Yes... jrp1900 • Its a great historical tragedy, for Jews, Palestinians, and gentiles everywhere, that Israel has failed to learn the real moral lessons of World War II. Judaism has a wonderful tradition of humanism and moral vision, inspired in no small part by the sufferings of the diaspora. In so many respects, reformed Jewish culture, especially as it came under the influence of Enlightenment universalism, was strongly allied to liberal, social democratic and radical politics, with their emphasis on reason and tolerance. The Nazis put paid to much of this. First by simply killing off millions. And second, by engaging Jews in a terrible Master/Slave dialectic, of which we have not seen the end. The Nazis subjected the Jews to the most vicious and pernicious racism the world has ever seen. They infantilized, brutalized and emasculated the Jews. They did their best to make them feel like the scum of the earth. Given what we know of humanity, its not very likely that a people could come out of such an ordeal with their best impulses intact. Some people did indeed hold onto a humanistic and tolerant version of Judaism. But some were morally scarred by the Nazi example. And they learned from the Nazis the politics that is slowly but surely killing the world: this is the politics that says that power is all; what counts in this world is not compassion or the right, but the iron fist. The people who run Israel, and too many Jewish Israelis, are subscribers to this basic Nazi belief. I fear that just as the Nazis placed themselves beyond good and evil, which made possible a policy of mass murder, Jewish Israeli nationalists are far beyond moral appeal. Their alienation from all moral standards does not bode well for either Israelis or Palestinians. A power philosophy breeds war and only war, and when a people gets used to war it gets used to murder and then that people become capable of anything. The Israelis dont yet realize that justice to Palestinians is the ONLY way they are going to hold onto the best parts of their own humanity. In the long run, its always better to be a suffering slave than a vicious bloodthirsty master....
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 13:19:31 +0000
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