05.13.08
Judaism is universal
From R-G
Le Monde Diplomatique May 2008
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine
Judaism is universal
By Eric Rouleau
Avraham Burg is the scourge of the Israeli establishment. Though he
has been in turn a prominent leader of the Labour Party, chairman of
the World Zionist Organisation and speaker of the Knesset, he
regularly expresses opinions at odds with those of most of his fellow
Israelis. Burg lost hope of influencing those in power and quit
politics in 2004.
The views he expresses in his latest book The Holocaust Is Over: We
Must Rise from Its Ashes (to be published by Macmillan in autumn 2008)
are brutally frank. On the occupation of the Palestinian territories
he writes: For years I tempered my position to avoid a breach within
Israeli society. I have now changed. Today I ask: are [all Jews] my
brothers? My answer is no Since the Shoah, I believe there is no such
thing as genetic Judaism, only Jewish values Even if they are
circumcised and respect the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments, the
wicked occupiers are not my brothers.
Throughout the book Burg contrasts the Judaism of the ghetto, whose
racism he deplores, with universal Judaism, whose humanism he
supports. He rejects the Old Testament notion that the Jews are Gods
chosen people, as that amounts to a claim of racial superiority. The
cancer of racism is eating away at us, he told the Israeli daily
Yedioth Aharonoth in 2003. He has also written that the terrible
tragedy of the Shoah demonstrated that Jehovah was not the protector
of the chosen people any more than He was responsible for their
misfortunes. He believes in a God who has given man the power of
decision-making and thus responsibility for his actions.
Burg is the son of a universally respected rabbi who was leader of the
National Religious Party and its representative in the Knesset in
nearly every government since the creation of the state of Israel in
1948. Burg himself was educated in a yeshiva (religious school) and
his work quotes liberally from the Torah and the Talmud to show that
holy texts can often be misinterpreted and distorted, or simply have
lost their relevance.
Burg accuses Zionist leaders of having appropriated the Shoah a
tragedy not only for the Jews but all humanity for often shameful
ends. He takes issue with the fact they have turned it into an
essential part of Jewish identity, which theyve thereby reduced to a
litany of past persecutions. In Burgs view, this distorts Jewish
history and conceals centuries of peace and good relations with other
peoples.
Burg reminds readers, for example, of the concern shown towards his
Jewish subjects by the ancient Persian ruler, Cyrus the Great; of the
fruitful relations that Jews enjoyed with their Muslim compatriots in
the Middle Ages in places such as Aragon, Castille and Andalucia; and
the privileged position of Jews in the Americas and other countries
across the world. He also points out that for centuries Jews lived
alongside Germans before the Nazis came to power. He believes that
Jews who are well integrated in their societies should not be
stigmatised for not wanting to emigrate to Israel, especially as the
diaspora plays a positive role in world civilisation.
Burg is against the use of the word Shoah (catastrophe) for the
Holocaust, since it gives it a unique character, beyond comparison
with other genocides. This exclusivity, he believes, undermines
compassion and solidarity with non-Jewish victims. It also feeds the
paranoia that anti-semitism is a universal, timeless phenomenon: The
whole world is in league against the Jews.
Zionist leaders have made use of the Holocaust in a variety of ways.
It can be used as emotional blackmail to bring both political and
financial advantage. Or serve as a reminder to the Germans of their
criminal guilt and to the Americans and Europeans that they looked the
other way while the Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis. The
Israeli authorities thereby guarantee themselves impunity, whatever
their violations of international law and human rights, and whatever
war crimes they carry out, such as targeted executions of
Palestinians.
Burg takes issue with Israeli scholars who ignore all genocides but
those suffered by the Jews, and with laws which punish only crimes
against Jews. He opposes Jewish immigrants being automatically granted
Israeli citizenship on religious and genetic grounds. A committed
secularist, he has also criticised the religious fundamentalists who
show contempt for national sovereignty. Noting that his country often
picks its leaders from members of the military or the secret services,
he has warned that the nightmare of a state run by rabbis and generals
is not impossible.
He thinks that it is time that Jews and Israelis freed themselves from
the nightmare of the Holocaust, which must of course be remembered
forever, but no longer by prostrating ourselves in the dust because we
must get rid of the Auschwitz mentality as well as the culture of
trauma and terror.
Burg does not consider himself anti-Zionist, except when the
principles of Herzl and the values of the declaration of independence
are betrayed. That is what happens when Israel is transformed into a
colonial state run by an immoral clique of corrupt outlaws, as he put
it in his Yedioth Aharonoth interview. In the same article he went on:
The end of Zionism is nigh A Jewish state may endure, but it will be a
state of a different sort, dreadful and alien to our values.
Such views unsurprisingly provoked an outcry in Israel. But they also
drew enthusiastic support from those Israelis who are eager to see
root and branch reform of their country. Avraham Burg, who is in his
early 50s, can hope that his dream may one day become reality. And,
like the wave of iconoclasts in the Israeli intelligentsia who have
absorbed the work of the new historians, he is living proof that his
society is undergoing profound change.