OS FILISTEUS E ISRAEL

OS INSISTENTES ECOS DA HISTÓRIA

(Via O Insurgente)

Filisteus e Israel
The contemporary fight against anti-semitism

O Times Online publicou no dia 14 deste mês um artigo, com este título, de grande interesse, sobre a questão do boicote contra as universidades de Israel, boicote votado por uma minúscula minoria dos universitários britânicos. Minúscula, sim. Constituida por elementos da esquerda bronca e dura, sim. Mas o boicote foi decidido em nome dos muitos milhares de sócios que não se deram ao trabalho de assistir à reunião. O artigo, escrito por dois professores de eminência incontestável, discute o que é o anti-semitismo hoje. Recomenda-se a leitura e recomenda-se também a cuidadosa leitura dos mais de cem comentários. Os comentários em jornais britânicos ‘de qualidade’ como o Telegraph e o Times são bastante elucidativos, não só pelas opiniões registadas.

O meu propósito aqui não é de tratar da questão substantiva. Já o tenho feito em outros lugares. Queria hoje falar na reflexão que me veio ao espírito ao ler esta matéria.

O que mais choca é o baixo nível tanto de raciocínio como de conhecimento histórico, sem falar dos erros gramaticais e ortográficos, de alguns dos leitores. Antigamente quem lia estes jornais era suposto ter um certo nível de cultura. Hoje, lamentavelmente, muitos são filisteus. Filisteus! Eis o ponto a que queria chegar. Esta expressão, antes bastante utilizada para classificar o vulgar, o inculto, o bruto e o ignorante, é menos empregada hoje. Talvez porque a vulgaridade, a incultura, a brutalidade e a ignorância são características tão generalizadas na nossa sociedade que deixaram de ser notadas e tornaram-se aceites. Mas, afinal, donde vem a expressão ‘filisteu’?

Quem conhece alguma coisa do Antigo Testamento sabe que houve um povo, supostamente vindo dos lados da Creta, que invadiu a costa do território que mais tarde veio a chamar-se Palestina, e entrou numa feroz luta contra os israelitas. A Bíblia descreve este povo, os filisteus, como rude, inculto e violento. Mais tarde os gregos transformaram o nome da terra invadida pelos filisteus em Palestina e os filisteus em palestinianos.
A má fama, porém, persistiu ao longo dos séculos e dos milénios. A palavra filisteu ficou no nosso vocabulãrio como ficaram vândalo, ou huno. Foi ressuscitada em meados do século XIX nas ‘culture wars’ da altura, principalmente entre universitários alemães. Nessa altura havia quem criticasse fervorosamente o avanço da ciência e da indústria como inimigas da alta cultura. A classe média em ascensão, a detestada burguesia, era vista como porta-bandeira da ofensiva anti-cultura. Empenhando-se na ciência e na indústria, os burgueses eram vistos como filisteus. A etiqueta ficou e durante a maior parte do século vinte, no mundo anglo-americano especialmente, os intelectuais, da esquerda ou da direita, habituaram-se a classificar os anti-intelectuais como filisteus.

Hoje o círculo fechou-se. Ligamos a televisão e lá estão eles, os filisteus de novo empenhados em pilhar e destruir. E os seus defensores, que não percebem nada do assunto, aí estão também alegremente a aplaudir.

O ANTI-SEMITISMO COMO DOENÇA DA ALMA

VINTE CONSIDERAÇÕES SOBRE UMA DOENÇA DA ALMA

O anti-semitismo como defeito moral e intelectual

TWENTY PROPOSITIONS ABOUT A DISEASE OF THE SOUL

Anti-semitism as a moral and intellectual deficiency

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Publicado primeiro em O INSURGENTE do 25 de Abril de 2007

First published in O INSURGENTE on April 25, 2007

Now available here with English translation in Portolani Special

ANALISAR O ANTI-SEMITISMO

A GUERRA CONTRA OS JUDEUS

Este é o 5º artigo numa série em que Melanie Phillips analisa a natureza do anti-semitismo. A sua leitura é recomendada. Andam por aí muitos cripto-antisemitas que, com argumentos convolutos, justificam o injustificável. Um dos sinais infalíveis é a notável preferência para criticar os israelitas e ignorar os crimes dos palestinianos. E sempre, sempre muitas mentiras sobre Israel, desde a invenção dum 'apartheid israelita' e esconder que há árabes no parlamento de Israel e combatentes árabes nas suas forças armadas até a repetição dos delírios de um Koestler sobre os Ashkenazis. Este último assunto será tratado num próximo texto.

THE WAR AGAINST THE JEWS (5)

The most contentious element of the argument against the academic boycott of Israel by Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz in today’s Times (read the longer version here) is that the boycott is ‘antisemitic’. While I agree that the boycott is indeed an example of Jew-hatred, some of their arguments struck me as rather weak and thus counter-productive. For example, just because boycotts of Jews have indeed been part and parcel of historic antisemitism does not itself prove —as the authors suggest — that this one must therefore be antisemitic, particularly since it is targeted at Israelis rather than Jews as a racial or ethnic group. Indeed, the problem with using the word ‘antisemitism’ is precisely that it is associated with prejudice against Jews specifically as a religious or racial group. So people do not accept that the malice against Israel is anti-Jew — or, indeed, that it is malice at all —because it is against a state which, although Jewish, does not represent all Jews. Using the word ‘antisemitism’ enables them to say that since anti-Israelism is thus not a prejudice against all Jews, the word is being used as a form of intellectual intimidation to close down legitimate criticism of Israel. This is why the word ‘antisemitism’ is very unhelpful in this context.

But the fact is that there is indeed an otherwise inexplicable malice in the animus against Israel and that it does indeed single out Jews — but as a people rather than as people. It is in fact but the latest stage in the linear progression of Jew-hatred down the centuries, from theology to race and now to nation. And it is clear that it is the same thing, from key elements of continuity between Jew-hatred today and in the past far more fundamental than the tactic of the boycott. It’s the singling out that is crucial, the fact that Jews are treated differently from the way any other group is treated. It is a prejudice against Jewish peoplehood, denying to the Jews the right to self-determination and to defend their nation that is granted to other peoples and instead singling it out uniquely for a campaign of delegitimisation based on lies. The article finally makes at least part of this point in this paragraph, in which it observes, correctly, that the boycott is predicated on the defamation of the Jews:

The Jewish State, in pursuance of its racist ideology, is perceived as pure aggressor, and the Palestinians are perceived as pure victims. The PACBI boycotters and their UCU fellow travellers would deny to Jews the rights that they upholds for other, comparable peoples. They adhere to the principle of national self-determination, except in the Jews’ case. They affirm international law, except in Israel’s case. They are outraged by the Jewish nature of the State of Israel, but are untroubled (say) by the Islamic nature of Iran or of Saudi Arabia. They regard Zionism as uniquely pernicious, rather than as merely another nationalism (just as earlier generations of anti-Semites regarded Jewish capitalists as uniquely pernicious, rather than merely as members of the capitalist class). They are indifferent to Jewish suffering, while being sensitive to the suffering of non-Jews. They dismiss anti-Semitism as a phantasm exploited by Jews to pursue their own goals. They overstate, on every occasion, and beyond reason, any case that could be made against Israel’s actions or policies, and wildly overstates the significance of the Israel/Palestinian conflict in world affairs – indeed, they put Jews at the centre of world affairs. Many of these ‘anti-Zionists’ are either anti-Semites or fellow travellers with anti-Semitism; longstanding anti-Semites now embrace ‘anti-Zionism’ as a cover for their Jew-hatred. This is because, in relation to Israel, the anti-Semite finds a protected voice. The desire to destroy Jews has been reconfigured as the desire to destroy or dismantle the Jewish State.

The point about Jew-hatred is this. It is not merely a prejudice like any other prejudice, in which nasty characteristics are ascribed to a particular group and as a result people treat its members badly. Jew-hatred has certain unique features, which revolve around singling out the Jews for treatment afforded to no other group: scapegoating them for the misdeeds of others, holding them to standards which are applied to no others, systematically telling lies about them which are told about no others, displaying an obsession with them to the exclusion of all others, and irrationally holding them to be responsible for all the ills of the world — whether this be the fall of Man from God’s grace, outbreaks of bubonic plague or the rise of Islamic terrorism.

All these characteristics are on display in the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel by the boycotts and the rest of the obsessional campaign against it. That is why it is indeed the latest manifestation of Jew-hatred.

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Article posted from Melanie Phillips’s Diary by permission:

URL to article: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1551

CUMPLICIDADE DO PARLAMENTO EUROPEU?

CUMPLICIDADE DO PARLAMENTO EUROPEU?

A vaga de anti-semitismo que assola a Europa, já encontra eco no Parlamento Europeu. Este artigo de Melanie Phillips denuncia a hipoocrisia das atitudes ‘politicamente correctas’ dos que mandam em Bruxelas e Estrasburgo.
Melanie Phillips’s Diary - http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary

Never again?

One of the most disturbing features of contemporary Jew-hatred is the availability on sale, in certain Islamic bookshops and on campuses around Europe, of the Tsarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That such a deranged and wholly discredited conspiracy theory about a purported Jewish plot to rule the world should be in circulation in modern western societies is an example of how the west is passively allowing the dissemination of material which is helping poison and inflame countless ignorant and impressionable minds and contributing to the current climate of medieval-style hysteria about the ‘world Jewish conspiracy’.

The EU is always banging on about racism, discrimination and the like. Nevertheless, not only were the Protocols published in French three months ago in Belgium but they were even briefly on display for sale inside the EU Parliament. To counter this evil, a month ago Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi, Director of the Transatlantic Institute in Brussels, sent a copy of The Plot to all MEPs and their staff. The Plot is a graphic novel by Alan Eisner which draws upon the history of this hoax. Dr Ottolenghi was subsequently astounded to receive a letter from the European Parliament saying it was refusing to distribute the book ‘due to the nature of its content’. When he asked for an explanation, he was fobbed off with conflicting excuses: they didn’t allow advertisements, the book had religious content, it had no relevance with the Parliament’s agenda. He has now lodged an appeal with the Quaestor in charge, Astrid Lulling MEP from Luxembourg (astrid.lulling@europarl.europa.eu). But so far, she has not even acknowledged receipt of his appeal — and from the rest of the Parliament, there is only silence.

So now can see just what the EU’s much-trumpeted espousal of anti-racism and human rights comes down to. It opens letters sent to MEPs — and if it doesn’t approve of their contents, it censors them and prevents MEPs from receiving them. It provides a platform for one of the most pernicious contributions to global Jew-hatred that has ever been published, which would thus appear to have ‘relevance with the Parliament’s agenda’, but refuses to distribute an antidote to it, which apparently does not.

Is this not a scandal? What are our MEPs doing allowing this to happen? And in Europe, of all places?

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Article printed from Melanie Phillips’s Diary by permission: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary

URL to article: http://www.melaniephillips.com.diary/?p=1550