 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Der Krieg ist der Vater der Dinge. -HERAKLIT
Foreword: The Zimmerman affair which caused enormous interest among the Israeli Jewish public but was almost entirely ignored by those who report on Israel in the Western press, developed out of reaction to an interview with professor Moshe Zimmerman, the first item of this collection. The rest consists of a short selection of the enormous amount of articles devoted to the subject by the Hebrew press.
All notes mine.
Israel Shahak.
Yerushalayim, April 28, 1995
"My mother would have been very surprised to see me here," said Moshe Zimmerman, a tall, thin, handsome man, professor of history and the head of the department for German Studies of the Hebrew University, who enjoys a reputation of a fascinating lecturer and an original researcher. Original thinking in the academic ivory tower is almost a certificate for a situation in which a person is controversial and exposed to criticism. Even more so when the field of his expertise is complex and sensitive like that of prof. Zimmerman's: Germany, German Jews, the Third Reich, the Holocaust. His historic analyses, the conclusions that he reaches, as well as the sharp, sometimes the blunt manner he phrases them have placed him in recent years in the center of many public controversies. But Zimmerman shocks his listeners not only when he speaks about the past. The parallel lines he draws between the past and the present are no less difficult to digest. This applies to his comparing the Jewish soldiers who volunteer to serve in the Territories to Germans who volunteered to serve in the SS and to his statement that children of Jewish settlers in Hebron "are like the Hitler Youth." People do not always understand his exact meaning or maybe his statements are too often removed from their context, but just as he fascinates his audience and stimulates the minds of the readers of his articles and books, so he also angers many people in the Jewish public, in whose eyes Prof. Zimmerman's original historic research is comparable to kicking the still open and bleeding wound in the history of the Jewish people.
His mother would have been surprised to see him walking in the alleys of the ultra-orthodox Me'a She'arim neighborhood on Friday afternoon, but apparently his words will supply his critics and opponents with more ammunition: "Since I was three or four years old I have been put off by those people," he said as we slowly walked in the narrow streets of Me'a She'arim, "already as a child I did not like to come here." On one wall swastikas are painted across a Star of David. The swastikas are erased. "That is a tendency of the Jewish orthodox community," he explains. "They no longer compare the Zionist state to the Nazis. Now they have a special identification with this state, because of their extreme right-wing views. If the Israeli left had a symbol they would have placed it near the swastikas. They are perpetually loyal to their right-wing extremism. They even still speak Yiddish, which is a dialect of German."
"I explain my way of speaking in two ways," Prof. Zimmerman says when asked about the enraged reactions that frequently follow his statements. "There is an element of provocation. If you think that the statements you want to make are of value, you must see to it that they are heard. The best way is through expressions that catch the ear. The moment you catch the public's attention, the stage is yours. I admit that this method also contains an element of a game. I do enjoy provoking my audience."
And, as stated, he is also very successful at doing that. He not only provokes his audience but amazes them with his sharpened phrases, arouses them with the meaning and significance that they attribute to some of his statements. In the eyes of a part of the Jewish public Prof. Zimmerman's phrases are a genuine blow to the memory of Holocaust victims. "Anyone who did not understand me is not worth the effort," he declares. That is also the way he reacted when a commotion arose surrounding statements he made about the use that Israel makes of the Holocaust. "I gave a lecture and discussed the use that Israel so often makes of the Holocaust. For years I have been arguing that this use is a distortion. The common and well-worn motto is that the greatest part of the justification for the establishment of Israel lies in the Holocaust. If that is so, then we owe thanks to Hitler. He had constructed Auschwitz and thereby contributed mightily to the Zionism. That approach is based on a misconception. I do not want and I am not prepared to say 'thank you' to Hitler." The enraged reaction to that lecture was not late in appearing. One listener sent a letter to the editor of Haaretz. "He wrote that I had said that we should thank Hitler when in fact I said the opposite," Zimmerman explained. Then he came to me and I explained my views to him several times. Something in his mental outlook prevented him from understanding my meaning."
The annual events on the Holocaust Day, the ceremonies around the world commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII and a conference of historians which Prof. Zimmerman initiated were the reason behind this meeting. Zimmerman invited ten German historians to the conference to be held in Jerusalem next month, who together with their Jewish colleagues will attempt to conduct "the balance sheet of the Third Reich 50 years after its fall." The conference will address the degree of the German army's involvement in the Nazi crimes and in foreign policy and will discuss the nature of the German occupation and other issues, attempting to understand what is the nature of the modern evil. The participants in the conference and certainly the issues which will be discussed are loaded with explosives. Anyone who is familiar with the nature of Prof. Zimmerman's research and his style can foresee that the importance of the planned gathering of the historians will be in breaking some taboos and in consolidating conclusions from the studies that were carried out in recent years, so that the picture of that period will be different than it has been portrayed up to now.
- A conference on the Third Reich with participation of historians from Israel and Germany. A deliberate provocation?
Certainly not. The funding for the conference largely comes from German sources. Moreover, from the academic viewpoint historians from both countries completely cover the field. The explanation that I gave shows that this is not a provocation.
- From the angle of historic conclusions, what will be at the center of the debates in the conference?
Up to now the Third Reich was described as a pyramid. At the top stood Hitler, giving orders which systematically flowed from the top of the pyramid to the base. Beyond the fundamental mistake in that concept, it also served various governments as a pretext for their collaboration with Germany after 1945. In that area the Cold War played a crucial role. The USSR and the USA divided the control of Germany among themselves. Both wanted the support of the population which they ruled and therefore placed the blame only on Hitler and about a dozen senior figures. You can understand how glad the Germans were when this approach was taken. Israel is also to blame since it was a full partner in this deception. The supposition that there was "another Germany" was accepted for political reasons, and in order to pay their moral debt they said a few things once in a while. However, there were some Germans who took upon themselves the task of opposing the Nazis, not a bad idea at all, yet not too much is said about them.
- What you are saying is that Hitler does not bear all of the blame? That there was no orderly governmental pyramid? What then was there?
During the Nazi regime its main characteristic was improvisation. Many different people made weird decisions, constantly glancing at Hitler. For example: people think that Hitler knew in advance that he wanted to kill all of the Jews, and that his order was carried out. In fact there were many people and organizations who wanted to get rid of the Jews. Each one tried in his turn style to propose a solution for the implementation. Every such development was extremely non-systematic.
- Yet the Jews were described in Mein Kampf as a germ that should be destroyed. That book has always been considered to be as Hitler's operative plan, as the expression of his intention to destroy the Jews.
So why did he wait 2.5 years before passing the Nurenberg laws? And if he had a premeditated intention to destroy them, why did he need any laws? In 1935 there was a party congress. The subject was to have been German foreign policy. For various reasons that subject was cancelled, so Hitler improvised and raised the question of the Jews.
- Hitler improvised?
Not only he. Take Krystal Nacht. The background was the expulsion of Jews of Polish origin from Germany. A Jewish youth named Hershl Greenspan expressed his protest by killing a junior German diplomat at the German embassy in Paris. One day later a rally of the Nazi Party was held to commemorate the putsch of 1923. In his speech Hitler did not mention the assassination at all. Goebbels, who wanted to promote himself, seized the opportunity and organized the riots.
- But the two examples are still within the framework of the tradition.
The point is that the decisions at one level or another were being made by almost everyone who lived in Germany in those years. Let us say that you are living in Germany during the Nazi regime. Your Jewish neighbors are disappearing. Suddenly their shop is out up for sale at a low price. What would you do, buy it, or review that step also in a moral light? There were countless incidents in which anyone was required to decide according to his conscience. Fathers whose sons were killed in the war protested by distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in a limited area. One morning you receive such a leaflet in your mailbox. What do you do?
- Do I have to do anything?
Most of the Germans who received such mail thought that it was a test, an examination by the Gestapo, and therefore they demonstrated their loyalty by going to the local police station. Decisions of various scopes were taken by every person. The absence of the governmental pyramid left many personal decisions in the hands of the average citizen. Dr. Mengele, who is rightly conceived as a monster by the Jews, was classified by the German bureaucracy as a research physician. In Israel his researches are rightly considered to be horrors. The mistake is that this view is not being broadened and the question is not asked: how was Mengele's sadistic research made possible? They knew that he was carrying out experiments on living people, and yet they did not ask too many questions. As far as they were concerned his research contributed to the health of the master race and that was the most important thing. So is Mengele alone to blame, or also those who could have refused to approve of his research?
- So the map of guilt changes and what you are saying is that all of the Germans are guilty? Why is that different from the common concept, as accepted by so many in Israel?
In Israel there was duplicity on this subject. On one hand many said that "all of the Germans are guilty, all of the Germans are Nazis," and on the other hand they shouted "Hitler, Hitler," considering him the successor of Pharaon and the other enemies of the Jews, adding that the Germans following him blindly as sheep. Both approaches were believed at the same time and both are mistaken. Hitler could not have done it on his own and not all Germans are guilty. The research of the past 20 years leads to the conclusion that the direct responsibility for the rise of Nazism and for its crimes falls on a broad public. People whose ties with Nazism consisted of only voting for Hitler in 1933 still bear their share in the guilt. Such people said afterwards: "there was such a confusion in the country, we wanted someone to make order. We didn't imagine that it would reach such horrors." That excuse is no longer regarded as valid. They had a responsibility to understand that anyone declaring that he would make order by means of violence was automatically disqualified for rule. The conclusion is that the fish stinks from all its parts, not only from its head. Each small injustice leads to a greater injustice and the rule 'be cautious at the beginning' applies to everyone.
One might say that this is a contradiction. Yet with the same degree of certainty with which Prof. Zimmerman places overall blame on the German public of the 1930s and 1940s he is careful about placing collective blame or responsibility on individuals. So much so, that in the eyes of many people - even among some of his students - he is considered to be a Germanophile, a provocateur who will always take a position that is outside the broad Jewish consensus about the German issue. Such was his position regarding the study of Mein Kampf in Israel. Zimmerman taught the book in the framework of the history department at the Hebrew University. "Many journalists asked me whether I considered studying the book to be dangerous," Zimmerman smilingly said, "as though the book might incite Jews to the extreme right. This is obviously absurd. I told them that if they are afraid of Jewish extreme right they should ban the Bible. For some reason, no one printed that."
- But you do not really propose to prohibit the study of the Bible?
My argument is simple. The combination of literature and politics is more threatening for a Jewish public in the Bible than in Mein Kampf. Like anything else, the Bible is also subject to interpretations. There are some who emphasize the verse "neither shall they learn war any more,"1 and there are those who think that one should kill as many Philistines as possible and collect their foreskins.2 This why I said what I did, not out of a wish to ban the study of the Bible.
- The use of the Bible as basis for political views is common in Israel. Does that say anything about its political character?
Generally speaking, I could say that in many areas we are on our way towards a modern dictatorship. The question how much is that related to the Bible is irrelevant.
- Please specify.
Nazism illustrated a situation in which a majority of a people chose in certain circumstances to ignore, to collaborate or to initiate horrors of various scopes. I have studied this phenomenon, and that is the ruler I use to measure the state of things in Israel. That is the true value of history - the comparison with the present. I no longer hear here a public outcry against the immorality of the occupation. Voting for a party that ideologically supports the occupation is not seen as a great moral evil. Soldiers who volunteer especially to serve in the Occupied Territories are considered to be heroes, when in fact that spirit of volunteerism might be compared to Germans who volunteered to serve in the SS. The deterioration of civil rights is an additional aspect. Just weeks ago the issue of private names was brought up. The Jewish police asked principals of high schools in Jerusalem to give them the names of students who were involved in smoking soft drugs. That was an attempt to turn the principal of a school, an educational figure, into a partner of the police. Very few people understood what the argument was about. The refusal of the principal of the University's high school was an admirable step. She was the only one who said, no, I will not collaborate.
Prof. Zimmerman is considered to be a leading historian among the research community in Israel, a fact which compounds the anger of his many opponents. His unique positions are anchored in well-founded proof. His five books - The Patriarch of Antisemitism - Wilhelm Maar, German Nationalism and Hamburg Patriotism, The Crises of German Nationalism, Germany's Unique Path in History, German Jewry 1914-1945 - all deal with "the German riddle" and are greatly respected in Israel and in Germany. In additional to his being the chair of the German Studies department at the Hebrew University, Zimmerman holds additional posts. In Germany he serves as a guest professor at Hamburg and Heidelberg Universities. He is a consultant of a German institute working for strengthening democracy and he frequently appears on German TV as a commentator. In the course of the conversation Prof. Zimmerman returned several times to the reality in Israel. In his view, the comparison between historic research and present events is part of the essence of being a historian. "The historian is not neutral," Zimmerman stated. "Every history is the study of the past for the purposes of the present. Therefore the comparisons and the critical view are obvious. If the historicism (an approach which avoids criticism in the name of the neutrality of the historian) permitted support for Nazism, it is obvious that we must take another way, a critical one. The historian constantly criticizes and since it is only possible to remedy the present and the future, his criticism is geared there. Anyone who has dealt with Nazi Germany cannot turn a blind eye to similar phenomena (or their beginnings) in the present Germany, in Israel or anywhere else."
- You freely skip between Nazi Germany and Israel. I do not doubt the enlightening power of the comparison. Yet how far can one go with such a problematic parallel between our occupation and rule over Palestinians and the horrors perpetrated by the Nazism?
It is obvious that we, from every aspect, have a better "pretext" for many of our actions. Yet there is also a monster in each of us, and if we continue to assume that we are always justified, that monster can grow. Therefore, we Jews are obliged to always hold the German example before our eyes. Already today I am addressing a phenomenon which is growing: there is an entire sector in the Jewish public which I unhesitatingly define as a copy of the German Nazis. Look at the children of the Jewish Hebron settlers: they are exactly like the Hitler Youth. From infancy they are pumped with ideas that all Arabs are bad, of how every Gentile is against us. They are turned into paranoids, they think themselves as a master race, they are exactly like the Hitler Youth. There is a very dangerous tendency of lenience towards that sector. MK Rehavam Ze'evi was brought into the government coalition,3 and people still think that the Kahane movement can be dealt with by the usual means. I am reminded of those conservatives in Germany who collaborated with Hitler out of exactly the same reasons and who made the same mistakes as we now do.
- Those are very harsh statements. The Jew who does not live in Hebron, who does not vote for Kahane, and who does not volunteer for undercover missions in the West Bank, where does he stand on the Zimmerman scale?
It is very difficult to justify the Israeli army as an occupation force, yet regarding individuals it is necessary to see the complexity of the issue, exactly as in Germany. A youth who does not want to serve in the army must go to prison. It is difficult to blame an 18 year-old person who does not want to go to jail. But there are differences between various types of military service and I draw the line between volunteers to special units and the regular soldiers. At this point we should look at the German army in WWII. It is often seen as a combat force while the crimes against humanity were perpetrated by the SS. In fact, most of the responsibility for executions and many other crimes falls on the German army. What is specially interesting for us is that many German soldiers who were required to take part in those crimes refused to do so. Those soldiers were often not brought to trial.4 There was often another soldier glad to pull the trigger instead of them. Nevertheless, we Jews should recall that in the course of the WWII no less than 100,000 German soldiers were executed for refusing to carry out orders. Sometimes the orders which they refused to carry out were to shoot Jews.
Yerushalayim, 12 May 1995
I would like to express my agreement with the views of professor Moshe Zimmerman and my deep appreciation of your paper's courage in publishing them. Since some of Zimmerman's detractors have invoked the memory of Holocaust victims and - impudently in my view - claimed to speak in the name of all its survivors, let me mention that I am myself a Holocaust survivor. As such I recall that my impression, and the impression of some friends who are Holocaust survivors is that German Nazis whom I had seen in action were motivated by their tacit or explicit belief in the Nazi ideology, including especially the belief in the sanctity of obedience to legally issued orders. It can not be doubted that an enormous majority of the Jews of Kiryat Arba (and even more of the Jews settled in Hebron itself) who supported the building of the magnificent memorial on the grave of the Jewish Nazi Baruch Goldstein5 did so because they believe in the same Judeo-Nazi ideology as he did. Had a German city constructed now a magnificent memorial on the grave of a Nazi who committed a murder similar to that of Goldstein we would label it a Nazi city, disregarding the exceptions that might exist in it. In exactly the same way we should regard Kiryat Arba as a Judeo-Nazi city and the Jewish settlers of Hebron as Judeo-Nazis of an even worse kind.
At this opportunity let us, the Jews, recall that the Nazi ideology which had caused the extermination of six millions of Jews and of so many millions of human beings from other peoples, had also brought on Germans themselves the worst humiliation and gravest calamity of their history. Because a part of the German nation had supported Nazi ideology, Germany lost territories which it possessed for centuries, suffered a loss of millions of its people and underwent enormous destruction. The same thing can yet happen to us, the Israeli Jews, if we shall not see in time the horrible dangers inherent in Judeo-Nazi ideology whose pioneers are now concentrated in Kiryat Arba and Hebron.6
Haaretz, May 10, 1995
Comparison is a method of research which is also granted to historians. Undermining the legitimacy of an attempt to compare means to undermine unprofessionally a research method even before reaching its essence. This method of research is a proper one even when one of its components is Nazism. A person who researches any kind of National Socialism7 does not only study its most extreme stage, but its entire development. The interesting and decisive question is how the various forms of National Socialism evolved from activities which did not seem to be extraordinary at the time even in their anti-democratic and anti-liberal features; to inhuman, unprecedented and yet modern extremism. The moral and strategic question that guides the research may be summarized as "beware of the beginnings, beware of their small ripples."
In his article What do the Germans still have to regret, (Haaretz, 7.5), Dan Margalit thoroughly understood the significance of the demand to expell a professor from a university because of his views, based on research in his field of expertise. Indeed, this very demand requires a comparison: such calls on the part of professors within universities and in newspaper advertisements characterized Germany shortly before the Nazi rise to power. Senates of German universities or other gatherings of professors, used then to voice a call - pretending to speak in the name of "the people's healthy feeling" - to expel the Jews, socialists and all opponents of Nazism from their academic positions. Those calls were quickly translated, even before intervention of the Nazi government, into practical steps. The comparison between the call to prohibit this writer from holding a post in the university and the call that was voiced in the first months of 1933 in Germany is not only legitimate, but also leads to a conclusion regarding obvious straits of similarity.
Many tend to quote Heinrich Heine's statement: "where books are burned people will ultimately be burned." That process has also an earlier stage: where the legal right of free speech is undermined, books will ultimately be burned. On May 10, 1993 that happened in Nazi Germany. I wonder: will those who want me expelled from the university because of my views now recommend to burn the books that I wrote, or the texts of the lectures that I gave?8 That would entail quite a lot of work, because it will entail not only the burning of the texts of my academic research. Every year tens of thousands of students study textbooks in whose writing I have participated. Will they also be brought to the stake? Moreover: the argument surrounding my statements proves that there no one addressed them, or at least there is no understanding of the text that is supposed to be the subject of the discussion and no familiarity with its context.
What is the argument about? Today, half a century after the fall of the Third Reich, we are attempting to evaluate the phenomenon from a new perspective. Like many other researchers, I am also participating in this work of evaluation. And as a person living within his people, I am trying to voice critical thoughts, relevant for Israel. Thus, when the question is asked, in response to my supposedly terrible statement concerning the Jewish children from Hebron or of their behavior on the anniversary of the death of Baruch Goldstein,9 whether there is no place to compare between their views and those found in the research of German National-Socialism, one must seriously relate to the comparison as a basis for a reply. And a positive reply, grave as this sounds, is well-based.
The same goes for another comparison which was fiercely attacked. The argument was raised that the publication, for teaching purposes, of some portions of Mein Kampf in Hebrew, might have an adverse effect on readers in Israel. To that I replied that in Israel, in contrast with Europe, right-wing and racist extremism is more nourished by the Old Testament than by Mein Kampf. Yet should we prohibit the publishing of the Bible in Israel because of that?
As long as we are discussing Israeli, European or Western reality, the comparison with the "black flag" of Western culture can only be of benefit. And whoever fears comparison as a method, perhaps fears the possibility that it will lead to similarities. Yet even that should not have been faulted: since we are basically trying to find similarities in the small ripples so as not to reach more radical developments.
There is absolutely nothing in common between the above statements and the tendency to belittle the Holocaust or Nazism. Indeed, there are many people who try to grasp at this comparison in order to alleviate the moral burden of the German people. Yet there is no place to suspect the writer of these lines of having such intentions. Moreover, since I am familiar with the history of Nazism I think that I can warn about the harmful potential existing in every society. The hypothesis, often voiced by Jewish right-wingers, that German government or German historians are interested in belittling Nazism and employ the services of a Jewish historian for that purpose, entails (beyond the attempt to discredit that historian) complete ignorance of the facts. The revisionist tendency was rejected by the political and historic establishment in Germany. The proof: even the meeting which the revisionists wanted to hold on this May 7 to recall that May 8, 1945 was not only the day of liberation but also what they term "the first day of the expulsion of Germans from the east," was cancelled under pressure of German establishment and public.
Therefore it would be better if those in Israel who believe that they are safeguarding truth and honesty, freedom of expression and accurate research, would avoid collaborating with the opponents of these values and serving as an intellectual figleaf for preparing a lynch.
Yediot Ahronot, May 15, 1995
It was a sad, if not terrible day on which 79 professors, my colleagues on the staff of the Hebrew University, publicized their demand to fire Prof. Moshe Zimmerman following the comparison which he drew between the settler youth in Hebron and the Hitler Youth. If there is such a number of staff members, most of them respected professors, who have no idea about the essence of the university and the meaning of academic freedom and freedom of expression, then the Hebrew University is in deep trouble.
Even the harshest free debate is the life's breath of a vibrant, creative, innovating academic community committed to its society which does not imprison itself in ivory towers. There is no subject in the world which is prohibited for debate on the condition that the debate is not conducted on an ideological or theological basis, but only on the basis of a reality which can be proved or dispelled by accepted means. That is not what my colleagues who attacked Moshe Zimmerman did. They are playing on the grounds of force and ideology, in an attempt to impose a regime of intellectual, or more accurately, political and ideological, terrorism in the Hebrew University.
It is no coincidence that the term tenure in the academic world is different, and must be different, from that in any other field. Tenure comes to guarantee that after a teacher and researcher has undergone obstacles and professional selection unparalleled in any other field, he will gain autonomy and enjoy freedom of thought, research and expression, so that academia will constitute an area protected from the intervention of politicians and other wielders of power. Without that condition, as was proved both by the Nazi and the Bolshevik academias, there is no possibility of developing a science worthy of the name, even if immense material resources are funneled to it. Therefore the demand to fire Moshe Zimmerman constitutes an unparalleled precedent for changing the basic rales of the game of Israeli academia. The idea, even if not carried out, has such far-reaching ramifications for the universities, that from now on one must fear for their futures. Since most of the 79 staff members who signed the letter sit on appointment and promotion committees, each of them can "determine policy" in quite broad areas, even without the matter being brought for discussion before the university's central bodies. Would it be an overly far-reaching supposition that those people, and others like them will in the future (and perhaps have already done so in the past?) impose an additional standard in their considerations when they come to make decisions regarding the hiring and promotion of junior staff members, which is the standard of "ideological suitability" to their views and their outlook?
Many fine people are in the list of the 79, and I am almost certain that not all of them considered the far-reaching ramifications of the manifesto which they signed, perhaps out of an understandable emotional upheaval. It is not too late to do some re-thinking and to announce their abandoning the demand for firing and even for a reprimand.10 Naturally Prof. Zimmerman will not be fired from the university, but the mark of Cain will stick to it unless the atmosphere be cleared. It should be unequivocally stated that there are no foreign considerations in hiring academics by the university, in granting tenure and in promoting staff members. Otherwise, unfortunately, the spirit of Senator McCarthy will hover for some time over the campuses of the Hebrew University.11
Yediot Ahronot, May 21, 1995
The historian Moshe Zimmerman and popular singer Aviv Geffen12 never imagined that they would find themselves in one framework and probably they would not have gladly shared one another's company. Nevertheless, Israeli society has managed to conjoin them and place them together in the category of those requiring protection of freedom of expression. Aviv Geffen has already heard harsh criticisms of the contents of his songs and the degree of his influence over the youth in this country. Prof. Moshe Zimmerman has also apparently learned that his views upset certain Jewish circles. Yet now they both face not only arguments and an attempt to contradict them, but also an attempt at gagging them. The Israeli Radio was told to stop broadcasting Geffen's newest song and Zimmerman might face a criminal suit in court.
The comparison which Zimmerman drew between Hitler Youth and the young settlers in Hebron ignited a pointed public debate regarding its contents and legitimacy. It is good that this debate took place. Moreover, every argument raised against the body of Zimmerman's statements (including the statement of the President at the Hebrew University that it would have been better if Zimmerman had not made his statement) was legitimate. But the attempt to prohibit Zimmerman from voicing views that upset his Jewish listeners is wrong. Therefore the Senate of the Hebrew University was well advised when it decided that there was no place, as far as it was concerned, even to discuss Zimmerman's statements made outside that institution. Regarding the instruction of the Attorney General to submit the matter to the State Attorney for examination: if such an instruction was made, it must be handled quickly and I hope that it ends with a recommendation to cease all legal treatment of the case.
On the other hand, those who are shocked by the views of Aviv Geffen must remember that there are also those who agree with the portrayal of our social reality as reflected in his songs and who identify with his criticism. In any case, any intelligent person would agree that the song Nowhere which caused the uproar is first and foremost a harsh protest song and as such it has a recognized place in the field of public debate. Anyone who wishes to may argue with its contents and try to disprove it. Yet all the arguments concerning insulting the public's feelings is irrelevant. That must certainly not be seen as a reason to ban the song from the Israeli radio. In support of this we must recall that the Supreme Court recently debated arguments against the advertisement "Go succeed" which was broadcast on Channel 2 of the TV, and ruled that it should not be banned for reasons of public feelings. If that was true concerning an advertisement - then even more so regarding a work of art.
Our Supreme Court, professors of philosophy, greatest writers and intellectuals, and even the leaders of the main opposition parties have reiterated that freedom of expression is one of our most fundamental rights and must not be violated except in the rarest of cases. The State of Israel, like all democracies, has anchored the freedom of expression in its basic foundations and has only restricted it in matters such as racism or actual harm to persons.
Freedom of expression is frequently put to new tests, and recently it has mostly come out victorious. The ability to express our views, whether in the areas of society and politics or in the areas of culture and art is the key to our intellectual and social development and the primary condition for the existence of a democratic regime in Israel. We are all duty-bound to see to it that the limitations of this fundamental right are as few and as sharply defined as possible, that the struggle against any view is conducted only by means of opposing views and not by imposing sanctions and by prohibiting creative thought.
Haaretz, May 12, 1995
A group of professors from the Hebrew University published as a huge advertisement in Haaretz and sent a letter to the president and rector of the university by which they are employed. After paying some hypocritical lip-service to academic freedom they called - "for the honor of the Jewish people in general and for the university's honor" - for the firing of the expert on the history of Nazism, Prof. Moshe Zimmerman. The reason: the comparison that he drew between Jewish hooliganism in the territories and the acts of the Nazi youth movement.
I asked Tsali Reshef whether any of those people had ever signed a petition of Peace Now. No one in the Peace Now office had ever met them. Apparently those professors do not dirty their hands with worthless protests. They did not publicize a petition when it was found that our Shabak tortured people. They were not shocked when people died under interrogation. They did not lay down on the street when soldiers killed a 50 year-old Palestinian driver who was driving workers to their jobs. They did not violate the curfew when 150,000 Arabs in Hebron area were placed under curfew intended to allow the settlers to celebrate in peace. They did not hear that settlers murdered Arabs and they didn't see Jewish hooligans shooting at homes in Hebron. They did not publicize protests against rabbi Levinger, Yehuda Etzion13 and Hagai Segal.14 Not a muscle in their faces twitched when they heard MK Hanan Porat15 calling for rejoicing on the day of the Hebron massacre and Likud MK Tsahi Ha'negbi - who may be a minister in the next government - proposing on the day of the attack at Kfar Darom to send a few helicopters to Gaza "and mow down whoever was rejoicing there." They did not set out to dismantle the monument on the grave of "Baruch the Hero" in Kiryat Arba and they did not swear that "Goldstein's acts will not be repeated."
They did not do all those things because in their view there is nothing in common between those actions, perpetrated by Jews, and Nazism which was perpetrated by non-Jews. All Jewish acts are innocent, home-made villianous acts which should not shock anyone, especially Jews with sense of honor. The professors who signed the petition are men of honor. Only Zimmerman's statements caused them to shiver with "disgust and horror."
66 professors and some lecturers who butted in signed that document. They constitute an insignificant minority among the 885 professors at the Hebrew University. Yet there was not one professor among the others who managed to organize a counter-petition.16 Buber, who also happened to be a Hebrew University professor, wrote about the treason of intellectuals in WWI. He likened them to the demon which, according to the legend, seduced King Solomon, sent him into the desert, disguised itself as the king and ruled in his place. If the king acts like a demon, Buber wrote, "go seek the real king in the desert." If there are any intellectuals in the Hebrew University they are probably locked up somewhere under the concrete desert of the Mt. Scopus campus.
___________________
1. Isaiah, chapter 2, verse 4.
2. This refers to the Biblical story of king David's dowry, known in Israel to every child. King Saul promised David to give him his daughter for a wife for a dowry of "hundred foreskins of the Philistines". David brought him two hundred foreskins. (Samuel I, chapter 18, verses 25-27).
3. Ze'evi's program is based on demand for total expulsion ("transfer") of all the Palestinians from the Territories. Total expulsion of all the Jews from Germany was the official Nazi program. Ze'evi was brought into the government coalition by Shamir and served as a minister in 1990-92. Rabin was even worse: he excluded the Arab Knesset members and included Ze'evi, as a Jew, in the fake condemnation of Goldstein murder and he avoids attacking him or his views.
4. Under the Israeli conditions I think that this is the best approach to take: to serve in the army, even in the Territories, but to openly refuse to carry out any inhuman orders even if legal, and to support one's view in an argument with the other soldiers. I myself did this quite often.
5. Rabin's government duly gave a permit for the construction of this monument for a Jewish Nazi whom it pretended to repudiate.
6. It shouid be understood that the real aims of the Jewish Nazis are much wider than a "final solution of the Palestinian problem". They want, merely as the first stage in their program, that Israel conquers Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait and huge chunks of Iraq, Saudi-Arabia and Egypt since all that is in their view a part of the "Land of Israel".
7. Without using the term "National-Socialistic", Labor Zionism has always described itself as a movement both national and socialistic.
8. A perusal of what Israeli Jewish extremists (i.e. more extreme than Likud) write leaves no doubt that they want to burn books, especially the books written in Hebrew. One of their stock accusations is that almost entire Hebrew literature of the last 150 years is only "poisoning Jewish mind" and making the Jewish soldiers merciful and cowardly - for them, like for Hitler, synonymous terms. The Haredim want to destroy the entire secular literature in Hebrew and everything "influenced by the non-Jewish spirit". There is no doubt that if Jewish Nazis will come to power their destruction of "poisonous" literature will be worse than under Hitler.
9. The reference is to a notorious TV program.
10. No one of them changed his opinion.
11. The 79 signatories are composed of two well-defined groups: seculars much more extreme than Likud and religious chauvinists. Those two groups are opposed to freedom of expression on principle, and the Zimmerman case merely gave them an opportunity to fight it. What was remarkable that the many Likud and Labor Zimmerman's opponents took great care to dissociate themselves from the demand of the 79 signatories and to insist that Zimmerman should not be fired from the university. This constitutes a change for better in comparison of the situation in the early 1970s.
12. Geffen is a young singer, extremely popular among the Jewish teenagers, to the point of frequently causing not only mass-hysteria but also mass-faintings of his admirers. Usually he sings about unhappy love, anxiety and the lack of understanding of parents towards their offspring, but from time to time he also sings, say, about the anxiety and fear of an Israeli soldier or about the stupidity of the leading politicians and gives by this a great offence to the self-appointed guardians of Israeli morale. The song Nowhere was attacked because it suggested that Israel is a bad place to live in and because it hinted that Rabin drinks.
13. An extremist who proposes to turn Israel into a monarchy ruled by a member of Davidic dynasty according to Biblical rules, (but disregarding Talmud). He has a tiny following but is much respected by the TV.
14. A member of terroristic "Jewish Undergronnd", sentenced for 3 years of prison but almost immediately amnestied. Immediately after his release he became a respected columnist in Maariv where he still writes. His views can be described as a Jewish version of the Islamic Jihad.
15. The most extreme of the National Religious Party Knesset members. Also a great friend of Yitzhak Rabin.
16. Actually a counter-petition was organized and published after the date of publication of this article. It was signed by more than 1,000 Israeli professors. The difference between the rapidity of the publication of extreme Jewish views and the slowness of the publication of any counter-view lies in the difference in financing the publication. Judeo-Nazism is extremely popular among the Jews of English-speaking countries, much more so than in Israel. A few collect phone calls or faxes will provide the money needed to support any and every Judeo-Nazi statement. In contrast, the opponents of Judeo-Nazism must laboriously provide their own money.
Quelle: Israel Shahak
kkk NETWORK red
kokhaviv publications > Kritisches Forum > Israel zwischen Fundamentalismus und Demokratie
© Copyright 1999 - 2002 kokhaviv publications