(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Tony Judt: When the Facts Change. Essays 1995–2010. Penguin Random House, 2015
Tony Judt (1948 – 2010) was a British historian, writer and university professor who, among others, published a number of essays in the journal The New York Rewiew of Books. His main theme was Europe – which is also the focus of this book.
When the Facts Change is a collection of essays published in various journals in the period 1995 – 2010. The essays revolve around the following statement: «When the facts change, I change my mind. What are you doing, sir? ”
The topics range relatively widely, and there are undoubtedly the essays in the second part of the book, with the headline Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews, which are by far the most interesting. But none of the other essays in the book are bad. They include everything from a historical summary of the literary efforts of Eric Hobsbawm, the historian who among other things wrote The Age of Extremes, to the importance of the railways to modern Europe.
An anachronism. The first essay in part two is called "Downhill all the way," and is a historical review of Israel's existence from the birth of the state to the present day. Tony Judt is a writer who has the ability to see issues from brand new and radical angles, just like his spiritual friend Hannah Arendt. In light of the Holocaust industry, the reader can taste the following statements: "Students today do not need to be reminded of the genocide of the Jews, the historical consequences of anti-Semitism, or the problem of evil. They know all about these – in ways their parents never did. ”
New questions emerge – the facts are changing – and Judt formulates a number of issues (several of which have probably come from his students): "Why do we focus so much on the Holocaust?" "Why is it illegal in certain countries to deny the Holocaust, but no other genocides?" the threat of anti-Semitism not exaggerated? "" And, increasingly, does Israel not use the Holocaust as an excuse? "
Judt writes: «The problem with Israel, in short, is not – as is sometimes suggested – that it is a European 'enclave' in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The very idea of a 'Jewish state' – a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded – is rooted in another time and place, Israel, in short, is an anachronism. "
The victim as the abuser. Tony Judd's writing art is apt, and really ruthless in its clairvoyance: Reading this book is a kind of painful feast. He writes: “Most Israelis are still trapped in the story of their own uniqueness. For some, this lies in the primordial presence of an ancient Jewish state on the territory of modern Israel. For others it rests in a God-given title to the lands of Judea and Samaria. Many still invoke the Holocaust and the claim that it authorizes Jews to make pressure upon the international community. "
As Judt rightly writes, Israel is almost regional in its geographical size and location, and yet the state is the fourth largest military power in the world. As the historian also points out, ordinary Israelis are blind to this fact, and still put themselves and their country in a typically unique historical situation, in which the state plays the role of victim, even though Israel is by far the real abuser. Judt calls the Israeli leadership consistently hopelessly incompetent: As a frightening mix of victims and abusers, Israel and its political leadership have occupied territories, and manipulated the US government to gain political, military and economic support. With the pretext of possible and rapid extermination carried out by the surrounding Arab states, and by manipulating false threats, the state has built up an insane arsenal of weapons, not least in the form of nuclear weapons. Judt is ruthless in his description of Ariel Sharon, who with blank authority from Washington practiced his acts of abuse for so many years, with the role of victim as the most important basis for legitimizing the bloody acts.
Let the Holocaust rest. In the essay "Israel: The alternative" he writes: "The Middle East peace process is finished. It did not die. It was killed. "
The Oslo agreement should now finally be declared dead: The facts have changed!
Jude sums up well what was the original idea behind the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948: "Israel needed the Jews, the Jews needed Israel." And as Judt so aptly writes: “The circumstances of its birth have thus bound Israel's identity inextricably to the Shoah, the German project to exterminate the Jews of Europe. As a result, all criticism on Israel is drawn ineluctably back to the memory of that project. »
And it is in the essay "The problem on evil in postwar Europe" that Tony Judt becomes really controversial: he takes a relentless confrontation with the cultivation of Holocoast, and asks the almost unheard of question (which makes it too easy for a reluctant reader to stamp him as an anti-Semite, despite the fact that Judt himself was a Jew): Is not this really something that deserves to be rested? Should the wounds always be kept open? And should the wounds be sustained constantly, as an excuse to hurt other people, in this case the Arabs? How can the wound be held forward on such borderline-like way, so shamelessly and without mercy? By creating a Holocaust industry, Israel has ensured that evil can continue. And as Judt also mentions, evil has become almost synonymous only with the Nazis' treatment of the Jews, something he is very skeptical of. Isn't there also much other evil in the world, and isn't it at least as important? he asks.
Universal problem. The radical evil which has been targeted at the Jewish population – should it really continue to be used as a basis for legitimizing its own abuses against Palestinians? The advanced relationship between the European Holocaust and Shoah is a constant problem for every thinking human being. The same is true of the relationship between Zionism and Jewish identity. How could the Holocaust become the perfect defense of evil against the Palestinian people? Evil is, and will always be, as Tony Judt recalls, a universal problem. He emphasizes that the Holocaust, after all, is part of a universal evil, not a "special evil": Evil is evil, and can not be linked to the special fate of individual groups.
Judt concludes by saying that Israel should tear apart its ethnic myth, which is based on the story of the destruction of the Second Temple. According to the same narrative, this led to the expulsion of the Israelis by the Romans, which helped to give the Jews a homeless existence in all corners of Europe. The Jews thus found "home" to their "original land" through the establishment of the Jewish state. This means "of course" that Jews have a greater right to live in the Middle East than Arabs. Another question that concerns Judah is why the Jews of Israel should also be given a special status in relation to other Jews.
Leather Democracy. And finally: On what basis does Israel's right to exist really rest? Judt does not deny this right, but is looking for new questions – and new answers. The answers are complex, of course – historically, politically and socially. But as the author writes: Israel is admittedly the only existing democracy in the Middle East, but what kind of democracy is it really about? Is a democracy that discriminates against its own citizens anything other than a sham democracy? Judt sums up: "Democracy is no excuse for bad behavior."
