Disproportionate

Last week Eva Peek wrote in NRC newspaper that she was disappointed by how little we have collectively learned from the Shoah. Nearly eighty years of commemorations and reflection on complicity and the ease with which the extermination of Jews could take place at the time, have not led to “a widely supported, refined knowledge of anti-Semitic stereotypes”. She is  disappointed, because that’s what she had hoped for.

I must say, I don’t completely agree with Peek. I am not disappointed with what I come across in national newspapers and news channels (so I am emphatically not talking about social media). Good journalists could stop at comparing the number of victims of Palestinian violence (around 1,600, including fallen soldiers) with the number of victims of Israeli bombs (more than 10,000), and then zoom in on the imbalance. That certainly happens, but there is also a remarkable amount of attention for the destructive impact of centuries of exclusion and persecution, culminating in the attempt at total destruction. The traumatization that has been built up over generations and has grown almost into a genetic predisposition, in its ugly depth, also represents an imbalance that we have to deal with. Not only Jews, but also, or especially, those (Western) societies that have fueled the traumas for centuries. The apparently felt need – at least in the better journalistic circles – to mention this can explain why a relatively large number of fairly in-depth articles have been published in the past month about (the history of) anti-Semitism, as well as nuanced interviews about Jewish fears and traumas that appear to pop up life-size from nothing these days.

By comparison: in 1940 I would not have wanted to vouch for the ‘better journalistic circles’ in terms of views on Jews, certainly not for the confessional part of those circles. Jewish stereotypes were accepted at face value, even by the ‘right-minded’ people of the time. It seems that decades of commemorations are now providing a broader perspective here. On the other hand, classic anti-Semitism is rapidly spreading to other parts of the world, partly due to current events.

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Two kinds of poison

Two kinds of poison bother me: CO2 in the air worldwide, and the anti-Semitism in the soil, traditionally the European-Russian soil but now steadily spreading to the Middle East and North Africa. The two poisons cause equal desperation, and I often don't know what to focus on. Around Dutch Liberation-day at May 4 of this year, confronted for the umpteenth time with the fathomless and inky abysses of the extermination camps, I wondered why actually I’m so concerned about the climate and a possible physical end of humanity. After all, wasn't humanity already morally bankrupt eighty years ago? Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly supported the occupation of the highway A12 and other disruptive actions by Extinction Rebellion (XR). Protesting against climate-threatening poison is always a good thing anyway, I thought.

At the moment the other poison concerns me more, mainly because of the speed and ease with which it is released. Our Dutch and European soil must be saturated to the brim with it, otherwise the eagerness with which anti-Israeli aggression flared up shortly after Hamas’ sadistic mass murder of Israeli civilians cannot be explained. As early as October 9, it was reported in one of the TV-shows that the mass murder was serious, but “that the Jews did ask for it to some extent.” On October 11, before the devastating Israeli bombings, the Palestinian flag was projected on the Rotterdam Eurotower by a department of XR. The obvious phase of understanding or compassion for Jewish Dutch people was virtually skipped, and (according to the Dutch paper NRC) “the switch was made immediately to a particularly aggressive form of solidarity with the Palestinians – often resulting in unadulterated anti-Semitism.” Katya Tolstoy, the outgoing National Theologian, says: “Because of the war in Gaza I feel a wave of anti-Semitism here, I know that from the Soviet Union.”

I knew that poison is in our soil – how could it be otherwise after hundreds of years of initially Christian-inspired and then secular anti-Semitic ideas? That is sunken socio-cultural heritage, so to speak. But that it is so flammable, in such large concentrations and so close to the surface, that scares me. And I also find it shocking that Extinction Rebellion is not the hygienic organization I thought it to be. Instead of fighting the anti-Semitic poison as it fights CO2, XR subsidizes its spread. Now that it appears that XR is just as blind to the social poison as the oil industry is to the greenhouse gas, the movement has become redundant for me. I think I know where my attention will be focused for the time being: on the anti-Semitic poison, that is, on the question of how the mechanism works by which one group can be blamed for literally everything, including the greenhouse gas.

By the way, I am of the opinion that the A12 should remain occupied. And the West Bank should not.

For another account of unconcerned anti-Semitism, see also Ironic. 

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Ironic

It is ironic, unreal and bewildering to read certain passages from the diaries of the German philosopher Heidegger, also known as the Black Notebooks, especially in these days when land and military action are at stake in the Middle East. The passages are presented as follows by the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy in his book The Banality of Heidegger:

► Uprootedness and therefore Bodenlosigkeit (lack of soil of one’s own) is a distinguishing feature of Judaism. The lack of ground consists in – or leads to – “being bound to nothing, making everything serviceable for itself (Judaism).” (Quote from Heidegger in this sentence: from‘Überlegungen VII-XI’, Schwartze Hefte 1938/39, p. 97).

► Because of this lack of a country of its own, Judaism writes itself out of human history because “groundlessness excludes itself”. (Quote from Heidegger in this sentence: from ‘Überlegungen VII-XI’ , Schwartze Hefte 1938/39, p. 97). Did Heidegger think, Nancy wonders, that Judaism could be helped in this self-destruction, for example by the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws?

► The contempt for the (then) lack of their own land is reinforced in Heidegger as, because of that lack, Jews do not know what it is to fight: “World Jewry(…)does not need to participate in military action, whereas we have to sacrifice the best blood of the best of our people” (Quote from Heidegger in this sentence: from ‘Überlegungen XII-XV’, Schwartze Hefte 1939-1941, p. 262).

Heidegger would probably not have minded saying exactly the opposite in today’s situation. A bit like in the last century the anti-Semitic communists detested the Jews because of ‘their’ capitalism, and the anti-Semitic capitalists because they were all communists. 

Also see Heidegger and the Jews

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Kol Nidrei and other illusions

Sometimes it happens that people are open to someone else’s distress, at the moment it becomes clear to them that they injured that other. Such is the central thesis which the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas elaborates in his books.

Among the many injuries which people inflict upon one another, Levinas’s attention is primarily directed towards, what he calls, the ‘violence of thinking’. This violence appears where one person thinks for another and this other doesn’t like it. It is a kind of intrusion, Levinas calls it ‘imperialism’. The thinker can dwell in the euphoric illusion that he helps the other. But the injury which the other incurs because of the thinker’s obtrusiveness can vary from humiliation to the feeling to be pressed into a corner. When the thinker notices this he can be startled by his own illusions and adjust his behaviour.

When I talk with people about this Levinasian thesis, they often recognize the phenomenon and they can point to concrete experiences of it in their own lives. But at the same time they often ask: why are there also people who do nót let themselves be directed by the distress they cause with another; who just keep going their own sovereign way and do as they please with their obtrusive plans? What causes that one person may be sensitive for the injury being done to the Face (as Levinas calls it) and another person is not?

Every time again I find this an intriguing question and I don’t have an answer to it. Some Levinas-students think you can train this sensitivity. For instance by listening seriously to others and practising this competence. I think this is not a wrong suggestion, because by doing so you develop a kind of alertness regarding illusions in which you may be trotting on and transgressing borders. 

Actually, the value of Day of Atonement for me lies precisely in its contribution to that training: to bring to mind, via a specially marked day and an overwhelming liturgy, where and when I lapsed into error. To be able to do so we need a special language and Yom Kippur’s liturgy offers that language. From this perspective Day of Atonement may be regarded as a training in sensitivity, because a whole day long you are immersed in that language.

Yet, I keep being sceptical about the suggestion that we can get rid of our illusions by such training. For illusions are simply inherent to our thinking. So, as long as we don’t give up thinking (and I would not recommend that) illusions will keep popping up and with them the injuries which they cause. I certainly believe that reflection on the effects of our thinking and acting produces progress, also in our thinking. But at the same time I am convinced that we will keep being surprised by our illusions and unwantingly will continue to injure people because of them.

The nice thing is that scepsis as to the possibility of countering illusions also got its place in the liturgy of Yom Kippur. Namely in the Kol Nidrei, where we direct our attention to promises (to conceive of as euphoric intentions or illusions) which in the future we certainly will break.

Far from offering a license for randomly making and breaking promises – as this text has been interpreted by malevolents - the Kol Nidrei herewith testifies of realism and of a deep insight into the treacherous nature of human thinking. From this perspective the pronouncing of the Kol Nidrei is to be seen as a training in sensitivity.

Yom Kippur may be the heaviest training in sensitivity of the Jewish yearcycle. But immediately afterwards it gets a continuation, in a lighter style, with Sukkot. The tent (Sukkah) which is open to all sides, as Abraham’s tent was, according to Levinas is a model of sensitivity and as such, for him, of human conscience.

A fresh glance

Sometimes you need outsiders to remind you of who you are, or to see old familiar things in just a bit sharper way.

However, some outsiders are more effective in this than others. When it comes to Europe, and to a ‘European identity’, the Argentine Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis, recently posed the question: “Europe, what happened to you?”.  On the occasion of his receiving the Charlemagne Prize, the Pope suggested that Europe can be summed up as in essence a champion of humanism, freedom and charity. Thus, Europe would manifest itself at its best in the aesthetic idyll of lovely Madonnas and crystalline baroque music.

Fortunately, the pope added that most of all he ‘dreams’ of this idyll. It must be, because apart from the fact that Europe currently is conspicuously drifting between human rights and pragmatic politics, European history already centuries earlier shows a lot of mutual fighting and murderous treatment of slaves and immigrant populations. So much so that recently the newspaper wondered in an opinion article whether asylum seekers know what kind of murderous continent they are entering.

So I don’t think of Bergoglio’s presentation of Europe as adequate. More striking I find a viewpoint of the Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter, who relates baroque music in a surprising way to violence. About seventeenth-century Europe, when the two went together, he says: “Everything in Baroque music was focused on perfection and harmony. But the same nations that were so engaged in that beauty, elsewhere in the world without scruples slaughtered whole tribes. That was perfectly acceptable. Baroque music highlights the hypocrisy of Western high culture. I’m afraid that disease will for some time still be with us”.

To be able to phrase it this way, you need to have a fresh glance.

Also see (Un)purity

Tone

To recall what anti-Semitism and Holocaust may mean for Jews is not easy. Such we could experience once more during the last few weeks after comments by Ken Livingstone (“Hitler was a Zionist”), the fuss around Abou Jahjah and unhappy reactions from Leon de Winter.

Who in my opinion sets a good tone, is the historian Auke Kok. Probably that has to do with the absence of any stereotyping of Jews which he presents in his columns. While in commemoration texts quite often there is a reverent kind of whispering about the victims; and where with Leon de Winter it always turns into good guys versus bad guys – with predictably Jews in the role of first – ; there Kok  just paints real-life people.

Thus he wrote on the occasion of the commemoration of the Amsterdam Februarystrike of 1941 about the fighting culture in poor Jewish neighborhoods in the twenties and thirties. There were Jewish “boxers, weightlifters and wrestlers: street boys who formed gangs in the war. With everything that was hard and sharp they beated on the WA. Because, also when it comes to Jews, not all of them were – or are – sweethearts, really”.

And on the occasion of May 4, Liberation Day, he presented Han Hollander. Hollander was since the thirties a nationally known football commentator, who in 1936 had enthusiastically reported on the Olympic Games in Berlin for the Dutch radio. In return he had received an expression of thanks, signed by the Fuehrer himself , that at Hollander’s home hung on the wall and on the basis of which he imagined to be protected against transport. Until he and his wife were arrested in July 1942 and killed in Sobibor.

Auke Kok reduces victims to the correct human proportions. Jews were and are ni ange ni bête. They are just people with all the habits and bad habits that come with it.

And indeed, also such people simply want to live in a safe country.

Also see Countries without borders

Right he is

Against all cynicism the philosopher Jurriaan Rood emphasizes that our Western society is indeed based on strong principles. In reaction to pessimistic sounds about political and social polarization, he states: “The biggest mistake is to think that we are a groundless, aimless society. Western society has very clear principles – we have grossly neglected them in recent decades, but we should exhibit them with more consciousness and pride: the separation of church and state, the monopoly of the state on violence and tolerance of dissent”.

To this he adds, going against the usual glorification of ‘Judeo-Christian values’: “Note that in these matters it is not the Judeo-Christian culture against Islam or something. Neither in the Christian nor in the Jewish culture tolerance was an important value”.

Right he is. Traditional Christian intolerance toward non-Christians is well known enough and I leave it out of consideration here. Jewish intolerance is perhaps less in the front of the mind, but there’s certainly been. Especially against dissent in the own Jewish circle, such as against Uriel da Costa and Baruch Spinoza.

Nevertheless, with regard to the latter intolerance a side remark is in place. Because if one, within the Jewish tradition, did not put into question the foundations (as did Da Costa and Spinoza), there was a lot room for maneuver. Then you could have a dissenting opinion which was at odds with that of authoritative rabbis and still be  mentioned in the Talmud. Then a sometimes dizzying variety of opinions was allowed, for which you may also use the word ‘tolerance’.

Especially when you compare it with the handling of losers of the internal Christian debates, such as found place at the councils of Nicea and Constantinople. They were just written out of history.

Also see Collectivity and Individual

Spiritual violence

It recently was twenty years ago that seven monks were kidnapped from their monastery in Tibhirine by Algerian Islamists. Two months later, on May 30, 1996, only their heads were found.

They had let it happen. The monks knew of the advancing Islamist violence in the region. They did consider to leave, but decided to remain in their monastery in solidarity with the local population and to refuse protection by the military.

And time and again at every commemoration, most recently by Stefan Waanders in Trouw, there are those gushy comments which extol the monks’ behavior as a sign of ultimate sacrifice readiness. This time Waanders adds to his article Brother Christian’s ‘testament’, in which he sums up the essence of his life. “This is a testament of the great spiritual texts of the last century”, says Waanders.

In the text, Brother Christian de Chergé, the prior of the monastery, speaks of his willingness to die out of solidarity with the Algerian Muslims who for more then a century were humiliated by the French. The respect that he thus shows to victims of French colonialism is certainly sympathetic, although I do not see how an Islamist massacre can benefit the image of Islam.

What stings me, and what makes questionable the whole gesture of the monks for me, is the following passage in Christian’s testament.

“Of course my death will seem to confirm all those who derided me as naive or idealistic: ‘Tell me, what do you think about it now!’ But people need to know that what torments and makes me curious most, will finally get a liberating answer. Because I will, if it pleases God, I will be allowed to let my sight be united with that of the Father to look with him to his Muslim children. I will see them as he sees them, bathed in the light of the glory of Christ, fruit of His Passion and coated with the gift of the Spirit, who always with hidden joy will create community and, playing with all the differences, will restore the similarities.”

This text strikes me as a mark of spiritual imperialism, one of the most unsympathetic kind, and, I fear, exemplary of Christianity. When reading such a passage I ask myself in despair: Is there no one who will see how here, from under a blanket of fluffy piety, in one blow every deviating, differently defined identity is assimilated to what for this monk rises over everyone and everything? Gone all otherness, away with plurality. Doesn’t anybody – this monk, or the author of the article, or the public – feel that there is coarse mental violence, pure imperialism at stake?

I know, irenic souls like Erasmus and others had exactly the same view. To me that only confirms what I tend to consider as the blind spot in our civilization, namely that mental pressure is not perceived as violence, and therewith as condemable as physical violence. Mental pressure is not innocent, if only because frustrated mental pressure can still lead to physical violence. As Luther’s dealings with the Jews can illustrate: when his preaching could not convince the Jews, he towards the end of his life turned to hate speech against the Jews.

This has got much to do with Thinking for someone else. Also see Reversal of values.

Have Jews more to fear than other people?

One could think so. A skullcap on the head of a teacher in Marseille was sufficient grounds for an, otherwise neat, 15-year-old Muslim to stab him down. Muslim women are sometimes attacked because of their headscarves. However, that they are stabbed for that reason, I have not heard of in Western Europe.

But there is much to compensate that thought. Such as the observation that Jews are no longer the proverbial strangers they were always held for. They are now one of the many ethnic minority groups, rather a bit more integrated than other groups. Xenophobic extreme right now has to divide its attention between all those groups and therefore from that side it is relatively safer for Jews.

Indeed, in recent decades danger has been added from the side of extremist Muslims, see above. But their violence is not directed exclusively against Jews. It has also targeted cartoonists, pop concert and terrace visitors. Whether one is secular, Jewish, Christian, even Muslim, it does not matter anymore.

Also at the level of national communities Jews gain company. Where around 2005 it still was ‘unheard barbaric’ to build a security fence as Israel did, at present the list of names of countries that build walls is almost endless. Like those on the border of Tunisia and Libya, Iran and Pakistan, the US and Mexico, Botswana and South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and much more. The feeling of security that for Israel is linked to borders is not as anachronistic yet as was generally thought.

Thus, as to the wall, the international community can no longer that easily condemn it. Of course Israeli policy in the West Bank can still rightly be condemned, so from that perspective Israel and Jews remain unabatedly vulnerable.

But it could well be that the moral aspect in the  relations with Israel will weigh less heavily as the terror continues rampant in the Western world. In such circumstances a sense of kinship with Israel is more obvious. After all, Israel has been fighting since its inception - ie prior to occupancy - against terror.

That may explain why, for instance, there is a lot of attention lately to the Israeli way of securing aircraft. According to The Economist, the, until recently controversial, Israeli approach is more effective than the American. “Americans search for weapons, Israelis search for suspects.” The latter implies an approach whereby suspects or just nervous people are often subjected to humiliating search. Frustration of attacks along that way has proven more successful than by luggage control.

Would trendwatcher Adjiesj Bakas be right when, along with the ‘Surinamisation of love’, he sees coming the  ‘Israelisation of society’? Whether life will be nicer because of that, that’s a good question – but now for everyone.

Does everybody become Jewish?

Compassion or Competition

Last week the frontpage of my newspaper presented an article by Marli Huijer under the title: “Try to imagine: you fight for air in a refrigerator”.  With me this headline generated the following thought: before I let all kinds of suggestions from others in response to the refugee crisis foist upon me, I want to elucidate for myself this kind of admonitions and exhortations.

In Huijer’s article I come across the following exhortations, whether or not interconnected: feel the proximity of the refugees; remember that you could have been one of them yourself, make yourself an idea of the situation; identify with the refugees. Below I try to unravel for myself what I think of each of those admonitions.

1.Feel the proximity. “That refrigerator-truck could as well have stood close to us around the corner on the highway. Austria, that’s European soil. Such proximity makes we are even more addressed in our responsibility. Our commitment is increased. We realize: we could ourselves have been it.” This passage follows the observation by Huijer that already earlier we were shocked by reports about boats and other dramas that took place outside the European continent.

I do agree with Huijer that physical proximity of misery touches you stronger than when it is farther away. Note in this connection that such an observation also works the other way: the further away the sorrow, the less we feel accountable. So there is no absolute responsibility on our side for refugees, closeness counts.

Furthermore, if you’re talking about proximity as a factor that counts, then this immediately also implies cultural proximity. That kind of closeness will count as well. Which can, very consistently, again work both ways: we are not waiting for more imports of Islamic fundamentalism or anti-Semitism. But perhaps we dó sympathize with critical, emancipated Middle Eastern citizens who are fed up with the backwardness of their governments.

2. Consider that you could have been it yourself. “Nobody wants to imagine to choke as a refugee in a truck, but you just have to imagine ... We realize: we could have been there ourselves.”

In this motivation to imagine what refugees go through, a certain sense of reciprocity and enlightened self-interest resounds. Something like: we might also once find ourselves in such a pitiable situation. If we help them now, we may hope that we will also be helped then by others. By the way, there is nothing wrong with this argument.

3. Identify yourself with the refugees: “We are able to identify with other people. That we can have compassion for the other, proceeds therefrom; we are rather similar.”

I think that’s true. When you recognize yourself in someone else that máy evoke  compassion. But, as the philosopher René Girard keeps emphasizing tirelessly,  recognizing the other as yourself can also trigger competition and mimetic desire: I want the same things and safety as the other, or rather I want to avoid for myself the insecurity which I see another is experiencing. Properly functioning mirror neurons work both ways: it can lead to competition and fencing off of what the other person wants from you; and it can lead to compassion.

This observation is consistent with the two camps that Huijer sees arise in the Netherlands. One camp is driven by compassion and wants to help but does not know how. The other camp is afraid of being eclipsed by what is coming down upon us. “It is up to the politicians to deal with it”, Huijer says. That last thought I might find the most convincing, but also the least spectacular.

Huijer’s other thoughts leave me, after the above weighing, in a state of moral confusion, coupled with the unpleasant feeling of being addressed somewhat moralistically.

Fortunately European politics, with the joint initiatives of Germany, Britain and France over the past week, now get some movement. That is – apart from the grand scale spontaneous reception of refugees, whether or not driven by mirror neurons – is a good thing, I think.

Also see Where do universal values bring us? and Levinas and Empathy

Is the world sound?

In newspaper interviews with several refugees recently the Iranian Pouya Zarchin was cited. He fled in 2011 from Iran to the Netherlands with a fake Spanish passport and tells how scared he was. “If I would get caught and returned to Iran, prison sentence would await me. Or worse. Dutch people can not understand that fear.”

Another, but related story was Wanda Reisel’s, referring to the persecution her family suffered during the Second World War. Because of the impact of that familyhistory she sees herself leading a double life. “My fantasy life is as important as, perhaps even more important than real life. In my head, everything is in order and secure, but the outside world is threatening and unreliable: before you know it you’ll be betrayed, arrested and put on transport. Because you show who you are”.

What resounds in both quotations is a conception of the world as something threatening, chaotic, unreliable. At best, its frightening character is to overcome by building a strong inner life over against it. Anyway, the mood of the quotes does not know of an objectively existing, sound ordering of the world, in which we would participate.

Then, indeed, the feeling about life recently expressed by the philosopher Ger Groot is entirely different. For him, there is order, deep down everything is all right. “Despite appearances to the contrary, right in our hearts we are convinced that the world is in order, that our existence is harmonious, that happiness is the raw material of reality.”

Groot is not unique in this way of experiencing the world. On the contrary, therewith he is an exponent of what rightly could be called the ‘Western order-thinking’. At its largest that order thinking is expressed in the Christian worldview. Its clue is the idea that, no matter how perverted our earth may get, the world has in fact already been redeemed and the results of such redemption are at our disposal in the form of sacraments and other objectified salvation.

In fact, the latter is wasted on Ger Groot, because he is an atheist. But the underlying mood, indeed, is his: fundamentally, there is order in the world, the world is just right. And for holding that view one does not necessarily have to be Christian, as is evident from the world view of even the most skeptical stream of Greek thought, the Stoa. The Stoa’s philosophy is based on the idea that everything in nature happens in a necessary manner. There is nothing to stop it, but with the help of reason you can give everything a place and defuse negative emotions. By joining the prevailing order, you will still be happy.

If it is true that both movements, Christianity and the Stoa, go back to Greek thought, it indicates how much the idea of a sound world is a Greek idea. One of the most powerful recent expressions of this order thinking – with once again an appeal on Greece – comes from Heidegger. He bases on it, with all his pessimism about the technocratic direction of Western civilization, a deep faith and an intense joy. But he always kept it half hidden, which was reason for Cornelis Verhoeven to refer once to Heidegger as ‘that cheat’.

How different from that sounds for example the Israeli writer David Grossman, in a recent interview with Ikon-House. “We Jews are looking for a different way of being in this world. Without being defined by fear and by wars, without enemy. To rely upon our Being. One of the simplest definitions of ‘Jew’ through the centuries is: someone who, collectively or individually, never felt at home in the world.”

You could explain the latter mood because Jews for centuries have been living in the diaspora, in constant dependence on the whims of others. So from a kind of accumulated post-traumatic stress disorder.

But it could also be that doubt about a just world order was much earlier articulated in Jewish culture. That would, already centuries before the beginning of the era, have found its way into biblical writings, like the Book of Job.

Whatever explanation you choose, both developments may help us to understand a little better why in the course of history Jews for Christians and other ‘Greek’ thinkers posed a threat: they questioned the Greek and Christian base feeling of a ‘sound world’. From that confrontation you can get very chagrined.

Also see Plato disproved and Order

Wiping

Recently the book Isabella. The Warrior Queen appeared, written by Kirstin Downey, about Queen Isabella of Spain. She was the wife of King Ferdinand and together they at the end of the fifteenth century managed to expulse the Muslims and Jews from Spain.

The book was recently discussed by Nina Weijers. In doing so she made use of a certain cliché that gradually has become implausible, and which therefore I think it is better not to use any longer.

I refer to the following passage (about Isabella): “Although she was fond of the New Testament, her mentality was more Old Testament in nature. As Downey concludes: ‘She was always more inclined to claim an eye for an eye than to turn the other cheeck.’”.

I object to the misguided nature of a suchlike passage, including the presented quote. Because what happens in the passage is paradoxical:
- It starts uncritically from a specific cliché, namely, the association of the New Testament with love and rejection of the principle of an eye for an eye.
- Then it notes that a supporter of the New Testament simply employs the principle of an eye for an eye.
- In the last sentence it restores the association of the New Testament with  turning the other cheek.

I do object to this because - in spite of the factual reality - the labels of New Testament and Old Testament remain intact: Old Testament = violence, New Testament = love.

This is correct to the extent to which the New Testament is another book with a different content. But I think that, once a book has gone along for thousands of years, our associations must be determined not only by the content. The actual intercourse with it by authority figures and its cultural integration must weigh in the associations we attach to them. From that point of view Isabella’s performance would well be exemplary of the action of many other New Testament lovers. If so then that, in my opinion, should affect the automatic associations we attribute to the New Testament.

My suggestion would therefore be to permanently wipe from our minds those clichéd associations. Because the clichés continue to produce misunderstandings and subcutaneously keep playing their dark role. When erasing them we can let us help by recognizing the reality of nuclear deterrence strategy of the Christian West, which has been based for decades on the principle: if you’ll hit, I will hit you first. Or by the position taken by leaders from the New Testament Eastern European culture as Putin and Poroshenko. The latter recently told us: “Do not think that we turn the other cheek when we are attacked”.

Maybe there is not much difference between the Old and New Testament. And is the real difference where people start murdering or beheading out of the blue, rather than in people who use rules of equal retribution for their own defense. The latter may be quite human. Turning the other cheek seems to me rarely an option anyway.

Also see Holy fire and Landmarks

Numbers

Is it going to be a question of numbers?

I mean, are we witnessing a clash of civilizations à la Samuel Huntington? In the sense of a massive cultural conflict between Islam and the West, to be won by the largest and the strongest?

I don’t want to think along those lines. But sometimes – out of fear – I let myself be carried away by the idea. And for the duration of this piece I let that happen.

Because, what we experience, sometimes is quite similar to a battle of civilizations. Last week, in the News an imam was interviewed who made mention of the unbearable humiliations he and the entire Islamic community had to undergo. He was a gentle man, but he did not miss the opportunity to say that they together amount to 1.7 billion.

And Amsterdam Mayor Van der Laan repeated his legitimate message that we may well be afraid, but should not let ourselves be terrorized. There is no need for that, he added, because “we are with many more”, by which actually he was referring to a coalition of all those who are against terror.

But if numbers are that important, then prospectives for Jews are not so good. Because in that respect, we of course draw the short straw.

It’s true, we consider ourselves as part of the coalition against terror, and are usually considered by others to do so. You can even say that Israel - apart from the landgrabbing  Greater Israel supporters – is geographically in the frontline against barbarism.

However, It only takes something small to happen in the Middle East for the Western public opinion to believe that the Jews actually do nót belong in the partnership. For the Islamic public opinion this is already a foregone conclusion anyway, so then it’s going to be pretty cramped with those small Jewish numbers. You would be Greater Israel-fan because of it.

But that’s what I do not want to be.

Also see Incentives and Another Judaïsm?

Je suis (pas) Charlie

A strange feeling of kinship with the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo lives in me.

Strange because I – unlike Charlie Hebdo – don’t like provocations so much. Instead, I tend to prefer to bridge divergent interests and disagreements through discussion and mutual understanding. Definitely different from what the murdered cartoonists used to do.

Does it perhaps have to do with the fact that except cartoonists also Jewish targets are high on the Muslim Terrorist targets lists? Then my sense of kinship would arise out of a shared threat. Solidarity by an accidentally shared situation.

But then, I think, is this shared first place on the list of targets so accidental really? Isn’t it possible to designate Jews in European cultural history as the freethinkers of the West? They already started being so in the first millennium of the Christian era, when the Jews were so rude to reject the so-called universal Christian truth. That was experienced by the surrounding society as outrageous and offensive. Perilous, but they did it, the Jews.

And they persevered, despite many persecutions, during the second millennium. Even when, from the 18th and 19th century secularization struck, Jews, accustomed to cherishing their own socio-inner life, kept drawing therefrom. They often contributed in an original way to Western music, philosophy and literature. Different from the (Victorian) mainstream, not constricting their hearts and sexual lifes, and therefore sometimes offensive again.

Today (Western) Christians are bothered much less by the Jewish free-mindedness than before, when the universal Christian truth pretensions were still intact. But now some Islamic movements have elevated many of these universal pretensions to ruthless truth and, again, transverse Jews don’t fit in. That may explain why their reputation for stubbornness, fanned by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, makes Jews into top butt for Muslim Terrorist attacks.

So, although I do not go on the streets with “Je suis Charlie” – I do feel that way.

Also see Parrhesia

I don't understand

There are a number of things about Israel that I do not understand.

This number does not, to be clear, include the current military action in order to curb rocket attacks from Gaza for some time. Because I can understand it – however terrible the war suffering is. No country, democratic or not, can just let itself be shelled while it has the means to stop the shelling. Sooner or later it will deploy those resources. Nobody likes that, I can see that, but apparently at this moment fighting for both Hamas and Israel is worthwhile.

One of the things I do nót understand is the unconcearn with which Israel perpetuates the occupation of the West Bank, and even actively strengthens it. I can see it no different than that the illegality of it, combined with the humiliation of the Palestinians, is a serious threat to Israel’s future.

I’ve also never understood the light-heartedness with which Israel lets itself be supported by Christian Zionists such as American Evangelicals or Dutch Christians for Israel. From an opportunistic, short-term perspective I can indeed understand that. In a world with a lot of hostility directed against Israel, you welcome any support that is available.

But the question is whether is that opportunism is a wise position to take. I think not. First, because such support is fundamentalist inspired. Characteristic of the groups referred to is their belief in the authority of the Bible, which they explain in such a way that the state of Israel figures as willed by God, namely in preparation for the second coming of Christ on earth. This appears to me to be an alien motif within the secular-Jewish project that Israel essentially was and still is. If motifs are that far apart, you should be careful with close ties.

A second reason stems from the very same fundamentalism. Because it implies that the Christian Zionists are not primarily interested in the Jewish cause, but in an idea that is linked to their theology. In the absence of an intrinsic human concern a switch in that theology or exegesis may as easily lead to a switch in attitude. Enthusiasm for the Jewish state can then change into indifference or even hostility.

At present something like that seems to occur indeed in certain Evangelical circles. There is talk of a return to the good old ‘fulfillment theology’. Which implies that the Kingdom of God was established by Jesus on earth and history was then fulfilled. The Jewish people, according to that vision, for God has no meaning any longer, neither has the State of Israel. From this kind of theology a lot of trouble for the Jews emerged already earlier in history.

Before you trust the sincerity of your supporters, it is important to know who you are dealing with and what their motives are. Jews should understand that anyway.

Also see The many dimensions of Ari Shavit and Accurate enough

The many dimensions of Ari Shavit

The sociologist and theologian Gied ten Berge, chairman of SIVMO, the Support Committee for Israeli Peace and Human Rights Organizations, wrote in the summer issue of the magazine Nieuwe Liefde a review of the book My promised land by Ari Shavit. The title of his review is well chosen: “Life on seven lines of fracture”, which refers to the seven rebellions that Shavit signals in Israel, and which just about sounds like ‘dancing on a volcano’.

But for the rest, Ten Berge missed a lot in Shavit’s book. Indeed, the book has much more dimensions than the review reflects. By that I have ia in mind the dimension of the history of Zionism, and the many aspects of Shavit’s vision of the Israeli peace movement.

For an adequate understanding of Israel and Zionism familiarity with their history is an absolute requirement. A long, loaded past must be taken into consideration, especially of centuries of Christian and secular anti-Semitism in Europe.

In one of her last columns journalist Eva van Sonderen makes clear how deep that kind of collective negative experiences can get fixed in the human mind. “I have experienced several workshops ‘Family Constellations’ and often the Holocaust emerged as a gigantic blockade, especially among young people, the third generation after, of which at first sight you would not think that. And sometimes, with Mizrahi or Sephardi participants, also there stories came up about the pogroms against Jews in North Africa or Asia”.

Shavit assigns an important role to that kind of blockages, and clearly shows to what degree they had their impact long before the Holocaust. In particular, the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews already at the end of the nineteenth century could no longer. They had nothing to lose anymore, Zionism was their last straw and Shavit reveals that well in his stories about the pioneers.

It is noteworthy that Ten Berge says nothing about this history, which is essential for the overall picture of Shavit. Just as for the Shavit the history of the expelled Palestinians is of great importance: they simply lived there already for generations. Which indeed Ten Berge does emphasize too.

Then there is the role of the Israeli peace movement. Shavit goes to great lengths to make clear that ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘peace’ are not as easily aligned as one might think. And certainly not in the brutal Middle East.

An average peace movement might cherish that illusion, and so did the Israeli peace movement. Shavit tells that, as a student and young journalist, he initially went along in that mood. He was a left-wing activist and protested against the occupation, in the belief that by ending the occupation peace would come within range.

“Only when I was thirty, and began to seriously listen to what the Palestinians actually had to say, I realized that this prospect for peace was unfounded. About this occupation the left was absolutely right: it is a moral, demographic and political disaster. But regarding peace the left was totally wrong. They counted on a peace partner that does not really exist. It was assumed that peace had to be feasible because it was needed. But the history of the conflict and the geo-strategic situation of the region involved that peace could not be achieved”. Yet, also from a kind of self-protection, that illusion of peace was hold on to.

The moral struggle that with a man like Shavit is accompanied by this type of analyses is palpable in his book. For my part, Ten Berge could have devoted a few words to it.

Instead, he believes that Shavit lacks a prophetic vision. Could there perhaps be something prophetic in the ruthless honesty and openness with which Shavit dares to face the situation?

Also see Right and Wrong

Right and Wrong

“Right or wrong, it’s my country”. That’s what you can hear Israelis and Jews say about Israël.

It is apparent from the title of his book My Promised Land that the political journalist Ari Shavit confirms the second part of the statement. But with the first part he has not finished so quickly. In fact, his whole book is about right and wrong.

Reading this book is a harrowing experience. I still have a long way from the book, I’m only halfway through, but already I can conclude that the subtitle of the book sums up its contents quite well: “The triumph and tragedy of Israel”. The book is an alternation of highs and lows.

A low, perhaps thé lowest point, I’ve just had: the story about the settlements. In itself sufficient reason for getting depressed. The primitive ideology, the complicity of otherwise right-thinking Labour Party politicians, the corrupting effects of military superiority, the comparisons with Nazi practices that also occur to the Israelis, the wave of terrorist attacks that make every will for peace implausible.

What keeps me upright when reading this book – which to me is the triumph of this book – is the intellectual courage and ruthless honesty of the author. You may call it, given all the twists of right and wrong which he names and describes, a moral achievement. “You think too much”, he gets as a reproach from some men of action. For me, precisely therefore, he is a reliable beacon on rugged terrain.

In short, the balance between the zionist right and wrong halfway the book is as follows:

Right: the desolate situation of millions of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century – after centuries of pogroms, discrimination, and oppression that only got worse – was no longer tenable. And the relatively small part that had managed to escape to Western Europe built itself a fairly comfortable existence there but, from the Dreyfus affair, did not feel safe anymore. The Endlösung was intuitively sensed.

This self-destructive dwelling of Jews in a Europe that had driven them to the end of their forces in the East and was about to puke them out in the West, provided the original Zionist plan an undeniable moral justification. As far as Shavit is concerned, up to the UN Partition Plan of 1947 and the founding of the state in 1948.

Wrong: the systematic disregard for Palestinian suffering that accompanied the foundation of the state. And just as bad: the creation of new suffering by creeping continuation of encroachment on their rights. Which lacks, in Shavit’s eyes, precisely the moral basis that early Zionism according to him díd have.

As I said, the fact that Shavit dares tell this story in this way is a great achievement in itself.

Also see Polyphony

Heidegger and the Jews

There can be no doubt any longer. Peter Trawny, the director of the Heidegger Institute in Wuppertal now publishes Heidegger’s Schwartze Heften, the notebooks with his diary entries from the thirties to seventies. They show that the philosopher from the Black Forest suspects Judaism of being bent on world domination. From the notebooks emanates, according to Trawny, a “Being-historical anti-Semitism” which infuses Heidegger’s thought through all its pores.

Actually, doubt there has been for many years indeed whether Heidegger was anti-Semitic. Most writers agreed that his wife Elfriede was, because she spoke out in an overt anti-Semitic way. But Heidegger himself did not. Of course there was his membership of the Nazi Party and his statement about the inner truth and greatness of the Hitler movement. But that could be explained by the circumstances in which Heidegger as rector of a university had to do his job.

It is not unlikely that this relativizing by heideggerians of Heidegger’s Nazi period was motivated by a great admiration for the philosopher’s work. Someone with such fascinating and profound thoughts, he impossibly could have been an anti-Semite?

Or yet, perhaps the reverse? With this question, the case begins to get interesting. Could there possibly be an inner connection between the deep (according to some: quasi-deep) thinking about the history of Being and anti-Semitism ?

Some will say: better don’t search for such a connection. For Heidegger's work is quite opaque and anti-Semitism is an elusive phenomenon, so only in a shared confusion a connection could possibly be found, but that clarifies nothing.

Then things remain as vague as the insecurity that Levinas in the thirties already experienced in the philosophy of Heidegger (so, apart from Heidegger’s political positions). In the preface of Existence and Existents Levinas tells that his thinking is at the same time determined by Heidegger’s philosophical innovations, and “governed by the profound need to leave the climate of that philosophy”.

But it does not necessarily have to remain that vague. Indeed, Levinas did not let it remain that vague. Because in his later philosophical work, especially in Totality and Infinity he makes very clear that in fact Heidegger’s thinking is totalitarian in nature. Heidegger does not know how to deal with the idea of radical otherness, and that has much to do with his adoration of Being.

Personally I try, on the basis of the comments of Levinas, to get it clear what happens when Heidegger’s thinking on Being is applied to something like management and organization. In that case, the idea of Being in which we all participate is complemented by the idea that we also share our lifeworlds through a shared Mitsein. Authentic Mitsein would generate a kind of spontaneous and taken-for-granted cooperation and communication on the basis of which a healthy organization can flourish.

That’s a nice thought, but also somewhat romantic and unrealistic and, as to me, only half the story. In many cases, an individual’s specific identity will in fact lead to tensions and fractures with others with whom he shares a world. And not always with the prospect of bridging the gaps because people may réally differ from each other. Then it takes more than an ethics which relies on a shared world. Then dealing with differences is just as crucial.

Heidegger’s problem with that could very well have to do with his anti-Semitism.

Also see Ironic, Why Heidegger doesn't bring us any further and Wonder or Bewilderment

stockpile

Just one article from the newspaper,  and a whole year program lies before you .

My paper last month reviewed the book My promised land. The triumph and tragedy of Israel, written by Ari Shavit . It's about Israel and its history, and the author makes an attempt to be as open and honest about the subject as possible.

In the book, and therefore in the review, a series of remarkable questions is presented. Weird questions or pat ones, I do not know yet.  In any case, questions that trigger an explosion of still further questions in me.

For example, somewhere in the headline it says : “ How long does Israel have?”  That’ s a remarkable question indeed.  Anyway, I’ve never heard that question with regard to China or Spain or the Netherlands. Where does that question come from? And what does it mean for the people of a state, if apparently its existence can be considered shaky? Does that justify extensive security and demographic measures to insure its existence? Or do these measures precisely undermine the acceptance of that state by others, and thus its stability ?

Another statement which gives rise to many more questions. Shavit writes that if his grandfather had remained English, his descendants would be assimilated. Shavit himself would probably have been half – Jewish “and have had a less rich inner life”.  Do Jews, then, generally have a richer inner life than non-Jews? What is such a statement based on? Does the concept of ‘chosenness’ play  a role here? And what does the statement to non-Jews who read it? Might it arouse indignation, or envy? Is there a possible connection to anti-Semitism?

Clearly , I need to read that book. And already in advance I have enough questions to fill a whole new year.

Also see Are Jews smarter?

Delegitimization

Frankly, I do not get it, those outraged reactions from the Israeli government and other Jewish circles on the announcement by the EU of a boycott of products from the settlements. What I do not get particularly is the assertion that this boycot entails delegitimisation of Israel.

Delegitimization refers to statements by enemies of Israel who claim that the state of Israel has been founded on false grounds, thus has no right to exist and should actually disappear.

That you’re worried about that kind of statements, I get that. Here the raison d’être of one’s state is put into question, and you do not necessarily have to be Jewish to find that threatening. And also completely misplaced, because Israel is based on a decision of the United Nations and is therefore firmly established in international law as almost no other country.

But precisely this last observation makes those ‘deeply hurt’ sounds from Israel so incomprehensible. Because if you sincerely want to continue along in the international legal system you can not go shopping there and select your own favourites. You will have to play the game conform to the rules.

Fortunately, the rules are fairly nuanced: Israel’s legitimacy is not in question, but the occupation of the West Bank is illegal. The conclusions which are subsequently drawn on the basis of those principles are equally nuanced: boycott of Israeli products is not an issue, it is about products from the occupied territories.

By presenting boycott of the latter as an affront to Israel as a whole, Netanyahu turns it into an all-or-nothing game. This is dangerous: Israel therewith quits the legal arena and thus plays into the hands of the delegitimizators. It is no coincidence that the always somewhat anti-Semitic colored British academic circles choose for all: a total boycott of all Israeli academics from outside ánd inside the Green Line. And in the Dutch supermarket otherwise benevolent consumers may, to be sure, decide not to buy anything at all from Israel.

If you really want to prevent delegitimization you will have to comply with the legal system. Then you will constantly have to distinguish between what complies with international law and what does not. And also between products which according to international law are kosher and which are not.

But sometimes I’m afraid I might get it anyway. Namely, that the blunt all-or-nothing story has less to do with the fear of delegitimization, but comes from blind ideological fervor in Israeli government circles.

If so it is even more important to stay within the legal discourse which at the moment is practised by Europe in a pretty correct fashion.

Also see The Village of Norway and The Green Line and the Red Line