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Der Krieg ist der Vater der Dinge. -HERAKLIT
Haaretz Friday Supplement for Culture and Literature, 13 December 1991
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
In the second part of his review of Tom Segev's book ("There was no Collaboration", Culture and Literature, November 29), professor Ya'akov Shavit made two important generalizations.1 In the first place, he claims that "in the 1930s the Zionist movement yet had absolutely no power to prevent the emigration of Jews to any place [other than Palestine]". The words "absolutely no power" raise a suspicion. Is it possible that the only Jewish movement formally recognized by the League of Nations, led by a man, Hayim Weizman, more internationally revered than any other Jew of the time, really had "absolutely no power"? In fact, at least in one known instance, the Zionist movement did have enough power to prevent the emigration of Jews to countries willing to accept them. I am talking about the Evian Conference at the end of 1938. At that conference, a number of states expressed their readiness to absorb the Jews of Germany, but the Zionist movement effectively vetoed that initiative. The whole story is described in detail in a revelatory book by S. B. Beit-Zvi, Post-Ugandan Zionism in the Crucible of the Holocaust, Bronfman, 1978 [in Hebrew]. Beit-Zvi conclusively proved that in the case in question the Zionist movement had enough power to prevent emigration of the German Jews to countries other than Palestine.2 Of course that power was still limited, and its actual amount depended on circumstances. But it means that each pertinent case should be investigated separately, in order to avoid generalizations as erroneous as Shavit's "absolutely no power".
Shavit's second generalization is that "the ascent of Hitler to power" dealt a deadly blow to "the position of the Jewish nation [in Europe]" and that therefore "it was only logical that not a few among the Zionist leaders wanted Zionism to take advantage of this situation, by encouraging the Jewish drive to emigrate to Palestine and by forcing the British to perceive the reasons of their emigration with a deeper understanding". Shavit apparently does not see anything wrong in the fact under his description, which for him seems to amount to nothing more than good opportunity for enhancing the power of the Zionism movement! Given this, it is only logical for Shavit [to treat] Jews as no more than "a human material",3 supposed to increase the power of Zionism, rather than as human beings whose sufferings have a weight of their own.
Not without justification, Professor Shavit complains about "an excess of demagogy" prevailing in discussion of such issues. It seems to me that he made a no minor contribution of his own to this state of affairs.
Hadashot Friday Supplement, 14 February 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Amira Segev in her article about "the new district judge Amnon Strashnov" (Hadashot Supplement, January 24) fails to ask the crucial question of how Strashnov became a judge in the first place. The answer is that a committee, comprised partly of representatives of political authorities and partly of representatives of high ranking judiciary, which acts in strictest secrecy, appointed him to this position for reasons unknown. Since this year marks the 50Oth anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and the occasion is used for writing a lot about Spain, it would be not irrelevant to point out that Spanish Inquisitors were appointed to their positions in exactly the same way as judges in the State of Israel are: by a secret committee, comprised partly of the representatives of the royal court and partly of Inquisitors themselves. Incidentally, among the Inquisitors there were some brilliant legal minds, no inferior to some of our judges.
But the analogy between the State of Israel at present and Spain of Isabella and Ferdinand the Catholic does not end here. For example, doesn't the idea of "transferring" all the Arabs from the Territories as advocated [in Israel] by the Moledet party and others resemble the expulsion of Jews by those Spanish monarchs? Because of this resemblance, it might be advisable to meditate a little about whether what was acceptable for the Spanish Inquisition would be acceptable in contemporary Israel. Perhaps the procedures of appointing judges to the Supreme Court in the U.S. are a tiny bit more democratic, even if, as proven by the sensation-mongering during the confirmation of Clarence Thomas, they have their adverse consequences as well?
Hadashot Supplement, 8 May 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
It is a pity that in an article dealing with Israeli espionage in Egypt, Yehoshua Meiri (Hadashot Supplement, April 23), while dealing with the "Lavon Affair", failed call it by its proper name of "terrorism". Had the Egyptians put bombs in Israeli post-offices, cinemas and culture centers, as we did it [in Egypt], would we call it "Intelligence gathering" as he does, or "terrorism"?
It is also a pity that Meiri passed in silence the objectives of this Israeli terrorism and failed to present it in its political context. During the "Lavon Affair", the British army was still occupying extensive chunks of Egypt. Due to Egyptian guerrilla warfare and other forms of popular resistance, the British were considering a withdrawal of their troops, and thereby the recognition of the Egyptian sovereignty de facto. Israeli terrorism [of the "Lavon Affair"] was intended to look in British eyes as Egyptian terrorism, in the hope of convincing the British to stay in Egypt "for ever and ever", to use Shamir's phrase now applying to the Territories. The Israeli government deluded itself that Egypt can remain subjugated forever. In reality, Israeli terrorism of that time caused a perpetual escalation of warfare which is still in progress, for the simple reason that Israel has never really reconciled itself with the factual independence of any Arab state.
Haaretz, 14 May 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
In his important article ("The moment at which rioters fill the streets", Haaretz, May 6) Uzi Benziman describes the existing legal discrimination between Jews and Arabs, (to be exact, between Jews and Gentiles), and ponders its consequences.4 Yet the article stops short of exhausting the problem. One might raise the question which Jews are in favor of this discrimination? And to what degree? For instance, one might ask which Jews would not consider a murder of a Gentile by a Jew as a serious crime requiring an adequate punishment?
The answer is clear: The Halacha does not interpret the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill"5 in the same way as the secular Jews. In the Halacha, there is a qualitative difference between a Jew murdering a Jew, a Gentile murdering a Jew, a Gentile murdering a Gentile and a Jew murdering a Gentile. The last case is qualified by the Halacha as "prohibited by a rabbinical rule".6 It means that breaches of this prohibition are no more than venial sins. But the Halacha also rules that a Jewish murderer of a Gentile should not be punished at all. He is to be punished by God.
The attitude of the Cabbala toward Gentiles is even more contemptuous than that of the Halacha. The Cabbala rules that the souls of the Gentiles are abominable and Satanic. This attitude reached its extremes in Habad Hassidism.
The described attitudes have been not infrequently acted upon, either by rabbis and religious politicians or by ordinary religious or tradition-observing Jews.7 Exposed to the constant brainwashing on the part of the religious [Jews] or the "experts" in Judaism, secular Jewish public is not let to recognize the comparability of the neo-Nazi skinheads in Germany with the Haredim and the majority of other religious Jews in Israel. Yet in reality, both stand by the same principles. Both refuse to recognize that a contempt of non-Jews for us has the same quality as our contempt for non-Jews.
Haaretz, 17 June 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Although I have been long supporting the Israeli withdrawal from all the Territories as proposed by Ahmad Tibi ("A citizen with a status of a suspicious object", Haaretz, June 5), I oppose the expression "the conquered Arab territory" which he uses in this context. In my view, there is no such thing as Arab or Jewish or Kurdish territories. All that exists are the conquered or oppressed nations.
I also oppose Tibi's demand that Israel be integrated into the Middle East as it now exists. I consider this demand incompatible with his other demands: of democracy and of equality for all Israeli citizens. It is also incompatible with his critique of the legally binding concept of Israel as "the state of the Jews [only]". I fully support Tibi's critique.
All Arab states are legally defined as Arab and/or Muslim states (or like Lebanon, as multireligious). There is no Arab country which grants equal rights to all its citizens. In no Arab country women are equal to men. Tibi says that American Jews seldom intermarry with Moroccan or Ethiopian Jews. This is true, but at least in Israel there is no law prohibiting such intermarriage for those who wish to intermarry. (Nor is there such a law in the U.S.) On the other hand, Muslim and Christian Palestinians not only seldom intermarry on their own free choice, but they are also prevented by law from such intermarriages, whether in Israel or in any Arab state.
Those who really want democracy and equality for all Israeli citizens should criticize the absence of democracy and equal rights in the Arab states. And those who want Israel to be integrated into the Middle East should understand that such an integration would be feasible only when the Middle East is comprised of democratic states.
Hadashot Supplement, 19 June 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
I wonder how come that Ilan Hauser, when interviewed by Ronald Fisher about the 1982 Lebanon invasion (Hadashot Supplement, June 5), already managed to forget Sharon's reasons for that invasion, even though Sharon had avowed his reasons openly. By the end of December 1981 the [Hebrew] press carried out the text of a speech which Sharon was scheduled to deliver at the Tel Aviv University. The best analysis of that speech was by Zvi Timor, published in Al Hamishmar (December 24, 1981).
In the opinion of Timor, with which I concur, the invasion of Lebanon was intended by Sharon, and by some others, to be the first stage in building an Israeli empire extending from "Algeria or Morocco" from the west to China in the east, and from Kenya or even South Africa in the south to the USSR in the north. Had the invasion been militarily successful, it would have been pursued onward, until the Israeli army would have been defeated far away from Israel's borders, more decisively than it has ever been defeated in the State of Israel's entire history.
If Sharon ever again returns to power [in Israel], he may be taken for granted to again try his luck at setting up an Israeli empire. Then his second fiasco may be much more calamitous than his first.
Haaretz, 26 June 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
The recent murder of the Egyptian writer Faraj Foda by Muslim religious zealots is a good occasion for asking ourselves: What does the Jewish Halacha say about analogous cases?
Maimonides' authoritative [Halachic] compendium Mishneh Torah, "Book of Judges", Section "Dissenters", rules in Chapter 3 that "a Jew who doesn't believe in the Oral Law is to be regarded as a heretic, and can be put to death by anyone (which means that any Jew is free to kill him)... and once he achieves notoriety as a heretic with regard to the Oral Law, he should be put down and not be raised up, (which means that his death should be caused indirectly and it is forbidden to rescue him if his life is endangered), since he belongs to the ranks of those Jews who either are heretics [in general], or say that the Torah was not revealed by God, or are informers. All these are no longer to be regarded as Jews. In order to put them to death no witnesses are needed, nor any prior warning,8 nor any judges, because any Jew who kills anyone of them performs a major act of merit by virtue of removing an obstacle".
As long as the Jews lived under the Halacha's despotic rule, they indeed treated the suspected dissenters and heretics in the thus prescribed manner. Today, not only rabbi Shach, the Shass party and the Lubavitcher [Rebbe] want us to reenact the just described laws which defined every Jew killing a heretic as a performer of an act of merit. The Gush Emunim, the National Religious Party, and even the moderates among the religious public, as long as they pay allegiance to the Halacha as their supreme authority, are in this respect no different.
It was only the European Enlightenment which liberated us from the murderous rule of the Halacha, over the initial opposition of most Jews of the time against such a liberation. At present, some Israeli Jews seek to restore the Halachic rule, and use their "educational" influence to indoctrinate people accordingly.
Kol Ha'ir, 10 July 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
When Hayim Bar'am writes that "the masses of Israeli Arabs voted for Jewish parties" (Kol Ha'ir, June 26), he neglects to mention that one of the parties attracting massive Arab vote was the National Religious Party, which Bar'am correctly identifies as a party of the extreme right. As many as 4.7% of Israeli Arabs voted for the NRP, compared to only 2.9% of Tel Avivians. That high a percentage cannot be accounted for by, let us say, the votes of Arab employees of the [NRP-controlled] ministry of Religions, or of Arab religious dignitaries dependent on that ministry. It can only be explained as an instance of voting according to the voter's clan affiliation. For the sake of, say, advancing a single Arab official or Sheikh in rank, an entire Arab clan would be ready to vote even for Gush Emunim, and thus offer their approval for the latter's deeds. Adding the NRP vote to the Arab vote for Likud (8.4%), Shass (4.9%) and the United Torah List (0.6%) yields 18.6% of the Israeli Arabs who voted for parties comprising Shamir's government coalition. Those who define themselves as "left", while ignoring the realities in Arab society which engender a voting pattern as deplorable as this one, are like a blind guiding the blind men from a New Testament parable, with all of them falling into the ditch.
Yerushalayim, 10 July 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
I was delighted to hear from Ms. Elitzur (Yael Admoni, Yerushalayim, July 3) that Jewish prayers, "if said in Hebron, ascend straight to the heavens, without the need of any bearers". Delighted as I was, however, I still have some questions to ask, which need to be answered. How crooked is the ascent of the prayers said by the Jews in places other than Hebron? Are the Jewish prayers in Jerusalem or Bney-Brak first dispatched to Hebron in order to be accepted in the heavens, or are they doomed to hover for some time in the air, while Ms. Elitzur's prayers receive preferential delivery? Or what about the prayers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Brooklyn? I am quite perplexed when I try to figure out how crooked their itinerary to the heavens must be in view of the distance of Brooklyn from Hebron.
I am also quite excited by what Ms. Elitzur said about the "bearers" of the prayers, even if by virtue of her living in Hebron she happens not to need their services. I am very eager to know, for example, who "bears" the prayers of Rabbi Shach, or of Rabbi Kaduri who supported the Shass party against Rabbi Shach's will. Could it be that Rabbi Shach's party was defeated in the elections because the bearers of his prayers proved incompetent, while Rabbi Kaduri's party won owing to his skill in tipping the bearers of his prayers properly? It makes me shake in fear when I recall that before 1967, when no Jew was living in Hebron, the prayers of all the pious Jews must have been reaching the heavens only through messengers, and only by a circular route. My own consolation is that we could live here nevertheless, and even win the War of Independence, whatever the manner of delivery of the prayers of pious Jews to heavens was. Perhaps the Jews could survive then, even if Ms. Elitzur and her fellow residents of Hebron would need the services of some "bearers" to deliver their prayers to the heavens.9
Al Hamishmar, 12 July 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Gadi Yatziv ("The Shass party takes off", Al Hamishmar, July 5) says he could only laugh when exorcisms and magic spells Shass resorted to [in its election campaign] were shown on [Israeli] TV. It is a pity he didn't make an effort to understand the obscurantist world view underlying such practices. Before the Jewish Enlightenment, this world view was shared by all the Jews, the Ashkenazi no less than the Sephardi ones. Before the Jewish Enlightenment all the Jews lived under the spell of the Cabbala, since when it triumphed over the previously regnant Halachic Judaism and over the attempts to introduce some philosophical discourse into Judaism. The triumph of the Cabbala and of the concomitant false messianism took place in the middle of the XVI century. Its absolute power over the Jewish communities persisted until the beginning of the Jewish Enlightenment, which must be understood primarily as a Jewish rebellion against the power of the Cabbalists and as a rejection of the then still recent Jewish past.
Moreover, Gadi Yatziv laughed at Cabbalistic superstitions performed by Sephardi Jews, but he didn't dare to poke fun at the same superstitions of the Ashkenazi Jews, in the first place by the Hassids. Can the reason for that omission be that the [Zionist] Labor movement has been glorifying the Hassidic movement instead of resisting it?
The sad truth is that the [Zionist] Labor movement already long ago betrayed the ideals of the Jewish Enlightenment, oblivious that it could have existed only because the Enlightenment preceded it. It did so for the sake of the supposedly convenient coalitions with the religious and Haredi parties. In this, it behaved like the Iranian Left towards the end of the Shah's rule, and for similar reasons. I believe the chief among these reasons was the all too human reluctance to repudiate our own immediate past as personified by the father or grandfather of each of us.
The reactionaries differ from the leftists primarily in that the former glorify their past blindly while the latter are supposed to be ready to assess it critically. Unless we learn from the sad experience of the Iranian Left, we may yet find ourselves in its present shape.
Hadashot Supplement, 17 July 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
In his excellent article ("The 'Golda, please don't leave us' neurosis", Hadashot Supplement, July 3), Doron Rosenblum asks: "What is the meaning of this obsessive urge - manifest in particular in the [Israeli] Labor party - to request the resigning leaders to remain in power". I think I can provide him with an answer.
Prof. Gideon Doron, who had been a member of a strategic team advising Rabin during the electoral campaign, thus explained (Al Hamishmar, June 26) Labor's electoral strategy to Amiram Cohen: "One of our central aims was to convey an image of Rabin as the true-blue successor of Begin". In other words, Rabin really had nothing to say as himself, but with the help of his "strategic team" he could at least disguise himself as Begin's look-alike. True, at a different time he would disguise himself as Begin's political enemy. But in general, Rabin's lifetime political career has amounted to no more than a game of adopting different disguises.
Since Ben-Gurion's retirement, his successors from among the [Israeli] Labor party and its "leaders", have done nothing apart from practitioning the art of adopting disguises. All the "leaders" of Labor have thus been no more than stuffed skins. Inside those skins there is straw, but no principles. It means that they really are not themselves, but their own look-alikes. The stuffed skin labeled as "Shimon Peres" has beaten all the records of achievement. It could be exhibited as several look-alikes at the same time: as Geula Cohen,10 as a believer in paradise to be soon established in the entire region, and under other semblances.
Haaretz, 28 August 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Yoel Markus writes ("No miracle is going to happen", Haaretz, August 21) that "the new Israeli government has the best of intentions" about conducting the peace talks. But the proposals of this government which he himself quotes are identical with what had been already proposed by Begin [in 1981], except for some changes to Palestinian disadvantage which, according to Markus, are necessitated by the fact that "the Territories have in the meanwhile been filled with Jewish settlements".
It follows that if this government has "the best of intentions", Begin's government had them too. The reverse is also true: If Begin didn't have "the best of intentions", Rabin has them neither. Rabin's "best of intentions" are relative, compared with the madness of Shamir or Sharon. But if we recall the bone breaking orders, we can only conclude that Arens had better intentions [toward the Palestinians] than Rabin.
In my view, no fundamental difference exists between Likud and Labor. Both parties are part of an overgrown, clumsy and demented core of Israeli politics. A real change in Israel is possible only after these two core parties, which date from the 1920s already, will at last come to the end of their days.
Hadashot, 11 August 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
I have a comment to make on the lead article by Hanan Kristal (Hadashot, August 2) showing how Labor party appointees for ministerships and deputy ministerships [in this government] exceed in numbers those of Likud [in the previous one]. This fact can be a surprise only to the naive who have still believed that Labor, even if headed by Rabin and Peres, might be capable of changing itself.
Granted, the Laborites may be capable of remedying the madness of Sharon or Gush Emunim. But real change can take place in Israel only when this putrescent party finally disintegrates.
Haaretz, 19 August 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
The affair of Sebastia as described by Ran Kislev (Haaretz, August 14) was in itself sordid enough, but its sequel was sordid even more.11 I am referring to fraudulent excuses under which [the settlement of] Ofra was supposed to be established as "a working camp" and [the settlement of] Shilo as "an archeological camp". Responsible for this fraud was the then minister of Defense, Shimon Peres, who at that time was championing the Gush Emunim cause. By the way, it was Peres who helped the settlers of Ofra to find means of subsistence in the initial period by granting them the monopoly to produce the kashrut labels for the Israeli army.
Peres' performance as the minister of Finance in 1988-90 did not deviate from this pattern either. His policy was to court favor with all and sundry religious groups, the Gush Emunim included, by showering them with "special money". His intent to come closer to [Jewish] religion and to flatter the rabbis was then avowed. But even most recently, while serving as an acting Prime Minister, he didn't hesitate to extend his protection to the religious law-breakers in Givat Kharsina [near Hebron]. 12 I am concerned that he may continue such practices in the future.
Hadashot Supplement, 21 August 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
The Israeli consul in Chicago Yitzhak Ben Gad [whom Peres wants to fire] may well be right when he claims (Hadashot Supplement, August 7) that "the Chicago public is angry at seeing their beloved consul dismissed". It is because in Ben Gad's understanding the word "public" by definition means only the Organized American Jews alone. For him and for his "public", 97% of the Americans cannot be a "public" because they are Gentiles, and another 1.5% because they are "assimilated Jews" and therefore, again by definition, inferior even to Gentiles.
As Israeli Jews, we should be well-aware that the Organized American Jews are, on the a average, more chauvinistic and racist than chauvinists and racists in our midst. The target of their racism is "the entire world", which according to them is invariably prejudiced against Israel even when it showers it with money. The Organized American Jews can hate all the Gentiles with impunity because they have in the U.S. succeeded in deterring any genuine discussion of Israel and of Judaism by scapegoating any opponent of theirs as an "anti-Semite" or of "self-hating Jew". Their success in that venture resembles the success of Senator MacCarthy in deterring free speech in the U.S., except that they have been rather more effectual in that job. There is also something peculiar in the way the Organized American Jews support Israel. They support us by dragging us to a war. If they succeed in this, we will be shedding blood while they will be shedding tears watching our tribulations on TV. No wonder they are trying to "redeem" their intolerance and hypocrisy by excess of zeal.
Kol Ha'ir, 11 September 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
An article by Yair Sheleg describing in all detail the dispute between Rabbi Goren and the Haredi rabbis regarding the religious licensing of organ transplants, is apt to mislead the readers about the crucial issue of that dispute. Both sides emphatically agree that all differences between their respective positions apply to Jewish patients alone. Therefore, the Haredim who normally oppose the removal of an organ from a body of a Jew for the purpose of transplanting it to someone else, have no objections against traveling to Europe or the U.S. to have an organ transplanted to their bodies there. They assume that such an organ would with near-certainty be then extracted from the body of a Gentile, and their rabbis concur with that assumption. A high probability that an organ for a transplant may be extracted from a Jewish body appears only in Israel. This is what motivates the rather successful Haredi anti-transplant campaign in Israel.
Several European conntries have already responded to this ignominy by banning organ transplants to the Israelis. There is a justice behind this ban, because most Jews in need of transplants indeed seek to receive Gentile organs while refusing in principle to donate any to the Gentiles. Rabbi Goren and the Haredi rabbis fully agree that the body of a Jew is a quality apart from the body of a Gentile. For that, both sides to the dispute deserve to be condemned with equal force.
Hadashot Supplement, 23 October 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Facts of Aharon Klein (Hadashot Supplement, September 25) showing how inefficient Shabak is in the Territories should be no surprise to anyone. Shabak cannot work in the Territories efficiently, because its primary functions there are administrative, while the "Civil Administration" is no more than a facade. Moreover, in performing those functions, Shabak has absolute powers. In the capacity of a secret police, Shabak behaves in the Territories no differently than the secret polices of the already defunct Eastern European regimes or of a larger part of still existing Arab regimes. In all such countries, the secret police determines the fate of every single human being.
Lord Acton's iron rule "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" applies here, even though it was formulated 150 years ago. One of the aspects of the process leading to the absolute corruption, applying fully to Shabak's officers, is that their efficiency decreases as their corruption increases. In plain words, one can say that they become more stupid as the years of their service pass by. Those who believe that Acton's iron rule with all its consequences applies only to Arab secret polices, but not to the Jewish one, or vice versa, merely prove that in addition to being stupid they are racist.
Yerushalayim, 2 October 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Let me cheer up a little those [ultra-pious] Haredi Jews, who deplore that the street-naming committee of the [Jerusalem] municipality turned down the proposal to name a street after Rabbi Weiss on the ground of his anti-Zionism. It should cheer them up if they hear a story about what happened in to a Jerusalem street named after Albert Einstein, a fervent Zionist but also an infidel.
Some time after Einstein's death some Jerusalemites wanted to name a street after him in this Holy City of ours. The religious Jews then resisted the idea as a terrible heresy. Just imagine, they argued, how would a religious Jew feel while living on a street called after an infidel as terrible as Einstein, and while being forced to invoke his impure name as his address. After a protracted controversy, a prototypical Israeli-style compromise was reached. An "Albert Einstein Street" figures on the map of [West] Jerusalem, but in reality it is merely a road between the buildings of the campus of the (no less infidel) Hebrew University in Giv'at Ram. No one has ever lived there nor needed to use it as his address: and so will it remain in the future.
Perhaps this story can serve as a precedent for the street-naming committee? Why shouldn't this committee find a road without buildings, in an all-Haredi neighborhood to be sure, and name it after Rabbi Weiss after all? His admirers may thus rest contented, just as Einstein's admirers in Jerusalem were forced to content themselves with the described compromise.
Haaretz Supplement, 9 October 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
In his article "The Yemenite Jews, doomed by nature to remain menial laborers" (Haaretz Supplement, September 18) Hayim Hanegbi speaks of the racist slurs with which Arthur Rupin [in 1908-1912] described the Yemenite Jews in his diary. Yet there exists a much better evidence of Rupin's racism. It is his book Sociology of the Jews, first published in German before Rupin arrived in Palestine [in 1904] and then twice translated into Hebrew, in Odessa in 1914 and in Tel Aviv in 1934. Recently the racist assumptions of this book were discussed (perhaps not in sufficient depth) by professor Ya'akov Shavit in his book Judaism as reflected through the Hellenic mirror (Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 1992). For the benefit of the readers, I am going to sum up - in quotes or my own words - what Shavit says about Rupin's racist theories in a section of his book entitled "The Jewish race, its origin and properties according to Rupin" (pp. 354-7).
According to Rupin the Jewish race originates from the cross-breeding of Cana'anites and Philistines, which means that the Jews are lily-white, contrary to the false "semitic myth" which denies the whiteness of the Jews. Shavit opines that "Rupin, and some other Jews as well, needed to sever the Semitic link, in order to deny that the Jews may share negative characteristics commonly attributed to the 'Semitic race', and in order to exempt 'the Jews' from the unwelcome racial proximity to 'the Arabs' as circumscribed by the boundaries of the same racial category". Shavit then proceeds to describe the properties of the "Jewish race" as Rupin defined them, rightly observing that "ironically, Rupin's portrayal of the Jew was identical with his portrayal in the anti-Semitic literature". He conjectures that Rupin became a Zionist because of "his deep fear that in an era of radical changes it would be increasingly difficult for the Jewish 'species' to preserve its qualities intact, without discarding them in the process of assimilation. It was in order to forestall such risks that he felt that the Jews needed a country of their own".14
Of course, the very existence of the Yemenite Jews could not but confute Rupin's theories that "the Jewish race" was a part of "the white race". He knew nothing yet about the [black-skinned] Ethiopian Jews or Jews of Cochin [in Southern India]. The "pure Spanish" Jews of Palestine15 of that time still could in his fertile imagination be incorporated into "the Jewish race". But the Yemenite Jews no longer could, by any stretch of that imagination. His conclusion was that they needed to be oppressed.
Haaretz, 30 October 1992
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Tom Segev's extensive review (Haaretz, October 16) of Anita Shapira's new book shares with the reviewed book16 a common but nevertheless grave mistake. In addition to the two "ethical approaches" of the Zionist Labor movement which both the author and the reviewer discuss, there was something third: an "ethical approach", or to name it plainly, the myth which animated that movement no less strongly than the other two. It was the idea of reviving the kingdom of David and Solomon. This myth implied that the Jews should conquer all the territories which had once been ruled by the [ancient] Israelites, or which had lain "within the boundaries of the [Divine] promise" as defined by the Bible. These words "restoration of the kingdom of David and Solomon", were after all used by David Ben-Gurion in his official explanation of the aims of the Suez War of 1956 provided in his Knesset speech on the third day of that war. As soon as the Knesset heard these words, all its members, with the exception of the 4 Israeli Communist Party MKs, rose to sing the Hatikva. In the same speech Ben-Gurion also said that "Sinai is not a part of Egypt", which didn't hinder him from simultaneously calling upon Egypt to make peace.
In this way, Ben-Gurion implicitly admitted, in my opinion rightly, that the Suez War, far from being a "no-choice war", was "an avoidable war" which was nevertheless waged for the sake of messianic aims. This admission was much more blatant than Begin's in 1982. It can be assumed that without President Eisenhower's opposition to this messianism the whole [Israeli] messianic madness which burst forth with all the force in 1967 would have begun already in 1956. After all, messianic strains were within the Labor movement strong and influential at least since 1918.
Yerushalayim, 5 March 1993
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
As you have reported (Yerushalayim, February 19) "the greatest rabbinic Sage", rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, explained to his students that six Ashkenazi Haredi [ultra-pious] Jews of Jerusalem died within a single week because "the carrent [Israeli] government is steeped in infidelity, with the help of the 'Oriental' Haredi party Shass". Let us assume here that rabbi Auerbach really knows what God wills, not just that he thinks he knows. Let us therefore further assume that God is indeed angry at the current [Israeli] government and its support by Shass enough to kill six persons completely uninvolved in politics. Even if those assumptions are true, they beg some questions:
A. Why did God choose to kill six Ashkenazi Haredim out of anger at "Oriental" Haredim?
B. In order to reveal God's punishing designs to the members of Shass and the secular supporters of the government, wouldn't it be more suitable for God to kill six prominent supporters of Shass, or six major supporters of Shulamit Aloni [a minister particularly hated by the Haredim] in a single week, rather than to kill six enemies of the government?
C. Is rabbi Auerbach willing at least to consider a simpler hypothesis, that God killed six Ashkenazi Haredim out of anger at their party, Agudat Israel, rather than at Shass?
D. And, to go a step further, perhaps God killed those six Ashkenazi Haredim out of anger at the rabbis who presume to know what He wants, such as rabbi Auerbach and the other rabbis who claim to speak in His name?
Hadashot, 17 March 1993
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Contrary to the pretensions of both sides, the debate between MK Burg [Labor] and the Education ministry (Hadashot, March 11) is not about teaching Judaism, but about the ways of brainwashing. Both sides don't want Judaism, whether past or present, to be taught in our schools.
Let me give two examples. A considerable segment of Jews in recent generations have been Reform by persuasion: yet nothing is said about it in the curriculum. Or, for another example, will it ever be taught in our schools that the greatest Hebrew poets - those of the Spanish period [1000-1200] - were bisexual, and that the magnificent love poems which they wrote were addressed to both their male and female lovers? Let us recall just two magnificent verses of Yehuda Halevi17 "She took off her clothes but didn't turn nude/For her charm, majesty and beauty were her dress".18 Can it ever be taught in our schools, regardless of how thrilled the students may be expected to be while learning it?
Haaretz, 26 March 1993
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
It is a pity that Meron Benvenisti ("Facts and repressions", Haaretz, March 18) fails to mention the most important and yet the most carefully concealed fact which is in my view pivotal for [Israeli] policies in the Territories. The settlements and the "state lands" in the Territories are overtly professed to be intended only for the Jews. Those who, like the Tzomet party, excuse that discrimination by invoking the military service criterion19 need to be reminded that, for example, a Druze who has served in the army and might have even reached a high-ranking position while serving in the Territories, is still not eligible for residing in a settlement or for benefiting in any way from the "state land". At the same time, an old Jew who only yesterday emigrated from Brooklyn, has never served in the army and never will, is perfectly eligible, even if he happens to refuse to become a citizen of the State of Israel.
The right to settle [in the Territories] and monetary benefits tied to settling are automatically granted the converts to Judaism, whether they come from Peru or from a tribe living near the border of India and Burma.20 But they are denied not only to any Palestinians, the army ex-servicemen among them included, but also to any Gentiles. Nearly 70% of the West Bank area and about 30% of the area of the densely inhabited Gaza Strip have already become "Gentile-rein", even officially so.
In other words, we have created a regime of Apartheid. In its specific treats it is more repulsive than anything that ever existed in South Africa. The settlements are just one manifestation of this regime.
Haaretz, 14 May 1993
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
A leader of the religious settlers [in the West Bank], Israel Har'el, defined (Haaretz, May 7) the deeds of the group which had become known as "the Jewish undergronnd" as a "retaliation against the Arabs" and "assistance to the government". Let us recall that their deeds, for which they were duly sentenced by the court, included an attempt to demolish the Temple Mount mosques, and placing the Sabbath clock-timed bombs beneath Arab buses with the intention of making them explode the moment the Sabbath would begin.
At that time [1984] such buses were used by many Jews and foreign tourists, but also by Arabs of both sexes and all ages. Only the religious Jews were not likely to ride in such buses at the moment when the bombs were timed to explode.21 The intended murder of foreign tourists vividly resembles the recent attacks on randomly chosen foreign tourists by the religious fanatics in Egypt.
Those exploits have never been straightforwardly condemned by religious settlers, and are still regarded by Har'el as "helping the government". This is a good occasion to remind everyone concerned that those attempts which some even now refuse to condemn, were aimed not only at the Gentiles (let alone only the Arabs) but also at non-religious Jews who are also viewed as subhumans who could be killed with impunity.
Yerushalayim, 11 March 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Yohay Hakak reports (March 4) that in his eulogy of the murderer Goldstein delivered in the hall of Hesder Yeshiva of Kiryat Arba, the rabbi of Kiryat Arba, Dov Lior, said that "whatever Goldstein did, was done for the sake of the Heavens". This means that Kiryat Arba has a Nazi rabbi professing opinions no different from those of Adolf Hitler. After all, Hitler also kept invoking "providence" in justification of his vile ideology. This similarity should be kept in mind when next time we'll protest to Germany about its Neo-Nazis.
In my view Neo-Nazis do have a right to advocate their revolting beliefs. Subsidizing Jewish Neo-Nazis out of the taxes which I pay as a citizen is, however, a completely different matter. Yet rabbi Lior does receive a salary from the government and the Hesder yeshivot are a part of the Israeli army. Incidentally, Meretz hypocrites in the government approve of this arrangement so as not to despoil "the peace process".
This is what makes the separation of religion from the state in Israel an urgent necessity: more urgent than even the termination of the conquest [of the Territories]. The hypocrites who keep bowing to the rabbis for the sake of the "peace process" should be told that this is not the way to reach peace. If anything, this is the way to speed up the possible transformation of Israel into a Khumeinist State.
Haaretz Book Supplement, 16 March 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
The Supplement's editor, Michael Handelsalz, in his editorial (Haaretz Book Supplement, February 16) tries to explain the silence of Israeli Jewish public on the persecution of Salman Rushdie by "a presumption - seemingly correct - that the Israeli Jews have more important issues to cope with". But in the previous week the entire Hebrew press discussed at great length one of these "more important issues", namely fact that a high-ranking French army officer was dismissed after he had written a historical article doubting whether Dreyfus was really innocent of the charges against him.
It is important and justified to keep asserting that Dreyfus was innocent indeed. However, I cannot imagine that Handelsalz would say that either the Jews or the French have "more important issues to cope with" than that. I am also of the opinion that a combination of vociferous insistence about Dreyfus with resounding silence about Rushdie amounts to a quite repulsive version of Jewish chauvinism. It has two curious implications. The first implication is that Dreyfus was innocent not in view of factual evidence, but because he happened to be Jewish and the Jews are always right. The second implication is that in the absence of any specifically Jewish interest in Rushdie's case, the Jews should not bother to campaign in defense of a mere Gentile.
The conclusion from this contrast seems to me clear. Israel has at present no writer of moral stature comparable to Emile Zola, and no politician of a calibre of Clemenceau. It was Clemenceau, after all, who about a hundred years ago had the courage to say that justice was more important to France than the honor of the French army. I cannot imagine even one Knesset Member who would be ready to say about the honor of the Israeli army what Clemenceau said about that of the French one.
Admittedly, Handelsalz did defend Rushdie in his editorial. It is to be deplored, however, that at the same time he found it possible to justify Israeli Jews who almost to the last man studiously ignored the iniquity victimizing Rushdie.
Haaretz, 1 April 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
There can be no doubt that the facts in Danny Rubinstein's article of March 16 are accurate. The only thing his article lacks, is an abstract description of Apartheid as a principle governing the actual practices of the Israeli conquest regime in the Territories. This principle is quite different from those adopted by most other conquest and colonial regimes. This principle also guarantees that the Israeli conquest regime cannot but serve the settlers.
The Israeli conquest regime has four major characteristics. First, its laws are not based on a given territory, but vary depending on to whom they apply. Israelis who live or even visit the Territories are subject to legal codes completely different from those binding the Palestinians who live there. In contrast, when Britain ruled India, a British subject living in or visiting India was bound by the same laws as the Indians.
All state lands in the Territories are openly professed to be intended for the purpose of Jewish settlement alone, irrespective of the citizenship of the actual of potential settler. No part of those lands is intended for settlement of the Palestinians, irrespective of whether they reside in the Territories, in exile, are Israeli citizens, or have served in the Israeli army.
The Palestinians in the Territories have been prohibited to exceed their water consumption quotas (whether drawn from the wells or other sources) beyond levels fixed according to their consumption in September 1967. In contrast, the Jews who have settled in the Territories are allowed to consume almost as much water as they please.
Any Jew can enter the Territories and settle in them at his discretion, except in rare cases when security considerations dictate otherwise. Palestinians have no such right. The State of Israel is not willing to recognize even their right to family reunification, in contrast to having taken advantage of this right to lure Soviet Jews to Israel.
Shishi, 1 April 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
I deplore it that professor Ruth Gabizon, whose views I usually respect, made a statement (Shishi, March 18) which I can only regard as a half truth which may be worse than an explicit lie. She wrote that on the territory of the State of Israel "every human being has in principle the right to move around and to settle (conditional on some laws)".
At least 92% of the State of Israel's territory are "state lands", all of which are managed in conformity with the Israel Land Law according to the regulations of the Jewish National Fund. Those regulations proscribe settling not only to Arab holders of Israeli citizenship, but also to any non-Jews whatsoever. The proscription applies e.g. to Druzes who have the duty to serve in the Israeli army and to Beduins and other Arabs who may serve in that army as volunteers. But the same proscription makes the same distinction between the foreigners. Non-Jewish citizens of any conceivable foreign state have no right to settle on these lands, whereas Jewish citizens of the same states do have such right. Even Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust don't have the right to settle on the "state lands" of the Jewish state. In the State of Israel the non-Jews are free to settle only on 8% of Israel's land which is owned privately.
Let me take the situation of Jerusalem as an example. In the Jewish Quarter of the Old City [of Jerusalem] where land is owned by the state, the right to settle was refused not only to its former inhabitant, Mohammed Burkan, but also to a Swedish academic who wanted to rent an apartment there [from its Jewish owner].23 In contrast, Jewish settlement in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City [of Jerusalem], in the village of Silwan and at other locations [within the city] is not only perfectly lawful, but also encouraged by the state.
Shishi, 22 April 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
The story of Mattay Cohen (Shishi, April 15) about the army doctor who refused to provide medical treatment to a Druze soldier upon noticing that "he bore an Arab family name" should remind all of us that the Israeli army career of the murderous doctor, Baruch Goldstein, had also begun with his refusal to provide medical treatment to non-Jews, and that the army hadn't drawn any consequences from this refusal. In addition to the breach of the Hippocratic Oath and the sheer inhumanity of such behavior, both cases under this discussion amount to a gross breach of the army's standing orders and of military discipline in general.
The massacre perpetrated by Goldstein could have been prevented. The heaviest responsibility for the failure to prevent it falls in my view on the high army command in 1984-85, and on the then Defense minister, Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin and his high command should have decided to court-martial Goldstein for disobeying orders and to dismiss him from the army. But the Israeli army and the individual who is commanding it behave in the same hypocritical and irresponsible way now as then. By refusing to deal with the current case of an army doctor who openly announced that "he refused to provide medical treatment to soldiers with an Arab family name", they show that they have neither learned nor forgotten anything.
Kol Ha'ir, 22 April 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Your article (April 15), discussing the prospects of civil war, ignores what I would regard as its most probable cause. The sole alternative you take into account, is a civil war resulting from defensive, even if armed resistance of religious settlers against government initiatives. But why don't you take into account the possibility that religious fanatics may try to seize power by violent means? And what about the possibility, which to me looks quite likely, that some battalions of either the Regional Defense or the Hesder Yeshivot arrive one Sunday in Jerusalem to arrest the ministers at the government's weekly meeting, and proceed to take over the TV and the radio in order to thus proclaim "a Jewish State according to Halacha"? If Rabin and all his ministers are regarded in those circles as "traitors" and Israeli Jewish society as "Canaanite", why shouldn't such an outcome be expected?
Your expert, Meir Pai'l, was misguided enough to speak only about later civil wars in Jewish history, without mentioning the first one, described in the Book of Exodus. That Book describes what happened after Moses descended from Mount Sinai and saw the Jews worshipping the Golden Calf. "Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said: 'Who is on the Lord's side?' And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves into him. And he said unto them: 'Thus said the Lord God of Israel. Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor'. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and there fell of the people that day about three thousands men" (Chapter 32, verses 26-29). This is a very Jewish story. And this is a quite likely scenario for what may well happen here, sooner rather than later.
Haaretz, 29 April 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
After reading the article by Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer (Haaretz, April 21) on Goldstein, I finally understood why the extermination of Jews by the Nazis, instead of being simply called "genocide" or "extermination", became formally designated - incorrectly in my view - as "Sho'a" [Calamity]. Since for Bauer Jewish commandments to exterminate other nations just don't seem to exist, adopting a separate name might have had good reasons. Precisely for those reasons Bauer lets himself partly justify Goldstein's massacre, when he writes that "Goldstein must have viewed himself a victim of the Arab Amalekites". I am not sure whether German Nazis really believed their own propaganda claiming that the Germans were "victims" of the Jews, but I do know that a murderer is not a victim. The one who is murdered is the victim!
I also know, and Bauer can be presumed to know it as well, that Jewish commandments to exterminate the Amalekite and Canaanite nations call for the perpetration of a genocide. About the Canaanites the Bible says: "Thou shalt save alive nothing that breathes" (Deuteronomy, chapter 20, verse 16). It is also important to note that according to the Bible exterminations should be carried out when the Jews are strong. The passage commanding the extermination of the Amalekites contains also the following words: "When the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies... Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heavens" (Deuteronomy, chapter 25, verse 19). The execution of this commandment is accounted by the following words of the Bible: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling" (I Samuel, chapter 15, verse 3). Israeli victories [over all neighbors] described in the Bible at the end of the preceding chapter serve as a rationale for the genocidal commandment which follows.
Those genocide commandments are included in all [sometimes somewhat variant] lists of 613 commandments which [according to Talmud] the Jews must fulfill. Unlike some commandments which are merely temporary, those are said to remain in force for "all generations of the Jews", which means that they need to fulfilled also in the future. I haven't yet heard from Yehuda Bauer a single word about the commandment to exterminate non-Jewish sucklings. I haven't yet heard from him anything that might indicate what does he think about the possible impact of this commandment on pious Jews, and for that matter also on pious Christians. Until I learn that from him, I will stick to my opinion that Holocaust scholars who confine themselves to dealing with the Holocaust alone, without mentioning the subject of other genocidal commandments, can be blamed for corrupting their scholarship morally and intellectually.
Haaretz, 2 May 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Danny Rubinstein (Haaretz, April 25) interprets "the Hamas ideology of stages" too narrowly,24 partly because the only thing which interests him is the attitude of Palestinians toward the State of Israel. In my view we should concern ourselves more keenly with Hamas' clout in Palestinian society.
We should take more interest in Hamas' ideology, according to which all political rights are to be denied not ooly to the Jews but also to the Christians. It should concern us that Hamas at present opposes any participation of Christians in politics. Since in the Gaza Strip the Christians are a small minority, "the Palestinian compromise-makers" found it easy to ignore the rights of that minority. In the West Bank, where the proportion of Christians is much higher, all PLO organizations, including those which for whatever reason are called "leftist", defend the rights of Palestinian Christians in theory and ignore them in practice. The demand of Hamas that in all meetings it attends together with representatives of other organizations everybody must be Muslim was tacitly accepted by those organizations already long ago.
Hamas opposes likewise the granting of any political rights to women. In the Gaza Strip it has already scored total victory also on this point. As a result, there is no Palestinian organization there in whose politics women participate any more. In the West Bank Hamas' victory has so far been in this respect only partial. Still, women are no longer let there to attend the meetings attended by Hamas.
I do not intend here to draw any political conclusions from this state of affairs. My intention is merely to contend that the Israeli media have been desirous to advance the peace process to the point of neglecting their rudimentary duty to report the news, in this case the news about developments within Palestinian society. Even more deplorable is in my view the treason of some [Israeli] intellectuals too anxious to have peace to be ready to utter a word about the many Human Rights violations committed during the peace process by various Palestinian organizations. But the worst offenders are in my view those Palestinian intellectuals who, while residing in Israel, keep preaching that we "need to integrate ourselves into the Middle East". Their silence about the violations of the rights of Palestinian women and Christians has made it clear that they really oppose democracy except when it can serve self-interested aims of the PLO.
Yerushalayim, 10 June 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
As was reported in the [Israeli] papers last week, some bombs and missiles dropped or fired by [Israeli] Airforce on the Hizbollah camp in Lebanon had been equipped with a delayed action mechanism. As one who was involved in investigating the Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians in 1982, I can testify that claims to the effect of the use of delayed action bombs and missiles, obviously aimed under such circumstances against the medical rescue teams and the already wounded, which were at that time made and never denied by Israel, were later confirmed. I regard the use of delayed action bombs under such conditions as equivalent to throwing bombs at a Red Star of David ambulance.25 In my view the premeditated barbarity on the part of a state which deliberately hits medical personnel in the process of rescuing the wounded is far worse than the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
If the present Lebanese claims (again not denied by Israel) about the use of delayed action bombs are correct - and I am afraid they are correct - I can only conclude that Rabin is worse than Sharon and Meretz is worse than Rabin. And the Peace Now is not even worth mentioning.
Shishi, 10 June 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Gabriel Moked thinks that if he calls the Histadrut, [Zionistl Labor Movement and [Israeli] Labor party "social-democratic" this concept fits them (Shishi, May 27). Let me explode this kind of demagogy. In the frst place no real social-democratic party rules, through a concern called "Workers Economy", over an enormous property. No social-democratic party would dare to conduct in this property a Reagan-style economic policy. Let Shishi put the matters to a test. Let it devote one of its weekly polls to question the Israeli workers where they prefer to be employed: in private businesses or in those which belong to Histadrut-owned "Workers Economy", and it will become apparent that they prefer the first. Those who actually talk to the workers know that the Histadrut is first and foremost their chief enemy and their greatest exploiter.
But there is an even more important issue on which the Histadrut and the [Israeli] Labor party are totally opposed to the social-democratic principles, and this is the extreme form of Jewish chauvinism which they adopted. Let us recall that the social-democratic parties accepted from their inception, and still do so, candidates for membership without any national or religious discrimination. Let us recall that they applied this principle to the Jews and that Jews became leaders in some of such parties a long before they reached similar positions in other parties. By contrast, the Histadrut was founded [in 1920] as an organization to which only the Jews could belong and only after more than fifty years of existence it had admitted Arab members. Till this very day the Histadrut discriminates against it Arab and showers favors on its settler members.
The situation in the Labor party is even worse: it is a racist party till this day.
Haaretz Friday Literary Supplement, 5 August 1994
Letter to the Editor by: Israel Shahak
This is a rejoinder to Israel Gutman's (July 22) and Yehuda Bauer's (July 29) criticisms of an article by Yossi Grodzinsky entitled "Zionist exploitation of the Holocaust is to be resisted" (July 15).26 I lived in the Warsaw Ghetto till shortly before its liquidation, and then for nearly two years in Bergen Belsen. After the liberation I talked to hundreds of Warsaw Ghetto survivors. Like myself, they all recalled that first news that Jews were being exterminated had reached the Warsaw Ghetto shortly after June 1941 from the Jewish communities of the USSR and later from various smaller towns of Poland. The particularly dismaying news of the liquidation of the Lublin Ghetto reached the Warsaw Ghetto only several months before extermination started in the latter. Yet not a single organized Jewish body tried during those several months to forewarn the Warsaw Jews that their turn was coming. Not one of them would appeal: whoever can save himself, he should!
In my view those who refrained from issuing such an appeal, including those who subsequently organized the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, committed a terrible mistake. The Uprising which began only after an overwhelming majority of Warsaw Ghetto Jews had already been exterminated, cannot in my view exonerate its leaders for their failure to forewarn people about the approaching extermination. I recall reading [in 1979 in the original Hebrew] Sabbtay B. Beit Zvi's book Post-Ugandan Zionism on Trial. A study of the factors that caused the mistakes made by the Zionist Movement during the Holocaust [The title of English version published by the author in 1991]. The book confirmed all my previous suspicions. Thinking of the Warsaw Ghetto insurgents, I have a habit of repeating to myself on each year's Holocaust and Heroism Day27 a verse from Isaiah (Chapter 22, 14): "Surely this iniquity will not be forgiven you till you die." In spite of having access to sources of information much better than those of an average Ghetto Jew, and in spite of regarding themselves as Jewish leaders and representatives, they didn't forewarn the Jews at large what fate awaited them. This was an iniquity indeed.
I also regard all organized attempts to rescue the East European Jews, and in particular all armed revolts for the sake of "saving the Jewish honor", as useless at best. I fully concur with Beit Zvi's view that true Jewish heroes deserving to be now honored by us, were those Jews who refused "to get organized" and saved themselves.
In his brilliant expose Beit Zvi shows how Zionist leadership of the time together with Bund28 and Agudat Israel,29 failed to do their elementary duty of trying to inform the Jews of Europe. He also shows how in 1941-42 the Hebrew press of Palestine consistently ignored the reports from the Soviet and Polish governments, and then from other sources, that European Jews were being exterminated. And whenever the Hebrew press of Palestine couldn't ignore such news entirely, it did its best to belittle them, occasionally to the point of quoting the official Nazi denials.30 I shall never forget that the Zionist Movement's leadership was then silent and guided others to silence. And those Holocaust historians who now exonerate that leadership are even more reprehensible.
In my view Beit Zvi was right in concluding that the leadership of the Zionist Movement wanted the Jews not to be rescued unless they would immigrate to Palestine. The opportunities to rescue the Jews by making them emigrate to other countries were rather restricted but not absent. The Zionist leadership did its utmost to foil those opportunities. The affair of the Patria ship which in December 1940 was anchored in the port of Haifa with hundreds of illegal Jewish immigrants on its board is in this context highly instructive. The British were about to deport Patria passengers to the island of Mauritius, where they would for certain not live under the threat of death. But the Zionist leadership planted a mine on the board, with the effect that over 200 Jews drowned when the ship sank. Of course, the Zionist leadership didn't intend to kill them: it only wanted to forestall the ship's departure. Nevertheless, the order to plant that mine was symptomatic of an offhand unconcern for human life. By all means, this is a totalitarian trait to assume that the end justifies the means, the loss of human life included. In this sense, the Zionist movement was par excellence totalitarian.
This is why I think that both Beit Zvi and Grodzinsky have rendered us a service of merit by exposing totalitarian elements of our national history in which the Holocaust still occupies a focal place.
Davar, 11 September 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Since you have devoted a lot of space to an interview with a woman settler in Hebron, affiliated with the Habad movement headed by the late Lubavitz Rebbe (Davar, September 1), I hope you will find some space to describe the ideas of that movement. Let me first note that the mass murderer Goldstein was affiliated not only with Kahane but also with the Habad movement. A large delegation from that movement had attended his funeral. In my view, ideas of the Habad movement are more reprehensible even than those of Kahane, except that their real meaning is disguised by their numerous adherents in the Israeli media. Kahane at least advocated his views straightforwardly, without disguising anything.
For instance, here is a quote from the Collected Conversations of the late Lubavitz Rebbe: a collection which is being circulated by his followers and which deals with the difference between Jews and Gentiles. "The difference between a Jew and a Gentile is encapsulated by the oft-repeated [Talmudic] phrase 'let us use categorical distinction'. This means that the difference between a Jew and a Gentile is not a matter of degree. Jewish superiority is absolute, as between different species. The body of a Jew and the body of a Gentile are two incomparable things. This is why the Old Rebbe [the founder of Habad movement, who died in 1812] explained in his book Hatanya that the phrase [from Jewish prayers] 'Thou hast chosen us from all the nations' refers to the difference between the bodies of the Jews and the bodies of the Gentiles. His argument ran that the act of choosing may take place only between what is similar in appearances. And indeed, superficially the bodies of Jews look like the bodies of Gentiles. But the quoted phrase means that although the bodies may look alike, the spiritual difference between them is deep enough to consider Jewish and Gentile bodies as belonging to totally different species, just as I have explained. This is why the Talmud says in the Sabbath Tractate that the Halacha [Jewish religious law] treats the bodies of Gentiles 'which are devoid of importance', in a manner antithetical to its treatment of Jewish bodies."
"Thus far I have explained the difference between the bodies. But the difference between the souls is incommensurably greater. The soul of a Gentile is a very antithesis of the Jewish soul because the former originates from three polluted Satanic spheres, whereas the latter originates in holiness" (Likutey Sihot [Collected Conversations], 1965, page 297.) The book Hatanya, which indeed says that the souls of all Gentiles come from Satanic spheres, also says that "absolutely nothing of merit can be found in a soul of a Gentile". And yet it remains the basic guideline book of the Habad movement. I can only conclude that the Habad movement's notions of the Gentiles do not differ essentially from the Nazi notions about the Jews.
The saner segment of our society is now lamenting the death of professor Leibovitz of blessed memory, whose death and funeral hasn't been even mentioned by a single word in the daily Haredi [ultrapious] press. Let us on this occasion recall that one of Leibovitz's greatest achievements was his coining the concept Judeo-Nazism. He meant to apply this concept not only to those Jews who desired nothing as much as to make an alliance with Adolf Hitler because they admired his ideology, but also to those Jewish ideologies which would strictly resemble the ideology of German Nazis, if only the word "Gentiles" in former would substitute for the word "Jews" in the latter. But we can also on this occasion recall that not by chance Leibovitz used to call Cabbala "the cesspool of Judaism". Although all Hassidic sects have their roots in the Cabbala, the Habad movement can be said to represent the bottom depths of this cesspool which continue to foul up all its admirers and which pose a threat to all of us.
Davar, 5 December 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
It seems to me that Daniel Ben-Simon (Davar, November 28) should now realize that the Rabin government and the Israeli "peace camp" which supports it have never intended to make peace with the Palestinians and in fact have never made any. What Rabin made was an accord with one mendacious dictator: Yasser Arafat. The Oslo Declaration of Principles does not even recognize any Palestinian rights, but only the right of the PLO - i.e. the right of Arafat and his henchmen - to represent the Palestinians. The real agreements between Israel and the PLO were concluded not in Oslo, but in a series of meetings of the Israeli Shabak heads with Arafat appointees as heads of his several secret police forces. Rabin and Peres have never intended to relinquish the Israeli rule over the Territories. All they wanted was to change its form, by letting the Fatah gangsters do more efficiently the dirty work previously done by the Israeli soldiers in the alleys of Jabliya or the streets of Nablus. As Rabin himself put it, they also wanted this dirty work done without interference of the [Israeli] Supreme Court and Be'Tzelem. This was what has occurred.
It follows that Rabin's support of settlements by constructing a network of apartheid roads connecting them cannot be interpreted as mere tactics. It is a part of grand strategy resting on two foundations: the intensification of apartheid in the Territories and hostility to any form of Palestinian democracy. The Israeli "peace camp", whose main preoccupation is to worship Arafat's personality, adheres to the same goals. This explains why it differs from Rabin so little. Both Rabin and the "peace camp" support - at least tacitly - any massacre of Palestinians if only it is perpetrated by Arafat's gangsters. The differences which exist between Rabin and, say, the tiny "peace block" about the settlements, are middling as compared to the view they share that Israeli interests dictate the preference for massacring the Palestinians by Arafat rather than by Israel.
Such policy objectives are more immoral than those of Yitzhak Shamir. And they stand no chances of materializing. As all records beating liar in the Middle East, Arafat cannot be relied to keep promises he gave to massacre the Palestinians for Israel's benefit. He will massacre them only when it will suit his own interest. Likewise, Peres does not intend in 1994 to develop the Territories, just as in 1965, when he headed the Rafi party, he did not intend to fulfill his promise to give a car to every Israeli worker. Millions of dollars which in August [1994] Peres obtained from the Holst Fund for Arafat, were "invested" in trying to massacre Arafat's foes in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Even this attempt ended in failure.
The present "peace process" is immoral because its aim is to intensify the apartheid regime, in the Territories. But it is also doomed to fail because it rests on an accord with a dictator who is a failure even as a dictator. Unlike such dictators as Assad, Arafat is unable to keep agreements he signs.
Haaretz, 16 December 1994
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
Ran Kislev (Haaretz, December 6) did not need to give examples from other countries in order to prove that a state can have security and survive without torture, and that states which use torture do not enhance their security. Israel had a Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, who in the autumn of 1977 abolished torture. The prohibition of torture was in force until the beginning of 1982, but the massive use of torture began only when Rabin became Defense minister in 1984. Let me point out that during the time when torture was prohibited, the State of Israel continued to exist, occupy the Territories and build plenty of settlements.
I also want to point out that all the PLO organizations have been using torture for some time, whether in "interrogations of the collaborators" or as their customary practice. The autonomy authorities in the Gaza Strip and Jericho are torturing suspects routinely, but it does not seem that the use of torture helped them in anything. Many Israelis who oppose torture - excuse me, "moderate physical pressure recently intensified" - when practiced by Shabak, support torture when practiced by Arafat's thugs. Israel still does not have an organization which would oppose torture, regardless of who practices it.
Kol Ha'ir, 6 January 1995
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
I deplore it that Hillel Cohen omits what I would consider to be the most important point from his story of the land robbed from the villagers of Al-Khader (Kol Ha'ir, January 6). After the confiscated land is announced to belong to the State of Israel, it is officially designated for use by the Jews ooly. It is not only the Palestinians (including those among them who serve in the Israeli army, police and Shabak) who do not have the right to use such land. The racist regulations of the Jewish National Fund which is in charge of such matters, also prohibit its lease or any other use to any non-Jews.
In my view, the thus institutionalized racism exceeds in importance the robbery of the land from the Palestinians. There are many states which systematically robbed land. The U.S., for example, robbed Indian land, transforming most of it into state land. Nevertheless, such land is now available for use by any U.S. citizens. If a Jew were in the U.S. prohibited to lease land belonging to the state only because he were Jewish, this would be rightly interpreted as anti-Semitism.
Unless we recognize the real issue - which is the racist character of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel and the roots of that racism in the Jewish religious law [Halacha] - we will not be able to understand our realities. And unless we can understand them, we will not be able to change them.
Haaretz, 10 February 1995
Letter to the Editor by Israel Shahak
In contrast to mystical notions of Yoram Bronovski (Haaretz, January 27) about the superiority of Hebrew and inferiority of other languages,31 let me quote the views of Rabbi Moshe Ibn Ezra32 from his book The Poetry of Israel:, the first ever book about Hebrew poetry which, incidentally, was written in Arabic. My quotes are from its Hebrew translation by Ben-Zion Halper, Schtibel Publishers, 1924.
In the third chapter of his book Ibn Ezra discusses the question: "How come that poetry is natural in Arabic and artificial in all other languages?" His conclusion is that it is due to three reasons. The first is that the climate of the Arab peninsula encourages eloquence, the second is that "the Arabs have absorbed the culture of Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian princely courts" and the third, most important, is that "the Arabs have assiduously translated all the ancient and modern books about science and culture they could find, provided them with commentaries and proceeded to write their own works on those subjects". Ibn Ezra adds that the Arabs can be particularly commended for translating the Greek books "because it is well-known not only that the Greeks had been more advanced in science than any other nation, but also that Greek metaphysics is the only way to obtain the blessing of the world to come".
With all that, Ibn Ezra considers all languages as potentially equal and he backs his contention with a story. "Once when I was young and still lived in my homeland, Granada, I was talking to a great Muslim scholar outstanding in Islamic religious law. He was a patron of mine to whom I owed many favors. During the conversation he asked me to read to him the Ten Commandments in Arabic. I realized that he intended to point out to me their stylistic shortcomings, and therefore asked him to read first to me the opening chapter of the Quran in Latin. He not only could speak Latin but was an unsurpassed master of that language. But when he attempted to translate the first chapter of the Quran into Latin, its magnificent style began to seem ridiculous and its great beauty turned into ugliness. He then realized what I had in mind and never again repeated his request".
We can only look forward to emulating in our own time some of the open-mindeduess which could be encountered in Granada, or at least among its scholars, by the end of the eleventh century.
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1. Professor Shavit can be described as the most prominent among those Israeli historians who on any conceivable question toe the Zionist propaganda line as determined 70 years ago. Although the two areas of his specialization are modern Jewish history and the history of Palestine (from the Zionist viewpoint!), he also deals with other periods of Jewish history, again presumably to reassert the "official" line, against which some Israeli historians are already rebelling. I have little esteem for Tom Segev's book ("The Seventh Million"), but it at least raises some poignant questions. For Shavit, this book was a heresy dangerous enough to write a very angry review in which he tried to prove that the Zionist movement, in particular its Labor variety, manifested wisdom and moral rectitude in every decision.
2. The Nazis themselves proposod this emigration, and the conference was held on their initiative. Although I cannot prove it, I lean towards the opinion that without the Zionist intervention (through the medium of Hayim Weizman and Golda Meir) the Conference could have succeeded, the German Jews could be saved, and a precedent for saving other Jews could thus be established.
3. "Human material" had been the stock Zionist phrase applying to all diaspora Jews, until the Jewish lobby in the U.S. became too powerful to thus insult it any longer. The assumption underlying the use of this phrase was that all Jews who do not live in "an organic Jewish society" which can exist only in Palestine, are perforce neurotic or otherwise diseased, fit only (if young enough) to be remolded into genuine human beings by Zionist reeducation. All the schools of Zionism talked this nonsense. I myself believed in it as a teenager, and it took a lot of self-emancipatory effort on my part to realize that Jews living in diaspora are perfectly ordinary human beings. The phrase was used countless times by a wide range of Zionist leaders including Abba Eban, but with particular delight by Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky.
4. Referring to the case of Rodney G. King and the subsequent riots, the article compared the injustices done to Blacks by the U.S. legal system with the injustices done to the Israeli Palestinian by the Israeli legal system. (The situation in the Territories, acknowledged as much graver still, was not dealt with in the article.) Benziman anticipates the possibility that their legal discrimination may yet induce the Israeli Palestinians to rioting.
5. In Hebrew this Commandment reads "Thou shalt not murder".
6. Halacha grades the sins committed by Jews into a number of ranks. The least grave are said to be sins committed against Halachic commandments which are acknowledged as man-made rather than Divine, i.e. the commandments of the rabbis. The case of a Jew murdering a Gentile is more complicated still. The Talmudic Sages admit that in strict interpretation of the Divine law such a murder is permissible (and will again become permissible in Messianic times). Acting out of a number of expediency considerations, such as that "a Jew who habitually murders Gentiles may yet learn to murder Jews as well", the Talmudic Sages nevertheless decided to prohibit such murders.
7. Intercessions against punishing a Jew accused of killing a Gentile (not necessarily an Arab!) have been by no means infrequent.
8. According to the Halacha, in "ordinary" cases a death sentence can be imposed on a Jew only under three conditions: (1) that the sentence is imposed by duly empowered judges, (2) that two Jewish witnesses testify to having seen the act under trial, and (3) that the culprit had been duly forewarned by two witnesses that the act he was about to commit was liable to incur a death sentence. Hence Maimonides' reference to the "warning". But Halacha also encompasses a huge amount of "extra-ordinary" cases, such as the above-discussed ones, when not only the "warning" but also other precautionary conditions can be dispensed with.
9. The doctrine that effectuality of prayers depends on the services of some angelic messengers (or of "Holy Men") who "deliver" them past "the gates of heavens" to God who wouldn't otherwise hear them, is a commonplace theme running through all Cabbalistic sects. Some Cabbalistic writings claim that prayers of ordinary Jews living in the Holy Land, and especially in Jerusalem, find their way to God easier than those of Jews living elsewhere. Still, the difference is considered relative: in general, the effectuality of prayers of the "Holy Men" is considered geographically neutral. The discussed doctrine is no private invention of Ms. Elitzur. It is rather one of the adaptations of the Cabbala manufactured by chauvinistic milieus after 1967.
10. After the notorious Geula Cohen lost her Knesset seat in the recent elections, Peres commended her in exalted terms, and deplored that "we will miss very much", her absence from the Knesset.
11. The Sebastia affair took place in 1975, when Rabin was Prime Minister and Peres his minister of Defense. Crowds of supporters of the Gush Emunim (then was quite popular) somehow managed to bypass the army roadblocks in order to reach the old railway station in Sebastia. Rabin ordered to remove them from there, but Peres stalled under various excuses. In the end all requests of Gush Emunim to establish more settlements in the West Bank were satisfied. Kislev's article retells this affair, concluding that it decisively contributed to the eventual fall of Rabin's government.
12. During the recent stay of Rabin in the U.S. Peres temporarily served as an acting Prime Minister, imposing "a compromise" in favor of the Hebron settlers who illegally built a house in Givat Kharsina. It was this which prompted Kislev to recall Peres' role in the Sebastia affair.
13. Arthur Rupin became in 1904 the director the "Palestine Office" of the World Zionist Organization, to stay in this post for several decades. He is considered to have been the founder of the Zionist settlement of Palestine. As Hanegbi notes, no Jewish town in Israel of any size wouldn't have a street named after him. Politically, he began as a hawk, to become in the 1920s a member of the ultra-dovish "Brit Shalom" movement, and in the mid-1930s to turn to ultra-hawkishness and support for the transfer.
14. This implies that the Palestinians, or at least most of them, needed to be expelled from "the Jewish country". Failure to expel them could only give rise to the same racist fears as existed in the diasporas.
15. At the turn of the century most of the "Oriental Jews" in Palestine considered themselves "pure Spanish" and spoke Ladino, a form of the ancient Castilian. Hanegbi comes from such a family.
16. The recently published Anita Shapira's book "Dove's Sword" is an exercise in apologetics. It portrays the early Zionistic Labor movement as all comprised of doves who didn't even anticipate that they were going to fight the Arabs for the sake of displacing them. According to Shapira they only wanted "to displace and fight the desert". Blame for the subsequent development of their aggressiveness is laid on the Palestinian attacks against the innocent Zionist pioneers, or else on Jabotinsky and the Zionist Right-wing. Segev tried (not too hard) to rectify Shapira's illusions about the dovishness of the early Laborites in details, but he refrained from relating in any way to the book's apologetic purposes.
17. Yehuda Halevi is commonly considered to have been the greatest ever Hebrew poet.
18. The quote is from a poem addressed to Halevi's friend and patron, Don Yehuda Perutza'el and his beloved "mistress of witchcraft". Don Perutza'el was a dignitary at the Castilian court and simultaneously "the prince" [i.e. the ruler] of the Castilian Jews. The poem, a masterpiece of its kind, opens with exulting over the beauty and sexual prowess of Don Perutza'el mistress, but concludes with exulting over his political role. It must have been intended for public recitation.
19. "Tzomet" has recently submitted to the Knesset a bill, subsequently voted down, which proposed that the right to vote and to be elected to the Knesset be denied to any Israeli who hadn't served in the army, whether Jewish or Arab.
20. Some crazed rabbis, politically supported by the State of Israel and financially assisted by some wealthy diaspora Jews, have been looking for potential converts to Judaism, claimed to be descendants of the lost "ten tribes of Israel". The actual purpose is to use them in settling the Territories. Several years ago about 40 such converts were brought from Peru and settled in Alon Moreh near Nablus. Several months ago about 100 tribespeople from the vicinity of the Indo-Burmese border were brought likewise. Upon learning Hebrew they are going to settle near Hebron. Both events were highly publicized and approved by the media. In fact, the numbers of such converts are far smaller than expected. Moreover, some well-publicized initiatives of this kind (for example a recent attempt to convert a whole tribe in Somali) ended in total fiasco. In spite of unimpressive results so far, such ventures have their significance.
21. Driving a car on the Sabbath is considered a mortal sin, punishable by stoning the offender. If the religious ever come to power, they could be expected to administer such punishments.
22. Professor Ruth Gabizon is the chairman of the Israel Association for Human Rights. She also contributes some columns to "Shishi".
23. The verdict in Burkan's case was delivered by the Supreme Court Judge Hayim Cohen who once had served as Attorney General. Throughout his career as a law enforcer, Cohen was responsible for confiscations of Arab-owned lands and denials of Arab basic rights probably more than any other lawyer in the entire history of Israel. On the count of his lofty speechifying about human rights he has nevertheless managed to acquire an undeserved reputation of "a liberal". The case of the Swedish academic was a plain apartment exchange deal with a Hebrew University teacher planning to spend her Sabbatical in Sweden. For the described legal reasons the deal could not be carried through.
24. The referred to article by Rubinstein discussed the prospect of Hamas agreeing to a cease fire with Israel under certain conditions. Not only Rubinstein, but nearly all other Hebrew press commentators as well, have since the Oslo Agreement consistently ignored the frightful consequences of both the growth of Hamas power and of the domination of Palestinian society by the Fatah bureaucracy.
25. From this point on, the sequel of the same letter was cut when on the same day, under the title "Israel does not deny", it appeared in "Haaretz", which otherwise had only words of praise for the operation. It has been the only letter raising this issue in the entire Hebrew press.
26. The dispute began already after the publication of Beit Zvi's book in 1978, to become in recent years even more passionate. For the most part it has been carried out on pages of "Haaretz" and its supplements. It has been revolving around the role of the Zionist movement during the Holocaust. Gutman and Bauer, for whom the Zionist leadership could have never been wrong, censured Grodzinsky in a downright scurrilous manner for documenting some mistakes of that leadership. In the polemics Bauer inter alia argued that Grodzinsky's right to express his views in the Jewish state was the best proof that Zionism had been right.
27. This is an annual commemoration held on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as counted by the Jewish calendar. The emphasis in the commemoration falls upon the Uprising and the few late and completely ineffectual rescue schemes initiated by the Zionist leadership, rather than on the extermination.
28. A Jewish socialist movement opposed to Zionism. It was quite strong in Eastern Europe.
29. In 1939 a majority of Polish Jews were as it is now called Haredi, and therefore opposed to both Zionism and socialism. The strongest Jewish party in Poland was the ultra-pious Agudat Israel which obtained a majority of Jewish votes in the 1938 municipal elections in Poland.
30. As Beit Zvi shows, this mode of presenting the Holocaust by the Zionist leadership and its hangers on abruptly ended on 23 November 1943. A week earlier 8 Palestinian Jewish old-timers who had been visiting Poland when the W.W.II began returned to Palestine. As British subjects they were exchanged by the Nazis for some Germans. Their testimony about the extermination couldn't any longer be denied: if it were, the 8 could appeal to the public above the heads of the leadership. The Zionist leaders who until then had been silent themselves, immediately started accusing "the whole world" of being silent!
31. Bronovski described sympathetically the views of Christian scholars from the XVI and XVII centuries who had believed that Hebrew is superior over other languages since it is spoken by God to angels and was used by Adam and his descendants until the Babel Tower "confused the tongues".
32. A poet and a scholar, commonly regarded as one of the greatest Hebrew poets. He was born circa 1055 in the then independent and highly cultured and tolerant Muslim kingdom of Granada. He became a high-ranking official in that kingdom, but he had to flee from it in 1087-88, after Granada was conquered by the much less tolerant and cultured Almoravid Khalifate. He then settled in Castile where he died in 1135. The book referred to in my letter was written shortly before his death.
Quelle: Israel Shahak
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