Denis Moynihan
May 18, 2024
What followed
the initial displacement and killing of Palestinians in 1948 has been one of
the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.
Palestinians and
allies marked the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, May 15—the day after the state
of Israel was formally declared. “Nakba” is Arabic for “catastrophe,” and is
used to describe the murder, dispossession, and forced displacement
Palestinians suffered in the years up to and including 1948. As many as 900,000
Palestinians were driven from their homes. Thousands were killed, massacred by
Israeli militias like the Irgun and the Stern Gang or while fleeing on foot
with no food or water, and some while engaged in armed resistance. What has
followed since 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted
conflicts in the modern era.
Israel’s assault
on Gaza has been termed a genocide by an increasing number of United Nations
member states and international legal experts. Egypt joined South Africa’s
genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The
Hague, where an emergency hearing was called this week, following Israel’s
ground invasion of Rafah. In Gaza, the official death toll is now over 35,000
Palestinians. Israel’s siege is also responsible for widening famine in Gaza.
“What we are
seeing now, what unfolds in front of our eyes, is a genocidal situation, by
which people are targeted, whether they are children, babies, in hospital, or
in schools. This is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing, of
depopulation,” renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who as an Israeli soldier
fought in the 1973 war, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “The Nakba has
never really ended for the Palestinians, so it’s a new horrific chapter in the
ongoing Nakba that the Palestinians are suffering.”
Professor Pappé
was just detained when he flew into Detroit, and described on Facebook two
hours of FBI questioning before being released. He said they asked, “Am I a
Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is
the solution to the ‘conflict’ (seriously, this is what they asked!) Who are my
Arab and Muslim friends in America?”
This week, on
Nakba Day, Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a Palestinian historian and endowed
Arab studies chair at Rice University, said on Democracy Now!:
“The Nakba is
continuing. We have to understand that this is a colonial continuum. This is a
structural process. It is not an event. And what we’re seeing now in Gaza is
very much connected to what happened in 1948.”
Professor
Takriti assigned historical blame on the United Nations, the United States, and
Britain:
“You had a very
aggressive settler-colonial movement develop in Palestine under British rule.
It was armed under British rule. It was trained under British rule.”
Professor
Takriti continued, “The Israeli project is very much intertwined with American
foreign policy toward the Palestinian people. They don’t see us as human
beings. They want to destroy us. But they know that they have to present it in
self-defense terms so that it’s palatable to the broader public… this is just a
racist, criminal project that is leading and causing immense pain and
suffering.”
South Africa’s
genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is seeking
to do just that. On Thursday, human rights attorney Adila Hassim spoke at the
ICJ emergency hearing, her voice betraying emotion as she recited grim
statistics:
Children have suffered particularly severely. More
than 14,000 have been killed. Thousands more have been injured or lost family
members, while an estimated 17,000 children are unaccompanied or separated.
Make no mistake. These conditions are a direct result of Israel’s military
onslaught on the besieged enclave with full knowledge of the destructive
consequences of this humanitarian crisis. In these circumstances, the thwarting
of humanitarian aid cannot be seen as anything but the deliberate snuffing out of
Palestinian lives, starvation to the point of famine, obstructing aid in the
face of famine, and killing of at least 200 aid workers.
Hassim
concluded, “Israel must be stopped.”
Ironically,
Israeli nationalists, many who deny that the Nakba occurred at all, are now
calling for a second one. “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will
overshadow the Nakba of 48,” wrote Knesset member Ariel Kellner. On Tuesday, at
an Israeli Independence Day march, far-right National Security Minister Itamar
Ben-Gvir addressed thousands, saying, “First, we must return to Gaza now! We
are coming home to the Holy Land! And second, we must encourage emigration.
Encourage the voluntary emigration of the residents of Gaza!”
Israel’s mass
slaughter in Gaza must end immediately. Ultimately, the Israeli occupation of
Palestine, and U.S. support for the occupation, also must end. It’s not good
for Israel or its national security. It’s devastating for Palestinians. It’s
illegal and immoral.
Can Jews be Nazis?
Stephen
F. Eisenman
May
17, 2024
For
many people, the question is inflammatory. The crimes of the German Nazis were
of such magnitude that comparison with any other historical violence is
invidious. The genocide of the Jews was deliberate and methodical and intended
to eliminate every last one. The goal was the same with the Romani and Sinti
people. By comparison, the Israelis – currently accused of genocide — are rank
amateurs. They have so far killed some 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza out of a
population of 2.3 million.
Photographer unknown, Colonel Ernst Bloch, (German Mischling), c. 1944.
But
the question, “Can Jews be Nazis?” is nevertheless important for challenging
claims of moral inoculation by virtue of the Jewish experience of the
Holocaust. If Israeli leaders are indeed committing a genocide in Gaza – as
seems the case — they inhabit the same moral universe as the German Nazis,
regardless of the suffering of past generations. In addition to the 35,000
killed, the war in Gaza has injured another 75,000 and displaced 2 million.
Most of the victims are women and children – how can their deaths be justified?
Israeli cabinet ministers, Knesset members, military personnel, and police have
all freely spoken of their wish to force Palestinians into Egypt, establish
Jewish-only settlements in Gaza, and even use an atomic bomb to kill everyone
in the Gaza strip. (U.S. senator Lindsay Graham recently also suggested using a
nuclear weapon against Gaza.)
Last
week, the Israeli government suspended food and fuel deliveries to Gaza as
collective punishment for a Hamas rocket attack that killed four soldiers. Such
retribution is banned under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, by
which Israel is bound. It also violates the teaching of the Hebrew prophets
Jeremiah and Ezekiel – “The person who sins; only he shall die.” One of the
Hebrew sages, Hillel the Elder, reiterated the point in the Mishna, the “oral”
Torah: “Each by his own sin will die’.
The
1948 U.N. Convention on the Crime of Genocide, describes it as “the intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”
By that definition, Israel has joined the club of violators and is subject to
international sanction. When the International Criminal Court levels charges of
genocide against Prime Minister Netanyahu, National Security Minister Ben-Gvir,
Defense Minister Gallant, IDF Chief of Staff Halevi, and Finance Minister
Smotrich – indictments could be announced any day — the men will be subject to
arrest by all convention signatories, including the U.S. (Genocide is also
prohibited under U.S. law, but to be prosecutable, the crime must be committed
in the U.S. or by U.S. nationals.) The punishment for genocide is 30 years
imprisonment, or in exceptional circumstances, life in prison. If Netanyahu
manages to avoid trial for corruption in Israel, and if he lives long enough
(he’s 74), he could be arrested and held in detention at an ICC facility
outside the Hague in Scheveningen. His jailers there are unlikely to let him to
indulge his taste for pink champagne and Cuban cigars.
Jewish
Nazis in Nazi Germany
“Can
jews be Nazis?” is also an historical question. To that, the answer is yes.
Though membership in the German Nazi party was barred to Jews, thousands joined
the Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht, and Kriegsmarine in the 1930s. They did so for the
same reasons as other Germans: To serve the fatherland, forge a career, and
continue a family tradition of military service. After passage of the Nuremberg
Laws in 1935, Jews were barred from enlistment, but some managed to hide their
ethnic origins (and lack of a foreskin), or else obtain papers from Nazi Party
officials attesting to their deutschblütigkeit. One colonel in the Wehrmacht,
Ernst Bloch, a Mischlinge (half-Jewish person) received the Knights Cross of
the Iron Cross for bravery, the highest award given to military and
paramilitary officers in Nazi Germany. His Judaism remained undetected until
1944, when he came to the attention of SS chief Henrich Himmler. A few weeks
later, he received the following letter from his superior, major general
Wilhelm Burgdorf, deputy chief of the Wehrmacht personnel office: “The Führer
has decided as of 31 January 1945 to discharge you from active duty. It is an
honor to thank you on behalf of the Führer for your service rendered during war
and peace for our people and fatherland. I wish you all the best for the
future. Heil Hitler.” The wonder is not that Bloch was detected after so long,
but that he was apparently surprised at his dismissal. A few weeks later, he
joined the Volkssturm (people’s militia) and was killed during the Soviet
invasion of Berlin. There were thousand of other Jews, not all Mischlinge who
attained high roles in the German military. Twenty of them were awarded the
Iron Cross.
In
all, thousands of Jews in Germany and occupied Europe – out of a population of
about 9.5 million — assisted the Nazi regime in some way. Most did so under
duress. Jewish ghetto councils, or Judenräte, established by Nazi officials in
Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere, were tasked with distributing limited
provisions of food and medicine, recruiting forced laborers, confiscating
Jewish property, and supervising the Jewish ghetto police. By 1942 or ’43, some
Judenräte and ghetto police were directly assisting local Nazis by identifying
resistance leaders and organizing Jews for deportation to the death camps. The
Jewish police could be cruel, especially the “13 Group,” established in Warsaw
in 1940. They ran their own prison and reported directly to the Gestapo.
Nevertheless, given the threats and ambient violence – refusal to comply with
Gestapo orders usually meant death — it’s difficult to cast judgement on
cooperating Jews. By the end of the war, the vast majority of them were dead.
Similar
moral and legal complexity concerns Kapos and Sonderkommandos. The former were
concentration or death-camp prisoners recruited to supervise and direct other
prisoners. They were generally, but not always, selected from criminal-inmates
to reduce the likelihood that they would feel solidarity with their charges.
Kapos were accorded privileges in exchange for their services and their
brutality: separate quarters, better food, and civilian clothes. If someone
selected to be Kapo refused service, he would generally be returned to the
ranks of regular prisoners, and somebody else appointed to take his place.
Thus, it’s easy to see why so few resisted recruitment – if there was always
someone available for the job, a prisoner would ask himself: “Why shouldn’t it
be me, why shouldn’t I survive?”?
Sonderkommandos
were death-camp workers, such as at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Sobibor,
who cleared the gas chambers of bodies, put them in the crematoria, and
disposed of the incinerated remains. The men who did this were generally
recruited immediately upon arrival at the camps and would be shot or gassed at
once if they refused. The work was of course unspeakable, and the Nazis made
sure that it was unspoken; the Sonderkommandos were segregated from other
prisoners to conceal the latter’s fate, and nearly all were themselves killed
in an effort to hide the facts of the Holocaust from the world. A few survived
however, and the tales they told exposed the harrowing of Hell. To call them
collaborators would be to inflict posthumous punishment upon people whose souls
were already shattered.
American
Jewish Nazis
There
is nothing funnier than a Jewish Nazi. That’s the unavoidable conclusion of any
survey of post-War American comedy. In 1940, the popular Three Stooges (all
Jewish), starred in the short film, You Nazty Spy in which Moe Howard plays a
wallpaper hanger who somehow becomes Hailstone, the Hitler-mustachioed leader
of the nation of Moronika. Two years later, the radio and TV comic Jack Benny
(Jewish) starred with Carol Lombard in To Be or Not to Be (1942), directed by
Ernst Lubitsch (Jewish). Benny plays Joseph Tura, a Polish stage actor who
dresses up as a Gestapo officer to obtain a list of civilians targeted for Nazi
reprisals. (It’s a very complicated plot.)
Immediately
after the war, there were a spate of war movies with Jews playing Nazi roles,
but few were comedies. Within about a decade, that began to change. On Your
Show of Shows (1954) Sid Caesar (Jewish) and Howard Morris (Jewish) performed
an eight-minute sketch called The German General in which Howard helps dress
Caesar in his elaborate uniform – military tunic, medals, epaulets, sash,
sword, and peaked hat — while both speak in pseudo-German (mixed with Yiddish)
double-talk. I won’t give away punch line if you haven’t seen it. (Click on the
link!) A decade later, Peter Sellers (Jewish) played a former Nazi, now an
American nuclear weapons expert in the black comic Dr. Strangelove directed by
Stanley Kubrick (Jewish). And in 1967, in what is perhaps the pinnacle of
American, Jewish comedy, Mel Brooks (Jewish) wrote and directed The Producers,
with a mainly Jewish cast either playing Nazis or abetting them. Zero Mostel
and Gene Wilder (both Jewish) are the two producers who aim to mount a Broadway
musical so tasteless that it closes in one night, allowing them to pocket all
their investors’ money. Kenneth Mars (Jewish) plays Franz Liebkind, the
Nazi-helmet wearing author of the play “Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with
Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden,” and Dick Shawn (Jewish) is the hippy-dippy
Fuhrer who steals the show and makes Springtime a success. During the Busby
Berkeley-style production number before the play’s intermission, Brooks sings a
single line, dubbing for one of the dancers in the chorus: “Don’t be stupid, be
a smarty! Come and join the Nazi Party!”
The Producers, Mel Brooks, writer and director, Crossbow,
Embassy and Columbia Pictures, 1967, screenshot.
At
about the same time, there premiered a television comedy – I’m ashamed to admit
it was one of my childhood favorites – called Hogan’s Heroes about a group of
American GIs in a German POW camp, Stalag 13. The premise of the show is that
the Nazis are comic buffoons, and the Americans are crafty and carefree,
running an espionage and sabotage outfit from their barracks. The commandant of
the camp, Colonel Klink was played by Werner Klemperer, the Jewish son of the
great German conductor and composer, Otto Klemperer, and cousin of the literary
scholar and diarist Victor Klemperer, whose three-volume journal of life under
the Third Reich, I Shall Bear Witness, To the Bitter End, and The Lesser Evil
is one of the essential testaments of the period. The incompetent and
good-natured character of Sergeant Schultz, whose oft-repeated catchphrase was
“I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing,” was played by the Ukraine-born
John Banner (Jewish). He lost much of his family in the Holocaust, as did
Robert Clary (Jewish), who played Corporal Louis LeBeau. Clary survived
Buchenwald, while 12 other members of his immediate family were sent to
Auschwitz, where they were all murdered. How he managed to keep his composure
in that show – which ran for six seasons until 1971 – one can only guess.
The
reason Jewish Nazis are funny is that with the few exceptions noted above, Jews
could not be Nazis. So, a Jewish Nazi is both a contradiction in terms, and an
affront to anti-Semites hell-bent on destroying them. In Freudian terms, the
laughter arises from the short-circuiting or release of psychic energy
(cathexis) that occurs when the logical chain – Nazi killer creates Jewish
victim — is broken. The same violation of expectation and laughter follows from
Woody Allen’s famous stand-up routine about the Klan, performed from 1962-64.
One day, he tells his audience, he was in the Deep South, and some friends
invited him to a costume party. He rarely goes to such things, he says, but
decided to make an exception and go as a ghost, dressed in a white sheet. But
on his way to the party, he is picked up by a car with three other men dressed
in sheets and hoods. They are obviously Ku Klux Klansmen who mistake him for
one of them. He tries to make small talk (about grits), but soon slips up and
they discover Woody’s Jewish identity. Just on the point of being lynched, he
makes such an eloquent plea for universal tolerance, that the Klansmen decide
to let him go and contribute $2,000 for Israel bonds.
No
joke
But
the sell-by date for funny, Jewish Nazis is by now well past. What happens when
Jews really do become Nazis – not party members, Klansmen or terrorists, but
just Jews who, like some other Americans, embrace hatred, violence, racism and
war? When Henry Kissinger was called a Nazi during the Nixon years and after,
it was no joke. His indifference to mass murder was well-known. After his
death, Ron Jacobs in Counterpunch offered the following summary:
“The
list of murderous atrocities for which Henry Kissinger was in some part
responsible is rivaled only by Adolf Hitler in 20th-century history. That list
begins with the secret bombing of Cambodia, the genocide in Timor, the coup in
Chile and the subsequent decades of fascist rule. It continues from there. If
asked, I would argue that the primary difference between Hitler and Kissinger
was the calculating and dispassionate manner in which Kissinger dispatched
people to their deaths. Indeed, when
asked about whether or not the bombing of Cambodia was effective, Kissinger
responded by saying, “Whether we got it right or not is really secondary.” The deaths of more than a hundred thousand
Cambodians in the bombing (and the subsequent coup and murderous campaign of
the Khmer Rouge after the defeat of Saigon) were inconsequential in his mind.”
There
have been many other, though perhaps lesser Jewish Nazis than Kissinger, that
is, men and women indifferent to human suffering, and complicit in murder,
genocide, and ecocide. They include Elliot Abrams, Ronald Reagan’s assistant
secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs. He helped cover
up or even facilitated genocidal attacks upon campesinos in El Salvador,
Honduras, and Guatemala. He was also a key planner for the Iran-Contra affair,
which illegally shipped arms and money to the terrorist contras in Nicaragua.
Madeleine
Albright, U.S. Secretary of State under President Clinton, was architect of the
Iraq sanctions that killed millions. In 1995 alone, according to the U.N. Food
and Agricultural Organization, more than half a million Iraqi children died
from illness and starvation due to the sanctions. When asked by Leslie Stahl if
the price was worth it, she replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but
the price? We think the price is worth it.”
Stephen
Miller, former special advisor to Trump, was champion of the Muslim travel ban
and architect of the policy that separated children from their migrant parents.
Lately he has been plotting a new anti-immigrant “blitz” if Trump is elected
again. “Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest,”
Miller said, “are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal
of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown. The
immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.” Miller has been busy
lately, accusing of anti-Semitism anyone sympathetic to the plight of Gazans.
And
on it goes. Jewish university chancellor Gene Block at UCLA allowed a gang of
non-student thugs, a veritable Freikorps, to riot and attack peaceful anti-war
student protestors. The violent mob was partly funded and abetted by Jessica
Seinfeld, wife of the famous comedian. Another Jewish billionaire, Bill Ackman,
also offered support for the UCLA counter-protesters, before withdrawing it
when press and public responses to it turned soured. (He also funded raucous,
pro-Israeli rallies at George Washington University and elsewhere.)
The
point of this is not is not to say that wealthy and powerful Jews are uniquely
abetting a genocide in Gaza or are masterminds behind global criminality. Those
are versions of the anti-Semitic canards that enabled the rise of fascism and
Nazism and that still animate the far-right in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.
Jews comprise just 2.4 per cent of the U.S. population and 0.2% of the global
population and have little sway over anything, anywhere, except in Israel and
Palestine. There, a faction of far-right leaders has gained political and
ideological sway over a small, but militarily powerful nation now hell-bent on
genocide. They are proud decedents of the terrorist Irgun and Herut parties
(which evolved into Likud), denounced by Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein and
others at the time as “closely akin in [their] organization, methods, political
philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.” No more and
apparently no less than any other community, Jews today are prey to fascist and
Nazi ideation, despite their own catastrophic experience with it. That makes
the heroism of Jewish protestors – students and faculty alike – at UCLA, USC,
Columbia and dozens of other colleges and universities across the country all
the more noteworthy and necessary. It’s also why journalists, politicians,
business leaders and the rest of us have the obligation to speak up loudly
against fascism, genocide, and war in Gaza and wherever else it occurs.
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