@maureen: israeli mizrakhi attitudes towards non-jewish arabs are a complicated subject in themselves, given the ways that anti-arab racism in israel gets applied to them. over the past few decades, mizrakh political groups have covered the range from the Israeli Black Panthers, who struggled for unity with palestinians based on common arab identity and shared experiences of oppression by the israeli state, to Shas and mizrakhi members of Likud, who’ve actively promoted anti-(non-jewish)-arab racism in mizrakhi communities as a way of legitimizing themselves in ashkenazi-dominated israeli society.

one of the more fascinating and disturbing aspects of all this is the tendency on the ashkenazi israeli left (and to some extent among progressive u.s. ashkenazim) to express racist ideas about mizrakhim through critiques of Shas and other right-wing mizrakhi organizations’ anti-palestinian politics. i’ve heard versions of “oh, those primitive mizrakhim, they’re hopelessly reactionary and not worth reaching out to, much less organizing” from folks as justifiably well-respected in anti-occupation circles as jeff halper (of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions). the dynamic is similar to the way some otherwise kick-ass white queer radicals in the u.s. dismiss latin@ and african-american communities as hopelessly homophobic…..

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and on the main piece…

julie writes:
The thousand-year-old Ashkenazi Jewish civilization that was disappeared by Nazi death camps and assimilation into other cultures was meant to provide the population for the Jewish state; when David Grün changed his surname to Ben Gurion and started adding modern words to biblical Hebrew, he envisioned Israel as a country into which Yiddishkeyt could be transplanted more or less whole.

this is largely inaccurate, in rather problematic ways.

sure, ashkenazim were supposed to provide the zionist colonial project with its human material, and ultimately be the core of the jewish state. but which ashkenazim matters a lot. the founding leaders of the zionism movement – herzl, nordau, et al – were all highly assimilated german (and austrian) ashkenazim. their attitudes towards the ashkenazim of eastern europe (the vast majority of ashkenazi communities) were deeply hostile and racialized. following western european and german racial theory of the time, they considered the “ostjuden” to be racially degenerate, culturally corrupted, and hopelessly “oriental” – perhaps a bit more salvageable than sefardim, but certainly much less purely “semitic” than those more exotic yidn. after herzl and his colleagues realized that the small and comfortable jewish communities of western europe and the german-speaking lands were unlikely to leave their homes, they turned to the more impoverished, more desperate, more religious “ostjuden” as a population reservoir.

this was a decision based on hostility to ashkenazi culture and society. its basic premise was that ashkenazi “ostjuden” could only be remade into a properly human “nation” by being stripped of their culture and communities and transmuted into new “hebrews” through the zionist project. as herzl put it, only thus could jews become “true germans”. the zionist term for the process is “shelilat hagalut”, usually translated as “negation of the diaspora”, but more accurately rendered by zev jabotinski as “liquidation of the diaspora”. all of the connotations of the latter version fit the phrase. neither herzl nor grün/ben-gurion envisioned anything like a transplantation of yidishkeyt into their jewish state. both (along with almost every other strand of the zionist movement, past or present, saw a transplantation of jews, entirely stripped of their degenerate diasporic cultures, as the goal of zionism. the pre-state colony of zionists in palestine and the israeli state until 1957, in fact, enforced a legal ban on the use of yiddish for public purposes – including in the theater and in newspapers – despite (or, rather, because of) its status as the home language of a majority of the jewish population of the area at the time. the name changes pioneered by the likes of david grün, and later legally imposed on all israeli government employees (a huge chunk of the population, especially in the 1950s), are another blatant sign of the zionist movement’s active hostility and desire to eradicate, not transplant, yidishkeyt, along with other longstanding jewish cultures.

finally, ashkenazi civilization has hardly “disappeared…or assimilat[ed] into other cultures”. while the yiddish language now has a mere 3 million speakers (making it one of the world’s 250 or so largest languages), primarily in ultra-orthodox communities, yidishkeyt is far more prevalent. despite the dominance of zionism in ashkenazi communities and educational institutions (which leads to an amazing absence of knowledge of jewish history and culture of any kind beyond the nazi attempted genocide, the zionist movement, and the mythic ‘history’ of the religious tradition), ashkenazish life goes on, and is actually enjoying something of a flowering of creativity at the moment.

rokhl kafrissen’s blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan, is one of the best chronicles of that flowering’s new york city face. recently, she’s been zeroing in on the dogma that you present as fact here, of the recent death of ashkenazi culture. she summarizes and links to a number of past posts here. if anything, i think she understates the case. these “memes of the yiddish atlantis” are one of the things (along with zionism) which still place ashkenazi culture still in danger of disappearing.

But you’ve definitely given me a reason to read the book.

But someone asked a question about the Mizrahi attitudes toward peace. Here’s a blog worth reading if you’re interested. It’s fairly right-wing at times, but so are most Mizrachim. In Israel, most vote Shas. One dynamic with the Gaza War was that many Mizrahim felt the Israeli establishment would have more readily defended Ashkenazim.

Re: the crossing out of Ashkenizim – cool. I thought it was one of those blogging tools where you cross something out to make a point. If it’s what you say it was, that is pretty reasonable stuff.

Re: victim blaming – We definitely still disagree here, but I see where you are coming from.

It seems we disagree on what should be emphasized. I don’t think you would be opposed to Jews defending themselves if they could, and I think the world would be a much better place if there was no anti-Semitism. There would be no Holocaust (of the Jews, at least) without anti-Semitism. It is also reasonable to argue that, had there been the same level of anti-Semitism in the 1930′s and 40′s but mass Jewish resistance combined with a flee to a Jewish state, there still would have been no Holocaust (at least nothing comparable).

But I would argue that ONLY placing emphasis on the fact that anti-Semitism was the problem (If only the Nazis hadn’t been such antisemitic, racist, homophobic scumbags, none of that would have happened;”) you take the Jews out of the equation as actors but are just passive receptors of what the world decides to do to them based on how much anti-Semitism thereis at a given time. Unfortunately, much (yes, plenty of exceptions, but still..) of Diaspora Jewish history is filled with exactly this paradigm. That paradigm has changed with Israel’s coming into existence and that is precisely what Barak is talking about. Burg has to be disingenous to think that Barak is blaming the victim. And if he doesn’t think that, he shouldn’t be spreading such an interpretation. Barak is viewing the reasons for the Holocaust as what they are: very complex and multi-dimensional. But among the ways that it could have been avoided is the Jewish emplowerment BArak speaks of. Just because his point brings up uncomfortable stereotypes doesn’t mean we should avoid discussing it. There are plenty of Jews (and non-Jews) who think that talk of “If only X hadn’t been so evil to us and anti semitic” is fruitlesss pointless . People will always hate us, they say, and the important thing is to empower ourselves so we are not at their mercy. One can disagree with this view of history without calling it victim-blaming.

oh, also, I think Julie crossed out Ashkenazim in response to J’s comment (@ #3) about the Shoah not just affecting Ashkenazim. As Julie said in #9, that was “sloppy” of her, so she changed it, but didn’t actually delete the text on which she’d been critiqued. (Presumably, so that those of us reading the post and comments after the fact wouldn’t be confused.)

I’m not sure how what you’re saying isn’t victim blaming.

The problem with framing the holocaust in the way that you have is that it elides the structural and institutional nature of antisemitism in Germany or the rest of Europe. “If only the Jews had been stronger, or had had bigger guns, none of this would have happened” places the blame for the holocaust on the victims of the holocaust. Rather than saying “If only the Nazis hadn’t been such antisemitic, racist, homophobic scumbags, none of that would have happened;” or, “if only antisemitism weren’t so deeply entrenched in European consciousness, the collapse of Germany’s economy following WWI couldn’t have been so conveniently blamed on the Jews, and the Nazi rise to power would have been much more difficult, and then maybe the holocaust wouldn’t have happened;” or, “If only the rest of the world, including the US, hadn’t been so complicit in the Nazi’s genocide, then 11 million people wouldn’t have died” – you place the responsibility for not being summarily slaughtered on the weak European Jews who couldn’t properly resist.

This is a super pervasive attitude in Israel, and it’s exactly what Burg is describing. I get why it happens, too. There’s the nasty antisemitic trope of Jews being weak and powerless, and in order to resist the painful affects of antisemitism, we distance ourselves from “those Jews” rather than confronting the antisemitism at its face. It’s a technique of self-preservation, but it’s also really short sighted. It doesn’t actually challenge or diminish the antisemitism, it rather reinforces it by reasserting that “those Jews” were weak, and that’s why it all happened… but you’ll see, we’re stronger now!

It’s the same sort of thing as saying “oh, I’m not one of *those* feminists” (ie those ugly, unshaven, fat, dykey feminists). You may not be any of those things, but it is still sexism to assert that they are lesser or bad. Maintaining the idea that there are good [insert marginalized group here] and bad [insert marginalized group here] doesn’t serve any of us, except those invested in our oppression.

While I was living in Israel, I took a course at Ben Gurion University on Holocaust Literature, and we spent a good deal of time talking about the position the Shoah commands in the Israeli public sphere – but with the political leanings of our professor, we never got anywhere near this kind of a discussion, though I wish we had.

I don’t know that I can quite articulate exactly what I’m thinking about with this next bit, so I apologize if it doesn’t make sense. I’m also in the middle of reading for a queer theory class, which might explain things if it seems to be coming out of nowhere, and I might be the only person for whom the parallels are a useful thought exercise.

“If the sole purpose of a Jewish homeland is to escape persecution, then without persecution, Israel really has no reason to exist. It seems that on some level, Israel is compelled to see Hitler in every Arab child in order to justify itself to itself.”

That passage made me think about the way that heterosexuality operates in relation to homosexuality. I know this sounds like a bit of a stretch, and I’m not trying to say that Zionism is basically the same as heterosexuality, but I see parallels in the ways in which they assert and define themselves.

If we take the above quoted characterization as true, both Zionism and heterosexuality are defined, primarily, oppositionally. And as a result, both depend upon the existence of the ‘other’ to continue to exist themselves. Heterosexuality, as a category and an identity (not as a set of behaviors), came into being with the classification and definition of homosexuality. Heterosexuality only exists insofar as it is that which is not homosexuality. Therefore, without homosexuality, heterosexuality becomes a meaningless and unnecessary category.

Within Burg’s paradigm, Zionism functions the same way. If Zionism, and the vision of Israel, is defined only in relation to antisemitism, it ceases to exist (or at least be necessary), without the existence of antisemitism. Thus it has to seek out and identify antisemitism in order to justify its own existence. It is self-defeating in the worst way, because it takes out others in its wake.

Now, note that I’m not saying antisemitism is Israel’s fault, per se. However, I do think that Zionism is inherently ill equipped to end antisemitism, because it, as a nationalist ideology, is simultaneously invested in its own continued relevance – and those two goals seem to be incompatible. At least as long as Zionism exists for the sole purpose of defending from, protecting against, or ending antisemitism.

This has given me a lot to think about in terms of my own self-identification with Zionism, and has pushed me strongly toward rejecting it (as a label or ideology that I identify with) altogether. Many of my personal struggles with identifying or not identifying with Zionism have not been about whether I agree with the actions of the Israeli government, “support” Israel, or agree with the positions of the most vocal US Zionists – but rather about the possibility of changing Zionism, of changing Israel while operating from the position of a Zionist, and this makes me all the more doubtful of that. Perhaps there isn’t space within Zionism for a discourse or vision of Israel that is positive and productive, based on the highest ethical values within Judaism and Islam, toward the possibility of being or l’goyim in the least xenophobic, most idealistic way possible. Not because such a vision is untenable or impossible, but because Zionism, by definition, can not make space for it.

Furthermore, to say that Jews need to stop thinking that everything is a potential Shoah is patronizing and insulting, even from an Israeli. Among the problems with it is that Israel’s enemies have been (and many are) absolutely open about a 2nd Shoah as their goal.

Finally, on the Barak’s statements about arriving there 50 years too late. I think the dissection of the statements are pretty lame. There is a very widespread feeling among Jews that had their been a Jewish State before the 1930′s that the Holocaust would not have happened, at least never to any comparable degree. And it’ not a crazy theory. Jews would have had a place to go and they would have been empowered to defend themselves. They would have a reason to hold their heads up highL the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Beilski brothers would not have been such outliers but would instead have been common. But even if Barak’s statement is, on some level, meant in a way resembling Burg’s “unpacking,” it’s a perfectly understandable sentiment. If Jews did have F-16′s and were “chiseled, tanned and battle hardened,” it would have been a hell of a lot more difficult to crowd them into ghettos and exterminate them. Burg may see this as hostility towards victims, but it’s nothing of the sort. It’s the feeling of regret, sorrow and anger at the CIRCUMSTANCES (lack of F-16′s, etc.) that the Jews found themselves in at that point in history that rendered so many of them too weak or too unempowered to resist. And there’s nothing wrong with Barak having that sentiment. Looks like Burg is getting in Holocaust exploitation action himself.

“Germany will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust,” took the breath out of me. Just, wow. Wow. WTF, wow.

Fabulous review. Looking forward to reading the book.