(Author: Chuck Volpe, Vol. 67, No. 3, Chanukah 2012)
“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K. He knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.” So begins Franz Kafka’s classic novel The Trial. The strange sense of guiltless guilt and injustice which pervades this novel could well describe the Jewish experience over the last 2000 years. Jews, living as a minority in often resentful host communities, have frequently been the target of unfounded suspicion and false accusations. For a large part of their history they have been, so to speak, ‘in the dock’, as defendants facing charges they could sometimes not make sense of. ‘Sufferance’, says Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, ‘is the badge of our tribe.’
Even the promise of messianic redemption did not remove the ever-present dread of what came to be called antisemitism and its effect on Jews. This factor is central to understanding Jews and Israel. To disregard antisemitism in the study of Jews would be like overlooking race in studying South African politics.
Antisemitism is painful and it is understandable that Jews are disinclined to revisit it. In his book The Jewish State Theodor Herzl comments wearily that “Everything rational and everything sentimental that can possibly be said in defence [of the Jews] has been said already.” Nevertheless, antisemitism has again surfaced in world politics and we have no choice but to confront it. Once again, it is not content just to stigmatize Jews; it wants to wipe them out.
Jews are survivors and they are smart, but their suffering has at times distorted clear thinking. I want to look at some these distortions or what I will call ‘delusions.’ Delusions are “ideas or beliefs which are held despite being contradicted by reality.” Sometimes, these beliefs are simply mistaken but quite often they take the form of a defence against reality, a form of self-deception.
I use the term ‘self-deception’ not as a moral judgement but to describe a natural human predisposition. We deceive ourselves in matters small – our looks, our children’s brilliance, and in matters large – our faultless ethics and our religious beliefs; and in the face of danger we often deceive ourselves with unrealistic hopes. The most poignant example of this played out in Europe in the late 1930s, when misplaced hope occluded the disaster that lay just ahead. Since antisemitism in all its forms threatens Jews and can lead to distortions in thinking, it will be helpful to look at its nature and characteristics.
The history of antisemitism is not a concatenation of isolated events or separate episodes. Over time, antisemitism builds upon itself, creating what has become a mythology surrounding Jews. Jews are easily the most mythologised people on the planet, accredited with the most extraordinary characteristics and powers, and it is this mythology, rather than their considerable achievements, that has given Jews such a central place in modern history.
The question ‘why the Jews?’ has a simple answer. They are a tiny and vulnerable people. Generally speaking, the antisemite knows this and believes that he can say and do what he wants and get away with it. As an ideology, antisemitism is intellectually feeble, unlike communism, for example, which had enormous intellectual backing through Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky and others. August Bebel called antisemitism the ‘the socialism of fools’ and recently the UK academic David Hirsh has termed it ‘the anti-imperialism fools’, in reference to its strong support by the ideological left.
Antisemitism’s essence is the lie and the more defamatory and extravagant the lie, the better. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler spoke for all antisemites when he coined the expression der Große Lüge the Big Lie. He made the credible claim that the more gigantic and bizarre the lie, the more likely it is to be believed. He based this on the common sense assumption that where there is smoke, there is a fire, and therefore the more smoke, the more likely the fire. He went on to accuse Jews, among other things, of responsibility for the French revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Depression, Capitalism and Communism together, and polluting the Aryan race.
In earlier times, the ‘big lie’ took different forms such as the murder of God, using the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes, and causing the Black Plague, to mention just a few. The sheer variety of accusations points to another characteristic – antisemitism’s virus-like ability to change frequently and easily according to need and circumstance. The charge of God-murder met the needs of the Church, the invention of Capitalism the needs of the Communists, the invention of Communism suited Capitalists like Henry Ford, and the charge of colonialism and ethnic cleansing fits the requirements of the ideological Left today. Each group creates its own mythology of the Jew, in an image of its own convenience.
It is in the nature of the big lie to be unanswerable. For example, how does one respond to an accusation which is cosmic in range, such as ‘you have murdered God’ or ‘you want to take over the world’? Or existential in nature, like ‘you are the devil’, or ‘you are sub-human’? Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, famously said that if a theory is not falsifiable or capable of refutation, it cannot be taken seriously. For instance, if I were to make the claim that an alien race controls the United Nations, a sceptic could ask for those conditions, which, if satisfied, would refute my theory. If I cannot furnish such conditions, he would be entitled to say that I was talking nonsense.
Likewise, when the antisemite accuses the Jew of killing God or wishing to dominate the world, one can reasonable ask what evidence might count against the truth of his statements. If he cannot provide this, he would have to submit to the charge of talking nonsense. But all this is theoretical, because the antisemite is not rational. Debate is not his forte. He does not reach his conclusions by any accredited process of reasoning and so is not amenable to evidence and moral persuasion.
It is not enough that the antisemite tells lies and that he directs his lies at a vulnerable group; he also employs a devious device to make his lies stick. He uses a conjurer’s trick that Ruth Wisse calls the prestidigitation of the ‘pointing finger.’ To illustrate this: Say, I approach a complete stranger in the street – call her Susan – and I say to her: “Susan, you are a prostitute.” When she recovers from the shock, she’ll surely deny the accusation. “Okay,” I say, “If you deny it, let’s settle the matter in a debate. I’ll propose the motion and you can defend yourself.”
Is this fair? Is she likely to agree? Of course not. Why? Not because she is a prostitute (which she obviously isn’t) but because she has been made the victim of a trick, the ‘prestidigitation of the pointing finger.’ She has been put on the defensive ab initio.
This is how antisemitism works. Jews are singled out by means of the ‘pointing finger’ and so are damned from the start. In a debate with Ronnie Kasrils during so-called Israel Apartheid Week at the beginning of 2012, I had to contend with the topic “Is Israel an apartheid state?” The bias is obvious. I wonder whether Kasrils would have agreed to the topic title: “Is Ronnie Kasrils deluded on the subject of Israel?”
The deception of the pointing finger is remarkably effective and has the added advantage of directing attention away from the accuser’s shortcomings. The Jew is put into the dock as the defendant, while the antisemite assumes the position of plaintiff, prosecutor and judge. What never ceases to amaze me is that Jews habitually fall for this trick.
Ruth Wisse defines antisemitism as the organisation of politics against the Jews. It might strike you as bizarre, but this half-baked, subintellectual package of lies was the most successful ideology of the 20th Century. Fascism and Communism, the two best-known ideologies, both failed. By comparison, antisemitism came within a hair’s breadth of achieving its stated goal, which was to eliminate Jews and Jewish influence from Europe.
In six years, six million Jewish men, women and children were gassed, shot, starved and tortured and then reduced to ash; hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed and the 800year-old European Jewish civilisation was laid to waste. The Jewish population of the world is today thirteen million, still, four million short of the 1939 census. That the Nazis did not succeed entirely was due to events outside their control rather than outside their designs.
The Holocaust should not be seen as a single event perpetrated by the Germans alone. With the notable exception of Denmark and Bulgaria, the nations of Europe together perpetrated what was in reality a cluster of crimes against the Jews of Europe. The term ‘Holocaust’ should be understood to refer to this cluster. There were crimes of perpetration, crimes of collaboration and crimes of abandonment, and together they combined to bring about the final catastrophic result. The scale of the Holocaust could never have been as great without this being so. This has scarcely been acknowledged by Europeans, but that should not obscure it from Jewish awareness.
Furthermore, the Holocaust was not an aberration of history. One has to acknowledge that it came out of Western civilisation. This has enormous implications both for Jews and for nonJews. Jews will forever live in its shadow, while non-Jews will need to reassess some of the basic assumptions about the civilisation to which they belong. Gyorgy Koves, the 15-year-old boy in survivor Imre Kertesz’s novel Fateless, observes “we [Jews] can never start a new life, only ever carry on the old one”. This strikes to the heart of the Jewish predicament today.
The enormous success of antisemitism did not go unnoticed. The Arab and Muslim world discovered its own uses for this foul ideology. As a dysfunctional civilisation trying to come to terms with modernity, the Arab world found this off-the-shelf panacea a godsend. Since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire almost 100 years ago the Arab Middle East has been in a state of turmoil. This is not because of Western colonialism, as the school of resentment would have you believe, but because of a decision 800 years ago in the Muslim world to abandon a burgeoning interest in science and philosophy and take refuge in fundamentalist religion. Sunni Islamic civilisation, which at the time dominated the civilised world in every sphere of learning from philosophy to mathematics, took the decision to follow the Ash’arite school of al Ghazali and abandon the legacy of reason and science it had inherited from the ancients.
The result today is that the total GDP of the Arab league, which comprises 22 countries and 300 million people, is about the same size as that of Spain. Furthermore, the belief that the Koran contains all knowledge worth knowing has led to the embarrassing situation where more books are translated into Spanish every year than have been translated into Arabic since the time of Mohammed. One in every two Arab woman cannot read or write and ten million children do not go to school. There is not a single Arab institution in the annual ranking of the world’s top universities while tiny Israel has six.
Rather than deal with this lack of development and the misery it gives rise to, the Arab world has looked for scapegoats. Western imperialism was one, but the Jews on a tiny sliver of land in the middle of the Islamic world provided a much more credible and convenient scapegoat, and a ready-made one to boot. Nazi antisemitism had already shown what could be done to this small people while the world stood by. As it happened, antisemitism was well-established in the Arab world at the time of the Second World War and Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian headman, spent most of the war in Berlin as the guest of Heinrich Himmler. When he wasn’t touring Auschwitz or openly calling for the extermination of the Jews, he was actively helping to prosecute the Holocaust.
Jeffrey Herf and Meir Litvak, in two recently published books, explore the infusion of totalitarian ideas and antisemitic tropes into Palestinian political culture and Islamist thinking. The Hamas Charter is the best example and if further evidence is needed, the testimony in court by the planners of the 9/11 terrorist attacks should suffice. According to the testimony, New York was selected for the atrocity because the planners believed that world Jewry’s plot to dominate the world emanated from there.
Led by Muslim countries, antisemitism in the West has been rekindled. By dint of numbers and their oil wealth, the Arab world managed to persuade the United Nations to implicitly revoke what they once granted, the right to a Jewish homeland. In 1975, by a vote of 72 to 35, the General Assembly adopted the outrageous resolution that “Zionism is racism.” At a stroke of the pen, they delegitimised the Jewish state, and even though this resolution was later repealed, it was simultaneously reaffirmed at the Muslim summit in Dakar. Please note that this is not a statement about disputed borders or human rights; this is a statement saying that Israel as a state should not exist. Just as the Nazis undermined the legitimacy of Jews in order to harm them as they did, so have the Arabs sought to undermine the legitimacy of Israel, so as to justify any future harm they may do to them.
If Hitler taught us anything, it is this: when a Nazi or a fascist or an Islamist or an antisemite of any description, says something, believe it. Don’t try and justify it or excuse it. Antisemitism is antisemitism and should always be called by its rightful name. If a newspaper publishes an antisemitic cartoon, call it antisemitic. If the attacks on the World Trade Centre were animated by antisemitic fantasies, say so. If the Iranian head of state calls for the destruction of Israel, take him at his word. If a so-called liberation movement like the PLO or Hamas or Hezbollah calls for the elimination of the Jewish state and the extermination of Jews, do not pretend that it is calling for anything else. Absence of clarity on antisemitism is the beginning of complicity.
Against this background I now want to look at six delusions.
Delusion 1: Jews underestimate their enemies
There is a minority belief that we can negotiate with the Arabs, and I use the term ‘Arab’ rather than ‘Palestinian’, because according to the polls, Palestinians regard themselves as Arab and Muslim first and then as Palestinian. The first clear indication of Arab intransigence came straight after the Six Day War. In a poll run by the Israel Institute for Applied Social Research the majority of Israelis were open to negotiation on the territories. After a victory of such decisiveness most people believed a deal could be done.
The Arabs, however, thought differently. Instead of rushing to the negotiating table, they issued the most categorical of rejections at the Arab league conference in Khartoum – No negotiation, No recognition, and No peace. This was and still is the clearest declaration of Arab and Palestinian intentions. The position of the Palestinian Authority today is not much different. They still refuse to recognise a Jewish state and will only negotiate on the precondition that Israel agrees to the return of all Palestinian refugees, notwithstanding that this would entail the end of the Jewish state. The lesson is that the Jewish state can be rejected as emphatically as a homeless tribe was once rejected.
Delusion 2: Jews underestimate the power of ideas
Given the enormous success of the Jewish idea of Zionism in bringing about a Jewish state after 2000 years, it is surprising that Israel has underestimated the corresponding power of Palestinian ideas. Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military theoretician, said that war is the extension of politics, but the Arabs have taught us that politics can be the extension of war. Having failed to vanquish the Israel militarily, the Palestinians proceeded to lay siege to the fundamental idea behind the Jewish state Zionism.
The ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution at the United Nations attacked the Zionist claim to a homeland with the counter-claim that this would deprive Palestinian Arabs of the right to their homeland. Even though later retracted, the resolution still forms the basis of the current BDS campaign against Israel. The Palestinian claim to the land is hammered in whenever a suicide bomber detonates himself, because the world interprets such selfsacrifice as an indication of the power and sincerity of the Palestinian claim.
The Palestinians have in effect stolen the Zionist narrative – ‘homeless Palestinian’ replaces ‘homeless Jew’, ‘Palestinian suffering’ replaces ‘Jewish suffering’, ‘Palestinian racism’ gives way to ‘Jewish racism’, and the genocide attempt by the Arabs in 1948 is replaced by an alleged ‘genocide of the Palestinian people’ by the Israelis. No wonder Jews are asking questions like ‘Is Zionism still relevant?’ Or ‘Has Zionism failed?’
Delusion 3: The liberal belief that mankind is improving and justice will ultimately prevail
This delusion, probably more widespread than any other, is the optimistic liberal belief in the progressive improvement of mankind. As tempting as it may be to believe that the world is becoming more civilised and less brutal and that justice will eventually prevail, this must be the ultimate selfdeception.
There is a brutal paradox at the centre of Western civilisation – between classical learning and culture as expressed in the humanities, on the one hand, and the big lie, totalitarian politics and the triumph of the death camps, on the other. We saw how men could operate a gas chamber during the day and weep over Mozart and Goethe at night over dinner. The long-standing belief that cultivation in the arts and sciences would humanise man turns out to be no more than an illusion.
The Holocaust stands in the sharpest contradiction to the idea of human progress. That it happened once increases the chances of it happening again. Rather than engendering sympathy for the Jews, Jews are now censored for their victimhood. It is the Jews that provide the mirror in which Western civilisation sees its own depravity. No one thanks them for this and for shattering their dreams of a better world.
Delusion 4: The liberal belief in a one-size-fits all theory
No one would doubt the appeal of liberalism. The liberal believes in a rational world in which all human problems, political or otherwise, respond to reason and are resolvable by negotiation. He forswears the use of force, not only for the damage it causes, but because it stands in radical contradiction to all his other beliefs. Notwithstanding all its merits liberalism has one fatal demerit – its inability to deal with political intransigence and intractable hatred – the characteristics of the totalitarian.
His problem lies in his one-size-fits-all political theory. This blinds him to the obvious fact that people and cultures differ. This is glaringly obvious in the Islamic world, where the majority cares not a jot for the liberal’s dearlyheld beliefs. The same general point was wellillustrated in the early 1930s, when liberalism came up against the intractable hatred and political intransigence of Adolf Hitler.
At the time, the leader of the opposition British Labour Party was a certain George Lansbury, a much beloved and saintly man. It was his belief that disarmament was the best means of compelling Hitler to mend his ways. Britain, he said, should stand before the world ‘armed only by justice and love.’ He went to Berlin to meet Hitler and at the close of the meeting asked Hitler for a positive message to take back to his Jewish constituents. He was assailed by a torrent of abuse which according to reports left the translator utterly incapacitated.
Nevertheless, Lansbury returned home still of the belief that Hitler was merely a lost soul who might yet receive salvation in the Anglican Communion. Winston Churchill at the time was written off by many as a right-wing warmonger for steadfastly pointing out the evils of the Nazis. Lansbury may well have been a saintly man but he was also a silly man. While Hitler was in thrall to a racist ideology, Arab Muslims are in thrall to a religious ideology. Both are totalitarian in scope. Muslims are enjoined to view every aspect of life, including politics, through the prism of their faith. Let’s look at how Islam affects the practice of politics in the Arab world.
In general, there are two models of politics the economic model and the religious model. In the economic model everything is subject to negotiation and compromise, and even though compromise may not be easy or even desirable, it is always possible. When Israel sits down at the table with the Palestinians, it directs itself according to the economic model of politics, which means, it expects to compromise and exchange. It may, for instance, agree to exchange land within the green line for a settlement bloc beyond the green line or make a concession in exchange for a reciprocal concession. But, by and large, everything is subject to negotiation and compromise. The liberal understands and feels at home in this model.
On the other hand, there is the religious model of politics. In this model, there are things that can never be compromised. The reason is that the religious model incorporates the concept of the holy, and the holy is neither negotiable nor subject to compromise. When the Palestinians sit down to talk, they do so according to the religious model of politics, which means genuflecting to Islam. In Islam there is no distinction between religion and politics. Religion is part of politics and politics is part of religion. The role of politics is to protect the religious way of life, and therefore, in matters which are touched by the holy, compromise is not possible.
According to Islam, if land has once been Islamic, it cannot revert to its former status. To relinquish it amounts to apostasy, and the punishment for apostasy is death. On the brink of an historic settlement at Camp David, Arafat walked away, not because he was afraid of losing face, but because he was afraid of losing his head. The same would apply to Abbas or any future Palestinian leader.
Does the liberal take this into account? No, because the liberal regards his ideals as sacrosanct; they are more than just a political preference; they are a matter of faith. When the liberal’s ideals are threatened, he will jettison Israel rather than his ideals. This was true of Jewish communists in the last century and it is true of liberals today, including Jewish liberals. The liberal’s belief in the power of reason and negotiation is such that for him there has to be a solution to the problem, peace has to be possible. If the Arabs can’t be persuaded to negotiate and are not receptive to pressure, then the only other option is to put pressure on the party that is – Israel. So Israel is blamed for the breakdown of talks and for being intransigent. By blaming Israel, the liberal preserves his liberal principles, saves himself the unpleasant task of confronting Arab rage and violence, and gives himself a reason for not coming to the defence of Israel.
The last two delusions deal with the way in which Jews respond to antisemitism. Delusions 5 incorporates the belief that Jews can mitigate antisemitism by proving their worth and, Delusion 6, that they can mitigate it by eliciting pity.
Delusion 5: The ‘I am worthy’ plea
The ‘I am worthy’ plea comes in two varieties – ‘I am worthy because of my achievements’ and ‘I am worthy because of my ethical standing.’
First, ‘I am worthy because of my achievements.’ Jews are an enormously energetic and creative people. It is reasonable to say that their achievements in almost every field of human endeavour are at least partly the result of their desire for acceptance. The logic is as follows: if I show that I am a productive and law-abiding citizen, I will prove myself worthy of acceptance, or at the very least, unworthy of hatred. Maybe this is why Jews relish nothing more than broadcasting their achievements (if the number of e-mails doing the rounds listing Jewish Nobel prize-winners and Israel’s spectacular achievements are anything to go by).
But hatred is not dispelled by proofs of excellence. The antisemite is not interested in the real-life Jew and his multiple achievements, but in the fantasy Jew and his multiple vices. In any case, what have achievements to do with being accepted as an equal? Is it not demeaning to play along with the idea that Jews should have to sing for their supper; to have to earn what is naturally due to them?
The second version of the plea is ‘I am worthy because of my ethical standing.’ Jews seem to have a burning desire to advertise their goodness and this takes the form of setting higher standards for themselves than for anyone else. To begin with, this is morally incoherent. The basic principle of meta-ethics is universalisability, which means one standard for everyone. For Jews to hold themselves to higher standard smacks of moral grandstanding if not narcissism. Ironically, when others hold Jews to a higher standard, they shout ‘foul’ yet they prescribe this for themselves.
The great proponent of this idea is the Jewish human rights advocate – it is the source of his moral prowess and his confused politics. For him, to be equal to others is not good enough: “I want to be held to a higher standard”, he says, and goes on to cite the historic Jewish mission to be ‘a light unto the nations.’ By holding Israel to a higher standard, he confuses what might be seen as Israel’s religious shortcomings, with the singling out of Israel by other nations. He is either blind or indifferent to the fact that Israel is being held to a double standard, not by God, but by other men.
Jewish moral decency cannot be a substitute for the moral decency of others. The Jewish desire for ethical acclaim directs the world’s attention away from where moral scrutiny should really come to rest. For example, after the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, Israel was alone in setting up a commission of enquiry, with the world in close attendance. As a consequence, the attention of the world was diverted from the Christian group who did the actual killing, and they were let off the hook. This is surely an instance of directing the ‘pointing finger’ at oneself.
Delusion 6: The ‘eliciting pity’ method
A second attempt to mitigate antisemitism is to elicit from others the same pity Jews feel for themselves. So, we erect Holocaust memorials, teach Holocaust studies, and ensure that Yad Vashem is the first stop for foreigners visiting Israel. The underlying belief is that by imparting information on the Holocaust, we will reduce the chance of it ever happening again. This belief is partly misplaced. If the innocence of Jews did not protect them in the first place, so why should advertising that innocence now be more effective?
The antisemite draws his own conclusions from the Holocaust: (1) it demonstrates that the Jews are an easy target; (2) it demonstrates that the international community was prepared to abandon the Jews in their hour of need; and (3) it suggests that there must be a reason why Jews were selected for such treatment in the first place. Rather than putting a stop to antisemitism, focussing on the Holocaust may actually encourage it.
I will end with four short observations. First is that antisemitism as an ideology should be studied. It should become a formal subject of study at schools and universities. More so than Holocaust studies antisemitism, as a contemporary political ideology, should become part of the syllabuses in political science, sociology and philosophy departments around the world. Its dangers for Jews and for society in general should be clearly recognised. Not to do this is to allow the possibility of its resuscitation.
Next, we must not count on the world being benevolent. In other words, let us not succumb to the belief in a universal, post-national brotherhood of man. In the real world, the shadow coexists with the light and the negative with the positive, so let’s not pretend it is otherwise. Those who should be most benevolent to Jews have repeatedly fallen short of right behaviour. Just as Christianity failed to live up to its own teachings in its treatment of the Jews, so, too, has liberalism. In becoming fellow travellers to anti-Jewish politics, they have betrayed the Jews together with their own principles.
Thirdly, Jews should shake off the belief that they hold the key to the eradication of antisemitism. Just as the status of Jews was once made contingent by the hostility of non-Jews, so has the status of Israel been made contingent by Arab hostility and resentment. Ultimately, it is up to non-Jews to eradicate antisemitism; they invented it and practise it and only they can expunge it.
Finally, let’s take the fight to the antisemite. As has been pointed out, Jews habitually fall for the trick of the ‘pointing finger.’ It is time we brought an end to this game of ‘Jewish victim’. Why should we sportingly take on the defence of a position that is doomed from the start? It is time to move from defence to offence, to level the playing field, even if this means confronting our accusers with accusations of our own.
Jewish self-affirmation has never been an exercise for the faint-hearted. The strength of the Jewish people, sharpened by endurance for over 2000 years, will prevail against the antisemite’s lies. But to do so requires that we understand clearly how living in the shadow of our tragic history affects the way we think.
Chuck Volpe is a Port Elizabeth businessman and chairman of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies Eastern Cape Council. This article is adapted from his paper delivered at the 2012 Limmud conference.
