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Victimhood and Jewish identityBy Gilad Atzmon* 4 April 2005Gilad Atzmon looks at the role of victimhood in contemporary Jewish identity. He argues that victimhood "is the latest and most sophisticated form of Jewish supremacist segregation", one that serves as a tool to make "the 'Other', the Western Gentile, feel unwelcome or inferior in any political discourse to do with Palestine" and provides Israel with "an ideological and moral body armour". I am sure that some of you are familiar with the old Jewish joke: what does it take for a Jewish mother to change a light bulb? Then, impersonating a Jewish matriarch, applying a high-pitch East European accent, you spit it out: "No vorries I vill sit in the dark." As it seems, the Jewish mother embodies the essence of modern Jewish existence. To be a Jew is to sit in the dark, to be a Jew is to be a victim and to enjoy your symptoms. If we analyse this bizarre tendency in the light of Freud's pleasure principle, we might mistakenly deduce that the Jewish mother finds pleasure in inflicting pain on herself. Some may even diagnose the Jewish mother as a mythical masochistic figure. In fact, it is the other way around, The Jewish mother doesn't enjoy her own suffering at all. The joke is supposed to reveal a very different message. The Jewish mother, instead of improving her general state of being, rather than enjoying reading the Jewish Chronicle in the light, voluntarily offers to sit in the dark; she gains satisfaction initiating some remorse feeling among the "Other", whoever the "Other" is. Usually, it is her beloved kind (son) but it can as well be her partner, the neighbour, the social worker, the Swiss banker or even the United Nations. The Jewish mother will sit in the dark as long as someone there is happy to feel guilty for her sitting in the dark. To be a proper Jewish mother means to exploit the entire victim vocabulary on a daily basis. But it isn't really the Jewish mother, as it would seem that the victim mentality occupies the hard nucleus of modern Jewish identity. As we all know, many of those who call themselves Jews are anything but religious. Some are even atheists. Many of our Jewish friends are anything but Zionist (at least that's what they say). Some are even anti Zionist. But, then, once a Jew drops his victim status he becomes an ordinary boring human being. To be a Jew is to believe in the Holocaust, to be a Jew is to believe in a historical narrative constructed around endless, merciless sagas of persecution and harassment. To be a Jew is to believe that all that suffering is far from over; in fact, that a new Holocaust may be relaunched tomorrow morning, why tomorrow, today, this very minute! To be a Jew is set oneself in a state of self-imposed paranoia. Thus, to be a Jew is to believe in "us and them" rather than in just "being among others". To be a Jew is to believe that anti-Semitism is an irrational tendency intrinsically symptomatic to Gentile existence. But who are the Gentiles? The Gentiles are the human family, thus I would deduce that to be a Jew is to believe that the human family behaves irrationally, at least when it comes to Jews. But what is so appealing in being a "victim"? I assume that most people would be embarrassed at blamed for victimizing themselves or even suspected of being paranoid. Somehow, this wouldn't happen with most Jews. A Jew would be offended at the suggestion that he is victimizing himself. Moreover, an accusation such as this would be perceived by him as a clear anti-Semitic assault, not to say a form of a "Holocaust denial". When it comes to common Jewish self-perception, being a victim is not the result of an act, rather, it is a state of being. Within the contemporary Jewish world view, the Jews are the only real ultimate genuine sufferers. If this is not enough, the fact that they are "the true, real and only genuine sufferers" is now legally imposed. Merely to suspect this may result in a court case. For instance, a new historian who voices doubt about some facts connected with the Nazi Judeocide will probably find himself behind bars or just removed from his academic post. When it comes to the unique case of the Jewish family, the Jewish mother strategies are found to be very effective. Sitting in the dark "pays off". The Jewish mother maintains her absolute hegemony within the family unit. Consequently, the guilt-ridden Jewish child (no doubt the real victim) will attend medical or law school just to keep his mother happy. He will bring home the highest possible marks just to ameliorate her sitting in the dark. By the time he finally realizes that he himself had been the real victim, he his ready to join his father's business and, in any case, he is too old to rebel. By now, he himself becomes a victim and the rest of the world should feel guilty for him. But then, he is far from being happy, rather than being out there among others, he is now pushed back to the ghetto, tied for the rest of his life with a clannish knot. Funnily enough, this is sufficient to make him a neurotic character as well an astonishingly good accountant or psychoanalyst. Looking at the Jewish family unit, we see a successful operating machine: the parents volunteer to take on some insignificant suffering and, in return, the guilt-ridden young generation bring home excellent academic results. But then, this very mechanism goes far beyond the Jewish family unit or even the segregated Jewish community. In fact, Jewish Western affairs after World War II are based on the very same philosophy. This may as well be the hidden layer behind the current misleading contemporary presentation of the complementary Judaeo-Christian bond: the Judeo subject insists on being the ultimate victim and the Christian world enthusiastically endorses the opportunity to celebrate guilt. As bizarre as it may sound, in 1948, while the Israelis ethnically cleansed the Palestinian population, the "guilty" West was sitting and praising "Jewish heroism". Very much the same happened following the miraculous Israeli victory in 1967. For many years, "guilt" became the core of the European parliamentary left's blind support of Israel. As revolting as it may sound, the modern Jewish identity is a copy of the role of the Jewish matriarch while the European parliamentary left assumes the role of the guilt-ridden Jewish toddler. Take a look at contemporary British politics: on the right end of the political spectrum, we find a Christian prime minister, Mr Tony Blair, the guilty Gentile, the leader of a once-socialist institution, now publicly supporting a bourgeois, racist, nationalist, colonialist state. Michael Howard, on the very same end of the political spectrum, a secular Jew, wouldn't bother to share with us some deep spiritual Jewish insights but, instead, tells us about his Jewish grandmother, the Holocaust victim. Today I am talking about Jewish identity. In practice, I am talking about Jewish identification. I leave out Judaism, or any reference to Jewish cultural heritage. I don't even talk about the Jewish people. Instead, I ask what does it mean to be a secular Jew. I try to find out what Jewish secular people identify with when they call themselves Jews. I would argue that, as far as contemporary Jewish identity is concerned, two major ideological schools offer a clear answer. One is Zionism and the other is Jewish leftism. Let's start with the Zionist school. After the 19th century European national awakening, some Jews decided that Jewishness is actually a manifestation of nationalist aspiration. Although European nationalism was intrinsically associated the patriotic subject with the land he dwelled on, Jewish nationalism was based on a mere fantasy. It associated the Jew with the land he was supposed to dwell on. The early Zionists' popular slogan at the time was: "a land with no people for a people with no land". While many historians justifiably ridicule the above-statement and have proved beyond doubt that the land of Palestine was in fact overwhelmingly occupied with indigenous Palestinians, the main problem with the slogan has to do with the fact that a people without a land can never establish a genuine national movement. Zionism was, and still is, as groundless as, let's say, an Italian claim for ownership of the land of England just because England was once a part of the Roman Empire. Jewish nationalism was always an ideologically baseless utopian belief. It is an invalid nationalist movement simply because the Jews are not a nation. And yet, Zionism was a sign of a change: the Jews decided willingly to change their doomed fate, to become a "normal" people, a people who love their land, a people who engage with nature and live in nature. The Zionist Jew desired to redeem himself from the state of victimhood. The Zionist Jew desired to take his own fate in his hands. This reformed perception held until 1967. Until then, the Zionist Jew regarded himself as a proud self-sufficient colonialist. Until, 1967, the Holocaust had merely an instrumental role; it was something to capitalize on rather than a major tragic event. If anything, for my parents' generation, the Holocaust was something to be ashamed of. The image of "cattle led to the slaughter" filled them, and even my generation, with contempt towards anything that smelled like Diaspora. Tom Segev was very articulate in conveying the story of Israelis' disdain towards the "Seventh Million" (those who managed to survive the war). Needless to say, the current state of Israel clearly reveals how unsuccessful Zionism proved to be. The transformation of the Jewish people into a modern Western, civilized society failed completely. The Israelis are far from being attached to the land which they apparently shred to pieces with apartheid walls. Not only that Israelis didn't manage to establish a civilized society, it is hard to think of any current modern state as morally corrupted and racially motivated as the Jewish state. And yet, Zionism was an attempt to transform the Jew into a dignified being, A strong, blond athletic productive subject, rather than one who prefers voluntarily to sit in the dark. The alternative Jewish ideological answer to Zionism is provided by the Jewish left thinkers. On the surface, it sounds poetic and peaceful but in practice it is at least as devastating as Zionism. The left Jew would roll his eyes up and state with sheer defeat that "it was Hitler rather than Moses who made him into a Jew". Basically, it is the "Other", the Gentile, who makes the Jew into a Jew. As funny as it may sound, most of these righteous Jews would argue in the same breath that the Palestinians should enjoy the right of "self-determination". I do ask myself how is it that, when it comes to themselves, these left Jews are far from being generous. Somehow, so it appears, the left Jew is reluctant to self-determine himself. Apparently, for the left Jew, World War II has never ended. Day by day, they are all defeated by Hitler, or more generally speaking, by the Gentile world. But isn't this an absurd proposition? In fact, there is no Gentile world. A Gentile world is in itself a Jewish invention. Gentile people do not identify themselves as "non-Jews"; there are far more interesting predicates to embrace. Hence, we can clearly see that Jewish leftism is in itself a form of "sitting in the dark"; it is an exercise in victim practice. In short, like the Jewish mother, they are sitting in the dark (probably not too far from their mothers). They are self-appointed victims. Thus, we must admit then that it is not Hitler who turned them into Jews. They are Jews because, enthusiastically, they endorse the Jewish identity. They prefer to be victims. It is their own preference not to change the light bulb. But then why is it necessary? Surely, the Jewish leftist knows that these days he can express his calling without presenting any ethnic traces. We are supposed to live in a multicultural society. Your voice is supposed to be heard regardless of your ethnic origin, your religious background, your sexual preferences or any other social grouping. I would argue that the voluntary tendency to sit in the dark is the new Jewish religion. It is a sophisticated ideological mechanism that makes the "Other", the Western Gentile, feel unwelcome or inferior in any political discourse to do with Palestine. In practice, it locates the humanist Jews in the centre of Palestinian affairs. But then, in practice, it serves Israel with an ideological and moral body armour. As soon as those humanist Jews become recognized as a genuine voice for Palestine, we learn from them that a one-state solution is utterly impractical. Somehow, for them, the Jewish cause is slightly more important than the Palestinian one. At the end of the day, the Jews really suffered. The victim strategy is the latest and most sophisticated form of Jewish supremacist segregation. Not only that I surround myself with walls, I even make the other feel guilty for my building those walls around myself (by the way, I don't know whether you are aware of the bizarre fact that, within the Israeli discourse, it is the Palestinians that are blamed for the Jews building the apartheid wall). You can take from the Jew his religion, you can take away the chicken soup, you can even put seafood on his plate, but once you take away the victim tendency, the Jew isn't a Jew anymore. Once you lift the colossal threat of Hitler, then the Jew becomes an ordinary boring human being. Let me tell you, this is not going to happen. *Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli musician and writer, and a proponent of a secular and democratic one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which the two peoples live in one state as citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. 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