not,
live in Israel or not, but they are all united by their unlimited belief
in anti-semitism.
When a Palestinian kills innocent Israeli civilians, it's anti-semitism.
When Palestinians attack soldiers of Israel's occupation army in their
own village, it's anti-semitism. When the UN General Assembly votes 133
to 4 condemning Israel's decision to murder the elected Palestinian
leader, it means that except for the US, Micronesia and Marshal Islands,
all other countries on the globe are anti-semitic. Even when a pregnant
Palestinian woman is stopped at an Israeli check-point and gives birth
in open field, the only lesson to be learnt is that Ha'aretz journalist
Gideon Levy – who reported two such cases in the past two weeks, one in
which the baby died – is an anti-semite.
Anti-semitism is an all-encompassing explanation. Anything unpleasant to
anti-Palestinian ears is just another instance of anti-semitism. Jewish
consciousness focused on anti-semitism has taken the shape of
anti-semitic conspiracy theories, like that of The Protocols of the
Learned Elders of Zion: whereas the anti-semitic classic relates every
calamity to Jewish conspiracy, Jews relate to anti-semitic conspiracy
every criticism of Israel. As we shall see, this is not the only
similarity between anti-Palestinianism and anti-semitism.
It is high time to say it out loud: in the entire course of Jewish
history, since the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC, there has
never been an era blessed with less anti-semitism than ours. There has
never been a better time for Jews to live in than our own.
Up to just two generations ago, anti-semitism was a legitimate political
and cultural attitude in most of the world's leading powers.
Anti-semitism was something you could express openly, even be proud of.
Disliking Jews was as natural then as detesting cockroaches is today.
Nowadays, anti-semitism is a taboo and a criminal offence in every
developed country on earth. Even truly anti-semitic groups deny their
anti-semitic character, knowing it is politically unacceptable. Unlike
earlier centuries, where anti-semitism stood in direct proportion to the
number of Jews in the pertinent country and thus constituted a real
threat to them, the countries where anti-semitism is still thriving
today – mostly poor Muslim countries – are virtually empty of Jews, so
that the actual danger to Jews there is minimal; representatives of
Muslim communities in the West have to give up their anti-semitism as a
precondition for entering the political system.
Just a few generations ago – the Holocaust aside for now – Jews were
treated as second-class citizens in all major Jewish concentrations.
They were denied civic and religious rights almost universally. There
were limits on access of Jews to universities and many professions, to
public service and to any position of power; sometimes even marrying and
making children was dependent on quotas and licences. Such
institutionalised discrimination and oppression is not only totally
extinct today: it is utterly unimaginable. With one revealing exception
(Israel, where non-orthodox religious Jews are discriminated against),
Jews enjoy full religious freedom wherever they are. They have full
citizenship wherever they live, with full political, civic and human
rights like every other citizen. This may sound trivial, but it was not
so just a few generations ago and throughout the entire first and second
millennia. Repressive regimes have either collapsed, or their Jewish
population has left them.
Nowadays, an orthodox Jew can run for the most powerful office on earth,
the president of the United States (I personally hope he doesn't win). A
Jew can be the mayor of Amsterdam in "anti-semitic" Holland, a minister
in "anti-semitic" Britain, a leading intellectual in "anti-semitic"
France, a president of "anti-semitic" Switzerland, editor-in-chief of a
major daily in "anti-semitic" Denmark, or an industrial tycoon in
"anti-semitic" Russia. None of this was imaginable a century ago. Jews
have free and unlimited access to every institution in every country
they live in; Ironically, a converted Jew is even mentioned as a
possible successor to the Holy See. At the same time, "anti-semitic"
Germany (home to the world's fastest-growing Jewish community) gives
Israel three military submarines for free, "anti-semitic" France has
proliferated to Israel the nuclear technology for its weapons of mass
destruction, and "anti-semitic" Europe has welcomed Israel as a single
non-European country to everything from football and basketball leagues
to the Eurovision Song Contest, and has granted Israeli universities a
special status for scientific fund-raising.
The Holocaust has been the greatest catastrophe in Jewish history and
among the greatest crimes in human history – but the very fact that
these words sound so obvious is a great victory on anti-semitism. The
term genocide, coined by a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust (R. Lemkin)
and modelled on the genocide of the Jews, has found its way to
international legislation and been affirmed as a crime by almost all the
countries on earth, including eventually (with a shamefully long delay)
the US. The Holocaust has (justly!) become the prototype of genocide, a
synonym for Crime against Humanity. There were several other genocides
in the 20th century – enough to mention the Armenian genocide by Turks
(which preceded and inspired the Holocaust) or the Tutsi genocide by
Hutu in Rwanda (which was even more "efficient" than the Holocaust).
However, while other genocides are still struggling even to be
acknowledged, the Holocaust is the only genocide which is considered
unquestionable to the extent that its denial is in some countries a
criminal offence. No other genocide even comes close to the 250 memorial
museums and research institutes dedicated to the Holocaust around the
world, and no other genocide survivors have been financially compensated
like the persecuted Jews. In such a world, whoever cries "anti-semitism"
twice a day has an extremely heavy burden of proof to shoulder.
The State of Israel has always been cynically exploiting allegations of
anti-semitism, condemning purported and cooperating with actual
anti-semites at will. Last week, to quote just a minor example, when the
world was outraged by Italy's monarch Berlusconi's claim that his
fascist predecessor Mussolini "had not killed anybody but just sent
people to holidays in exile" – which comes fairly close to Holocaust
denial – the only official Israeli reaction was that of an unnamed
spokesman for the 2nd Minister in the Ministry of Finance, who mumbled
that "If the words have been said (!), one can not agree with them,
since History speaks for itself" (Ha'aretz 14.9, p.12 bottom). The
reason for this ear-deafening outcry i
