Jews and Power (Jewish Encounters)
by Ruth R. Wisse
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ruth R. WisseEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-28
ISBN: 0805242244
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Schocken
Book Reviews of Jews and Power (Jewish Encounters)
Book Review: Identifies and analyses the central issues and factors
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the BEST books out there on the subject of anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews or the Jewish State).
She takes us on a discussion from the loss of Jewish sovereignty in 70 CE, when Roman emperor Titus crushed the Jewish revolt against Roman rule in Israel, burning the Temple in Jerusalem and sending many Jews into Exile, up until the failure of the doomed Oslo Accords leading to the war of terror against the Israeli people launched by Yasser Arafat in 2000,
On note of hope and courage she notes that to her the re-establishment of Israel only three years after the destruction of European Jewry is an even more hopeful augury than the dove's appearance before Noah with an olive leaf after the flood. She rightly pours scorn on modern day would be Hitler, Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
who branded Israel as ' a rotten dried tree that will eliminated by one storm', reminding us that Jews have lived to see the downfall of every Haman and Hitler.
In fact most likely Ahmadinejad is foretelling the fate of his own decayed society.
The basis of her essay is the dual discussion on Jewish survival and the realization that no other people developed a similar long-term culture of accommodation to defeat.
In response to Russian pogroms of 1881 one of the early modern Zionist thinkers Leon Pinkser issued a call for Jewish self-emancipation, arguing that exile had turned the Jews into a nation of zombies. Hebrew poet Haim Nahman Bialik rebuked has fellow Jews for passively allowing themselves to be slaughtered urging self-liberation for Jews to determine their own future.
Wisse points out how since ancient times the Jews have always been vulnerable to betrayal by the least satisfied people in their own, seeking revenge on their people for real and imagined slights. From the collaborators who worked with the Greeks and Romans during the occupation of Israel by their Empires, to the Jew-hating Jews oif today with their bottomless hatred of Israel and it's people, and their efforts to do Israel harm and encourage it's genocidal foes like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian and Syrian regimes.
In a detailed study of the Diaspora, the author notes how
one of the most unfortunate developments in the exile was the loathsome moser (informer), the negative counterpart of the shtadlan (intercessor) who intercedes with the authorities who speak for the Jews to those in power. "The Jewish community was always hostage to it's unhappiest members who stood to gain by serving the powers that be."
On the other hand the persecution of the Jews into the 19th century helped to galvanize the Jewish people into a coherent national movement that would restore the Jews to sovereignty in their own ancient homeland.
Moses Leib Lilienblum, once a secular socialist, became a passionate Zionist as a result of the 19981-82 pogroms in Russia.
Similarly Theodore Herzl was a committed assimilationist before covering the Dreyfuss Affair in France in 1894, after which he became the father of modern day Zionism.
Wisse's study of how this Jew-hatred led to Jews becoming committed Zionists resonates with me.
The 2000 war of terror ('intifada') of 2000, accompanied by the massive growth of the vicious anti-Israel industry of the Muslim world and international left, who control the media, universities and United Nations, among other things, turned me into a committed Jew and passionate Zionist. Especially the violent and venomous international hate fest against Jews and Israel of 2001 in Durban, ironically in Orwellian fashion called the 'UN Conference Against Racism', and a campaign by Jewish mosers to outdo their gentile counterparts in hatred of Israel and demands for that country's destruction.
Part Three of this book is about the Jew's Return to Zion and the struggle of Israel to survive against an Arab world obsessed with her destruction. She illustrates how "Although European anti-Semites blamed Jews for their existing social crises such as poverty, unemployment and loss of spiritual direction, Arab leaders created the crisis for which they were blamed' in rejecting partition and refusing the resettlement of Palestinian refugees they deliberately sustained the refugee crisis because Israel could be charged for fake moral repsonsibility of the refugee crisis as long as the crisis could be prolonged.
Contrary to the image the world has been brainwashed with by the international left and Muslim power networks, the entire conflict has in reality revolved around Israeli efforts at accommodation against Arab aggression and expansionism.
Therefore when Golda Meir told Sadat that "We can forgive you for killing our sons, But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours" she was admitted an unhealthy attitude of ceaseless efforts at accommodation against a relentless aggressor , whose political traditions interpreted her confession as a weakness.
The author correctly tells us that she would have demonstrated greater understanding of her Arab adversary, as well as mutual decency. tolerance and realism of both sides (instead of all decency, tolerance and accommodation coming form the Israeli side as it has for the last 60 years) if she had told him "WE Jews are here to stay."
The Arabs Soviet tutors supplied the Arabs with far more potent ideological language than the right wing type anti-Semitic language used by Hitler's mufti, when they taught them to invert reality and accuse Israel of 'racism' and 'imperialism'.
The author explains how the Palestinians have built a national identity based PURELY on bottomless hatred of another people and obsessive determination to destroy them rather than any cultural traditions of their own.
Their language, culture and traditions are identical to that of other Arabs in the Middle East, unlike real national minorities like the Kurds and Maronites. Only hatred of Israel has been used to forge a national identity.
What if, the author asks if the Palestinians had concentrated on "how to 'improve education, health care, governance, trade and commerce, and public works- had they prepared to build their own society rather than destroying someone else's".
The author also does not spare condemnation of the perfidy of the United Nations when she points out that 'In the 1960s the Arab-Soviet bloc used opposition to Israel to take political control over the world organization for which America was footing the bill. Resolutions attacking Israel's "racism" and "discrimination" routinely divert attention away from their sponsors, who unlike Israel,institutionalize racism and discrimination (including against women) in their countries. Professional observers have buy now provided ample evidence of how the Arab war against Israel "debased the UN, sullied it's charter, perverted the meaning of human rights and ransacked international law and it's highest court".
It all boils down to the fact as the author tells us that a genuine chance of peace depend on how soon Israel is accorded the rightful place it has earned in the family of nations.
Violence continues for the same reason it took place in 1920 and before.
The refusal of the Arabs to accept the presence of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland.
And peace will only come when the Arabs and their backers realize once and for all that the Jews of Israel are there to stay.
Summary of Jews and Power (Jewish Encounters)
Taking in everything from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords, Ruth Wisse offers a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power. Traditional Jews believed that upholding the covenant with God constituted a treaty with the most powerful force in the universe; this later transformed itself into a belief that, unburdened by a military, Jews could pursue their religious mission on a purely moral plain. Wisse, an eminent professor of comparative literature at Harvard, demonstrates how Jewish political weakness both increased Jewish vulnerability to scapegoating and violence, and unwittingly goaded power-seeking nations to cast Jews as perpetual targets.Although she sees hope in the State of Israel, Wisse questions the way the strategies of the Diaspora continue to drive the Jewish state, echoing Abba Eban's observation that Israel was the only nation to win a war and then sue for peace. And then she draws a persuasive parallel to the United States today, as it struggles to figure out how a liberal democracy can face off against enemies who view Western morality as weakness. This deeply provocative book is sure to stir debate both inside and outside the Jewish world. Wisse's narrative offers a compelling argument that is rich with history and bristling with contemporary urgency.
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