Purim Special
From Esther to
AIPAC
By GILAD ATZMON
"In certain contexts,
memory can be subversive; in others, memory can shield
the status quo. When individuals and communities become
vested with memory as a form of identity and specialness,
then other suffering threatens to displace the
centrality of our experience. Instead of a bridge of
solidarity to others who are suffering in the present,
suffering in the past can become a badge of honour,
protecting us from the challenges that are before us.
Then our witness, originally powerful, opening questions
about God and power, becomes diluted, can be seen as
fake, contrived, even wilfully so. An industry grows up
around you, honours you, and at the same time uses your
witness for other reasons. In the end a confusion
results, externally and internally, until the witness
himself can no longer differentiate between the world of
interpretation he helped articulate and the world that
now speaks in his name. Is this what happened to Wiesel,
or is Finkelstein's more acerbic analysis accurate?"[1]
03/05/07 "Counterpunch'
-- -- Jewishness is a rather broad term. It refers to a
culture with many faces, varied distinctive groups,
different beliefs, opposing political camps, different
classes and diversified ethnicity. Nevertheless, the
connection between those very many people who happen to
identify themselves as Jews is rather intriguing. In the
paragraphs that follow, I will try to further the search
into the notion of Jewishness. I will make an attempt to
trace the intellectual, spiritual and mythological
collective bond that makes Jewishness into a powerful
identity.
Clearly, Jewishness is neither a racial nor an ethnic
category. Though Jewish identity is racially and ethnically
orientated, the Jewish people do not form a homogenous
group. There is no racial or ethnic continuum. Jewishness
may be seen by some as a continuation of Judaism. I would
maintain that this is not necessarily the case either.
Though Jewishness borrows some fundamental Judaic elements,
Jewishness is not Judaism and it is even categorically
different from Judaism. Furthermore, as we know, more than a
few of those who proudly define themselves as Jews have very
little knowledge of Judaism, many of them are atheists,
non-religious and even overtly oppose Judaism or any other
religion. Many of those Jews who happen to oppose Judaism
happen to maintain their Jewish identity and to be extremely
proud about it[2]. This opposition to Judaism obviously
includes Zionism (at least the early version) but it also is
the basis of much of Jewish socialist anti-Zionism.
Though Jewishness is different from Judaism one may still
wonder just what constitutes Jewishness: whether it is a new
form of religion an ideology or if it is just a 'state of
mind'.
If Jewishness is indeed a religion, the next questions
that have to be asked are, "what kind of religion is it?
What does this religion entail? What do its followers
believe in?" If it is a religion, one may wonder whether it
is possible to divorce from it as much as it is possible to
step out of Judaism, Christianity or Islam.
If Jewishness is an ideology, then the right questions to
ask are, "what does this ideology stand for? Does it form a
discourse? Is it a monolithic discourse? Does it portray a
new world order? Is it aiming for peace or violence? Does it
carry a universal message to humanity or is it just another
manifestation of some tribal precepts?"
If Jewishness is a state of mind, then the question to
raise is whether it is rational or irrational. Is it within
the expressible or rather within the inexpressible?
At this point I may suggest to consider the remote
possibility that Jewishness may be a strange hybrid, it can
be all of those things at once i.e., a religion, an ideology
and a state of mind.
The Holocaust Religion
"Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the philosopher who was an
observant orthodox Jew, told me once: "The Jewish
religion died 200 years ago. Now there is nothing that
unifies the Jews around the world apart from the
Holocaust." (Uri Avnery[3])
Philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the German born Hebrew
University professor, was probably the first to suggest that
the Holocaust has become the new Jewish religion. 'The
Holocaust' is far more than historical narrative, it indeed
contains most of the essential religious elements: it has
its priests (Simon Wiesenthal, Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt,
etc.) and prophets (Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and
those who warn about the Iranian Judeocide to come). It has
its commandments and dogmas ('never again', 'six million',
etc.). It has its rituals (memorial days, Pilgrimage to
Auschwitz etc.). It establishes an esoteric symbolic order (kapo,
gas chambers, chimneys, dust, Musselmann, etc.). It has its
shrines and temples (Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and
now the UN). If this is not enough, the Holocaust religion
is also maintained by a massive economic network and global
financial infrastructures (Holocaust industry a la
Norman Finkelstein). Most interestingly, the Holocaust
religion is coherent enough to define the new 'antichrists'
(the Deniers) and it is powerful enough to persecute them
(Holocaust denial laws).
Critical scholars who dispute the notion of 'Holocaust
religion' suggest that though the new emerging religion
retains many characteristics of an organised religion, it
doesn't establish an external God figure to point at, to
worship or to love. I myself cannot agree less. I insist
that the Holocaust religion embodies the essence of the
liberal democratic worldview. It is there to offer a new
form of worshiping. It made self loving into a dogmatic
belief in which the observant follower worships himself. In
the new religion it is 'the Jew' whom the Jews worship. It
is all about 'me', the subject of endless suffering who
makes it into redemption.
However, more than a few Jewish scholars in Israel and
abroad happen to accept Leibowitz's observation. Amongst
them is Marc Ellis, the prominent Jewish theologian who
suggests a revealing insight into the dialectic of the new
religion. "Holocaust theology," says Ellis, "yields three
themes that exist in dialectical tension: suffering and
empowerment, innocence and redemption, specialness and
normalization."[4]
Though Holocaust religion didn't replace Judaism, it gave
Jewishness a new meaning. It sets a modern Jewish narrative
allocating the Jewish subject within a Jewish project. It
allocates the Jew a central role within his own self-centred
universe. The 'sufferer' and the 'innocent' are marching
towards 'redemption' and 'empowerment'. God is obviously out
of the game, he is fired, he has failed in his historic
mission, he wasn't there to save the Jews. Within the new
religion the Jew becomes 'the Jews' new God', it is all
about the Jew who redeems himself.
The Jewish follower of the Holocaust religion idealises
the condition of his existence. He then sets a framework of
a future struggle towards recognition. For the Zionist
follower of the new religion, the implications seem to be
relatively durable. He is there to 'schlep' the
entirety of world Jewry to Zion at the expense of the
indigenous Palestinian people. For the Socialist Jew, the
project is slightly more complicated. For him redemption
means setting a new world order, namely a socialist haven. A
world dominated by dogmatic working class politics in which
Jews happen to be no more than just one minority amongst
many. For the humanist observant, Holocaust religion means
that Jews must locate themselves at the forefront of the
struggle against racism, oppression and evil in general.
Though it sounds promising, it happens to be problematic
because of obvious reasons. In our current world order it is
Israel and America that happen to be amongst the leading
oppressive evils. Expecting Jews to be in the forefront of
humanist struggle sets Jews in a fight against their
brethren and their supportive single superpower. However, It
is rather clear that all three Holocaust churches assign the
Jews a major project with some global implications.
***
As we can see, the Holocaust functions as an ideological
interface. It provides its follower with a logos. On
the level of consciousness, it suggests a purely analytical
vision of the past and present, yet, it doesn't stop just
there, it also defines the struggle to come. It defines a
vision of a Jewish future. Nevertheless, as a consequence it
fills the Jewish subject's unconsciousness with the ultimate
anxiety: the destruction of the 'I'.
Needless to say, a faith that stimulates the consciousness
(Ideology) and steers the unconsciousness (Spirit) is a very
good recipe for a winning religion. This structural bond of
ideology and spirit is fundamental to the Judaic tradition.
The bond between the legal clarity of the halacah
(ideology) and the mysteriousness of Jehovah or even
Kabala (spirit) makes Judaism into a totality, a
universe in itself. Bolshevism, the mass movement rather
than the political theory, is built upon the same structure,
the lucidity of pseudo-scientific materialism together with
the fear of the capitalistic appetite. Neoconservative's
politics of fear is again all about locking the subject in
the chasm between the alleged forensic lucidity of WMDs and
the inexpressible fright of 'terror to come'.
This very bond between consciousness and unconsciousness
brings to mind the Lacanian notion of the 'real'. The 'real'
is that which cannot be symbolized i.e., expressed in words.
The real is the 'inexpressible', the inaccessible. In
Zizek's words, 'the real is impossible', 'the real is the
trauma'. Nevertheless, it is this trauma that shapes the
symbolic order. It is the trauma that forms our reality.
The Holocaust religion fits nicely into the Lacanian
model. Its spiritual core is rooted deeply within the domain
of the inexpressible. Its preaching teaches us to see a
threat in everything. It is the ultimate conjunction between
the ideology and the spirit that has materialised into sheer
pragmatism.
Interestingly enough, the Holocaust religion extends far
beyond the internal Jewish discourse. In fact the new
religion operates as a mission. It sets shrines in far
lands. As we can see, the emerging religion is already
becoming a new world order. It is the Holocaust that is now
used as an alibi to nuke Iran[5]. Clearly, Holocaust
religion serves the Jewish political discourse both on the
right and left but it appeals to the Goyim as well,
especially those who are engaged in merciless killing 'in
the name of freedom'[6]. To a certain extent we are all
subject to this religion, some of us are worshipers, others
are just subject to its power. Interestingly enough, those
who deny the Holocaust are themselves subject to abuse by
the high priests of this religion. Holocaust religion
constitutes the Western 'Real'. We are not allowed to touch
it or to look into it. Very much like the Israelites who are
entitled to obey their God but never to question him.
***
The Scholars who are engaged in the study of the
Holocaust religion (theology, ideology and historicity), are
engaged mainly with structural formulations, its meanings,
its rhetoric and its historical interpretation. Some happen
to search for the theological dialectic (Marc Ellis), others
formulate the commandments (Adi Ofir), some learn its
historical evolution (Lenni Brenner), other expose its
financial infrastructure (Finkelstein). Interestingly
enough, most scholars who are engaged in the subject of
Holocaust religion are engaged with a list of events that
happened between 1933-1945. Most of the scholars are
themselves orthodox observants. Though they may be critical
of different aspects of the exploitation of the Holocaust,
they all accept the validity of the Nazi Judeocide and its
mainstream interpretations and implications. Most of the
scholars, if not all of them, do not challenge the Zionist
narrative, namely Nazi Judeocide, yet, more than a few are
critical of the way Jewish and Zionist institutes employ the
Holocaust. Though some may dispute the numbers (Shraga
Elam), and others question the validity of memory (Ellis,
Finkelstein), no one goes as far as revisionism, not a
single Holocaust religion scholar dares engage in a dialogue
with the so-called 'deniers' to discuss their vision of the
events or any other revisionist scholarship.
Far more interesting is the fact that none of the
Holocaust religion scholars have spent any energy studying
the role of the Holocaust within the long-standing Jewish
continuum. From this point onward, I will maintain that
Holocaust religion was well established a long time before
the Final Solution (1942), well before the Kristalnacht
(1938), well before the Nuremberg Laws (1936), well before
the first anti-Jewish law was announced by Nazi Germany,
well before the American Jewish Congress declared a
financial war against Nazi Germany (1933) and even well
before Hitler was born (1889). The Holocaust religion is
probably as old as the Jews.
Jewish Archetypes
In a previous paper I have defined the notion of
'Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder' (Pre-TSD) [7]. Within
the condition of the Pre-TSD, the stress is the outcome of a
phantasmic imaginary episode set in the future, an event
that has never taken place. Unlike the Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder, in which stress is realised as the direct reaction
to an event that (may) have taken place in the past, within
the state of Pre-TSD, the stress is formed as the outcome of
an imaginary potential event. Within the Pre-TSD an illusion
pre-empts the conditions in which the fantasy of future
terror is shaping the present reality.
As it seems, the dialectic of fear dominates the Jewish
existence as well as mindset far longer than we are ready to
admit. Though fright is exploited politically by Jewish
ethnic leaders since the early days of emancipation, the
dialectic of fear is far older than modern Jewish history.
In fact it is the heritage of the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible)
that is there to set the Jew in a pre-traumatic state. It is
the Hebrew Bible that sets a binary framework of
Innocence/Suffering and Persecution/Empowerment. More
particularly, the fear of Judeocide is entangled with Jewish
spirit, culture and literature.
I would argue here that the Holocaust religion was there to
transform the ancient Israelites into Jews.
The American anthropologist Glenn Bowman who specialised in
the study of exilic identities offers a crucial insight into
the subject of fear and its contribution to the subject of
Identity politics. "Antagonism," says Bowman, "is
fundamental to process of fetishsation underlying identity,
because one tends precisely to talk about who one is or what
one is at a moment in which that being seems threatened. I
begin to call myself such and such a person, or such and
such a representative of an imagined community, at the
moment something seems to threaten to disallow the being the
name I speak stands in for. Identity terms come into usage
at precisely the moment in which for some reason one comes
to feel they signifying a being or entity one has to fight
to defend." [8]
In short, Bowman stresses that it is the fear that
crystallises the notion of identity. However, once the fear
is matured into a state of a collective pre-traumatic stress
then identity re-forms itself. When it comes to the Jewish
people, it is the Bible that is there to set the Jews within
a state of Pre-TSD. It is the Bible that initiates the fear
of Judeocide.
***
More and more Bible scholars are now disputing the
historicity of the Bible. Niels Lechme in 'The Canaanites
and Their Land' argues that the Bible is for the most part
"written after the Babylonian Exile and that those writings
rework (and in large part invent) previous Israelite history
so that it reflects and reiterates the experiences of those
returning from the Babylonian exile."[9]
In other words, being written by home-comers, the Bible
incorporates some hardcore exilic ideology into an historic
narrative. Very much like in the case of the early Zionist
ideologist who regarded assimilation as a death threat, "The
communities which aggregated under the leadership of the
Yahwehist priesthood (at the time of the Babylonian exile)
saw assimilation and apostasy not only as social death for
themselves as Judeans but also as attempted deicide. They
resolved to maintain an absolute and exclusive commitment to
Yahweh who they were sure would lead them back to the land
from which they had been expelled. The prescribed blood
purity as a means of maintaining the borders of the national
community, thus proscribed inter-marriage with those
surrounding them. They also established a series of
exclusivist rituals that set themselves off from their
neighbours, and these not only included a surrogate form of
temple worship but also a distinct calendar which
ritualistically enabled them to exist in a different time
frame than the communities with which they shared space. All
of these diacritical devices served to mark and maintain
difference, but did not prevent them from trading with and
thus being able to sustain themselves amongst the
Babylonians."
Looking into Bowman and Lechme's spectacular reading of the
Bible and the Judaic narrative as a manifestation of exilic
and marginal identity may explain the fact that Jewishness
flourishes in exile but rather loses its impetus once it
becomes a domestic adventure. If Jewishness is indeed
centred around an émigré collective survival ideology, than
its follower will prosper in Exile. However, that which
maintains the Jewish collective identity is fear. Similar to
the case of Holocaust religion, Jewishness sets the fear of
Judeocide at the core of the Jewish psyche, yet, it also
offers the spiritual, ideological and pragmatic measures to
deal with this fear.
Book of Esther
The
Book of Esther is a biblical story that is the basis for the
celebration of Purim, probably the most joyous Jewish
festival. The book tells the story of an attempted Judeocide
but it also tells a story in which Jews manage to change
their fate. In the book the Jews do manage to rescue
themselves and even to mete revenge.
It is set in the third year
of Ahasuerus, and the ruler is a king of Persia usually
identified with Xerxes I. It is a story of a palace,
conspiracy, an attempted Judeocide and a brave and beautiful
Jewish queen (Esther) who manages to save the Jewish people
at the very last minute.
In the story, King Ahasuerus
is married to Vashti, whom he repudiates after she rejects
his offer to 'visit' him during a feast. Esther was selected
from the candidates to be Ahasuerus's new wife. As the story
progresses, Ahasuerus's prime minister Haman plots to have
the king kill all the Jews without knowing that Esther is
actually Jewish. In the story, Esther together with her
cousin Mordechai saves the day for their people. At the risk
of endangering her own safety, Esther warns Ahasuerus of
Haman's murderous anti-Jewish plot. Haman and his sons are
hanged on the fifty cubit gallows he had originally built
for cousin Mordecai. As it happens, Mordecai takes Haman's
place, he becomes the prime minister. Ahasuerus's edict
decreeing the murder of the Jews cannot be rescinded, so he
issues another edict allowing the Jews to take up arms and
kill their enemies, which they do.
The moral of the story is
rather clear. If Jews want to survive, they better find
infiltrates into the corridors of power. With Esther,
Mordechai and Purim in mind, AIPAC and the notion of 'Jewish
power' looks like an embodiment of a deep Biblical and
cultural ideology.
However, here is the
interesting twist. Though the story is presented as an
historic tale, the historical accuracy of the Book of
Esther is largely disputed by most modern Bible
Scholars. It is largely the lack of clear corroboration of
any of the details of the story of the Book of Esther with
what is known of Persian History from classical sources that
led scholars to come to a conclusion that the story is
mostly or even totally fictional.
In other words, though the
moral is clear, the attempted genocide is fictional.
Seemingly, the Book of Esther set its followers into a
collective Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It makes a fantasy
of destruction into an ideology of survival. And indeed,
some read the story as an allegory of quintessentially
assimilated Jews who discover that they are targets of
anti-Semitism, but are also in a position to save themselves
and their fellow Jews.
Keeping Bowman in mind may
throw some light here. The Book of Esther is there to form
the exilic identity. It is there to implant the existential
stress, it introduces the Holocaust religion. It sets the
conditions that turn the Holocaust into reality.
Interestingly enough, the Book of Esther (in the Hebrew
version) is one of only two books of the Bible that do not
directly mention God (the other is Song of Songs). In the
Book of Esther it is the Jews who believe in themselves, in
their own power, in their uniqueness, in their
sophistication, in their ability to conspire, in their
ability to take over kingdoms, in their ability to save
themselves. The Book of Esther is all about empowerment and
the Jews who believe in their powers.
From Purim to
Birkenau
In an article named "A Purim Lesson: Lobbying Against
Genocide, Then and Now"[10], Dr. Rafael Medoff shares with
his readers what he regards as the lesson inherited to the
Jews by the Book of Esther. If to be more precise, it is the
art of lobbying which Esther and Mordechai are there to
teach us. "The holiday of Purim" says Medoff, "celebrates
the successful effort by prominent Jews in the capitol of
ancient Persia to prevent genocide against the Jewish
people." But Medoff doesn't stop just there. This specific
exercise of what some call 'Jewish power' has been carried
forward and performed by modern emancipated Jews: "What is
not well known is that a comparable lobbying effort took
place in modern times -- in Washington, D.C., at the peak of
the Holocaust."
In the article Medoff explores the similarities between
Esther's lobbying in Persia and her modern brothers lobbying
within the FDR's administration at the pick of WW2. "The
Esther in 1940s Washington was Henry Morgenthau Jr." says
Medoff, "a wealthy, assimilated Jew of German descent who
(as his son later put it) was anxious to be regarded as 'one
hundred percent American.' Downplaying his Jewishness,
Morgenthau gradually rose from being FDR's friend and
adviser to his Treasury Secretary."
Clearly, Medoff spotted a modern Mordechai as well, "a young
Zionist emissary from Jerusalem, Peter Bergson (real name:
Hillel Kook) who led a series of protest campaigns to bring
about U.S. rescue of Jews from Hitler. The Bergson group's
newspaper ads and public rallies roused public awareness of
the Holocaust -- particularly when it organized over 400
rabbis to march to the front gate of the White House just
before Yom Kippur in 1943."
Medoff's reading of the Book of Esther provides us with a
glaring insight into the internal code of Jewish collective
survival dynamics in which the assimilated (Esther) and the
observant (Mordechai) are joining forces with clear Judeo
centric interests in their minds.
According to Medoff the similarities are indeed shocking. "Mordechai's
pressure finally convinced Esther to go to the king; the
pressure of Morgenthau's aides finally convinced him to go
to the president, armed with a stinging 18-page report that
they titled 'Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of
This Government in the Murder of the Jews.'"
Dr. Medoff is rather ready to draw his historical
conclusions. "Esther's lobbying succeeded. Ahasuerus
cancelled the genocide decree and executed Haman and his
henchmen. Morgenthau's lobbying also succeeded. A
Bergson-initiated Congressional resolution calling for U.S.
rescue action quickly passed the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee -- enabling Morgenthau to tell FDR that 'you have
either got to move very fast, or the Congress of the United
States will do it for you.' Ten months before election day,
the last thing FDR wanted was an embarrassing public scandal
over the refugee issue. Within days, Roosevelt did what the
Congressional resolution sought -- he issued an executive
order creating the War Refugee Board, a U.S. government
agency to rescue refugees from Hitler."
It is clear beyond doubt that Medoff sees the Book of Esther
as a general guideline for a healthy Jewish future. Medoff
ends his paper saying: "the claim that nothing could be done
to help Europe's Jews had been demolished by Jews who shook
off their fears and spoke up for their people -- in ancient
Persia and in modern Washington." In other words, Jews can
do and should do for themselves. This is indeed the moral of
the Book of Esther as well as the Holocaust religion.
What Jews should do for themselves is indeed an open
question. Different Jews have different ideas. The Neocon
believes in dragging America and the West into an endless
war against Islam. Emmanuel Levinas, on the contrary,
believes that Jews should actually position themselves at
the forefront of the struggle against oppression and
injustice. Indeed, Jewish empowerment is just one answer
among many. Yet, it is a very powerful not to say a
dangerous one. It is especially dangerous when the American
Jewish Committee (AJC) acts as a modern-day Mordechai and
publicly engages in an extensive lobbying effort for a war
against Iran.
When analysing the work and influence of AIPAC within
American politics it is the Book of Esther that we should
bear in mind. AIPAC is more than a mere political lobby.
AIPAC is a modern-day Mordechai, the AJC is modern-day
Mordechai. Both AIPAC and AJC are inherently in line with
the Hebrew Biblical school of thought. However, while the
Mordechais are relatively easy to spot, the Esthers, those
who act for Israel behind the scenes, are slightly more
difficult to trace.
I believe that once we learn to look at Israeli lobbying in
the parameters that are drawn by the Book of
Esther/Holocaust-religion, we are then entitled to regard
Ahmadinejad as the current Haman/Hitler figure. The AJC is
Mordechai, Bush is obviously Ahasuerus, yet Esther can be
almost anyone, from the last Necon to Cheney and beyond.
Brenner and Prinz
In the opening paragraph of this essay I ask what
Jewishness stands for. Though I accept the complexity of the
notion of Jewishness, I tend to additionally accept
Leibowitz's contribution to the subject: Holocaust is the
new Jewish religion. However, within the paper I took the
liberty of extending the notion of the Holocaust. Rather
than referring merely to the Shoah, i.e., the Nazi Judeocide,
I argue here that the Holocaust is actually engraved within
the Jewish discourse and spirit. The Holocaust is the
essence of the collective Jewish Pre-Traumatic stress
disorder and it predates the Shoah. To be a Jew is to see
the 'other' as a threat rather than as a brother. To be a
Jew is to be on a constant alert. To be a Jew is to
internalise the message of the Book of Esther. It is to aim
towards the most influential junctions of hegemony. To be a
Jew is to collaborate with power.
The American Marxist historian Lenni Brenner is fascinated
by the collaboration between Zionists and Nazism. In his
book Zionism In The Age of Dictators he presents an
extract from Rabbi Joachim Prinz's book published in 1937
after Rabbi Prinz left Germany for America.
"Everyone in Germany knew that only the Zionists could
responsibly represent the Jews in dealings with the Nazi
government. We all felt sure that one day the government
would arrange a round table conference with the Jews, at
which after the riots and atrocities of the revolution had
passed the new status of German Jewry could be considered.
The government announced very solemnly that there was no
country in the world which tried to solve the Jewish problem
as seriously as did Germany. Solution of the Jewish
question? It was our Zionist dream! We never denied the
existence of the Jewish question! Dissimilation? It was our
own appeal! ... In a statement notable for its pride and
dignity, we called for a conference." [11]
Brenner then brings in extracts from a Memorandum that
was sent to the Nazi Party by the German Zionist ZVfD on 21
June 1933:
"Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the
Jewish condition, which consists above all in an
abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an
intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one's own
tradition ... On the foundation of the new state, which
has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit
our community into the total structure so that for us
too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for
the Fatherland is possible. ... Our acknowledgement of
Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere
relationship to the German people and its national and
racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to
falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against
mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the
Jewish group ... We believe in the possibility of an
honest relationship of loyalty between a group-conscious
Jewry and the German state ... "[12]
Brenner doesn't approve either of Prinz's take nor the
Zionist initiative. Filled with loathing he says, "This
document, a treason to the Jews of Germany, was written in
standard Zionist cliches: 'abnormal occupational pattern',
'rootless intellectuals greatly in need of moral
regeneration', etc. In it the German Zionists offered
calculated collaboration between Zionism and Nazism,
hallowed by the goal of a Jewish state: we shall wage no
battle against thee, only against those that would resist
thee."
Brenner fails to see the obvious. Rabbi Prinz and the
ZVfD were not traitors, they were actually genuine Jews.
They followed their very Jewish cultural code. They followed
the Book of Esther, they took the role of Mordechai. They
tried to find a way to collaborate with what they correctly
identified as a prominent emerging power. In 1969, Rabbi
Prinz confessed that ever "since the assassination of
Walther Rathenau in 1922, there was no doubt in our minds
that the German development would be toward an anti-Semitic
totalitarian regime. When Hitler began to arouse, and as he
put it 'awaken' the German nation to racial consciousness
and racial superiority, we had no doubt that this man would
sooner or later become the leader of the German nation."[13]
Whether Brenner or anyone else likes it or not, Rabbi
Prinz proves to be an authentic Jewish leader. He proves to
possess some highly developed survival radar mechanism that
fit perfectly well with the exilic ideology. In 1981 Lenni
Brenner interviewed Rabbi Prinz. Here is what he had to say
about the collaborator Rabbi:
"(Prinz) dramatically evolved in the 44 years since
he was expelled from Germany. He told me, off tape, that
he soon realized that nothing he said there made sense
in the US. He became an American liberal. Eventually, as
head of the American Jewish Congress, he was asked to
march with Martin Luther King and he did so."
Once again, Brenner fails to see the obvious. Prinz
didn't change at all. Prinz didn't evolve in those 44 years.
He was and remained a genuine authentic Jew, and an
extremely clever one. A man who internalised the essence of
Jewish émigré philosophy: In Germany be a German, and in
America be American. Be flexible, fit in and adopt
relativistic ethical thinking. Prinz, being a devoted
follower of Mordechai, realised that whatever is good for
the Jews is simply good.
I went back and listened to the invaluable Brenner
interviews with Rabbi Prinz that are now available on
line[14]. I was rather shocked to find out that actually
Prinz presents his position eloquently. It is Prinz rather
than Brenner who provides us a glimpse into Jewish ideology
and its interaction with the surrounding reality. It is
Prinz rather than Brenner who happens to understand the
German volk and their aspirations. Prinz presents his
past moves as a proud Jew. From his point of view,
collaborating with Hitler was indeed the right thing to do.
He was following Mordechai, he was probably searching for an
Esther to come. Thus, it is only natural that Rabbi Prinz
later became the President of the Jewish American Congress.
He became a prominent American leader In spite of his
'collaboration with Hitler'. Simply because of the obvious
reason: from a Jewish ideological point of view, he did the
right thing.
Final Words About
Zionism
Once we learn to look at Jewishness as an exilic
culture, as the embodiment of the 'ultimate other' we can
then understand Jewishness as a collective continuum
grounded on a fantasy of horror. Jewishness is the
materialisation of politics of fear into a pragmatic agenda.
This is what Holocaust religion is all about and it is
indeed as old as the Jews. Rabbi Prinz could foresee the
Holocaust. Both Prinz and the ZVfD could anticipate a
Judeocide. Thus, from a Jewish ideological point of view
they acted appropriately. They were committed to their
esoteric ethics within an esoteric cultural discourse.
Zionism was indeed a great promise, it was there to convert
the Jews into Israelites. It was going to make the Jews into
people like other peoples. Zionism was there to identify and
fight the Galut (Diaspora), the exilic characteristic
of the Jewish people and their culture. But Zionism was
doomed to failure. The reason is obvious: within a culture
that is metaphysically grounded upon exilic ideology the
last thing you can expect is a successful homecoming. In
order to live for its promise Zionism had to liberate itself
of the Jewish exilic ideology, Zionism had to liberate
itself of the Holocaust religion. But this is exactly what
it fails to do. Being exilic to the bone, Zionism had to
turn to antagonising the indigenous Palestinians in order to
maintain its fetish of Jewish identity.
Since Zionism failed to divorce itself from the Jewish
émigré ideology, it lost the opportunity to evolve into any
form of domestic culture. Consequently, Israeli culture and
politics is a strange amalgam of indecisiveness; a mixture
of colonial empowerment together with Galut's victim
mentality. Zionism is a secular product of exilic culture
that cannot mature into authentic homegrown perception.
Visit Gilad's website
http://www.gilad.co.uk/
Notes
[1] Marc Ellis,
Marc Ellis on Finkelstein
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=21
[2]http://www.counterpunch.org/
[3]http://www.ramallahonline.com
[4] Marc H. Ellis, Beyond Innocence & Redemption -
Confronting The Holocaust And Israeli Power, Creating a
Moral Future for the Jewish People (San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1990).
[5]
http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2007/01/gilad-atzmon-brave-new-world-war.html
[6] ‘(http://www.amin.org/look/amin/en.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=7&NrArticle=36140&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3)
[7]
http://www.imemc.org/article/21744
[8] Glenn Bowman-Migrant Labour: Constructing Homeland in
the Exilic Imagination, Antrhropological Theory II:4.
December 2002 pp 447-468.
[9] Ibid
[10]
http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2004-03-purim.php
[11]
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch05.htm
[12] Ibid
[13]
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch03.htm
[14]
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/clip.php?cid=512
