Eminentoes
Hanukkah’s Scrooge
Tony Judt, alas, may be too obsessed to be even Dickensian.
Based upon his recent article in the Financial Times (“Israel must unpick its ethnic myth”), I know what Tony Judt wants for Hanukkah: The evaporation of a collective Jewish existence and the elimination of the Zionist entity — the state of Israel — which is essential to that dream.
In the FT article, Judt complains that when he was a lad in Israel his Zionist teachers told him a fairy tale that only a Jewish state could be an “alternative to persecution, assimilation or cultural dilution…. The Israel they wished me to join was therefore grounded, and could only be grounded, in an ethnically rigid view of Jews and Jewishness.”
For this reason, Judt, a University Professor at New York University, regards the establishment and existence of Jewish state as a dangerous aberration and the major source of many of the world’s ills. In fact, he hates being reminded he is Jewish and has concocted an ideology around that pathology unrelated to both history and fact.
So, for instance, Judt ignores the creation of Pakistan as Muslim state in 1947, a year before Israel was founded, or that many of the European states he regards a examples post-ethnic enlightenment have a “right of return” for ethnic Germans, French, Spanish, etc. or that their treatment of immigrants is more restrictive and selective than Israel or America.
Judt supported American intervention in the Bosnian conflict and the creation of the predominantly Muslim state of Bosnia-Herzegovina on humanitarian grounds. In 1999, ” in defending the U.S.-led NATO effort, he wrote: “the extermination of minorities within national frontiers has many recent European precedents.” There is precedent in the Middle East too where, as Victor Davis Hanson observed, “over half-million or so Jews… have been ethnically cleansed from (and sometimes murdered in) Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and almost every Jewish community in the Arab Middle East.”
But to Judt the creation of the Jewish state is something unique to nature and politics; particularly in the idealized global village Judt’s brain seems to wander. He has decided that its perpetuation depends largely on too many Jews around the world believing in the “fiction” that Israel is the restoration of a people to their ancient nationhood and that such a nation must play a transformative and positive role in human affairs.
Judt writes: “Once we agree, in short, that Israel’s uniquely ‘Jewish’ quality is an imagined or elective affinity, how are we to proceed?” Judt’s final solution is to urge Jews to stop giving money to Israel. The “rationale” he provides says a lot about how unhinged he is from facts:
The civil war in Northern Ireland came to an end in part because an American president instructed the Irish emigrant community in the US to stop sending arms and cash to the Provisional IRA. If American Jews stopped associating their fate with Israel and used their charitable cheques for better purposes, something similar might happen in the Middle East.
For those who might not know, the IRA is a terrorist organization that received training, funding, and arms from both the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Libya. Donations to Israel — a democracy — fund education, the life sciences, infrastructure development, and programs to help the assimilation of Jews and non-Jews who have left oppressive, war torn regimes to seek a better life.
Judt’s article could be dismissed if he were not one of leaders of a broader movement made up of non-governmental organizations that are seeking to implement his vision. The Goldstone Report, the recent EU vote affirming East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state without mentioning Israel’s right to exist or legal claim to Jerusalem, the recent UK decision to label products from Israeli communities in the West Bank and from Gaza so as to facilitate a boycott all flow from the same twisted rage that gave rise to Judt’s FT article.
We can expect that Judt and his ilk will continue to pursue this unthinking and persistent program of hate. But having just been on a trip to Israel, I saw why Judt’s dream will fail.
Recently my son immigrated to Israel after serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. He is attending college at Herzliya IDC where he became friends with Daher Said. Daher is from Somalia. Militia murdered his family in 1996. He escaped to Egypt only to face discrimination. He headed towards the Egypt-Israel border where he asked Israeli soldiers guarding the border to take him in. They did. Daher is but one of many students at Herzliya IDC who escaped persecution, terror and murder in countries like Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia by retracing the exodus that gave life to the Jewish state.
Israel is strong by virtue of its vibrant high-tech economy, robust democracy and military might. But what sustains it above all is the collective determination and efforts to share and re-create the Jewish drama of liberation, renewal and hope in human purpose. As the story of Hanukkah suggests, this great moral enterprise is at the core of what Judt derides as the “affinity” of Jews to Israel. And it is this story — and the story of Daher Said — that will continue to inspire long after the ravings of Tony Judt are forgotten.
About the Author
Robert M. Goldberg is vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and founder of Hands Off My H ealth, a grass roots health care empowerment network. His is new book, Tabloid Medicine: How the Internet is Being Used To Hijack Medical Science For Fear and Profit, was published last month by Kaplan.
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Appleby| 12.14.09 @ 6:41AM
One more indication that the End Times are quickly approaching. Yes, crazy paranoids like this man have always existed; but at no other time in history were they able to fling their, er, dreck around the world with the touch of a button.
Add that to the other side, of course, which is that this is the first time in history when we can truly preach the Gospel to all nations, and it makes some of us go hmmmmm.
Meanwhile, the story of Hannukah is instructive, and if you dont know it, you ought to google it.
KyMouse| 12.15.09 @ 12:44PM
Good grief, Professor Judt, I'm a gentile, but I've taken four trips to Israel, to show my love and support for it and its people. Does Judt dismiss the Bible as "fiction," too? It contains prophecies that the Jewish people would be driven out of their land because of disobedience toward God, but brought back at a future time. And those prophecies have come true.
I guess Judt would have had no use for the late Zola Levitt, a Jewish believer in Jesus (of Zola Levitt Ministries). Zola liked to point out his Jewish people are the only ones in history who have been forced out of their land, wandered for almost two millennia, and then come back to it -- and come back speaking their ancient language, acknowledging (if not always worshipping) the same God as their ancient ancestors, and observing many of the same customs.
Zola often added that the people who show you around the Pyramids (or the Acropolis) today can't say the same thing -- your Pyramid guide probably worships Allah, not Horus, and doesn't write in hieroglyphics.
Appleby, the Gospel is indeed being preached to all nations, including Israel. Through ministries such as Jews for Jesus, Jewish believers in Jesus from many countries join with native Israelis to proclaim the Gospel -- just as in the time of Jesus. More and more Jewish people are reading the New Testament (the B'rit Chadashah) and considering the claims of Jesus for themselves. These are indeed amazing times!
Grant| 12.14.09 @ 6:51AM
Tony Judt is a self-hating Jew. I have considered that Left Liberalism is Jewish self-hating that has caught on with weak-minded Gentiles (always in good supply). They think they can perfect human nature through the tax code.
Oh well.
Rich| 12.14.09 @ 7:11AM
Grant:
The Northeast is full of such self-hating Jews. They are willing to support and defend Israel's enemies on the Left and and any Democrat politician or administration until the last dead Jew in Israel.
loulou| 12.14.09 @ 10:40AM
Enen Israel is full of self-hating Jews. It is a mental illness.
Michael Tomlinson| 12.14.09 @ 7:57PM
The left hates everyone, but blood thirsty dictators and Muslim terrorists.
Ken (Old Texican)| 12.14.09 @ 8:41AM
Well, we Texans "Remember The Alamo".
We just cannot help admiring the endurance, and the courage of the Israelis in the face of enormous odds.
God bless 'em!
cuban pete| 12.14.09 @ 9:44AM
My thoughts exactly.
Thanks, Ken
Scott A Joseph, MD| 12.14.09 @ 2:24PM
You, sir, are a great American and a fine defender of Western Culture. As a graduate of TCU and UTMB, I salute you. Merry Christmas.
ACynic| 12.14.09 @ 3:25PM
The vile and abhorrent Karl Marx is probably the most famous jewish anti-semite. It would seem logical that someone like a Hitler would write a polemic on "the jewish question," and describe the "huckstering" jew.
But no, it was Karl Marx - the father of communism and left wing progressive thought.
Also, lets not forget Leon Trotsky - another self hating jew (I forget his real name), one of the founders of Bolshevik Russia, who had no qualms about instituting policies to exterminate tens of thousands of people.
How ironic, that two of the "heros" of the the left wing progressive movement were self hating, vile jewish individuals, one of who was a rabid anti-semite and the other a mass murderer, and yet, the extreme left wing progressive ideology is so attractive to the vast majority of American jewish people.
I will never, never, never, never understand this.
Ret. Marine| 12.14.09 @ 10:05PM
and it would be best left to never understand this position. I call it suicide myself. The progressive mindset is a mental disorder. I some times think of these types as stuck-on-stupid and angered in their hearts. But, who knows why?
Michael Tomlinson| 12.14.09 @ 7:56PM
Why wouldn't the alternative be true -- the elimination of Muslim states and Islam would make the world a safer place? Consider the simple reality that the world is a more violent and dangerous place, because of Islam. If the left were really interested in peace their focus would be on ways to neutralize or remove the threat of Islam. But instead from Obama on down they are working hard to protect their fascist Muslim comrades.
Paul Curley| 12.14.09 @ 8:33PM
I'm just re-reading Elie Weisel's "Night" for about the 5th time. God bless Israel. God bless the Jewish people.
dd| 12.15.09 @ 4:04AM
anyone who has ever lived near jewish people can easily understand how incredibaly disgusting these vile demons are. but kudos to them for finally manning up and fighting for their own land. they have sucked the blood off the rest of us for too long. send them all to israel! and who the hell cares about the muslems? a more pimitive and draconian people have never exisited in the history of the human race. i am an american indian so i should have some perspective on such things. fuck arabs and fuck jews. i think the arabs can give up a tiny bit of land so the jews can stop destroying the rest of the world. please?
sanjuro| 12.15.09 @ 8:28PM
You're a real piece of...work dd. Now run along and let the adults talk.
RKerr| 12.16.09 @ 12:01AM
If Hamas and the other Palestinian militant groups lay down there weapons tomorrow, there will be peace. On the other hand, if Israel lay down its weapons tomorrow, there will be no more Israel.
It's a simple and obvious fact to anyone who has spent any time at all in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza and spoken with the people who live there.
Like many academics in the US and Western Europe, Professor Judt has been lulled into a tenure-induced alternate reality where those who are successful are evil and those who choose not to buy into progress are virtuous.
Mike| 12.18.09 @ 8:22AM
Oh dear. Proves again why Americans should be left out of sensible discussion. I'm sure there are voices of reason over there, but they appear to be constantly drowned. Judt is a massivelt respected historian (both in Europe and in the U.S.) and will be remembered long after the trite in this publication is forgotten. Perhaps you haven't read his work, but Judt has been a supporter of Israel and filled in for make-shift labour during the 1967 war. His criticism of Israel's continued bullying of a largely impoverished population - whose land Israel stole in 1948 - is level-headed and reasonable and is accepted as such by many even in Israel. Many Europeans deride Americans for not being able to accept reasonable criticism of their views, a prejudice you people have done nothing to help.