On the Jewish Civil War in the Era of Netanyahu
Why Netanyahu and his ilk, for all their purported love of Zionism, may be deadly to the Jewish State
By
David Gottfried
https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/music-of-the-holocaust-highlights-from-the-collection/music-of-the-holocaust/never-say-that-you-have-reached-the-final-road
(An English translation to this song is provided on the screen. The music was borrowed from the Red Army; the lyrics are from a Jewish poet and fighter killed by the Nazis during the War) )
I wasn’t always such a renegade from the Jewish Faith. When I was Bar Mitzvahed, my Rabbi told the congregation that when he met me, when I was seven, he thought I was the most remarkable boy he had ever seem because upon meeting him, I asked, “How did G-d evolve.”
Yeah, I certainly had a penchant for asking probing, persnickety questions, even when the object of my obnoxious intellect was my faith. However, my tendency to ask irritating questions is precisely what made me such a staunch and true Jew.
Indeed, Jean Paul Sartre said that anti Semitism developed in large measure because the Jewish proclivity toward asking disturbing questions is unnerving and destabilizing.
And why do we ask so many questions? Perhaps because the first Jew, Abraham, founded Judaism by asking bright and obnoxious questions. Genesis tells us that he came from a family of idol worshipers, that his father was an idol maker, and that he kicked the stone and wooden idols about and said that common corporeal stuff that we can mold with our hands cannot constitute the divine. Hence, to be a Jew is to think, to ask, and to debunk. And the most Jewish of the Jews are the greatest debunkers of all and eventually debunk Judaism: Spinoza, Marx, Freud, Jesus. [Now, Lord, please give us the Christian who has enough Jewishness in him, and enough Sakel (Yiddish for brain power) to debunk Christianity.]
However, the ultra-orthodox Jews who are behind Netanyahu would shun my questioning with a loud and denouncing German “Verboten.”
As my readers are no doubt aware, Israel, at present, is convulsed by a struggle between cultural and political right-wingers, who back Netanyahu and his plans to weaken judicial power, and liberals who want to defend the Israeli judiciary.
I am on the side of the liberals who want to defend the Judiciary. I do not believe that Netanyahu’s plan to reduce the power of the judiciary is necessarily a threat to democracy, but Netanyahu and his ilk are a threat to Israel, and to what I cherish; therefore, I oppose his proposed emasculation of the judiciary.
(The reduction of judicial power is not necessarily a threat to democracy because when a judge, who is not elected by the people, strikes down the laws of legislators, who are elected by the people, nothing inherently “democratic” has transpired. If Democracy means power is in the hands of the people, then the augmentation of the power of legislators, who are elected by the people, at the expense of judges, will strengthen democracy. For example, Netanyahu wants to void the power, of Israel’s Supreme Court, to declare acts of Parliament unconstitutional. Netanyahu’s proposal is alien to American jurisprudence and so we think it is invalid. However, before the case of Marbury v. Madison, there was no American legal precedent which contended that the US Supreme court could void Congressional bills as unconstitutional; neither the constitution nor any federal statue provides that the US Supreme Court can void Congressional statutes as unconstitutional.)
In any event, because of a certain schism in Judaism, I must oppose Netanyahu because of where I stand in relation to that schism.
The schism I speak of has always existed. On one side you’ve got the guys like Bernie Sanders. On the other side of the great Jewish schism you’ve got the Bernie Madoffs, the Bernie Bergmans, the Jared Kushners, the Ed Koches, etc.
Of course, all people can be divided into leftists and rightists, but I think the magnification of ideological commitment, sometimes bordering on virulent fanaticism, is more intense among Jews. I think a huge percentage of Jews are intensely, ferociously left wing (Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxumberg, Emma Goldman, Bela Kuhn, Harold Laski, Samuel Gompers, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Bernie Sanders) and a high percentage of Jews are conniving, crass capitalists (The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, where about 200 Jewish and Italian girls died in a sweatshop fire; Bernard Bergman, who owned nursing homes where elderly Jews lay rotting in their excrement; Bernie Madoff, whose stock market shenanigans constituted the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, and Mayor Ed Koch, who used to say, “If you can’t afford New York City, just leave.”)
Arguably, there is a multi-thousand year dialectic which rends the Jewish people: On one side, there is the law. The law which has often been a handmaiden to business. I am thinking of Talmudic scholars who devote countless hours to determining how much Farmer A must pay Farmer B for selling him a cow that didn’t give milk.
And the Jewish law has inspired its opposite: The glorious, rebellious, Jewish prophetic tradition bellowing, “Liberate the poor and smash the Chandeliers in the mansions of the rich and preening pigs.”
In recent years, in Israel, as in America, capitalist power has waxed, and socialistic tendencies have waned. Indeed, some years back I read an article in the Isareli newspaper Haaretz which noted that there was a new type of suicide in Israel. The article reported that increasing numbers of Jews were killing themselves because they did not feel rich enough to fit in with the richer, more American-like Jews making the scene in Israel.
Israel is a nation that was built by the starving remnants of the crematoria; they were a gallant and valiant collective denunciation of the mercantile Jew of the ghettos of Europe. They were too mature to believe in the nursery tales of a loving G-d. They were stridently socialistic.
Israel was built by a New Jew. The new Jew was not to be a cowering, capitalist cipher, counting his money, hoarding his money, afraid to fight, afraid to blaze with the brilliance of his birthright.
And Israel has been taken over by vulgar, selfish men who have turned Dizengoff Streeet into an Eastern extension of Queens Blvd. in New York City. Indeed, when I last went to Israel, I met Jews who were so gaga over America that they wanted Israel to become the 51st State.
Listen to me Israel: The more you become like capitalistic America the more likely you will die. You are outnumbered by the Arabs by 100 to 1. (Footnote 1) You became a state by holding fast to the corny but wonderful credo: All for one and all for one. You became a state because everyone was willing to give for each other. There’s no other way to win a battle.
As Israel becomes more and more tacky, capitalistic, vain and crass, it will be more and more unlikely to survive. The ultra-religious Jews are, allegedly, solid Zionists because they are so fervently Jewish. However, the capitalistic excesses of the ultra-orthodox will undermine the state. Let me be very concrete: When the going gets tough, and one’s town in Israel is on the verge of being annihilated by an advancing Arab army, the Americanized, capitalistic Israeli Jew will be apt to abandon Israel in favor of his house, with a swimming pool, in Beverly Hills. Indeed, even though Israel is not in a hot war, thousands of ultra-orthodox Jews receive exemptions from military service. Most of these ultra-orthodox Jews are not capitalists adeptly playing the market; however, they have the selfish, capitalistic personality that makes allegiance to one’s brother in the form of military service an impossibility.
Their smug, capitalistic selfishness, their willingness to spit on the loving and courageous socialistic spirt that made the Star of David fly after two thousand years of dormancy, and their willingness to ally themselves with fascistic fiends like Donald Trump, underscores what is at best their moral mediocrity and at worst rank and utter mendaciousness.
Footnote 1: It has become fashionable to contend that Israel is an oppressive, militaristic ogre, that the Arabs do not threaten Israel and that the only people threatened are the “Palestinians.” I do not have time to begin to explain why this fashionable assessment it faulty, let alone explain why I put quotation marks around the word “Palestinians.” However, I’ll prove that just a few changes in the politics of the mid-East could deeply endanger Israel. Because of the peace accords implemented by Jimmy Carter, and the billions of dollars the US gives Egypt every year, Egypt’s guns are no longer pointed at Israel. If Egypt were to revert to the rabid anti-Israel stance of the 50’s and 60’s, it could team up with countries to the East of Israel and they could attack Israel collectively (As in the 67 war when Israel, by itself, fought Egypt, Syria and Jordan, or the 48 war of independence, when Israel fought 6 Arab states plus the United Kingdom.) Also, as of late, China is putting the finishing touches on a reproachment between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the muting of hostilities between these vociferous and powerful states may prove most ominous to Israel.