Yossi Schwartz, ISL the section of the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 01.05.2022
It is amusing to see how ignorant the Zionist professors are. Their ideology simply stupefies them. Take for example Prof. Yehuda Bauer who spoke at the Vert Hotel in Jerusalem on Tuesday night at a dinner hosted by the World Jewish Congress and the Israel Council on Foreign Relations on the eve of the SECCA (Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Anti -Semitism) forum, hosted by the WJC, in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European Commission. The forum was timed to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day. His speech was a great success. The facts that these gentlemen and ladies had a special dinner on the eve of the Holocaust by itself tell us a lot about this mob.
Professor Yehuda Bauer is Professor Emeritus of History and Holocaust Studies at the Abrahams Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Bauer has written numerous articles and books on the Holocaust and on Genocide. In 1998, he was awarded the Israel Prize, the highest civilian award in Israel and in 2001, he was elected a member of the Israeli Academy of Science. Bauer has served as advisor to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research, and as senior advisor to the Swedish Government on the International Forum on Genocide Prevention.
So, you would expect him to know some elementary facts about history and about Anti-Semitism. Yet he said in the dinner: Anti-Semitism didn’t start with Christianity, but with idol worshipers, and that while Anti -Semitism endangers Jews, it also endangers society as a whole. World War II was the result of Anti-Semitic ideology. It broke out because of hatred of Jews. He said there had been no Anti-Semitism in China or India where Jews were regarded as just another group, but there was a lot of Anti-Semitism in Europe and America. Altogether, 29 million people were killed in that war, declared Bauer. [i]
Let us examine his assertions closely.
Assertion 1: Anti-Semitism didn’t start with Christianity, but with idol worshipers.
Bauer does not bother to tell us what are the sources he relied on for this claim but if we examine the Jewish Bible, we will find that the Israelites were those who were ordered to commit genocide against the non-Jews Amalek.
We read from the Torah on Purim morning that God says “I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” (Exodus 17:14), while on Shabbat Zakhor, the Shabbat before Purim, we read that God commands the Israelites: “you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” (Deut. 25:19).
We learn from the Haftarah of Shabbat Zakhor that these verses were understood in a literal sense. The Prophet Samuel orders King Saul in God’s name: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!” (I Samuel 15:3)
What was the sin of the Amaleks? According to Prof. Avi Sagi of Bar Ilan University Rabbi Yitzhak Abravanel (Portugal, Spain, Italy, 15 th century) and Rabbi Yitzhak Arama (Spain, 15 th century) say that Amalek deviated from the norms of war. They attacked a weak, defenseless bunch of slaves on the road, just for the sake of attacking them. They had nothing to gain from the attack since the Israelites had just left Egypt; it would lead neither to improving their reputation as warriors nor to significant spoils. It was an unjust war motivated by hatred.
While some Rabbis say that Amaleks do not exist anymore there have been many important rabbis who ruled that Amalek still exists and that the Jews are still commanded to remember their deeds and to destroy them. This was the opinion of Maimonides in his Sefer Hamitzvot (Positive Commandments 188-189) and in his Mishneh Torah (Laws of Kings 5:4-5). Though he mentions there the tradition about Sanheriv mixing up the nations, he clearly does not apply it to Amalek i.e. they still exist and they must be remembered and blotted out. This was also the opinion of Rabbi Pinhass Halevi of Barcelona in his Sefer Hahinukh (13 th century). He says that “every Jewish male has the obligation to kill them and to destroy them from the world if they have the power to do so, in every place at every time, if perhaps he finds one of their descendants”.
Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik (d. 1993), Rabbi Irving Greenberg, and Rabbi Yitzhak Arieli say that anyone who hates the Jewish people is from the seed of Amalek. Thus, Rabbi Soloveitchik identifies the Nazis, the Soviets, Nasser and the Mufti as descendants of Amalek (Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, The Jewish Way , New York, 1988, pp. 232-234).
“Given the ongoing Middle East conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as the surrounding Arab nation-states, and this seemingly intractable sixty-nine-year confrontation, it should not be at all surprising that, among certain traditionally-observant and traditionally-thinking and traditionally-reading Jewish circles, today’s Palestinians are the living descendants of the Hebrew Bible’s original Amalekites, evil personified, and worthy of extermination and annihilation. Nor, given the complexities of the political, social, economic, military, and religious issues involved in Middle Eastern realities, is it at all surprising that this most recent understanding of Amalek has surfaced and remains current.” [ii]
Thus, the first assertion does not hold water.
Assertion 2: World War II was the result of Anti- Semitic ideology
Professor Yehuda Bauer must live in a world of his imagination detached from history. WWII was the continuation of WWI a war to re-divide colonies, markets, raw materials, cheap labor, and strategic locations. To turn it into a war of pro and Anti -Semitic ideology you must believe that one camp (USA, England, USSR) was Philo-Semitic while Nazi Germany, Italian Fascism and Japan were Anti-Semites which obviously is not the case as Bauer himself said: “but there was a lot of Anti-Semitism in Europe and America“.
Finally, how did professor Bauer reach the conclusion that altogether, 29 million people were killed in that war?
A lower estimate is that 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 people died during World War II. Among the Allied powers, the U.S.S.R. suffered the greatest total number of dead: perhaps 18,000,000. An estimated 5,800,000 Poles died, which was 20 percent of Poland’s prewar population. About 298,000 Americans died. Among the Axis powers, there were about 4,200,000 German deaths and about 1,972,000 Japanese deaths. [iii]
Battle Deaths: 15,000,000
Battle Wounded: 25,000,000
Civilian Deaths: 45,000,000
*Worldwide casualty estimates vary widely in several sources. The number of civilian deaths in China alone might well be more than 50,000,000. [iv]
Thus, the entire speech is nonsense and an insult to people who want to know the facts.
So let us examine another younger Zionist philosopher the American political philosopher Michael Walzer who in 1967 while opposing US involvement in Vietnam defended Israel’s war against the Arab states
Suddenly, as he wrote in 2017 in the Fathom Journal, “I was also speaking in defense of the Israeli preemptive strike against Egypt.”
He said that his audiences were often hostile, and that both pacifists and hawks demanded to know how he could reconcile fierce opposition to one war while supporting another.
“I had to explain the politics of distinction: wars are just and unjust,” he wrote. “That moment was the origin of my book Just and Unjust Wars, published 10 years later.”
So, the question is what are the criteria for Just War?
Instead of reply we are told: We must stand together against BDS and all forms of anti-Semitism he says. Walzer is active in a group of left-wing professors fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on campuses called The Third Narrative. While supposedly fiercely critical of the settlements and the “occupation,” this group actively pushes back against various BDS initiatives across the country. Walzer rejected the notion that being Left and a Zionist is a dying breed in the US, and said that, “in an odd way, the Ukrainian war is going to help us.”
The Ukrainian fight against the Russians, he said, is the paragon of a “just war.”
The Ukrainians, he explained, “are fighting an unprovoked attack, defending themselves. There is a line from [military theorist Carl von] Clausewitz that says every invader would like to March unopposed into the other country; it is the people who resist the invasion who start the war. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin thought there would not be much resistance.” The Ukrainians, he said, “proved that the Russian war was one of aggression by resisting it, by fighting, by risking their lives for their country’s freedom.”
So how does that help left-wing Zionists defending Israel on often hostile US campuses?
“Because Ukraine is the nation-state of the Ukrainian people, with a 20% [Russian] minority, and Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, with a 20% [Arab] minority inside the Green Line. They are very similar, and if you realize the importance of Ukrainian nationhood, I think it is much easier to realize the value of Jewish nationhood.”
Really?
Should left winger support the South of the US that declared the confederation to be the nation state of the white slave owners? By 1860, the final census taken before the American Civil War, there were 6,184,477 white folk and four million slaves in the South[v] thus the black slaves were a minority. What about South Africa that the white settler-colonialists declared as their nation state? According to the logic of her professor Walzer the whites had the right to a nation state based on the oppression of the blacks.
Thus, the artificial similarity of Israel with the Ukraine does not hold water. Israel before 1967 was a society of settler-colonialists oppressing the Palestinians citizens of Israel that lived under a military rule until 1996 while Egypt and the other Arab states were semi-colonies. Russia is an imperialist state while Ukraine is not an imperialist state.
Professors said that the reactionary Bismarck who was served by the professors “I buy a thousand in a mark“. What is remarkable about the Russian imperialist war is the similarity of state terrorism and propaganda like Israel. As a matter of fact, the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians encourages the Palestinian struggle. Yesterday two-armed guard in a settlement in the West Bank were killed by Palestinian guerrilla fighters
Considering the poor quality of the Zionist’s arguments while the Zionist state is committing war crimes it is not surprising that growing number of trade unions student unions and student newspapers join the BDS.
“Trade unions and national trade union federations across the world have voted to endorse BDS or BDS initiatives. This includes: COSATU in South Africa, CUT in Brazil, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the UK Trade Union Congress, Belgian federation ABVV/FGTB, French unions CNT and CGT Educ’Action, the LO federation in Norway, the Canadian Postal Workers Union, among many others. Dozens of unions and federations across the Arab World support the BDS movement including the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Jordan (FITU-J), the Egyptian Medical Syndicate, Moroccan Workers Union (UMT), amongst others. The Public Services International and several other international federations have also adopted BDS” [vi]
“For years, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard University, has declined to back the movement to boycott Israel, even as it expressed concern about Israeli policies and supported the free-speech rights of Harvard student groups that did advocate for a boycott. That changed Friday, when the newspaper published an unsigned editorial offering a full-throated endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, in a potent symbol of a changing campus climate around Israel” [vii]
“Melbourne University Student Union passed a resolution 10 votes to six on Friday that accused Israel of ongoing ethnic cleansing, apartheid, attacks on innocent worshipers and described Zionism as a “racist, colonial ideology.” [viii]
“Following an appeal signed by 400 academics from all South African universities, including 9 university heads, the Senate of the University of Johannesburg (UJ) voted to allow its formal relationship with Ben-Gurion University (BGU) in Israel to lapse on 1 April 2011. The appeal was also supported by main trade unions in the country, including COSATU and NEHAWU” [ix]
“The academic boycott is supported by academic associations across the world, including the American Studies Association, National Women’s Studies Association, African Literature Association, among others. The Teachers Union of Ireland, Federation of Francophone Students in Belgium (FEF), the National Union of Students (NUS) in the UK, Qatar University Student Representative Board (QUSRB), the graduate student workers unions at New York University and University of Massachusetts Amherst, among others, have endorsed the academic boycott of Israel” [x]
Down with the Zionist apartheid state!
For a Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-705385
[ii] https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/8/9/196/
[iii] https://www.britannica.com/question/How-many-people-died-during-World-War-II
[iv] https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war
[v] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1010169/black-and-slave-population-us-1790-1880/
[vi] https://bdsmovement.net/trade-union-solidarity
[vii] https://www.timesofisrael.com/harvard-student-paper-endorses-bds-movement-while-rejecting-antisemitism/
[viii] https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-705547
[ix] https://bdsmovement.net/academic-boycot
[x] Ibid