Avaraham Burg, a onetime speaker of the Knesset has created outrage in Israel with his book, recently translated into English: The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes. None of Burg's assertions are new or earth shattering, but any non-Jew who made these same assertions would be promptly labeled anti-Semitic. The novelty here is that such ideas are being expressed by a mainstream Israeli figure. Consider this statement:
- “I realized that Israel had become an efficient kingdom with no prophecy. Where was it going? What is a Jewish democratic state? What does it mean that Jews define themselves by genetics 60 years after genetics were used against them?”
In a radio interview, Burg gives a telling anecdote about the centrality of the Holocaust to the Israeli narrative. He recounts the story of a colleague leaving to Poland on a business trip only to return prematurely a couple of days later. When he asked him what happened, his friend said that while traveling by train across Poland it all came back to him: the trains, the concentration camps, the gas chambers. He could not take it and promptly returned to Israel. The problem was his friend was an Iraqi Jew with connection whatsoever to the holocaust. In his book, Burg asserts that Israel has become a self-justifying Sparta, that Israel should not be a Jewish state and that its law of return granting citizenship to any Jew should be changed. The English version of the book, interestingly, is a watered down and skips over some controversial statements he made in the original manuscript such as the assertion that the Israeli government will pass a law prohibiting the marriage between Jews and Arabs.
Why should I care? Because no real sustainable Middle Eastern peace is possible when Israel's very identity is based on the concept of perpetual victimhood and perpetual conflict.
4 comments:
Actually, Burg's book did not create much controversy in Israel at all when it was published in Hebrew, more than one year ago. Burg was interviewed on several mainstream television news shows and his book sold quite well.
His ideas are not new; they have been part of the national dialogue for decades. This is simply the first time those views have been articulated by someone who is religious and previously defined himself as a Zionist.
The NY Times really should have picked up the story when the book came out in Hebrew, but they waited until the translation was published. That is why you are only hearing about it now in New York, although everyone in Ramallah was talking about it last year.
Lisa
Lisa,
Thanks for the comment. I realize that the book made the news here because of the recent translation. I also realize the the scope of ideas within Israel is not reflected in coverage of Israel in the US media. Perhaps the watered down English version is meant to appease Jewish-American readers who hold a much more monolithic and rigid view of what Israel is and should be compared to their Israeli co-religionists.
Dear Abu Kareem,
I must admit that I envy the Israelis on the presence of a two minor groups. On the one hand, the academic and non-academic historians, who have taken it on them selves to salvage the past of their country from politically-motivated distortion. The other is the group of people working against the policies of their country such as Burg, or reach out to Palestinians.
I would like to draw your attention to an author and a book (that I haven't read though), about the invention of the Jewish people. (http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel) Shlomo Sand, a professor of modern European history in Israel published a book titled
"When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?" which attempts to reconstruct the history of the "invention" of a Jewish national myth that was the basis of the Zionist movement. The article gives an idea about the content. I have read some work of Erik Hobsbawm, the British historian about the invention of European Nationalisms, and had been waiting for a text with a similar analysis about the development of the Lavantine Nationalisms. I grow up in Syria and had my fair share of nationalistic Arabist indoctrination. So it was pretty shocking to read Hobsbawm for the first time and to watch him take nationalist historical claims apart. I hope that Sand's book will be the beginning of a new kind of history-writing in the region!
Salamat
Abu Hazem
Ahlan Abu Hazem,
Thanks for the comment. I heard about Sand's book but have not read it. I look with a jaundiced eye at all forms of nationalisms including our own which is a direct descendant of European nationalism. You have sparked my interest in Hobsbawn.
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