June 14, 2012
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=4103
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In a column appearing in The
Independent, the fiercely anti-Israeli UK daily, Avram Burg, former
Speaker of the Knesset, Chairman of the Jewish Agency and scion of one
of Israel's renowned religious Zionist families, commended the UK
government for measures designed to boycott Israeli goods produced
beyond the green line and urged the EU to do likewise "in Israel's
interest".
Burg, who had the chutzpa to
state that he was writing as a "Zionist", described Israel "as the last
colonial occupier in the Western world" and proclaimed that “the Israeli
people's eyes are blind and their ears are deaf" and the "real enemy of
Israel's future is Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel".
In the past, Burg has called for
the abrogation of "the law of return” which he defined as "a mirror
image of Hitler”. He has described the Jewish state as "a ghetto of
belligerent colonialism” and urged Israelis to obtain foreign passports.
He also recommended the dismantlement of Yad Vashem and its
substitution by new headquarters for the International Criminal Court.
Yet few would dare to describe
this man, whose mother's family was butchered in 1929 during the pogroms
in Hebron, as a "self-hating Jew".
That is because one of the most
effective accomplishments chalked up by political far-left activists was
their success in eliminating the term “self-hating Jews" from the
Jewish political lexicon. They are abetted by those from the extreme
right who indiscriminately label every Jewish critic of Israeli policy
as a self-hating Jew.
By cynically employing inverse
McCarthyist tactics to silence their critics, the far left succeeded in
intimidating politicians and writers into adopting a form of political
correctness which suppresses mention of one of the primary factors
motivating the bizarre Jewish involvement in the campaign to demonize
and delegitimize Israel.
Today, anyone employing the term “self-hating” in relation to Jews is summarily condemned and accused of being chauvinistic.
Yet any objective review of
Jewish history demonstrates that “self-hatred” was always an important
element motivating Jews who turned against their own people and far
predates the existence of Israel.
The current situation was
accurately summarized in a recent interview with Howard Jacobson,
recipient of the highly coveted Man Booker Prize for the novel “The
Finkler Question” which satirized British anti-Semitism and "self-hating
Jews".
Ironically, his interview with
Maya Sela appeared in the English internet edition of the Israeli daily
Ha'aretz, which is probably the most important global media platform
promoting the rantings of Jews demonizing Israel.
Jacobson nonchalantly abandons
political correctness by ignoring the taboo on the term “self-hating
Jews” when referring to Jews who demonize and delegitimize Israel.
He relates to "the need for Jews
to be, one way or another, anti-Jewish. The need for so many Jews,
particularly intellectual Jews, to express their hatred with
embarrassment with Jewishness, and hating Israel is just the latest
version of it. Jews were doing that long before there was a modern state
of Israel… I suppose that if you belong to a minority that has been
hated for so long, then you begin to sort of absorb some of that. It
would be very surprising if you didn't. In psychology they would tell
you that an abused child will in the end come to take the view of
himself that the abuser has. I don't doubt that some Jews do that".
Over the ages, anti-Semitism has
inflicted such devastating suffering on the Jewish people that it
inevitably spawned a small but highly vocal number of Jews obsessed with
dissociating themselves.
If one analyzes the behavior of
Jewish apostates during the Middle Ages, notorious for accusing their
kinsman of satanic rites and churning out the vilest anti-Semitic
tracts, there is little doubt that they were motivated by self-hatred as
well as opportunism.
The era of Emancipation also
witnessed Jewish Universalists engaged in campaigns defaming their
fellow Jews. In the nineteenth century socialist revolutionary arena,
self-hatred led to justifying pogroms as a lubricant to generate
revolutions.
Karl Marx was a prime example of
this. Although converted to Christianity, he was a descendant of a long
line of rabbis. His noxious self-hatred was the basis for his vile
anti-Semitic tract “Zur Judenfrage”, in which he stated that "money is a
jealous God of Israel… The social emancipation of the Jews is the
emancipation of society from Judaism.”
The tradition of “self-hatred” was sustained by Jewish communists. In the Soviet Union, the Yevsektsia,
the Jewish section of the Bolsheviks, were notorious for behaving more
harshly and displaying a greater determination to destroy synagogues and
Jewish cultural institutions than their non-Jewish counterparts.
Western Jewish communists
applauded Stalin's murder of Jews and crimes against the Jewish people
and were amongst the staunchest defenders of the Evil Empire.
In Israel, the fellow traveling
Mapam, the forerunner of Meretz, behaved as schizophrenics, seeking to
combine their Zionism with love and allegiance to the Soviet Union, even
when one of their leaders, Mordechai Oren, was arrested and tried on
trumped up espionage charges in Czechoslovakia.
Yet it was only after the Oslo
Accords, when Labor (Mapai) was desperately trying to convince Israelis
that peace with the fork-tongued Arafat was feasible, that the self
-haters emerged en mass from the closet. They assumed prominent roles at
universities and attained political respectability by infiltrating the
Labor Party and obtaining excessive media coverage in the Israeli daily
Ha'aretz and its English language website, which prior to becoming
dominated by post Zionists, was considered the leading intellectual
newspaper of the land. Today it vigorously promotes journalists who
demonize the state with the same vigor as their communist antecedents.
The Israeli self-haters range
from outright political psychopaths like former Israeli musician Gilad
Atzmon who justifies the Nazi murder of the Jews, to failed politician
Avram Burg who delegitimizes his country. They include journalists who
paved the way for the Goldstone report and charges of war crimes against
Israel by demonizing the IDF, whilst defending the intransigent and
duplicitous Palestinians.
In addition, there are some
diaspora Jews, ugly blemishes on the fringes of Jewish communities
throughout the world, who stand at the vanguard of the anti-Israeli
pack. Most of those engaged in these activities, unlike Avram Burg, stem
from assimilated or delusionary leftist backgrounds and have no genuine
involvement in Jewish life.
But occasional despicable
behavior by groups on the extreme right may also qualify as a
manifestation of self-hatred. Ironically, I clearly recollect the late
National Religious Party leader Dr. Josef Burg, father of Avram,
confessing to me that he was having sleepless nights out of concern that
some Jews residing in isolated settlements would absorb and transform
the fierce animosity radiated by Palestinians surrounding them into a
form of “self-hatred” which could manifest itself by anti-social
behavior.
In summary, "self-hating Jews"
is unquestionably a term which should be employed to identify those
small pockets of Jews who demonize their own people. But it should be
employed in a highly selective manner and not utilized indiscriminately
against naïve well-meaning "bleeding hearts" or legitimate critics of
Israeli policies with whom we may disagree.
He may be contacted at ileibler@netvision.net.il
This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post
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