The Nazification of Israel: Guardian op-ed by prominent European philosopher inverts Nazi terminology against Jewish state
Attempts in Europe to portray Israel as the modern incarnation of Nazi Germany were once the preserve of the extremists. Islamists, fascists and communists — each acting for reasons of their own — have employed the technique to portray the Jewish state as the epitome of political evil with which no compromise can be made and for whom total eradication is the only acceptable outcome.
It is a sign of the times, however, that the Nazification of Israel as a technique of denigration has begun to invade the mainstream. In my forthcoming book — A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel — I provide an entire section on the Nazi analogy as well as some opinion poll evidence on just how widespread its usage has become. A commentary in today’s Guardian by the prominent Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek offers a perfect illustration of how the technique is now employed.
Zizek, who has near iconic status among Europe’s liberal-Left, begins his piece with some familiar distortions about the eviction earlier this month of two Palestinian families from their homes in the east Jerusalem district of Sheikh Jarrah. Zizek presents what was in fact an eviction due to non-payment of rent as merely one instance of a broader policy of ethnic cleansing — a policy which is reminiscent, he infers, of the way the Nazis treated the Jews.
“The state of Israel is clearly engaged in a slow, invisible process, ignored by the media,” he says. “One day, the world will awake and discover that there is no more Palestinian West Bank, that the land is Palestinian-frei, and that we must accept the fact.” (My itallics)
There is plenty to be said about Israeli settlement policy and much that can be criticised. But what possessed Zizek to use, and the Guardian to allow, the term “Palestinian-frei”? It is obviously an inversion of the Nazi term Judenfrei, literally meaning free of Jews. (Linguists suggest that it is not as strong as the term Judenrein (cleansed of Jews) but its purpose and etymology is clear.)
There is no repetition of the term. It is not dwelt upon. There is no great fanfare. It is just slipped casually into the narrative in a manner which suggests that its usage is considered by both author and newspaper as normal.
And that, of course, goes to the heart of the problem. The denigration of the Jewish state in modern Europe has now become part of such an edifice of hatred and bigotry that there are no longer any taboos. It is now possible to say anything, literally anything, about Israel, however grotesque and defamatory, and to feel no shame, to invite no censure.
No other state in the world is talked about in such a manner. And yes, it is anti-Semitism. And yes, it’s back.
To read the full article, click here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/18/west-bank-israel-settlers-palestinians
Tags: Israel
August 18th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Great blog, Robin. As well as many people saying or inferring that Israel is racist, other people are asking the question. “What is the difference between Zionism and racism” asked the highly-regarded fixture of the media establishment, Jeremy Paxman, on BBC’s Newsnight this year, as if he was asking what the weather would be like tomorrow. To ask the question, one has to think it is a reasonable question to ask. One wouldn’t regard Paxman as left-wing at all. He is just a barometer of the lazy, unthinking, complacent mainstream media establishment. That is where we are today.
August 18th, 2009 at 10:38 am
One day, the world will awake and discover that there is no more a Palestinian West Bank, that the land is Palestinian-frei
Purely on the level of factually correct, land claimed as Jewish is less than 8% of the whole West Bank and that includes Jerusalem and the surrounding areas/suburbs. If Israel was intent on removing all the Palestinians from the land, it is making a singularly ineffective job of it.
The Guardian management in particularly, is pursuing an obsessive crusade against Israel. It seems to be guided by a cabal of vicious extreme and irrational lefties whose only vision in life seems to be the destruction of the Jewish Zionist state.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
It’s nice to find a place where one can oppose the Guardian tendency and not have one’s messages deleted. I’ll definitely be back, Robin.
Keep up the good work in exposing hypocrisy and antisemitism !
August 18th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I find it very dishonest of the author to make no mention of Netanyahu’s recent reference to ‘judenrein’ - in a conversation with the German foreign secretary! It is very likely, after all, that Zizek had this incident in mind.
This in no way excuses his use of Palestinian-frei, however.
“It is just slipped casually into the narrative in a manner which suggests that its usage is considered by both author and newspaper as normal.”
It does no such thing. Zizek does not speak for The Guardian - he is merely expressing his own opinions.
You talk about denigration, hatred, bigotry and ‘anti-Semitism’ (it’s not as simple as that) - but do you not find Netanyahu’s statement rather objectionable?
Robin Shepherd says in response:
Thank you for your comments. I completely disagree. Netanyahu’s use of the term Judenrein is a reasonable expression under the circumstances. The default position of many in the anti-Israel community is that no Jews should be allowed to live in the West Bank. That is in fact a policy of Judenrein and it is fair of Netanyahu to point that out.
Also, Zizek does indeed speak for himself and not the Guardian. But the Guardian has a responsibility not to provide a platform for such outrageous bigotry.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I’ve pointed up some further use of anti-semitic sleight of hand based Israel/Nazi analogies by Zizek in his CiF post here:
http://adloyada.typepad.com/adloyada/2009/08/guardian-publishes-zizeks-antisemitic-lies.html
August 18th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Some newspapers are in some financial difficulty because of peoples changing habits. I wonder if The Guardian has had a little conditional help?
August 18th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Notice how he even manages to bring Wagner’s Die Walküre into his dirty little piece. I’m surprised he didn’t also suggest that the settlers play the Ride of the Valkeries on their iPods as they ride into battle.
The fact of the matter is that it is the individuals who accuse the Jewish people of acting like Nazis who themselves bear the closest resemblance to those monsters, at least in so far as their anti-Semitism is concerned. I would say that the same is true of those individuals and organisations who help disseminate such ideas.
These are indeed dark days for the Jews of Britain. As Anthony Julius wrote a while back: “I sometimes think that Jews born in the 1940s and 1950s have been living through a golden period but that the closed season on Jews has now come to an end.”
http://tinyurl.com/amnna4
August 18th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Pretzelberg: Netanyahu’s mention of Judenrein was out of place undoubtedly. I hold no brief for him. However the furore kicked up over the use of that single word in their own newspaper should have alerted the Guardian to the fact that this kind of reference was unacceptable and they should have used the censorship powers that they demonstrate to us so arbitrarily every day to remove that blot from the article in question.
August 18th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Well, I believe Netanyahu was referring to the West Bank when he used the term Judenrein, indicating the West Bank will never be Judenrein.
He said this, keep in mind, with the background fact that all 20+ states comprising the Arab League are in point of fact very nearly (in some cases such as Libya and Syria, literally or just short of literally) Judenrein.
There’s the added fact that Sharon pulled all Israeli Jews out of Gaza, in 2005, in order to render it Judenfrei.
So, yes, it’s not the most delicate term that might be used. But, no, given the situation and historical and contemporary realities, both Judenfrei and Judenrein do reflect those realities. So, in that sense, it’s not an overly exciteable term, it’s a term that reflects the realities and, arguably, reasonably and responsibly reflects those realities (i.e. even in a diplomatic exchange at the highest levels). Nothing is being manufactured, there is no traducement being attempting via inference, via intimation.
All that taken into account, I don’t see how it’s so obvious, so apparent that Netanyahu was in the wrong.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:19 am
pretzelberg is not comparing like with like and is therefore being disingenuous. There’s a big difference between the sort of foot-in-mouth utterances of Netenyahu and the concerted attempts on CiF and elsewhere to portray Israel as a Nazi state and to blame it for all the ills in the world. This is actively encouraged on CiF, or at least little is done above or below the line to curb it.
And if Zizek and other blind haters don’t speak for the Guardian, why is CiF so eager to give them and their reprehensible opinions house room?
As Jubi says, the Guardian/CiF are very ready to censure posts which speak out against anti-Zionism which cloaks Jew hatred (whilst leaving the offensive posts in print and indeed commissioning articles like Zizek’s which reiterate the same sentiments). It seems that “Comment is Free” only if:
* You are anti-Israel (and don’t bother to distinguish or cannot distinguish between hatred of Israel’s policies and hatred of her people because they are Jews);
* You are the resident charity case, like Berchmans/Paul Titterton.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Wow looks like Seumas Milne has a new drinking buddy while Ben White is sitting in Gaza barred of alcohol and flogging his book.
…”Will write for falafel Need to sell all, Slavoj is the new star, Berchmans and Morean left me for the hairy one who stole my separation wall”…
Is this just me, but I am starting to miss the apartheid comparisons.
I seriously think the next stage will be horns and demons, ritual child killing and swine flu.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
“Netanyahu’s use of the term Judenrein is a reasonable expression under the circumstances.”
Indeed. I can think of no human being on the planet who has more right to decide the use of the term Judenrein, than the prime minister - the primary elected representative - of the nation which is itself the primary refuge of the survivors of history’s archtypical genocide and Judenreinheit attempt.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Outstanding article and insightful analysis - I cited a couple of paragraphs on CIF.
Its a pity the entire article does not appear there - have you considered submitting it for publication there?
Robin Shepherd says: Thank you for your kind words, and for your suggestion. As you can see from the Cif website it is not all that easy to get neutral or pro-Israeli pieces published. However, I might start trying again.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
“The fact of the matter is that it is the individuals who accuse the Jewish people of acting like Nazis who themselves bear the closest resemblance to those monsters, at least in so far as their anti-Semitism is concerned.”
A correct comment. The gentile historian Paul Johnson, in his History of the Jews, has commented that the surest indicator of an anti-Semite is one who cannot keep himself from feverishly mixing Jews with Nazis.
August 19th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
The Palestinian population has expanded enormously under Israeli rule, in not only Israel itself, but the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The only ethnic cleansing that can possibly be referred to in the Arab-Israeli conflict is the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Arab and Islamic lands. From almost a million before the creation of Israel, less than a few thousand remain. Some countries, such as Libya, have completed achieved “judenrein”.
August 19th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
The fact that Zizek has said that the West Bank will be Palestinian-frei is a kick in the face to all Jews who were ethnically cleansed from Arab lands, which are in most part COMPLETELY Judenfrei.
The Palestinians are the only ones complaining of genocide, when their population keeps growing!
I still can’t understand why the left-wing mindless masses fall for this gratuitous propaganda. They keep the blinkers on when it comes to “Palestinians”, but when it comes to Jews (and Christians) being ethnically cleansed, they keep VERY silent.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
The commissioning editor for Comment is Free is Brian Whitaker, who is the most anti-Israel of the Middle East editors the Guardian has had. He was the lead editor for the Guardian’s ferocious anti-Israel coverage at the time of the 2002 Defensive Shield operation, including the stories about hundreds of Palestinians being slaughtered by the IDF and their bodies buried under the ruins.
He runs a web site called Al-bab which exists to celebrate Arab culture (of which he declares himself a devotee) and is a portal to English language Arab web sites. For years, it was subsidised by the Bahreini govt. In his previous ME Editor role Whitaker commissioned the article by Faisal Bodi which celebrated “martyr bombers” two weeks before 9/11. In 2004 he also ran a piece by Osama Bin Laden. His reporting of all Israeli issues was always full of strongly anti-Israel language.
Yes, he might run the odd one or two pro-Israel or neutral answers, each of which will be drowned out by both ferocious individual responses and the huge number of pro-Arab pro-Islamists CiF pieces he commissions.
Incidentally, I have made a formal complaint about the Zizek article, submitting my own blog post as evidence of its anti-semitism. I have had an email informing me the Readers’ Editor is away on holiday, after which she will consider it. So it will sit there untouched projecting its lies to the world because of course the Guardian feels it can take a holiday from responding to complaints about racist bias in their articles.
August 19th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Nannette, that sort of hard left world view is exactly what Orwell satirised so brilliantly in “1984″.
A tiny cadre of the privileged controls money & power and makes the decisions on the party line. That’s the reality of “democratic centralism”.
The party faithful are required to know all the lines and dutifully regurgitate them on demand. This saves them of course from the tedium of the least tinge of uncertainty let alone moral ambiguity or independent thought, which is a dangerous sign of bourgeois individualism. When occasion demands they must completely switch lines at the will of the leadership (as happened to the CP in Britain when the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed, and instantly again when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and as satirized in “1984″.)
They are highly simplified for the great majority whose main role is to be the foot soldiers, selling the paper and schlepping new members. Hence “four legs good, two legs bad”. Their whole world view would fall apart if they did not have such simplicities and matching parrotspeak to cling to.
September 5th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Robin, superb blog.
I would add to Robin’s response to Pretzelberg.
The principal country of refuge for destitute and ill Holocaust survivors was Israel. And for the moment it is Netanyahu who is Israel’s democratically-chosen leader.
Who more appropriate to decide the proper use of “Judenfrei” than the democratically-chosen representative of the Jewish state, itself the destination and country of refuge of the victims themselves?
Is it not a bit of moral effrontery for the Guardian, or Pretzelberg, to attempt to tell the Jewish state how to view the Holocaust? Is it not worse for the Guardian, or Pretzelberg, to use such a flimsy excuse to attempt to tar the Jewish state with the “Nazi” label?
Nauseating.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:31 am
I see my post prompted a number of replies.
My main gripes with Netanyahu’s use of ‘judenrein’ are
a) that he was speaking English but felt it necessary to use a German word (and therefore prompt immediate Nazi connotations)
b) that he said it to the German foreign secretary (who sat there in an embarrassed silence) - as if the latter needed a reminder of his country’s horrific legacy from WWII!
@ Philo-Semite
You seem to be confusing me with somebody else.
“Is it not a bit of moral effrontery for the Guardian, or Pretzelberg, to attempt to tell the Jewish state how to view the Holocaust?”
- I am doing no such thing. Where on earth did you get that from?
“Is it not worse for the Guardian, or Pretzelberg, to use such a flimsy excuse to attempt to tar the Jewish state with the “Nazi” label?”
- I’ll have to insist you withdraw this preposterous accusation. FYI I have in the past repeatedly clicked on the report-abuse button on seeing such attempts on CiF.
Your comment is complete fiction and is indeed “Nauseating”.