ZGram - 12/19/2003 - "THE SILENCING OF DISSENT - - How do they get away with it?"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

November 19, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

When I announced the format change of my Zgrams from "general 
interest" to "Prisoner of Conscience Letter" specific, I made a bit 
of a mistake, not cutting myself enough slack.  Every once in a 
while, an essay comes along that simply shouts to be disseminated. 
You are getting such an essay today, introduced by Russian-born 
journalist Israel Shamir:

[START]

  Paul Eisen, a director of Deir Yassin Remembered, is one of the 
staunchest friends of Palestine in England. The article below 
provides you with a wonderful definition of antisemitism:

  "If you do not agree with the right of Jews to go to Palestine, 
settle there en masse against the wishes of the indigenous 
population, expel this population from 75% of their land and then, 
for the next fifty years and more, continue this assault on the 
remaining land and population, then you are an anti-Semite."

  Eisen deals with the deepest levels of Jewish influence on the West. 
He enters the twilight zone of the Western mind and discovers there 
an interesting phenomenon:

  "Whether there is anything special about Jews is not really 
relevant. What is relevant is that a large part of the Western world, 
even the most secular part, seems to believe that there is, or, if 
they don't believe it, are not confident enough in their disbelief to 
say so."

  Probably I should add that this article calls for careful reading as 
it is full of irony and understatements; a naive and non-English 
reader can misunderstand it greatly. His main message, its bottom 
line, goes far beyond the question of Palestine:

  Shouldn't we break free from this infatuation with Jews?

  Shamir

[END]

Here is the Eisen essay itself - and a work of art it is! 
Intellectual power at its finest:

[START]

  THE SILENCING OF DISSENT - - How do they get away with it?

  Paul Eisen

  As the onslaught on the Palestinian people continues and the 
hundred-year conquest of Palestine enters what may be its final 
stages, efforts by the Israeli, Zionist and Jewish establishments to 
silence any remaining criticism of Israel and Zionism intensify. At 
the centre of these efforts is the claim that anti-Zionism equals 
anti-Semitism. Critics of Israel are warned that whilst like any 
other democratic state, Israel is open to criticism of its policies, 
any criticism of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is, by 
definition, anti-Semitic.

  First, it is not true that we are free to criticize Israeli policies 
since so many perfectly legitimate criticisms of Israeli policy are 
blanketed as attacks on Israel's right to self-defense and therefore 
as attacks on Israel's right to exist and, therefore themselves as 
anti-Semitic. But what of the core argument that, since all other 
peoples are entitled to statehood, to deny to Jews that which is 
granted to everyone else is discriminatory and, therefore, 
anti-Semitic?

  There are of course some who really do want to "push the Jews into 
the sea", and there are certainly those who say that Jews are not a 
nation, but a religious group. There are others who undoubtedly would 
deny the right of Jews to establish a state anywhere. These people 
can fight their own battles. For my part, if Jews say they are a 
nation, that's fine and if Jews want to wear blue-and-white, wave 
flags and set up a state on some piece of uninhabited and unclaimed 
land, although I won't be joining them, that's also fine. The problem 
is when this state is established on someone else's land and 
maintained at someone else's expense.

  So what is this state of Israel, this Jewish state, whose existence 
we are forbidden to question? Founded on the expulsion and exile of 
another people, and defining itself as for Jews alone, Israel 
officially and unofficially, overtly and covertly, discriminates 
against non-Jews. Is denying Jews such a state denying them that 
which is granted to all others? One may agree or disagree with any of 
this. One may argue for or against Jewish nationhood, the need for a 
Jewish state, the right of Jews to have a state in Palestine, and 
even, post-Holocaust, the justification for Jews to establish that 
state at the expense of another people. One can agree or disagree 
with any of this, but is such agreement or disagreement necessarily 
anti-Semitic?

   ANTI-ZIONISM EQUAL ANTI-SEMITISM?

  The anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism argument amounts to this: If 
you do not agree with the right of Jews to go to Palestine, settle 
there en masse against the wishes of the indigenous population, expel 
this population from 75% of their land and then, for the next fifty 
years and more, continue this assault on the remaining land and 
population, then you are an anti-Semite. Similarly, if you do not 
support the existence of an ethnically based state which defines 
itself as being for Jews only and discriminates officially both 
inside and outside its borders against non-Jews, then, again, you are 
an anti-Semite.

  This would be laughable if it came from any other group of people, 
yet coming from Jews, even though not always agreed with, it is still 
seen as legitimate. So how do they get away with it? No-one else 
does, so what's special about Jews?

  Whether there is anything special about Jews is not really relevant. 
What is relevant is that a large part of the Western world, even the 
most secular part, seems to believe that there is, or, if they don't 
believe it, are not confident enough in their disbelief to say so. 
The Western world seems at times almost obsessed with Jews and Jewish 
life. Stories of struggle from the Hebrew Bible, such as the Exodus 
from Egypt, have become paradigms for other people's struggles and 
aspirations. The emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe into their 
Golden Land in America has become as American a legend as the Wild 
West. Jewish folklore and myth, stereotypes of Jewish humour, food 
and family life-all are deeply woven into the fabric of Western, 
particularly American, life. Yet these preoccupations are complicated 
and often ambivalent.  Despite our present secularity, Christianity 
still occupies a central place in Western culture and experience, and 
Jews occupy a central place in the Christian narrative, so it is no 
surprise that Jews and Jewish concerns receive a lot of attention. 
But Christian attitudes towards Jews are themselves complex and 
contradictory: Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew, and yet, 
traditionally, His teachings supersede those of Judaism. Jesus lived 
amongst Jews, His message was shaped by Jews yet He was rejected by 
Jews and, it has been widely believed, died at the behest of Jews. 
So, for many Christians, Jews are both the people of God and the 
people who rejected God, and are objects of both great veneration and 
great loathing. This ambivalence is reflected in the secular world 
too where Jews are widely admired for their history and traditions 
and for their creativity and success yet are also held in some 
suspicion and dislike for their exclusivity and supposed feelings of 
'specialness'. Jews seem either loved or hated and, now since the 
Holocaust, publicly at least, they seem loved or at least if not 
loved, then certainly, indulged.

    IS JEWISH SUFFERING UNIQUE?

  The establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948, coming just 
three years after the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945, marks, 
for Jews, the transition from enslavement to empowerment. This 
empowerment of Jews took place not only with the establishment of 
Israel, but also continuously, from the mass emigration of Jews to 
the West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the 
present day. Today in the West Jews enjoy unparalleled political, 
economic and social power and influence. Jews are represented way 
beyond their numbers in the upper echelons of all areas of public and 
professional life-politics, academia, the arts, the media and 
business. But even more than the political and economic power which 
Jews possess, is the social power. Jews have a moral prestige derived 
from their history and traditions as a chosen and as a suffering 
people. In these more secular times, however, especially since the 
Holocaust, it is as a suffering people that Jews occupy their special 
place in Western culture.

  That Jews have suffered is undeniable. But acknowledgement of this 
suffering is rarely enough. Jews and others have demanded that not 
only should Jewish suffering be acknowledged but that it also be 
accorded special status. Jewish suffering is rarely measured against 
the sufferings of other groups. Blacks, women, children, gays, 
workers, peasants, minorities of all kinds, all have suffered, but 
none as much as Jews. Protestants at the hands of Catholics, 
Catholics at the hands of Protestants, pagans and heretics, all have 
suffered religious persecution, but none as relentlessly as Jews. 
Indians, Armenians, Gypsies and Aborigines, all have been targeted 
for elimination, but none as murderously and as premeditatedly as 
Jews.

  Jewish suffering is held to be mysterious and beyond explanation. 
Context is rarely examined. The place and role of Jews in society - 
their historical relationships with Church and state, landlords and 
peasantry - is hardly ever subject to scrutiny, and, whilst 
non-Jewish attitudes to Jews are the subject of intense interest, 
Jewish attitudes to non-Jews are rarely mentioned. Attempts to 
confront these issues are met with suspicion, and sometimes 
hostility, because of a fear that explanation may lead to 
rationalization, which may lead to exculpation, and then even to 
justification.

  The stakes in this already fraught game have been raised so much 
higher by the Holocaust. Is the Holocaust "The ultimate mystery, 
never to be comprehended or transmitted" as Elie Wiesel would have us 
believe? Are attempts to question the Holocaust narrative just a 
cover for denial or even justification? Was Jewish suffering in the 
Holocaust greater and of more significance than that of anyone else? 
Were the three million Polish Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis 
more important than the three million Polish non-Jews who also died? 
Twenty million black Africans, a million Ibos, a million Kampucheans, 
Armenians, Aborigines, all have perished in genocides, but none as 
meaningfully as the six million Jews slaughtered in the only genocide 
to be theologically named and now perceived by Jews and the rest of 
the Western world to be an event of near religious significance.

  Jews have not been just passive recipients of all this special 
treatment and consideration. The special status accorded to Israel's 
behaviour in Palestine, and Jewish support for it, is not something 
that the Jewish establishment has accepted reluctantly. On the 
contrary, Jews and Jewish organisations have demanded it. And at the 
heart of this demand for special consideration is the demand that the 
whole world, recognising the uniqueness of Jewish suffering, should 
join with Jews in their fears about anti-Semitism and of its 
resurgence.

   Anti-Semitism in its historic, virulent and eliminationist form did 
exist and could certainly exist again, but it does not currently 
exist in the West in any significantly observable form.  Jews have 
never been so secure or empowered, yet many Jews feel and act as if 
they are a hair's breadth away from Auschwitz. And not only this, but 
they require that everybody else feel the same. So soon after the 
Holocaust this is perhaps understandable, but less so when it is used 
to silence dissent and criticism of Israel and Zionism. Jews, 
individually and collectively use their political, economic, social, 
and moral power in support of Israel and Zionism. In their defense of 
Israel and Zionism, Jews brandish their suffering at the world, 
accusing it of reverting to its old anti-Semitic ways. 

  THE SILENCING OF DISSENT.

  Is a Jewish state acceptable in this day and age? Are the Jews a 
people who qualify for national self-determination, or are Jews a 
religious group only? Post-Holocaust, does the Jewish need for a 
state of their own perhaps even justify the displacement of the 
Palestinians? Are Jews who wield power to serve what they perceive as 
their own ethnic interests and to support Israel, to be held 
politically accountable? What is anti-Semitism? Is anti-Zionism 
anti-Semitism? All this and a great deal more could and should be 
debated. What need not be debated is this: that every complexity and 
ambiguity of Jewish identity and history, every example of Jewish 
suffering, every instance of anti-Jewish prejudice, however 
inconsequential, is used to justify the crimes of Israel and Zionism. 
Every possible interpretation or misinterpretation of language, and 
every kind of intellectual sophistry is used by Zionists to muddy the 
waters and label the critic of Israel and Zionism an anti-Semite. 
Words and phrases become loaded with hidden meanings, so that even 
the most honest critic of Israel has to twist and turn and jump 
through hoops to ensure that he or she is not perceived as 
anti-Semitic.

  And the penalties for transgression are terrible. For those who do 
not manage to pick their way through this minefield, the charge of 
anti-Semite awaits, with all its possibilities of political, 
religious and social exclusion. No longer a descriptive term for 
someone who hates Jews simply for being Jews, 'anti-Semite' is now a 
curse to hurl against anyone who dares to criticise Jews and, 
increasingly against anyone who dares, too trenchantly, to criticize 
Israel and Zionism. And for those Jews of conscience who dare speak 
out, for them there is reserved the special penalty of exclusion from 
Jewish life and exile.

  Marc Ellis's 'ecumenical deal' which translates also into a 
political deal, says it all. It goes like this: To the Christian and 
to the entire non-Jewish world, Jews say this: 'You will apologise 
for Jewish suffering again and again and again. And, when you have 
finished apologising, you will then apologise some more. When you 
have apologised sufficiently we will forgive you, provided you let us 
do what we want in Palestine.'

  As hard as it may be, for the sake of us all - Jew and non-Jew 
alike, do we not now have to break free?

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Paul Eisen is a director of Deir Yassin Remembered and is on the 
Executive Committee of Sabeel UK. dyr at eisen.demon.co.uk

  This article is based on "Speaking the Truth to Jews" which will 
appear in a forthcoming book, "Speaking the Truth about Israel and 
Zionism", edited by Michael Prior and published by Melisende in March 
2004.

  PAUL EISEN