"Some anti-Zionists dislike Israel a little more than is necessary”, and why Chris Hedges disturbs me.
Link below
A review essay by Ian Buruma may be of interest to people with an interest in the rise of contemporary antisemitism, though I would have liked a little more attention by Buruma to the relationship between what the years before the Holocaust and its effects on Palestine, but if I am not wrong from what I remember of reading his essays years ago that he is basically a liberal Zionist, and so has his limits. He only sees the rot after 1947 and especially 1967.
That said he does make some perceptive observations about some left attitudes towards Jews and Zionism , and I do like the following phrase, “Still, to adapt an old Jewish joke, some anti-Zionists dislike Israel a little more than is necessary.”
I think that actually nails it for me on why I’m so uncomfortable with the rhetoric used by people such as the American commentator Chris Hedges who has been in Australia. The dislike of Zionism and Israel and the language used to express that just doesn’t stop at political dislike or severe criticism, a severe criticism which is mostly entirely justified. But his clear dislike reflects something deeper, far more personal
It reveals something disturbing, more than a desire to rid the world of colonialism and imperialism (Palestine is the linchpin). Some of Hedges’ inflammatory, catastrophic turn of phrase, using the worst case scenario, definitely gets into that grey zone when it is completely unnecessary to use certain language to make a valid political point. His case could be made without the extra twist of the knife, but he can’t resist. He may not even be conscious of it. It doesn’t matter. It has an effect on readers or listeners to have those phrases repeated. Jews, as a whole, with their alien culture and supposed sense of superiority and fascist imperialist Zionists are conflated.
Here, in quotes, is some of the language used by Hedges in his Edward Said Memorial Lecture: ‘Requiem for Gaza’, recently delivered in Gaza.
The “alien culture of Zionism”. This was said in the context of Palestine, but all too easily would the angry reader or listener see hear alien/Jew/ foreign. It’s a classic trope. Jews never fit in anywhere. And as well, there is for the nth time, any infinite number of Zionisms.
“ [A] morally blind nostalgia for an invented past.” As if the other great religions are neither normally blind nor guilty of invention of their past including prophets, events, and theologies. Sadly, we see some of the same rhetoric is picked up in elements of the Australian left.
“ The fatuous claims by Jews that their victimhood is unique”. A pretty broad statement, though one associated with much Zionist propaganda. However, it i a claim disputed by many Jews, and has been so since the claim was first made. In think the original claim was about the scale of industrial organisation of death, not victimhood. Thus Raul Hilberg who wrote the classic The Destruction of the European Jews, said in an interview (quoted on Wikipedia) “For me the Holocaust was a vast, single event, but I am never going to use the word unique, because I recognize that when one starts breaking it into pieces, which is my trade, one finds completely recognizable, ordinary ingredients.” And isn’t Hedges aware of Serbian and others’ claims of unique forms of victimhood to justify their violence?
“Jewish supremacy is sanctified by God, as is the slaughter of the Palestinians,” He doesn’t really qualify this after linking it to Israel ethnofascism and calls for the killing of Amalek, even though he mentions attacks on Jewish liberals as an out from generalizing such a call to all Jews. The Jewish supremacy trope is an old one, linked to the “chosen people” dogma and antisemitism. In fact, the chosen people dogma has been subjected to much debate over the centuries by Jews ; more of a burden of religious obligation/covenant than superiority. The fascist stream in religious-nationalist thinking has been denounced on numerous occasions by mainstream thinkers, yet Hedges makes no acknowledgement of what amounts to the Jewish Wars, to paraphrase Flavius Josephus.
These are the dangerous exaggerated, attention-seeking tropes that stick in the minds of angry people who aren’t interested in nuance.
Sadly, this sort of rhetoric turns up in the rhetoric of some loud voices on the Australian left.
http://archive.today/OwVr7
