Jewish History, Jewish Religion:
The Weight of Three Thousand Years
by Professor Israel Shahak
Contents:
Foreword by Gore Vidal
A Closed Utopia?
Prejudice and Prevarication
Orthodoxy and Interpretation
The Weight of History
The Laws against Non-Jews
Political Consequences
Notes and References
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Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and
occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948,
Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when
he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought
him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his
whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of
Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an
antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to
be just another funny story about Truman and the serene
corruption of American politics.
Unfortunately, the hurried recognition of
Israel as a state has resulted in forty-five years of murderous
confusion, and the destruction of what Zionist fellow travellers
thought would be a pluralistic state - home to its native
population of Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as a future
home to peaceful European and American Jewish immigrants, even
the ones who affected to believe that the great realtor in the
sky had given them, in perpetuity, the lands of Judea and
Samaria. Since many of the immigrants were good socialists in
Europe, we assumed that they would not allow the new state to
become a theocracy, and that the native Palestinians could live
with them as equals. This was not meant to be. I shall not
rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will
say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political
and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.
Unlikely, because no other minority in American
history has ever hijacked so much money from the American
taxpayers in order to invest in a 'homeland'. It is as if the
American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his
reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our
people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would
have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a
religious minority of less than two per cent has bought or
intimidated seventy senators (the necessary two thirds to
overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying support of
the media.
In a sense, I rather admire the way that the
Israel lobby has gone about its business of seeing that billions
of dollars, year after year, go to make Israel a 'bulwark against
communism'. Actually, neither the USSR nor communism was ever
much of a presence in the region. What America did manage to do
was to turn the once friendly Arab world against us. Meanwhile,
the misinformation about what is going on in the Middle East has
got even greater and the principal victim of these gaudy lies -
the American taxpayer to one side - is American Jewry, as it is
constantly bullied by such professional terrorists as Begin and
Shamir. Worse, with a few honorable exceptions, Jewish-American
intellectuals abandoned liberalism for a series of demented
alliances with the Christian (antisemtic) right and with the
Pentagon-industrial complex. In 1985 one of them blithely wrote
that when Jews arrived on the American scene they 'found liberal
opinion and liberal politicians more congenial in their
attitudes, more sensitive to Jewish concerns' but now it is in
the Jewish interest to ally with the Protestant fundamentalists
because, after all, "is there any point in Jews hanging on
dogmatically, hypocritically, to their opinions of yesteryear?'
At this point the American left split and those of us who
criticised our onetime Jewish allies for misguided opportunism,
were promptly rewarded with the ritual epithet 'antisemite' or
'self-hating Jew'.
Fortunately, the voice of reason is alive and
well, and in Israel, of all places. From Jerusalem, Israel Shahak
never ceases to analyse not only the dismal politics of Israel
today but the Talmud itself, and the effect of the entire
rabbinical tradition on a small state that the right-wing
rabbinate means to turn into a theocracy for Jews only. I have
been reading Shahak for years. He has a satirist's eye for the
confusions to be found in any religion that tries to rationalise
the irrational. He has a scholar's sharp eye for textual
contradictions. He is a joy to read on the great Gentile-hating
Dr Maimonides.
Needless to say, Israel's authorities deplore
Shahak. But there is not much to be done with a retired professor
of chemistry who was born in Warsaw in 1933 and spent his
childhood in the concentration camp at Belsen. In 1945, he came
to Israel; served in the Israeli military; did not become a
Marxist in the years when it was fashionable. He was - and still
is - a humanist who detests imperialism whether in the names of
the God of Abraham or of George Bush. Equally, he opposes with
great wit and learning the totalitarian strain in Judaism. Like a
highly learned Thomas Paine, Shahak illustrates the prospect
before us, as well as the long history behind us, and thus he
continues to reason, year after year. Those who heed him will
certainly be wiser and - dare I say? - better. He is the latest,
if not the last, of the great prophets.
-- Gore Vidal
CHAPTER 1
THIS BOOK, although written in
English and addressed to people living outside the State of
Israel, is, in a way, a continuation of my political activities
as an Israeli Jew. Those activities began in 1965-6 with a
protest which caused a considerable scandal at the time: I had
personally witnessed an ultra-religious Jew refuse to allow his
phone to be used on the Sabbath in order to call an ambulance for
a non-Jew who happened to have collapsed in his Jerusalem
neighbourhood. Instead of simply publishing the incident in the
press, I asked for a meeting which is composed of rabbis
nominated by the State of Israel. I asked them whether such
behavior was consistent with their interpretation of the Jewish
religion. They answered that the Jew in question had behaved
correctly, indeed piously, and backed their statement by
referring me to a passage in an authoritative compendium of
Talmudic laws, written in this century. I reported the incident
to the main Hebrew daily, Ha'aretz, whose publication of the
story caused a media scandal.
The results of the scandal were, for me, rather
negative. Neither the Israeli, nor the diaspora, rabbinical
authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not
violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They
added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that if the
consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of
the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake. It became apparent to
me, as drawing on Talmudic laws governing the relations between
Jews and non-Jews, that neither Zionism, including its seemingly
secular part, nor Israeli politics since the inception of the
State of Israel, nor particularly the policies of the Jewish
supporters of Israel in the diaspora, could be understood unless
the deeper influence of those laws, and the worldview which they
both create and express is taken into account. The actual
policies Israel pursued after the Six Day War, and in particular
the apartheid character of the Israeli regime in the Occupied
Territories and the attitude of the majority of Jews to the issue
of the rights of the Palestinians, even in the abstract, have
merely strengthened this conviction.
By making this statement I am not trying to
ignore the political or strategic considerations which may have
also influenced the rulers of Israel. I am merely saying that
actual politics is an interaction between realistic
considerations (whether valid or mistaken, moral or immoral in my
view) and ideological influences. The latter tend to be more
influential the less they are discussed and 'dragged into the
light'. Any form of racism, discrimination and xenophobia becomes
more potent and politically influential if it is taken for
granted by the society which indulges in it. This is especially
so if its discussion is prohibited, either formally or by tacit
agreement. When racism, discrimination and xenophobia is
prevalent among Jews, and directed against non-Jews, being
fuelled by religious motivations, it is like its opposite case,
that of antisemitism and its religious motivations. Today,
however, while the second is being discussed, the very existence
of the first is generally ignored, more outside Israel than
within it.
Without a discussion of the prevalent Jewish
attitudes to non-Jews, even the concept of Israel as 'a Jewish
state', as Israel formally defines itself, cannot be understood.
The widespread misconception that Israel, even without
considering its regime in the Occupied Territories, is a true
democracy arises from the refusal to confront the significance of
the term 'a Jewish state' for non-Jews. In my view, Israel as a
Jewish state constitutes a danger not only to itself and its
inhabitants, but to all Jews and to all other peoples and states
in the Middle East and beyond. I also consider that other Middle
Eastern states or entities which define themselves as 'Arab' or
'Muslim', like the Israeli self-definition as being 'Jewish',
likewise constitute a danger. However, while this danger is
widely discussed, the danger inherent in the Jewish character of
the State of Israel is not.
The principle of Israel as 'a Jewish state' was
supremely important to Israeli politicians from the inception of
the state and was inculcated into the Jewish population by all
conceivable ways. When, in the early 1980s, a tiny minority of
Israeli Jews emerged which opposed this concept, a Constitutional
Law (that is, a law overriding provisions of other laws, which
cannot be revoked except by a special procedure) was passed in
1985 by an enormous majority of the Knesset.
By this law no party whose programme openly
opposes the principle of 'a Jewish state' or proposes to change
it by democratic means, is allowed to participate in the
elections to the Knesset. I myself strongly oppose this
constitutional principle. The legal consequence for me is that I
cannot belong, in the state of which I am a citizen, to a party
having principles with which I would agree and which is allowed
to participate in Knesset elections. Even this example shows that
the State of Israel is not a democracy due to the application of
a Jewish ideology directed against all non-Jews and those Jews
who oppose this ideology. But the danger which this dominant
ideology represents is not limited to domestic affairs. It also
influences Israeli foreign policies. This danger will continue to
grow, as long as two currently operating developments are being
strengthened: the increase in the Jewish character of Israel and
the increase in its power, particularly in nuclear power. Another
ominous factor is that Israeli influence in the USA political
establishment is also increasing. Hence accurate information
about Judaism, and especially about the treatment of non-Jews by
Israel, is now not only important, but politically vital as well.
Let me begin with the official Israeli
definition of the term 'Jewish', illustrating the crucial
difference between Israel as 'a Jewish state' and the majority of
other states. By this official definition, Israel 'belongs' to
persons who are defined by the Israeli authorities as 'Jewish',
irrespective of where they live, and to them alone. On the other
hand, Israel doesn't officially 'belong' to its non-Jewish
citizens, whose status is considered even officially as inferior.
This means in practice that if members of a Peruvian tribe are
converted to Judaism, and thus regarded as Jewish, they are
entitled at once to become Israeli citizens and benefit from the
approximately 70 per cent of the West Bank land (and the 92 per
cent of the area of Israel proper), officially designated only
for the benefit of Jews. All non-Jews ( not only all
Palestinians) are prohibited from benefiting from those lands.
(The prohibition applies even to Israeli Arabs who served in the
Israeli army and reached a high rank.) The case involving
Peruvian converts to Judaism actually occurred a few years ago.
The newly-created Jews were settled in the West Bank, near
Nablus, on land from which non-Jews are officially excluded. All
Israeli governments are taking enormous political risks,
including the risk of war, so that such settlements, composed
exclusively of persons who are defined as 'Jewish' (and not
'Israeli' as most of the media mendaciously claims) would be
subject to only 'Jewish' authority.
I suspect that the Jews of the USA or of
Britain would regard it as antisemitic if Christians would
propose that the USA or the United Kingdom should become a
'Christian state', belonging only to citizens officially defined
as 'Christians'. The consequence of such doctrine is that Jews
converting to Christianity would become full citizens because of
their conversion. It should be recalled that the benefits of
conversions are well known to Jews from their own history. When
the Christian and the Islamic states used to discriminate against
all persons not belonging to the religion of the state, including
the Jews, the discrimination against Jews was at once removed by
their conversion. But a non-Jew discriminated against by the
State of Israel will cease to be so treated the moment he or she
converts to Judaism.This simply shows that the same kind of
exclusivity that is regarded by a majority of the diaspora Jews
as antisemitic is regarded by the majority of all Jews as Jewish.
To oppose both antisemitism and Jewish chauvinism is widely
regarded among Jews as a 'self-hatred', a concept which I regard
as nonsensical.
The meaning of the term 'Jewish' and its
cognates, including 'Judaism', thus becomes in the context of
Israeli politics as important as the meaning of 'Islamic', when
officially used by Iran, or 'communist' when it was officially
used by the USSR. However, the meaning of the term 'Jewish' as it
is popularly used is not clear, either in Hebrew or when
translated into other languages, and so the term had to be
defined officially.
According to Israeli law a person is considered
'Jewish' if either their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother
and great-great-grandmother were Jewesses by religion; or if the
person was converted to Judaism in a way satisfactory to the
Israeli authorities, and on condition that the person has not
converted from Judaism to another religion, in which case Israel
ceases to regard them as 'Jewish'. Of the three conditions, the
first represents the Talmudic definition of 'who is a Jew', a
defintion followed by Jewish Orthodoxy. The Talmud and
post-Talmudic rabbinic law also recognise the conversion of a
non-Jew to Judaism (as well as the purchase of a non-Jewish slave
by a Jew followed by a different kind of conversion) as a method
of becoming Jewish, provided that the conversion is performed by
authorised rabbis in a proper manner. This 'proper manner'
entails for females, their inspection by three rabbis while naked
in a 'bath of purification', a ritual which, although notorious
to all readers of the Hebrew press, is not often mentioned by the
English media in spite of its undoubted interest for certain
readers. I hope that this book will be the beginning of a process
which will rectify this discrepancy.
But there is another urgent necessity for an
official definition of who is, and who is not 'Jewish'. The State
of Israel officially discriminates in favour of Jews and against
non-Jews in many domains of life, of which I regard three as
being most important: residency rights, the right to work and the
right to equality before the law. Discrimination in residency is
based on the fact that about 92 per cent of Israel's land is the
property of the state and is administered by the Israel Land
Authority according to regulations issued by the Jewish National
Fund (JNF), and affiliate of the World Zionist Organization. In
its regulations the JNF denies the right to reside, to open a
business, and often to work, to anyone who is not Jewish, only
because he is not Jewish. At the same time, Jews are not
prohibited from taking residence or opening businesses anywhere
in Israel. If applied in another state against the Jews, such
discriminatory practice would instantly and justifiably be
labelled antisemitism and would no doubt spark massive public
protests. When applied by Israel as a part of its 'Jewish
ideology', they are usually studiously ignored or excused when
rarely mentioned.
The denial of the right to work means that
non-Jews are prohibited officially from working on land
administered by the Israel Land Authority according to the JNF
regulations. No doubt these regulations are not always, or even
often, enforced but they do exist. From time to time Israel
attempts enforcement campaigns by state authorities, as, for
example, when the Agriculture Ministry acts against 'the
pestilence of letting fruit orchards belonging to Jews and
situated on National Land [i.e., land belonging to the State of
Israel] be harvested by Arab labourers', even if the labourers in
question are citizens of Israel. Israel also strictly prohibits
Jews settled on 'National Land' to sub-rent even a part of their
land to Arabs, even for a short time; and those who do so are
punished, usually by heavy fines. There is no prohibitions on
non-Jews renting their land to Jews. This means, in my own case,
that by virtue of being a Jew I have the right to lease an
orchard for harvesting its produce from another Jew, but a
non-Jew, whether a citizen of Israel or a resident alien, does
not have this right.
Non-Jewish citizens of Israel do not have the
right to equality before the law. This discrimination is
expressed in many Israeli laws in which, presumably in order to
avoid embarrassment, the terms 'Jewish' and 'non-Jewish' are
usually not explicitly stated, as they are in the crucial Law of
Return. According to that law only persons officially recognised
as 'Jewish' have an automatic right of entry to Israel and of
settling in it. They automatically receive an 'immigration
certificate' which provides them on arrival with 'citizenship by
virtue of having returned to the Jewish homeland', and with the
right to many financial benefits, which vary somewhat according
to the country from which they emigrated. The Jews who emigrate
from the states of the former UUSR receive 'an absorption grant'
of more than $20,000 per family. All Jews immigrating to Israel
according to this law immediately acquire the right to vote in
elections and to be elected to the Knesset -- even if they do not
speak a word of Hebrew.
Other Israeli laws substitute the more obtuse
expressions 'anyone who can immigrate in accordance with the Law
of Return' and 'anyone who is not entitled to immigrate in
accordance with the law of Return'. Depending on the law in
question benefits are them granted to the first category and
systematically denied to the second. The routine means for
enforcing discrimination in everyday life is the ID card, which
everyone is obliged to carry at all times. ID cards list the
official 'nationality' of a person, which can be 'Jewish', 'Arab', 'Druze' and
the like, with the significant exception of 'Israeli'. Attempts
to force the Interior Minister to allow Israelis wishing to be
officially described as 'Israeli', or even as 'Israeli-Jew' in
their ID cards have failed. Those
who have attempted to do so have a letter from the Ministry of
the Interior stating that 'it was decided not to recognise an
Israeli nationality'. The letter does not specify
who made this decision or when.
There are so many laws and regulations in
Israel which discriminate in favour of the persons defined in
Israel as those 'who can immigrate in accordance with the Law of
Return' that the subject demands seperate treatment. We can look
here at one example, seemingly trivial in comparison with
residence restrictions, but nevertheless important since it
reveals the real intentions of the Israeli legislator. Israeli
citizens who left the country for a time but who are defined as
those who 'can immigrate in accordance with the Law of Return'
are eligible on their return to generous customs benefits, to
receive subsidy for their children's high school education, and
to receive either a grant or a loan on easy terms for the
purchase of an apartment, as well as other benefits. Citizens who
cannot be so defined, in other words, the non-Jewish citizens of
Israel, get none of these benefits. The obvious intention of such
discriminatory measures is to decrease the number of non-Jewish
citizens of Israel, in order to make Israel a more 'Jewish'
state.
Israel also propagates among its Jewish citizens an
exclusivist ideology of the Redemption of Land. Its official aim
of minimizing the number of non-Jews can be well perceived in
this ideology , which is inculcated to Jewish schoolchildren in
Israel. They are taught that it is applicable to the entire
extent of either the State of Israel or, after 1967, to what is
referred to as the Land of Israel. According to this ideology,
the land which has been 'redeemed' is the land which has passed
from non-Jewish ownership to Jewish ownership. The ownership can
be either private, or belong to either the JNF or the Jewish
state. The land which belongs to non-Jews is, on the contrary,
considered to be 'unredeemed'. Thus, if a Jew who committed the
blackest crimes which can be imagined buys a piece of land from a
virtuous non-Jew, the 'unredeemed' land becomes 'redeemed' by
such a transaction. However, if a virtuous non-Jew purchases land
from the worst Jew, the formerly pure and 'redeemed' land becomes
'unredeemed' again. The logical conclusion of such an ideology is
the expulsion, called 'transfer', of all non-Jews from the area
of land which has to be 'redeemed'. Therefore the Utopia of the
'Jewish ideology' adopted by the State of Israel is a land which
is wholly 'redeemed' and none of it is owned or worked by
non-Jews. The leaders of the Zionist labour movement expressed
this utterly repellent idea with the greatest clarity. Walter
Laquer a devoted Zionist, tells in his History of Zionism1 how one of these spiritual
fathers, A.D. Gordon, who died in 1919, 'objected to violence in
principle and justified self defence only in extreme
circumstances. But he and his friends wanted every tree and bush
in the Jewish homeland to be planted by nobody else except Jewish
pioneers'. This means that they wanted everybody else to just go
away and leave the land to be 'redeemed' by Jews. Gordon's
successors added more violence than he intended but the principle
of 'redemption' and its consequences have remained.
In the same way, the kibbutz, widely hailed as
an attempt to create a Utopia, was and is an exclusivist Utopia;
even if it is composed of atheists, it does not accent Arab
members on principle and demands that potential members from
other nationalities be first converted to Judaism. No wonder the
kibbutz boys can be regarded as the most militaristic segment of
the Israeli Jewish society.
It is this exclusivist ideology, rather than
all the 'security needs' alleged by Israeli propaganda, which
determined the takeovers of land in Israel in the 1950s and again
in the mid-1960s and in the Occupied Territories after 1967. This
ideology also dictated official Israeli plans for 'the
Judaizition of Galilee'. This curious term means encouraging Jews
to settle in Galilee by giving them financial benefits. (I wonder
what would be the reaction of US Jews if a plan for 'the
Christianization of New York' or even only of Brooklyn, would be
proposed in their country.) But the Redemption of the Land
implies more than regional 'Judaization'. In the entire area of
Israel the JNF, vigorously backed by Israeli state agencies
(especially by the secret police) is spending great sums of
public money in order to 'redeem' any land which non-Jews are
willing to sell, and to preempt any attempt by a Jew to sell his
land to a non-Jew by paying him a higher price.
The main danger which Israel, as 'a Jewish state', poses to
its own people, to other Jews and to its neighbors, is its
ideologically motivated pursuit of territorial expansion and the
inevitable series of wars resulting from this aim. The more
Israel becomes Jewish or, as one says in Hebrew, the more it
'returns to Judaism' (a process which has been under way in
Israel at least since 1967), the more its actual politics are
guided by Jewish ideological considerations and less by rational
ones. My use of the term 'rational' does not refer here to a
moral evaluation of Israeli policies, or to the supposed defence
or security needs of Israel - even less so to the supposed needs
of 'Israeli survival'. I am referring here to Israeli imperial
policies based on its presumed interests. However morally bad or
politically crass such policies are, I regard the adoption of
policies based on 'Jewish ideology', in all its different
versions as being even worse. The ideological defence of Israeli
policies are usually based on Jewish religious beliefs or, in the
case of secular Jews, on the 'historical rights' of the Jews
which derive from those beliefs and retain the dogmatic character
of religious faith.
My own early political conversion from admirer
of Ben-Gurion to his dedicated opponent began exactly with such
an issue. In 1956 I eagerly swallowed all of Ben-Gurion's
political and military reasons for Israel initiating the Suez
War, until he (in spite of being an
atheist, proud of his disregard of the commandments of Jewish
religion) pronounced in the Knesset on the third
day of that war, that the real reason for it is 'the restoration
of the kingdom of David and Solomon' to its Biblical borders. At
this point in his speech, almost every Knesset member
spontaneously rose and sang the Israeli national anthem. To my
knowledge, no zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion's
idea that Israeli policies must be based (within the limits of
pragmatic considerations) on the restoration of the Biblical
borders as the borders of the Jewish state. Indeed, close
analysis of Israeli grand strategies and actual principles of
foreign policy, as they are expressed in Hebrew, makes it clear
that it is 'Jewish ideology', more than any other factor, which
determines actual Israeli policies. The disregard of Judaism as
it really is and of 'Jewish ideology' makes those policies
incomprehensible to foreign observers who usually know nothing
about Judaism exept crude apologetics.
Let me give a more recent illustration of the
essential difference which exists between Israeli imperial
planning of the most inflated but secular type, and the
principles of 'Jewish ideology'. The latter enjoins that land
which was either ruled by any Jewish ruler in ancient times or
was promised by God to the Jews, either in the Bible or - what is
actually more important politically - according to a rabbinic
interpretation of the Bible and the Talmud, should belong to
Israel since it is a Jewish state. No doubt, many Jewish 'doves'
are of the opinion that such conquest should be deferred to a
time when Israel will be stronger than it is now, or that there
would be, hopefully, a 'peaceful conquest', that is , that the
Arab rulers or peoples would be 'persuaded' to cede the land in
question in return for benefits which the Jewish state would then
confer on them.
A number of discrepant versions of Biblical borders2 of the Land of Israel, which
rabbinical authorities interpret as ideally belonging to the
Jewish state, are in circulation. The most far-reaching among
them include the following areas within these borders: in the
south, all of Sinai and a part of nothern Egypt up to the
environs of Cairo; in the east, all of Jordan and a large chunk
of Saudi Arabia, all of Kuwait and a part of Iraq south of the
Euphrates; in the north, all of Lebanon and all of Syria together
with a huge part of Turkey (up to lake Van); and in the west,
Cyprus. An enormous body of research and learned discussion based
on these borders, embodied in atlases, books, articles and more
popular forms of propaganda is being published in Israel, often
with state subsidies, or other forms of support. Certainly the
late Kahane and his followers, as will as influential bodies such
as Gush Emunim, not only desire the conquest of those territories
by Israel, but regard it as a divinely commanded act, sure to be
successful since it will be aided by God. In fact, important
Jewish religious figures regard the Israeli refusal to undertake
such a holy war, or even worse, the return of Sinai to Egypt, as
a national sin which was justly punished by God. One of the more
influential Gush Emunim rabbis, Dov Lior, the rabbi of Jewish
settlements of Kiryat Arba and of Hebron, stated repeatedly that
the Israeli failure to conquer Lebanon in 1982-5 was a
well-merited divine punishment for its sin of 'giving a part of
Land of Israel', namely Sinai, to Egypt.
Although I have chosen an admittedly extreme
example of the Biblical borders of the Land of Israel which
'belong' to the 'Jewish state', those borders are quite popular
in national-religious circles. There are less extreme versions of
Biblical borders, sometimes also called 'historical borders'. It
should however be emphasized that within Israel and the community
of its diaspora Jewish supporters, the validity of the concept of
either Biblical borders or historical borders as delineating the
borders of land which belongs to Jews by right is not denied on
grounds of principle, except by the tiny minority which opposes
the concept of a Jewish state. Otherwise, objections to the
realisation of such borders by a war are purely pragmatical. One
can claim that Israel is now too weak to conquer all the land
which 'belongs' to the Jews, or that the loss of Jewish lives
(but not of Arab lives!) entailed in a war of conquest of such
magnitude is more important than the conquest of the land, but in
normative Judaism one cannot claim that 'the Land of Israel', in
whatever borders, does not 'belong' to all the Jews. In May 1993,
Ariel Sharon formally proposed in the Likud Convention that
Israel should adopt the 'Biblical borders' concept as its
official policy. There were rather few objections to this
proposal, either in the Likud or outside it, and all were cased
on pragmaic grounds. No one even asked Sharon where exactly are
the Biblical borders which he was urging that Israel should
attain. Let us recall that among those who call themselves
Leninists there was no doubt that history follows the principles
laid out by Marx and Lenin. It is not only the belief itself,
however dogmatic, but the refusal that it should ever be doubted,
by thwarting open discussion, which creates a totalitarian cast
of mind. Israeli-Jewish society and diaspora Jews who are leading
'Jewish lives' and organised in purely Jewish organisations, can
be said therefore to have a strong streak of totalitarianism in
their character.
However, an Israeli grand strategy, not based
on the tenets of 'Jewish ideology', but based on purely strategic
or imperial considerations had also developed since the inception
of the state. An authoriative and lucid description of the
principles governing such strategy was given by General
(Reserves) Shlomo Gazit, a former Military Intelligence
commander.-- According to Gazit,
In other words, Israel aims at imposing a
hegemony on other Middle Eastern states. Needless to say,
according to Gazit, Israel has a benevolent concern for the
stability of the Arab regimes. In Gazit's view, by protecting
Middle Eastern regimes, Israel performs a vital service for 'the
industrially advanced states, all of which are keenly concerned
with guaranteeing the stability in the Middle East'. He argues
that without Israel the existing regimes of the region would have
collapsed long ago and that they remain in existence only because
of Israeli threats. While this view may be hypocritical, one
should recall in such contexts La Rochefoucault's maxim that
'hypocrisy is the tax which wickedness pays to virtue'.
Redemption of the Land is an attempt to evade paying any such
tax.
Needless to say, I also oppose root and branch
the Israeli non-ideological policies as they are so lucidly and
correctly explained by Gazit. At the same time, I recognize that
the dangers of the policies of Ben-Gurion of Sharon, motivated by
'Jewish ideology', are much worse than merely imperial policies,
however criminal. The results of policies of other ideologically
motivated regimes point in the same direction. The existence of
an important component of Israeli policy, which is based on
'Jewish ideology', makes its analysis politically imperative.
This ideology is, in turn based on the attitudes of historic
Judaism to non-Jews, one of the main themes of this book. Those
attitudes necessarily influence many Jews, consciously or
unconciously. Our task here is to discuss historic Judaism in
real terms.
The influence on 'Jewish ideology' on many Jews
will be stronger the more it is hidden from public discussion.
Such discussion will, it is hoped, lead people take the same
attitude towards Jewish chauvinism and the contempt displayed by
so many Jews towards non-Jews (which will be documented below) as
that commonly taken towards antisemitism and all other forms of
xenophobia, chauvinism and racism. It is justly assumed that only
the full exposition, not only of antisemitism, but also of its
historical roots, can be the basis of struggle against it.
Likewise I am assuming that only the full exposition of Jewish
chauvinism and religious fanaticism can be the basis of struggle
against those phenomena. This is especially true today when,
contrary to the situation prevailing fifty or sixty years ago,
the political influence of Jewish chauvinism and religious
fanaticism is much greater than that of antisemitism. But there
is also another important consideration. I strongly believe that
antisemitism and Jewish chauvinism can only be fought
simultaneously.
Until such attitudes are widely adopted, the actual danger
of Israeli policies based on 'Jewish ideology' remains greater
than the danger of policies based on purely strategic
considerations. The difference between the two kinds of policies
was well expressed by Hugh Trevor-Roper in his essay 'Sir Thomas More and
Utopia'3 in
which he termed them Platonic and Machiavellian:
In a similiar way true believers in that
Utopia called the 'Jewish state', which will strive to achieve
the 'Biblical borders', are more dangerous than the grand
strategists of Gazit's type because their policies are being
sanctified either by the use of religion or, worse, by the use of
secularized religious principles which retaim absolute validity.
While Gazit at least sees a need to argue that the Israel diktat
benefits the Arab regimes, Ben-Gurion did not pretend that the
re-establishment of the kingdom of David and Solomon will benefit
anybody except the Jewish state.
Using the concepts of Platonism to analyse
Israeli policies based on 'Jewish ideology' should not seem
strange. It was noticed by several scholars, of whom the most
important was Moses Hadas, who claimed that the foundations of
'classical Judaism', that is, of Judaism as it was established by
talmudic sages, are based on Platonic influences and especially
on the image of Sparta as it appears in Plato4. According to Hadas, a crucial
feature of the Platonic political system, adopted by Judaism as
early as the Maccabean period (142-63 BC), was 'that every phase
of human conduct be subject to religious sanctions which are in
fact to be manipulated by the ruler'. There can be no better
definition of 'classical Judaism' and of the ways in which the
rabbis manipulated it than this Platonic definition. In
particular, Hadas claims that Judaism adopted what 'Plato himself
summarized [as] the objectives of his program', in the following
well-known passage:
If the word 'rabbi' is substituted for
'an officer' we will have a perfect image of classical Judaism.
The latter is still deeply influencing Israeli-Jewish society and
determing to a large extent the Israeli policies.
It was the above quoted passage which was
chosen by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its
Enemies as describing the essence of 'a closed
society'. Historical Judaism and its two successors, Jewish
Orthodoxy and Zionism, are both sworn enemies of the concept of
the open society as applied to Israel. A Jewish state, whether
based on its present Jewish ideology or, if it becomes even more
Jewish in character than it is now, on the principles of Jewish
Orthodoxy, cannot ever contain an open society. There are two
choices which face Israeli-Jewish society. It can become a fully
closed and warlike ghetto, a Jewish Sparta, supported by the
labour of Arab helots, kept in existence by its influence on the
US political establishment and by threats to use its nuclear
power, or it can try to become an open society. The second choice
is dependent on an honest examination of its Jewish past, on the
admission that Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism exist, and on an
honest examination of the attitudes of Judaism towards the
non-Jews.
jewhis1.htm
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First published 1994 by Pluto Press
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Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 first appeared in the journal Khamsin
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are reproduced with permission
Foreword copyright © 1994 Gore Vidal
Copyright © 1994 Israel Shahak
The right of Israel Shahak to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication
Data
Shahak, Israel.
Jewish history, Jewish religion: the weight of three
thousand
years/Israel Shahak
ll8pp. 22cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7453-0818-X
1. Israel - Politics and government. 2. Orthodox
Judaism
- Israel - Controversial literature. 3. Zionism -
Controversial literature. 4. Palestinian Arabs -
Israel.
I. Title. II. Series.
D5102.95.S52 1994
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