AT PENPOINT
There is a quality supposedly peculiar to Jews, a kind of supreme self-confidence or audacity, chutzpah, best illustrated by the joke about the Jew who murdered his parents, got caught, was tried and convicted, then appealed to the court for mercy while he was being sentenced. Because he was an orphan.
Something of that chutzpah was in the outlook of Theodor Herzl when, back towards the end of the 19th century, he raised the demand of a homeland for the Jews, for an Israel. It should be remembered that this was the time when pogroms of slaughter against Jews occurred in the Russian Empire, which then included parts of modern Poland. So with the chutzpah which White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) America had imposed upon its Jewish migrants, the Zionists demanded a separate homeland.
The demand was for Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews. The only problem was that it was now occupied by people. These people were Arab and Muslim, though some at least were descended from the Jews of yore. However, the project was not just really to restore a Jewish homeland, so much as to establish a Zionist state, one in which Jewish-ness was not really a religious identity, so much as an ethnic one, while those who had that identity were free to follow a socialistic, even atheistic, kind of ideology.
Some Jews who took their religious identity seriously, were against this. Therefore, you have the phenomenon of anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews. But make no mistake; a lot of Orthodox Jews are ardent Zionists, and though a minority, have achieved two things: a lot of observance of the Jewish law, particularly the Sabbath, in Israel; and sustaining Benjamin Netanyahu in government.
However, the Jews underwent what might be called the Mother of all Pogroms, the Holocaust. The collective guilt of the victors of World War II led to the British (which then occupied Palestine) to leave it in 1948, so that Israel could be formed. One cannot evade the element of chutzpah. Nazis had committed a truly horrible crime.
Holocaust denial has been made a crime. That is almost as funny as the bad history that denial represents. True, the six million might be something of an exaggeration, but no figure goes below 4.5 million. That’s still a lot of people to kill. Part of the problem which historians are still trying to sort out is that the Nazis din’t just kill Jews. They also killed Poles, gypsies, communists, the mentally retarded, homosexuals, and many others. Each of these categories included Jews, and as a result, accounting has got fearfully mixed up.
However, Holocaust denial is a crime, part from being something that would send any group of professional historians roaring with derisive laughter. It should be noted that blasphemy against the Holy Prophet (PBUH) is supposedly protected by the principle of freedom of speech, as is desecration of the Quran, but Holocaust denial is not.
Be that as it may, Jews are now implying that because the Holocaust happened to them, they should have the right to massacre someone else. That implies that the crimes of the Nazis are to be wreaked on the Palestinians. That sounds like chutzpah at its most intense.
Jews have historically been attracted to the learned professions. One of the most prominent Jews of the twelfth century, Maimonidies, was Salahuddin’s physician. They could not be judges, except in their own personal-law courts, because they did not accept the Sharia as true. However, they ultimately became lawyers under Western governments. Rufus Isaacs, of the UK, became Marquess of Reading and was an early 20th century Viceroy of India. Justice Abraham Fortas became a judge of the US Supreme Court in the middle of the 20th century.
However, traditional affinity to the law does not seem to be helping Israel. Previously, the Israeli legal strategy seems to have been to avoid the case going to court. This is a common strategy among those who fear not just that they will lose the case, but that the court may pass interim orders with an adverse effect. That is exactly what is happening to Israel at the moment.
The problem is that Jews were pretty secure before the Holocaust. Yet it happened. By its brutality in Gaza, it is merely ensuring that a class is produced which will remember Israelis as those who killed so many of them. They have killed so many Gazans that they will now have to kill them all. Lest the survivors take vengeance.
It may seem ironic that Israel does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, for its predecessor, the International Military Tribunal, which tried the surviving Nazi leadership at Nuremberg, was the first to try for genocide, and was the first judicial notice taken of the Holocaust. However, it does not, because then it would lay open to prosecution members of the Israeli Defence Forces for prosecution for war crimes against Palestinians. However, the ICC has issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. It has also issued warrants for the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Shinwar, and the Hamas military chief, Muhammad Deif. Netanyahu’s reaction was interesting: he was upset with the USA for not sanctioning the ICC, for not recognising the right of a free society to defend itself. Another words, he is asking for a blanket approval, even of war crimes.
The USA does not approve of the ICC, and does not recognise its jurisdiction over its citizens. It is not that U forces are incapable of war crimes, but the USA argues that it has its own mechanisms of institutional accountability, best illustrated by the court martial of Lt William Calley for the 1968 My Lai massacre. It may be mentioned that he ended up doing just three years house arrest for the massacre of between 357 and 504 unarmed civilians. It should be noted that no arrest has been made. The Hamas leaders for whose arrests warrants have been issued have not surrendered either, but this is the first time any forum has taken notice of Israeli actions. It might be remembered that Israel got away with the Sabra and Chatila massacres in 1982 without any sanction, and it perhaps thought that it would get away thus again. There is a difference of scale: between 500 and 3700 were slaughtered over three days in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, but now 37,000 have been slaughtered in Gaza over almost seven months. Perhaps worse, Israel has shown no signs of relenting.
It has already launched an attack on Gaza City, though whether this was the attack which the ICJ prohibited/ The ICJ also ordered that its investigators should get access to the alleged sites of war crimes. Again, this came in the shape of an interim order. It seems that the weight of the Western powers is also being placed to stop an operation.
It seems that Western powers, especially the USA, have missed the point in the face of the bewildering campus protests against Israel. One university, Toronto Tech, has even caved in. Three European countries, Norway, Pain and Ireland, have recognized Palestine. While it seems that drops of water are eroding the stone, in view of the US government’s obduracy, how many generations will this take?
The latest Israeli plan seems to be to replace Hamas with some other group, such as the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank. But will this gain Israel security?
The problem is that Jews were pretty secure before the Holocaust. Yet it happened. By its brutality in Gaza, it is merely ensuring that a class is produced which will remember Israelis as those who killed so many of them. They have killed so many Gazans that they will now have to kill them all. Lest the survivors take vengeance.
