Kristallnacht reflections

When President Obama welcomed the newly re-elected German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Washington last week, he commented on the imminent 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. But as Merkel emphasized in an address to both houses of the US Congress, November 9 is also the anniversary of the so-called Kristallnacht in 1938, the "night of the broken glass," when Nazis brutalized Jews and attacked their homes and property in an orgy of unrestrained violence that "later turned into the break with civilization that was the Shoah."

In the same speech, Merkel also declared that a "nuclear bomb in the hands of an Iranian president who denies the Holocaust, threatens Israel and denies Israel the right to exist is not acceptable." A few weeks earlier, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had focused on this specific issue in his address to the UN General Assembly, where he sought to highlight the danger posed by a fanatic Iranian regime that is pursuing its nuclear ambitions at all costs while denying the Holocaust and Israel's right to exist.

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'The Arabs will change'

President Shimon Peres hosted his second "Facing Tomorrow" conference in Jerusalem last week. In an interview with Newsweek shortly after the conclusion of the conference, Peres acknowledged the many problems and challenges Israel was facing, but also re-iterated his oft-stated conviction that peace in the Middle East is possible. At one point, he noted: "Some people ask, 'What will happen to Israel in the coming 100 years vis-à-vis the Arab world?' And my answer is, the Arabs will change. Not us. They have to join in a new age."

There are of course many Israelis who don't quite share their president's optimism, but some recently published books make the case that the kind of change Peres is expecting is already taking place in the Arab world. One of these is Robin Wright's Dreams and Shadows. However, as a sympathetic yet critical review in The New York Times has pointed out, Wright's own research actually gives little reason to think she is right to believe that "a budding culture of change" at the grassroots level is about to bring meaningful and constructive reform to the Middle East. 

When it comes to the attitudes toward Israel prevalent in the Arab world, it is certainly difficult to detect any positive change. Particularly dismal to contemplate is the fact that even the two Arab states to have signed peace agreements with Israel have shown little interest in any normalization of ties. If we just look at the news from Egypt and Jordan over the past few weeks, the evidence seems clear: instead of any sign of change, it's the same old story of deep-seated hatred toward Israel and Jews.

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'Psychoactive' against Israel

What a bizarre title, you may be thinking - and you're right. But it only reflects how bizarre things can get when you venture out to the fringes where it's fashionable to demonize Israel as a uniquely evil force in today's world. It wouldn't be worth writing about it were it not for the fact that when it comes to demonizing Israel, nothing is too absurd to get aired in respectable media outlets or at academic conferences; indeed, there are even prestigious awards to be won.

A good example is former Israeli lawyer and political activist Felicia Langer, who was recently awarded Germany's "Federal Merit Cross, First Class." Langer, who has lived in Germany for some 20 years, has made a name for herself as a fierce critic of Israel who wouldn't even shy away from language that suggests comparisons between the Jewish state and Nazi Germany. Reportedly, she left Israel out of protest and has explained that she made "a politically conscious choice for Germany ... because I understood with what brutality and sophistication Israel was exploiting the Germans' guilt."

Obviously, the kind of positive reinforcement bestowed on Langer is by and large reserved for Jewish "critics" of Israel, because if a non-Jew suggests that Israel should be suspected of genocidal intentions or be compared to Nazi Germany, most people realize that this kind of "criticism" of Israel is tainted by anti-Semitic attitudes. The phenomenon of Jews eager to level those preposterous charges against Israel has led to a debate about the question if this is a manifestation of "Jewish anti-Semitism."

Recently I came across an article that railed against the "tropes of 'Jewish antisemitism'" and dismissed the "concept of the 'self-hating Jew,'" which was described as having been "dignified with a pseudo-psychopathology by those keen to suppress dissent." The writer, Antony Lerman, is a regular contributor to the Guardian's "Comment is Free" blog, and this was not the first time that he expressed his passionate rejection of the concept of Jewish "self-hatred." One of the previous occasions was in Lerman's recent review of a book by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, whom Lerman criticized sharply:

He wants space for dissident voices, yet repeatedly gives credence to the notion of Jewish self-hatred, a bogus concept that serves no other purpose than to demonise Jewish dissent. He calls on Jews not to see all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, but he endorses wholesale the idea of the 'new anti-Semitism' - basically, that Israel is the Jew among the nations - which licenses Jews to do precisely what he says they shouldn't."

Since a note at the end of the review announces that Antony Lerman "is writing a book reflecting on his personal experience of Zionism and Israel," we can expect to hear more from him in defense of even the most outlandish accusations against Israel.

While I myself have reservations about the concept of Jewish "self-hatred" - though for very different reasons than Lerman - it seems to me that his thinking on the matter is rather confused. To give just one example, consider his assertion: "Far from being the antithesis of Jewish self-hatred, it is arguable that Zionism was actually a display of it." Really?

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Israel, war crimes and the media

When it comes to accusing Israel of war crimes, you don't have to go looking for the international headlines. It's a very different matter when Israel defends itself against such accusations, or when Israel's enemies are accused of war crimes.

What do you know - it only took a few years and some ten thousand rocket and mortar attacks on Israel for Human Rights Watch (HRW) to come out with the statement:

Hamas forces violated the laws of war both by firing rockets deliberately or indiscriminately at Israeli cities and by launching them from populated areas and endangering Gazan civilians."

Indeed, HRW even got around to devoting a slim report to the "Rockets from Gaza", and this report acknowledges:

Since 2001, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza have fired thousands of rockets deliberately or indiscriminately at civilian areas in Israel. ...Palestinian rocket attacks... are an ongoing threat to the nearly 800,000 Israeli civilians who live and work in range of the rockets. ...Statements from the leaders of Hamas and other armed groups indicate that many of these attacks are deliberately intended to strike Israeli civilians and civilian structures. Individuals who willfully authorize or carry out deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians are committing war crimes."

Of course, since the media aren't all that interested in Palestinian war crimes, this report wasn't really global front page news.

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The 'Israeli Apartheid' gospel

Advertised as "The new book by Ben White" on a website dedicated to marketing "Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide," everything seems skillfully designed to appeal both to dedicated Israel-bashers and newcomers eager to learn the basics. Those who have never heard of Ben White, a young Cambridge graduate with a BA in English Literature, will certainly be impressed by the long list of prominent people he could get to endorse his first book that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything he studied: Ben White's efforts to spread the idea that Israel should be denounced and opposed as an "apartheid state" are warmly praised by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the historian Ilan Pappe, and a number of well-known academics and writers as well as political and religious personalities.

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Is Obama anti-Israel?

A recent Jerusalem Post-sponsored poll showed that only 6 percent of Jewish Israelis consider the Obama administration as "pro-Israel," while 50 percent believe that Obama's policies reflect a "pro-Palestinian" stance and 36 percent see the policies as "neutral."

There is of course a noisy chorus of merry voices that cheer Obama's "tough love" for Israel and the shouts for "more" and "tougher, much tougher" are all over the media - and no doubt there is a dimension to it that has very little to do with sober political analysis. Indeed, it's hard to avoid the impression that at a time when there is no shortage of serious foreign policy challenges for the Obama administration, their determined fight against even one more brick in any Israeli building anywhere beyond the line that separated Israel and the Jordanian-occupied West Bank before 1967 attracts a rather disproportionate amount of media coverage.

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Amalek and Der Spiegel

No doubt, when it comes to demonizing Israel, the race is on - though it's not entirely clear if the finish line is set at the bottom of journalism or the height of hypocrisy. In any case, here is a strong contender: under the title "Potential for Apocalypse," the German news magazine Der Spiegel asked on Monday: "Is War between Iran and Israel Inevitable?" The lead-in for the long essay of some 4400 words provides a sensationalist summary to whet the appetite of readers:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may seem very different, but they are united in their apocalyptic religious visions. Their respective beliefs may be propelling them on a collision course with potentially horrific consequences."

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, and read it again, and again - but that's what it says: Bibi Netanyahu, the secular prime minister of a secular democracy, has "apocalyptic religious visions" that somehow "unite" him with the Holocaust-denying, fanatically religious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who recently "won" re-election by "divine assessment," because the "supreme leader" of the Iranian mullahcracy said so.

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The Muslim world's anti-imperialists

President Obama's speech in Cairo has been debated already long before it was given, and there was a veritable tsunami of commentary afterwards. Some of the critical commentaries were in my view off the mark because they ignored the fact that this was a speech given by an American president who decided to go to an Arab capital to address the Muslim world in a quest for improved mutual understanding. Of course one can disagree with the notion that it is indeed America that should plead for better mutual understanding. As former secretary of state Madeleine Albright emphasized:

To most Americans, the idea that our country is attacking Islam or that we view the Islamic faith as an enemy is absurd. The first Gulf War was a response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of a neighboring Arab country. On 9/11, America was the victim, not the aggressor. In Iraq, President Bush's rationale for regime change, though misguided, was hardly anti-Islamic. US leaders can't be held accountable for what some writers say in order to scare people and sell books. What is more, in the 1990s, America twice led NATO into conflicts on behalf of Muslim populations - first in Bosnia, then Kosovo."

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The UN hypocrites' council

An investigation initiated by the UN Human Rights Council to examine allegations about war crimes committed during the recent war in Gaza will begin this week, as widely reported. In order to fully appreciate the implications of this endeavor, some other recent news reports should be taken into account. Consider this report from the London Times:

Confidential United Nations documents...record nearly 7,000 civilian deaths in the no-fire zone up to the end of April. UN sources said that the toll then surged, with an average of 1,000 civilians killed each day until May 19...That figure concurs with the estimate made ... by Father Amalraj, a Roman Catholic priest who fled the no-fire zone on May 16 and is now interned with 200,000 other survivors in Manik Farm refugee camp. It would take the final toll above 20,000. 'Higher,' a UN source told The Times. 'Keep going':

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The art of antisemitism

The short theater play "Seven Jewish Children," written as a reaction to the Gaza war by the prominent British playwright Caryl Churchill earlier this year, has stirred up a heated debate about antisemitism.   Initially, this debate focused on the question if Churchill's play is antisemitic - a charge that Churchill and her admirers obviously rejected as completely unjustified. But as many critics of the play have pointed out, the question is easy to settle: imagine a comparable play peddling negative stereotypes about "Seven Muslim Children" or "Seven Arab Children," and one thing is for sure: none of the people who praise Churchill's play would want to have anything to do with it.

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