Jamal Najjab
Waging Peace
FORMER ISRAELI Knesset Speaker Avrum Burg discussed “Zionism, Israel and Human Rights” at the Rabbis for Human Rights Second North American Conference on Judaism and Human Rights, held Dec. 7 at the Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, DC.
Burg’s family has long championed the Zionist cause within Israel, he said, but he now feels compelled to question the movement’s present course. His recent book, The Holocaust is Over, We Must Rise from its Ashes—which he originally planned to title Hitler Won—caused a great deal of debate in Israel. He warned his audience that he was about to open a “Jewish Pandora’s box.”
“Zionism is a fantastic idea which created changes in the very existence of the Jewish people,” Burg told his audience, “but we cannot ignore some basic fundamental assumptions that did not work well.” One was that the early Zionists were a people without a land who settled a land without a people. It was arrogant for Zionists not to see the others, Burg said, and that mindset must be changed—the sooner the better.
According to Burg, Zionists were looking for a land of choice, but as a result of the Holocaust the land was seen as a shelter. “And within a shelter, especially of battered people, you behave differently,” he pointed out. Now that the state of Israel is established and prospering, Burg believes Israeli Jews need to change their collective attitude as a nation. “We can go out of the shelter and explore some other territory. We can be confident without the shelter,” he maintained.
Remarking on the eight-year U.S. occupation of Iraq and Israel’s 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Burg asked, “Do I hide in this reality, or do I try to offer an alternative?” Burg’s alternative has three components. For him, “never again” does not mean for just the Jewish community, allowing the rest of the world to suffer. “A people who 60 years ago were the victims of the universe must prevent the victimization of anyone who needs them,” he argued, “whether in Gaza, Darfur or the inner city of Detroit.”
Burg’s second point was that talk of a “clash of civilizations” must end. “There are not children of the light and children of the dark,” he said. He mockingly asked if all Muslims think alike? If that is the case, then are a billion or so Americans clones of U.S. President George W. Bush? “No, I am not,” he exclaimed, “no, they are not!”
Burg does not believe that a loving God directs us to kill the other; instead, we each have the final authority for our own actions—“and no one else is responsible for humanity but human beings.”
His final point was that the Jews of the world need to begin a new discourse concerning their faith and beliefs because the spiritual essence of Judaism has been forgotten. “I hope you will buy into my prayer that all the Jewish people and the Israeli people included will move from trauma to trust.”
The next panelist, Munther Dajani, dean of Al Quds University’s Faulty of Arts, reminded his audience that all religions believe in human rights, peace, love and good behavior. He wondered how any of these precious values could be achieved within Zionism.
There are those within the Zionist camp who do not believe the Palestinians deserve to be treated as people with human rights, Dajani said, just as there are Palestinians who don’t believe Jews deserve the same basic rights. “The Palestinians do not know the teaching of Judaism,” he pointed out, “and focus on the actions of the Zionist on the ground, which have nothing to do with the values of Judaism.” In Dajani’s opinion, both religions, Islam and Judaism, have been “hijacked by radical minorities” who don’t want a peaceful settlement. He believes all peacemakers should use “their religious values to spread the culture of peace, democracy and moderation.”
Finally, Yale University Professor of Modern Jewish History Paula Hyman provided a brief history of Zionism. “For me and many others in the past,” she said, “Zionism was the plucky nationalism, the choo choo that could and did.” While the Zionist movement and the Jewish state were once highly regarded in the world, she noted, “It has become the incarnation of satanic nationalism, colonialism gone wild....We felt only admiration, but now we feel we must defend it from its vilification in the larger community.”
Zionism was never concerned about human rights, Hyman admitted, but only the condition of the Jewish people. Its doctrine was to give the Jews political power, to encourage them to recognize themselves as a people and to assist them in the creation of a political haven. “Zionism focused on nation building,” she explained, “not on the human rights of everybody.”
In Hyman’s view, the Six-Day War was the turning point—a horrible victory that unleashed a radical nationalism among the world’s Jews. In her course on the Holocaust she explains that there were perpetrators, victims and bystanders. American Jews see all Jews as victims, she said. “It is difficult for American Jews to see that the Palestinians are the victims, that we in America are bystanders and that some Israelis are the perpetrators. Jews find it hard to not see themselves as victims, and certainly not as bystanders or as perpetrators.” This issue must be further explored by the Jewish community, she concluded.
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2009
