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The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics

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The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics Roger Garaudy The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics AAARGH [Source of the text: CODOH: http://codoh.com/ © 1996 All rights reserved.] This text has been displayed on the Net as a tool for educational purpose, further research, on a non commercial and fair use basis, by the International Secretariat of the Association des Anciens Amateurs de Récits de Guerres et d'Holocaustes (Aaargh). The E-mail of the Secretariat is: [email protected]. Mail can be sent at PO Box 81475, Chicago, IL 60681-0475, USA. We see the act of displaying a written document on Internet as the equivalent to displaying it on the shelves of a public library. It costs us a modicum of labor and money. The only benefit accrues to the reader who, we surmise, thinks by himself. A reader looks for a document on the Web at his or her own risks. As for the author, there is no reason to suppose that he or she shares any responsibility for other writings displayed on this Site. Because laws enforcing a specific censorship on some historical question apply in various countries (Germany, France, Israel, Switzerland, Canada, and others) we do not ask their permission from authors living in thoses places: they wouldn't have the freedom to consent. We believe we are protected by article 19 of the Human Rights Charter: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, in Paris.) 2 Contents Introduction Part I: Theological Myths 1. The Myth of the "Promise": Promised Land or Conquered Land? a. In Contemporary Christian Exegesis b. In the Prophetic Jewish Exegesis 2. The Myth of the "Chosen People" 3. The Myth of Joshua: Ethnic Purification Part II: The Myths of the 20th Century 1. The Myth of Zionist Antifascism 2. The Myth of the Justice of Nuremberg 3. The Myth of the Holocaust 4. The Myth of "A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land" Part III: The Political Use of the Myth 1. The Israeli-Zionist Lobby in the United States 2. The Israeli-Zionist Lobby in France 3. The Myth of the Israeli Miracle: The External Financing of Israel Conclusion Addendum: Annex 1. Letter from Abbé Pierre to Roger Garaudy, 15 April, 1996 2. Letter from Pastor Roger Parmentier to Roger Garaudy, 11 May, 1996 3. The Cry of a Deportee by Gaston Pernot, Doctor of Law, Commander of the Legion of Honor, Paris ("Le Figaro," Friday, May 3, 1996) 4. Indignation of an Israeli Writer by Ari Shavit/Haaretz/New York Times Syndication (Translated from Hebrew in "Liberation" of May 21, 1996.) 3 Right to Reply--A Pamphlet in Response to Attacks 1. A Reply to the Media Lynching of Abbé Pierre and Roger Garaudy 2. Machination of a Lynching 3. The Scorned "Right to Reply" 4. The Witch Hunt 5. Struggle Against All Fundamentalisms 6. The Magic Word that Kills 7. As for the lies instituted at Nuremberg 8. Then what do I deny? 9. One Goal: Gag Abbé Pierre and Garaudy 10. Zionism against Israel 11. A Very Powerful Lobby in the United States 12. A Very Powerful Lobby in France 13. The Nuremberg Taboo: An Inverted Dreyfus Affair 14. A "Litany of Hate" 15. A Tribal Reading of the Bible 16. A Prophetic Reading: Abbé Pierre 17. Abrogate the Totalitarian Gayssot Law 18. In Whose Interest? 19. But the Truth Bursts Against Darkness 4 Introduction THIS BOOK IS THE HISTORY OF A HERESY. THROUGH A LITERAL AND SELECTIVE reading of a Revealed Word, it makes religion into a political tool and in so doing, hallows it. This heresy is a fatal disease at this end of the century, one that I already defined in "Intégrismes." I fought Islamic fundamentalism in "The Greatness and decadence of Islam" at the risk of displeasing those who did not like me to say it. I fought Christian fundamentalism in "Towards a war of religion" at the risk of displeasing those who don't like me to say: "The Christ of Paul is not Jesus." I am fighting today Jewish fundamentalism in "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics" at the risk of attracting the thunder of those Israeli-Zionists who did not like Rabbi Hirsch's reminder: "Zionism wants to define the Jewish people as a national entity ... which is a heresy." SOURCE: "Washington Post," October 3, 1978. What is the Zionism that I denounced (and not the Jewish people) in my book? It has often defined itself: it is a political doctrine. "Since 1896, Zionism refers to the political movement founded by Theodore Herzl." SOURCE: Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel. "Herzl Press." New York, 1971, volume 2, p. 1262. This is a nationalist doctrine which was not born out of Judaism but out of the European nationalism of the 19th century. Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, did not claim to belong to a religion: "I do not obey a religious impulse." SOURCE: Th. Herzl: "Diaries. Ed. Victor Gollancz, 1958. "I am an agnostic." (p. 54) He was not interested in the "Holy Land" in particular: for his nationalist objectives, he would have equally accepted Uganda or Tripoli, Cyprus or Argentina, Mozambique or the Congo. SOURCE; Herzl, Diaries (passim). But in the face of the opposition of his Jewish friends, he realized the importance of the "Mighty Legend" (June 9, 1895), Diaries I, p. 56) as "a rallying cry of irresistible power." SOURCE: Herzl, p. 45. This is a mobilizing slogan that this eminently realistic politician could not ignore. Transposing this "mighty Legend" of the "Return" into historical reality, he declared: 5 "Palestine is our unforgettable historical homeland ... The name alone will be a powerful rallying cry for our people." SOURCE: "L'Etat Juif," p. 209. "The Jewish Question is for me neither a social question nor a religious question ... it is a national question." This is a colonial doctrine. Here too, the lucid Theodore Herzl does not hide his objectives. The first step is to set up a "Charter Company" under the protection of England, or any other power, as a stepping stone toward the formation of "the Jewish State." That is why he called on the master of this type of operation, the colonial trafficker, Cecil Rhodes, who used his Charter Company to carve out of South Africa a subsidiary bearing his name: Rhodesia. Theodore Herzl wrote him on January 11, 1902: "Please send me a letter stating that you have examined my program and that you approve it. You may be wondering why I am calling on you, Mr. Rhodes. It is because my program is a political program." SOURCE: Herzl, "Tagebuch," Vol. III, p. 105. The Zionist doctrine adopted at the August 1897 Basle Congress had three dimensions: political, nationalist, colonial. Due to his Machiavellian genius, Theodore Herzl could justifiably say: "I founded the Jewish State." SOURCE: "Diaries," p. 224. Half a century later, his disciples applied exactly the same policies, used the same methods and followed the same political line to create the State of Israel (after W.W. II). But this political, nationalist, colonialist enterprise was never a fulfillment of Jewish faith and spirituality. At the same time as the Congress of Basle, which could not be held in Munich (as predicted by Herzl) because of opposition from the German Jewish community, another conference was held in Montreal (1892), where Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, the most representative Jewish personality in America, initiated a motion against the political and tribal Zionist interpretation of the Bible and for a spiritual and universalist interpretation of the Prophets. "We totally disapprove of the initiative aiming at the creation of a Jewish State. Attempts of this type highlight an erroneous conception of the mission of Israel ... that the Jewish Prophets were the first to proclaim ... It aims at a Messianic time when men recognize belonging to one great community for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth." SOURCE: Conférence Centrale des Rabbins Américains. Yearbook VII, 1897, p. xii. This opposition to political Zionism, inspired by the attachment to the spirituality of the Jewish faith, did not cease from expressing itself. Following W.W.II, using the U.N. and at the same time taking advantage of rivalries among nations and, especially, of the unconditional support of the United States, Israeli Zionism managed to impose itself as a dominant force. Thanks to its lobby, it succeeded in reversing an 6 admirable prophetic tradition. But it did not manage to stifle the criticism of great spiritual men. Martin Buber, one of the great Jewish voices of this century, during his entire lifetime and until his death in Israel, did not stop denouncing the degeneracy and even the inversion of religious Zionism into political Zionism. Martin Buber declared in New York: "The feeling I had 60 years ago when I entered the Zionist movement is essentially the same feeling I have today ... I hoped that this nationalism would not follow the path of others a beginning with a great hope and degenerating later to become a sacred egoism, daring, even like Mussolini, to proclaim itself sacroegoismo, as though collective egoism could be more sacred than individual egoism. When we returned to Palestine, the decisive question was: Do you want to come here as a friend, a brother, a member of the community of people of the Middle East or as the representatives of colonialism and of imperialism? "The contradiction between the end and the means to reach it divided the Zionists: some wanted to receive political privileges from the Great Powers, others, especially the youth, wanted to be allowed to work in Palestine with their neighbors, on behalf of their life together, and for the future.
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