Building the future, without forgetting the past
The last two weeks have been unbelievable. I have seen the world -- Jerusalem, Milan, New York, Munich, Washington. So far, everywhere I went I witnessed the same conversation. There is a feeling, in all of these places, that a train is about to depart from a station. In America, there is a feeling that President-elect Obama has put an end to so many years of discrimination and oppression and that America is going to depart toward a new, much better world. In Italy, as in Germany, they are discussing the present, but thinking about the past -- how best to depart from the miseries caused by the political regimes of the 20th century and toward an open, pluralistic society which contains the contemporary "other," the non-European elements of society.
Soon I will be on my way home, back to Israel, and I ask myself -- are we going to depart for somewhere or are we doomed to live in the past, with our ghosts, never to be redeemed? I don't believe in this attitude. I always believed in the future -- not to say that the past is not important or that forgiving means forgetting but that Israel must get out of the bunker of trauma and depart toward the safe haven of trust.
So I wrote a book that stirred up a lot of controversy. My argument is simple: very soon our children will live in a world without living witnesses of World War Two. The Holocaust will become a memory rather than an experience. How do we depart from experience to memory, from trauma to trust, from the past to the future? This is what I would like discuss with you all because, for me, the essence of this journey is to listen to other people's overt and covert experiences and attitudes and develop mine from them.
I'm glad you are here to discuss a new book about Israel and the Jewish experience, because you know, we like, never discuss those issues around here. :)
Seriously, it sounds like an interesting book. However, I would like to make one suggestion. If you know any Palestinians or other Arabs, would you consider inviting them to join and participate in the discussion of your book? I looked at the list of invited participants, and didn't notice any Arabic names on the list.
December 8, 2008 4:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan.
While I agree that there is no representation of the Arab POV (or even much of the "realist" one) on TPMCafe, I'm not sure that THIS particular discussion is the appropriate venue nor is Burg the right person to address regarding the lack of Arab participation in the Cafe.
As an avid follower of the mind-opening discussions on Syria Comment, I would relish the participation of Arabs such as Syrian Sami Moubayad or "Alex" here because as Haaretz journo Yoav Stern said on SC in his defense of an article he wrote for Haaretz:
"A very important channel that has developed gradually over the past years is Syria Comment. Where else can you see Israelis and Syrians, officials, semi officials, academics and just civilians, exchange views like they do here?"
We need more of the above....HERE, too.
But, there is a virtual war going on centered around the issues of moving beyond the Holocaust and other related topics that is rapidly becoming a game-changer within the more politically aware/activist portion of the Jewish community.
In THIS specific case, adding an Arab voice for the sake of diversity would be a diversion from the critical ongoing debates.
December 8, 2008 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK, I see your point, lally. Maybe Palestinians don't belong in a discussion among Jews about how they should remember the Holocaust. We'll have to see how the discussion evolves.
The problem obviously isn't that there should be discussions at TPM Cafe among Jews about how Jews should remember their history and experiences, and respond to them. Nor that there should be discussions here, led by Jews, about Israel and its relationship with the Palestinian Arabs and the broader Arab world or Muslim world. Nor that there should be discussions here, led again by Jews, about US relations with the Middle East. It's that there should be so many such conversations, with no attempt to bring in the other concerned groups, where the perspectives of those groups are relevant.
December 8, 2008 10:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where do they post the list?
December 8, 2008 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lila's post: "This Week at the Cafe"
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/08/this_week_at_cafe_5/
December 8, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Abandon the idea that the Shoah is the defining experience of modern Judaism or that the world is a cauldron of antisemitism ready, at any moment, to boil over and you abandon Israel's raison d'etre and with it, Israel's legitimacy.
Without the Shoah Israelis are a pack of land-stealing brigands, and no one -- well, maybe Attila -- wants to think of himself as that.
December 8, 2008 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Zionism was already being discussed by the world community as an international movement to build a Jewish state in Eretz Israel as early as 1840.
The Balfour Declaration, giving international recognition of the right of the Jewish people to build a "national homeland" in Eretz Israel dates to 1917. All of this is BEFORE the Shoah.
December 8, 2008 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess that puts them at least several notches above the Americans, Canadians, Central and South Americans, and Australians. Except, of course, the Americans committed a real genocide and enslaved another race of people while they were at it. Tell us, Ellen, how stupid and ill-informed are you?
December 8, 2008 11:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Americans committed atrocities and caused great suffering and misery to others. That excuses the other misery and suffering caused by others how? That's nothing more than an excuse to rationalize and justify the misery we cause others.
December 9, 2008 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Americans fought wars with Indians. They ended. America had slavery practiced on its shores. It ended.
In Israel, war and the subjugation of the Israelis' own "other" never ends. Things change, sometimes they improve. But not in Israel.
Nowhere in America, or Canada or South and Central America, or Australia - today - are people jugged up in vast, open-air prisons, starved, shot, punished collectively and avidly dehumanized.
As long as Israel does this, its legitimacy is not jeopardized - it is destroyed.
December 9, 2008 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
It ended, sure, after what? 500 years of slavery, Jim Crow, and lynchings? It would have been easy to have said in, say, 1920 or 1930 or 1888 that things in America "never change."
It seems to me that, at no time other than during the Civil War, was it said that America was "illegitimate."
At no time, AFAIK, between Independence and 1965, was it said that America was not a "democracy."
And yet these things are routinely said about the Black State of Israel.
December 9, 2008 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have no idea. Neither do you, Tintin. It's NOT 1920 or 1930. Or 1888. All of those dates are the long-ago past. And things changed.
Is that all you've got to defend Israel's transgressions? Ancient history?
December 9, 2008 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, I do and so do you.
You know, for instance, that in 1920, we Americans were 34 years away from the START of integrating our schools. And we were 45 years away from the Voting Rights Act that ensured our freed slaves, citizens since 1865, the right to vote in their own country.
In 1930, just subtract 10 years from those totals. 'Course, way back in 1888, our freed slaves had been "citizens" for 23 years, but would still have to wait 66 years (longer than Israel's been in existence) before the START of integration and 76 years before these citizens were assured the right to vote.
My point is not to justify anything. My point is that it took the US a long time to even approach the ideals it aspired to. My point is that the horrendous acts that were policy as usual in the US for CENTURIES didn't delegitimize the US and they don't, as Ellen tartly suggests, delegitimize Israel. Sorry, I have no patience for the thesis that Israel is rotten at its core, simply built to counter anti-Semitism, or will never change.
That was my point before you decided to piggy back on the conversation...
December 10, 2008 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
More ancient history...
That really is all you have... isn't it, genius?
The U.S. would have been delegitimized if it had never changed, if its people had vitified into half-crazy paranoids, begrudging the world for hating us, or resenting us... or envying us. Shouldn't the ingrates we so afflict appreciate being tormented by oppressors so entitled?
Every argument for Israel's transgressions begins and ends with this phony mitigation that "the U.S. did much worse!" Sure beats the idea Israel could EVER take responsiblity for its own actions.
Your "points" are as pointless as your posts.
December 10, 2008 4:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here you go, THIS is the post I was responding to:
"Abandon the idea that the Shoah is the defining experience of modern Judaism or that the world is a cauldron of antisemitism ready, at any moment, to boil over and you abandon Israel's raison d'etre and with it, Israel's legitimacy."
I'm saying "No" to this. I reject this. On historical and principled grounds. Countries often start one way and end up another way. It has nothing to do with "justifying" anything.
But I will say this, Curt, if you feel the need to call me names, I'd prefer you not respond to my posts. Continue, and I'll ignore you.
December 10, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, we [even those of us who are half and half] will not forget the witnesses of another generation. We cannot. Nevertheless, experience is manyfold. The old witnesses have experiences and memories as do the Palestinians. And also, even when a generation dies, that experience will never become just only a memory. It's too ingrained in us to walk away, or very far away from it. The key is to recognize that there are others with a similitude or at least an almost similitude in memory as a people and to build a bridge to them as always hope they build one back.
December 8, 2008 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
The "almost similitude"...that's the part that always causes the stall. It isn't about forgetting, it's about forgiving. If we don't forgive the past, we can never live in the present.
December 9, 2008 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a survivor of child abuse. I can't imagine that surrounding myself almost exclusively with other victims of child abuse, and dwelling on it, would be the best way to heal.
Intermingling more with the non-chosen masses would help of course, but like Ellen noted, there are reasons aside from religion for isolating and savoring the trauma.
Besides, who doesn't want to be the king of pain? I knew an older Polish lady who wrote a book about her early childhood in a Russian work camp, and was told by a publishing company that it was the wrong holocaust.
The fact that every other historic and current genocide receives less attention than the Shoah undoubtedly adds to the feeling of suffering among some Jews.
Suffering is an integral part of Orthodox Jewish culture, as we saw last week when the Brooklyn rabbi and his wife killed in Mumbai were loudly mourned by hundreds in Jerusalem, most if not all of whom didn't know the couple personally.
Two years ago in Borough Park Brooklyn, a riot broke out when a noted jerk was given a parking ticket. I just pictured the cultivated sense of suffering of the participants, ready to boil over at the slightest trigger.
I also know that if people unfamiliar with child abuse started speaking in over-generalities about the effects of it, I would probably become defensive and ask "what do they know?"
I would hope that if I was engaged in destructive behavior, like paying the abuse forward, I'd at least be able to listen, and not demonize anybody who called me out.
Since the creation of Israel and the cleansing of Palestinians was in a sense a paying forward of the Shoah, Israelis find themselves in a situation not conducive to introspection.
December 8, 2008 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Intermingling more with the non-chosen masses would help of course, but like Ellen noted, there are reasons aside from religion for isolating and savoring the trauma."
What are you even talking about? You think Jews sit cloistered with other Jews retelling stories about the Holocaust? "I lost two; how many did you lose?" You know, half the time Jews get blamed for not "intermingling" with the, ah, "non chosen masses," and the other half the time, they get blamed for intermingling too much and like, you know, "taking over."
"Suffering is an integral part of Orthodox Jewish culture, as we saw last week when the Brooklyn rabbi and his wife killed in Mumbai were loudly mourned by hundreds in Jerusalem, most if not all of whom didn't know the couple personally."
It is?! Maybe YBD should speak to this ignorant remark. Maybe we should get some black folk in here and ask them to tell us why dey always singing dah blues. Now there's some powerful suffering! Christ, sometimes they even burn down cities when the suffering jes get too "integral."
December 8, 2008 11:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry bro, the pogrom was still fresh in my mind. I could have been more delicate.
The topic of conversation was how to move from trauma to trust, and my comments apply to those whose trauma and lack of trust lead them to support inhumane government policies, to the detriment of everybody. My bad.
I'm not sure I'd equate intermingling with "taking over." One is a social activity and the other, not so much.
That reminds me. There are a half dozen Shoah films due out this Oscar season. There's certainly a whole lot of intermingling in the Academy. Remember that Palestinian black comedy 4 years ago that was disqualified from the Best Foreign Film category because Palestine isn't a country?
That's Shoah business for ya.
Let's see if the excellent documentary "Soviet Story" http://irc.lv/video?id=YrHosaqsKcUW
gets a nomination for Best Documentary. Doubtful, since it highlights what the Allies and the press have trivialized ever since: That Stalin's genocide dwarfs that of the 6 million.
Sorry to rant everybody. Hopefully Rahm Emanuel will ease my fears of an Israeli Iran strike, when he's not mopping the floors. Oh wait, he's not an Arab.
December 9, 2008 1:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for your explanation; I see your point.
Arambone writes:
I'm not sure I'd equate intermingling with "taking over." One is a social activity and the other, not so much.
Tintin: No; but many others would and do. That's the problem. Spend a little time on Jew Watch or any number of other sites of the same ilk. Makes me feel good about the ADL. Then, of course, there's all that talk about rich the Jews are, how they control the press, how they control Hollywood. I guess if an anti-Semite who had a fondness for Hitler can build and control Detroit, other people to control other industries.
That reminds me. There are a half dozen Shoah films due out this Oscar season. There's certainly a whole lot of intermingling in the Academy. Remember that Palestinian black comedy 4 years ago that was disqualified from the Best Foreign Film category because Palestine isn't a country?
That's Shoah business for ya.
Tintin: Don't know about that case, but it sounds like the wrong decision. And?
Let's see if the excellent documentary "Soviet Story" http://irc.lv/video?id=YrHosaqsKcUW
gets a nomination for Best Documentary. Doubtful, since it highlights what the Allies and the press have trivialized ever since: That Stalin's genocide dwarfs that of the 6 million.
Tintin: Hey, but why dwell on the past, right? Besides, the survivors had a country they could go back to, right? No place like home!
Sorry to rant everybody. Hopefully Rahm Emanuel will ease my fears of an Israeli Iran strike, when he's not mopping the floors. Oh wait, he's not an Arab.
Tintin: Apologies accepted.
December 9, 2008 9:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tintin, glad we're on good terms now:) I more than half expected to be written off as an anti-semite by now.
Here's a couple anecdotes to continue the conversation:
Two years ago I worked with a white guy from Texas, and we were talking about Hurricane Katrina. He mentioned the complaints about the government response by black victims, and said "hey, don't blame me." He so thoroughly identified with the Bush administration in this white vs. black confrontation that he thought a complaint about the Bush administration was a complaint against himself.
If I posited that Jews made up a disproportionate percentage of media executives at the 6 major media companies, I'd hope you wouldn't take it personally or as a complaint about you.
If I said that the banking industry, basically handed over to Jews by Christians for hundreds of years, was still run to a limited extent by Jewish individuals, I'd hope you wouldn't take that as criticism of you, unless you're a powerful banker.
I understand that some of the web sites you mentioned (I'll check them out) make overly broad assertions about all Jews, or Jews in general. I'd hope that their existence wouldn't limit you from honestly evaluating the impact of Jewish individuals on any given industry, and how a few of those powerful individuals might collaborate across industries to advance common goals.
For instance, is it not likely that bank run by a Jew has ever financed a Hollywood studio run by a Jew to make a movie about the Holocaust? What about a film that casually makes an Arab character look stupid or radical? I've never seen a Hollywood movie featuring heroic Israeli peace activists struggling against radical settlers hell bent on stealing land a magical man in the sky told them was theirs.
You write off the minimization of Stalin's vast crimes with "Hey, but why dwell on the past, right?" The same could be said for Jews hung up on the Holocaust, some of whom still cling to the belief that the rest of the world would just assume do it again. This belief sure makes it easier to support the settler movement.
Second anecdote- A few months ago I met an older Orthodox Jew who had just moved to Borough Park. We talked for at least two hours. In the course of conversation, after describing his grandparents' concentration camp ordeals, he told me a story. In Romania, where his family was from, a prominent Zionist journalist told the non-elite Jews (including this Brooklyn guy's grandparents) to get on the trains, and that they would be taken to safety. The trains headed straight to concentration camps, of course. This journalist later moved to Israel, apparently, and was killed by Eastern European Jews who recognized him when he was running for Prime Minister.
Where there a small number of Zionists who wanted the state of Israel created so badly that they were willing to sacrifice some fellow (non-elite) Jews? Unfortunately, there would seem to be some evidence for this.
And if Jews and the Allies were willing to trivialize the slaughter of millions of innocents at the hands of Stalin, might they also be willing to exaggerate the number of Jews killed by Hitler? Why not?
December 9, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tintin, glad we're on good terms now:) I more than half expected to be written off as an anti-semite by now.
Tintin: I don't do that, except when I think someone IS an anti-Semite.
Here's a couple anecdotes to continue the conversation:
Two years ago I worked with a white guy from Texas, and we were talking about Hurricane Katrina. He mentioned the complaints about the government response by black victims, and said "hey, don't blame me." He so thoroughly identified with the Bush administration in this white vs. black confrontation that he thought a complaint about the Bush administration was a complaint against himself.
Tintin: Maybe he felt guilty BECAUSE he was white. You know, guilty about the way blacks have been treated and spectacle of the wreckage in black neighborhoods. Obviously, I don't know.
If I posited that Jews made up a disproportionate percentage of media executives at the 6 major media companies, I'd hope you wouldn't take it personally or as a complaint about you.
Tintin: It would depend on the POINT of your observation.
If I said that the banking industry, basically handed over to Jews by Christians for hundreds of years, was still run to a limited extent by Jewish individuals, I'd hope you wouldn't take that as criticism of you, unless you're a powerful banker.
Tintin: Same answer.
I understand that some of the web sites you mentioned (I'll check them out) make overly broad assertions about all Jews, or Jews in general. I'd hope that their existence wouldn't limit you from honestly evaluating the impact of Jewish individuals on any given industry, and how a few of those powerful individuals might collaborate across industries to advance common goals.
Tintin: I think it would depend on a couple of things. You would have to SHOW WHAT that impact was. You would have to SHOW the collaboration. And you would have to explain the POINT of your analysis. It's unremarkable that members of the same ethnic group help each other.
For instance, is it not likely that bank run by a Jew has ever financed a Hollywood studio run by a Jew to make a movie about the Holocaust?
Tintin: Yes, but so what? I'm sure they get their financing wherever they can. They also finance movies about other topics. Again, the point seems to be missing.
What about a film that casually makes an Arab character look stupid or radical? I've never seen a Hollywood movie featuring heroic Israeli peace activists struggling against radical settlers hell bent on stealing land a magical man in the sky told them was theirs.
Tintin: What about the 1000s of movies made by Jews that feature NO Jewish characters, except maybe a nebbish or there?
You write off the minimization of Stalin's vast crimes with "Hey, but why dwell on the past, right?"
Tintin: That was sarcasm because that is what Jews are often told vis a vis the Holocaust.
The same could be said for Jews hung up on the Holocaust, some of whom still cling to the belief that the rest of the world would just assume do it again. This belief sure makes it easier to support the settler movement.
Tintin: Not getting your point exactly. The Holocaust was preceded by millennia of anti-Semitism, exclusion, oppression, and violence. After all that, the Zionists concluded that the Europeans didn't want them there. That's overly simplistic, but somewhat accurate, I think.
Second anecdote- A few months ago I met an older Orthodox Jew who had just moved to Borough Park. We talked for at least two hours. In the course of conversation, after describing his grandparents' concentration camp ordeals, he told me a story. In Romania, where his family was from, a prominent Zionist journalist told the non-elite Jews (including this Brooklyn guy's grandparents) to get on the trains, and that they would be taken to safety. The trains headed straight to concentration camps, of course. This journalist later moved to Israel, apparently, and was killed by Eastern European Jews who recognized him when he was running for Prime Minister.
Tintin: Okay. So far, so good. We'll assume he's telling the truth.
Where there a small number of Zionists who wanted the state of Israel created so badly that they were willing to sacrifice some fellow (non-elite) Jews? Unfortunately, there would seem to be some evidence for this.
Tintin: Okay. Not good at all, but...what's the point?
And if Jews and the Allies were willing to trivialize the slaughter of millions of innocents at the hands of Stalin, might they also be willing to exaggerate the number of Jews killed by Hitler? Why not?
Tintin: Who's trivializing the crimes of Stalin? That would be wrong and inaccurate as history. There's been a huge amount of research done on the Holocaust, and I'm not sure the exact number can ever be determined definitively. But if the number turns out to be 5.5 million, it wouldn't change my views on things too much. In any event, I think you have to SHOW these sorts of things. Speculation is just that.
Besides which, why is it important to YOU how many Jews died in WWII? It isn't that important to me.
December 9, 2008 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's some unsolicited advice to the "three great religions of the world" - stop fighting over who has the better imaginary friend and take a good look at that psychotic god you claim to worship. Is that really how you want to live, worshiping a god that sends plague after plague to destroy societies, a god that kills innocent children to teach his people a lesson, a god that floods an entire world because he's angry and exasperated, a god that forbids humanity to eat from the tree of knowledge, who kills his own son to teach you a lesson, who causes death to your enemies and death to you to in seeking revenge, who condones slavery and the abuse of women and children and calls upon you to hate other people who don't worship him as you think he should be worshipped or as he demands to be worshipped?
Is this really what you want? Is this how you want to the world to be; filled with revenge, abuse, death, punishment, cruelty of parents to children, incest, misogyny, prejudice, exclusion and contempt for others?
If this is what you want, then have at it, but don't involve innocent people outside of your groups in your sick, hatefilled world and acknowledge at least to yourselves that this is how you want to live, led by a psychotic, twisted, spiteful god. If this isn't what you want, then maybe you should get down on your hands and knees and wash the streets of your "holy city" with your tears of regret and sorrow and compete to see who can be the most generous, the most forgiving, the kindest, the most noble.
I suspect though, that you'll choose the former, because this is how you want to live, that you can't imagine any other way to live and your god is your excuse for your cruelty and need to hurt and humiliate other human beings.
December 9, 2008 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh please, Bev, really.
Why focus on the three great religions of the world, when there are so many OTHER people to whom you could, and should, by rights also be making the same plea?
I mean, Mao killed 30 million; Stalin another 30 million; GW freed his slaves, but after he was dead and didn't need them anymore; Jefferson never freed is slaves; our greatest president ever embarked on a war that killed 650,000 Americans to, what? keep the south from going its own way.
By contrast, it was a follower of one of the three great religions that led America "out of Egypt" toward the promised land. And a religious weaver of the oh-so-non-violent Hindu faith that led his country to freedom and inspired millions to follow a path of non-violence. And on and on.
I LIKE the substance of your plea, but the "religion is the root of all evil" shtick is old and tired...and unproven.
December 9, 2008 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, the 1,000,000 year old argument - they do it too. It's your diversion that is old and tired - I KNOW other people do these things. I'm not addressing the atrocities of Stalin, of Mao, of Hitler or any other despots, tyrants and madmen of the world who can only read literally, who cannot apply those lessons that are useful to the advancement of our species, who can think only in specificities, who think that if they aren't named, then they are exempt from thinking about the lessons. A Hindu, an American baptist isn't in charge of Jerusalem, the representatives of the three great religions of the world are. They want to wallow in the sty and they want everyone to wallow with them.
December 9, 2008 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
No here's my point...
You write: "stop fighting over who has the better imaginary friend and take a good look at that psychotic god you claim to worship. Is that really how you want to live, worshiping a god that sends plague after plague to destroy societies, a god that kills innocent children to teach his people a lesson, a god that floods an entire world because he's angry and exasperated, a god that forbids humanity to eat from the tree of knowledge, who kills his own son to teach you a lesson, who causes death to your enemies and death to you to in seeking revenge, who condones slavery and the abuse of women and children and calls upon you to hate other people who don't worship him as you think he should be worshipped or as he demands to be worshipped?"
You are clearly blaming the content, the stories, the theology of these religions for the violence issued by members of said religions. As if to say, "Well, what do you expect from people who believe that malarkey?"
My point was NOT, other people do it so it's okay, it was that your analysis is off-base, IMHO. What is the cause of massive, horrific violence? These religions? Or perhaps something else in the human psyche/biology? I think that's a fair question, given that these religions give rise both to evil and good. And some of the worst evil was perpetrated by folks who didn't believe in these religions and their tenets at all.
December 9, 2008 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shoah business. Yeah, this is gonna be great....
December 9, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
What are you implying, Bar? Jews coined the phrase, according to Norman Finkelstein.
http://www.jewcy.com/post/there_no_business_shoah_business
December 9, 2008 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me spell it out for you. This is already the kind of discussion that values cleverness over wisdom. Enjoy yourself.
December 9, 2008 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you.
December 9, 2008 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
To each his own I guess.
I find it imperative to point out that I thought your use of the phrase "national real estate development" to describe the WB to be quite clever.
Some might find such a breezy description of a horrendous reality to be less than wise.
Oh tut tut.
December 9, 2008 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
lally,
Touche -- clever is as clever does, I guess. But seriously, in all your practical wisdom regarding Israeli settlement policy, what else would you call it?
Meanwhile, sadly, nothing in this week's ensuing discussion has changed my heart and mind about it. Just another giddy celebration of provacative but simplistic assertions of nefarious racist intentions heaped upon the cartoon light unto the nations. That's entertainment!
Alas, however unlike the old days, the hits are a comparative trickle of single and double digits per post. Not even MJ can weigh in with the old magik. It's almost like we're running over the same old ground; and how we found; the same old fears; wish you were here... (guitar jam and fade).
Apologies to Roger Waters and David Gilmour.
December 11, 2008 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay. I'll bite. I seem to have a lot of energy these days. I read your article and didn't see a word about the "Shoah business." Nor a quote from Finkelstein. In fact, the point of the article seems to be that these films sugarcoat the Holocaust as an event in which "all the Jews live." Myself, I'm a little embarrassed by all the Holocaust films coming out. Tired of it, really. But the story makes the point that "the Holocaust movie" has become a genre.
I dunno. Americans seem never to tire of Westerns, even though the West was won a long time ago. It still occupies a big piece of our pscyhes and becomes a field where we work out various kinds of emotions and keep trying to figure out who we are. Maybe the same goes for Holocaust movies; I don't know. The truth is, in America, we commercialize a LOT of things that maybe we shouldn't.
December 9, 2008 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tintin, I mostly just linked to the article because the title was "No Business Like Shoah Business." It wasn't mentioned in the article because it's just an old phrase. And I wasn't trying to be clever (as Bar thought) when I used it, since I assumed most everyone had heard it before.
I didn't cite a Finkelstein quote because I couldn't find the phrase in The Holocaust Industry, so it must have been in Beyond Chutzpah where I first came across it. I think Burg's new book definitely owes a debt of gratitude to Finkelstein, who got ripped apart when he made some of the very same points Burg is making now.
Not to rip on Burg, but were he not an Israeli insider, he'd face a whole lot more heat than he will. It will be interesting to see what Alan Dershowitz, Abe Fox, and their friends will say about this book.
Like you, I'm tired of the flood of Holocaust films. I could deal with and perhaps even enjoy one a year. I'll refrain from delving into the seemingly obvious question of whether there might be the slightest Jewish angle to this phenomenon, because you seem to take any suggestion of outsized influence of Jewish individuals in any industry as casually anti-semitic.
December 9, 2008 11:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh yes, the old anti-anti-Semitic gambit.
My point was...what was YOUR point?
You seem unwilling to answer that question.
Any time you're willing to say, I'm willing to listen and will comment back to the best of my ability.
December 10, 2008 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
BarK.
I thought your comment was funny. I also thought the "Shoah business" comment was funny. Oh well. Perhaps I spend too much time appreciating the pointed wit of Israelis like the acerbic Yoel Marcus, the satirist "B.Michael" and others who use sharp humor to make their points on serious subjects as a matter of course.
You see what you want to see in these discussions.
BTW, I'm glad you appreciate my "practical wisdom regarding Israeli settlement policy" although I don't know how my wishing that Sharon would wake up is practical or wise.
I'm one of those unhelpful types who can opine about what's wrong with the current situation without having a bloody clue about what to do about it.
December 12, 2008 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink