Paul J. Balles considers former Israeli legislator and cabinet member Avrum Burg’s thought-provoking views on Jewish identity and Israeli psychology, arguing that, if American Jews and Israelis could learn from Burg, “there might be a chance for an enduring peace in the Middle East”.
"Avrum Burg is the scion of one of Israel's founding families,” writes Tony Karon in Time magazine (1 January 2009) “His father was the deputy speaker of the first Knesset, and Burg himself later became speaker of the legislature, and a member of Israel's cabinet."
Karon adds, "In his new book The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from Its Ashes, he argues that an obsession with an exaggerated sense of threats to Jewish survival cultivated by Israel and its most fervent backers actually impedes the realization of Judaism's higher goals."
The following extracts of Avrum Burg's thinking came from an interview with Karon. While his humanitarian conscience held sway during that interview, his comments are thought provoking and raise further questions:
Avrum Burg: "The question facing our generation will be: can the Jewish people survive without an external enemy? Give me war, give me pogrom, give me disaster, and I know what to do; give me peace and tranquillity, and I'm lost."
As brilliant as leading Jewish thinkers have been, why have they failed to analyse and correct this? Certainly psychoanalysts and psychologists like Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, Otto Rank and Abraham Maslow might have done more to reconcile the mental anguish of the “Jewish people”.
AB: "... the Jewish people did not continue in order to continue, or survive in order to survive. A cat can survive – so it's a circumcised cat, so what? It's not about survival; survival for what?"
Thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Albert Einstein, Edmund Husserl, Sir Karl Popper, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Spinoza might have helped resolve an issue like this if they hadn't been estranged from Judaism.
AB: "Even in the Holocaust, the lesson is "Never Again." But this doesn't mean just never again can genocide be allowed to happen to the Jews, but never again can genocide be allowed to happen to any human being."
This seems such an obvious lesson that the approval rate among Israelis of the genocide in Gaza seems unfathomable.
AB: "... when I hear someone like Benjamin Netanyahu ... say of [Iran's President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, 'It's 1938 all over again' ... and compare Ahmadinejad to Hitler, don't you diminish Hitler's significance?"
Yes, but the new prime minister is selling a pre-emptive war.
AB: "I do not think that Yad Vashem should be the showcase or the gateway through which everybody should first encounter Israel... This is not the way to baptize people into an encounter with Judaism... It's an emotional blackmail that says to people, ‘this is what we have experienced, so shut up and help us’..."
The baptismal isn’t with Judaism but with Zionist propaganda. Despite the fact that the differences have been blurred, that has been an essential ingredient in establishing a nation state that sweeps “occupation”, apartheid and land-theft under the carpet.
AB: "Why is my brother or sister in America a great poet or composer or physician whose achievements raise up all of humanity, and I who live here on my sword became a world expert on arms and swords?"
This has been the wise Jew’s argument against Zionism since the earliest migrations of Jewish terrorists to Israel.
AB: "Many people say to me, "What about Gaza? Don't have so much compassion for them, don't tell the Israelis to be nice there, tell [the Palestinians] to be nice there. And I say Gaza is a nightmare, and it's a stain on my conscience."
Why don’t those who criticize you for having “compassion” also experience stains on their consciences?
If both American Jews and Israelis could learn from a voice like Burg's, there might be a chance for an enduring peace in the Middle East.
Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.
