Invoking the Holocaust to Defend the Occupation

By John Mearsheimer

For American readers, the great virtue of Avraham Burg's important new
book is that he says things about Israel and the Jewish people that are
hardly ever heard in mainstream discourse in the United States. It is
hard to believe how stunted and biased the coverage of Israel is in the
American media, not to mention the extent to which our politicians have
perfected the art of pandering to the Jewish state. The situation got so
bad in the recent presidential campaign that journalists Jeffrey
Goldberg and Shmuel Rosner -- both staunch defenders of Israel -- wrote
pieces titled "Enough about Israel Already."

Let's hope that The Holocaust is Over is widely read and discussed,
because it makes arguments that need to be heard and considered by
Americans of all persuasions, but especially by those who feel a deep
attachment to Israel. The fact that Burg wrote this book also matters
greatly. He cannot be easily dismissed as a self-hating Jew or a crank,
as he comes from a prominent Israeli family and has been deeply involved
in mainstream Israeli politics for much of his adult life. Moreover, he
clearly loves Israel.

Burg makes many smart points in his book, but I would like to focus on
what I take to be his central arguments. His core message is that Israel
is in serious trouble at home and there is good reason to think that
things could go horribly wrong in the future. He emphasizes that Israel
has changed greatly since 1948. He quotes his mother on this point:
"This country is not the country that we built. We founded a different
country in 1948, but I don't know where it's disappeared." Israel today,
he writes, "is frighteningly similar to the countries we never wanted to
resemble." Talking about Israel's shift to the right over time, he makes
the eye-popping observation that "Jews and Israelis have become thugs."

Burg makes it clear that he is not equating Israel's past behavior with
what happened in Nazi Germany, but he does see disturbing similarities
between Israel and "the Germany that preceded Hitler." This raises the
obvious question: could Israel end up going on a murderous rampage
against the Palestinians? Burg thinks it is possible. He writes, "The
notion that this cannot happen to us because our history as persecuted
people makes us immune to hatred and racism is very dangerous. A look
inside Israel shows that the erosion has begun." He even raises the
possibility that there might be a civil war inside Israel, which "will
be not a war between members of the Jewish people of different shades of
beliefs, but an uncompromising struggle between good people and bad
people anywhere."

Burg is aware that many American Jews will dismiss his arguments because
they are so at odds with the picture of Israel that they have in their
heads. Accordingly, he reminds the reader: "I come from there, and my
friends and relatives are still there. I listen to their talk, know
their ambitions, and feel their heartbeats. I know where they are
headed." And where they might be headed worries him greatly. Again, he
fears that Israel will end up following in the footsteps of Germany,
where "slow processes altered the perception of reality to the degree
that insanity became the norm, and then we were exterminated. It
happened in the land of poets and philosophers. There it was possible,
and here too, in the land of the prophets. The establishment of a state
run by rabbis and generals is not an impossible nightmare. I know how
difficult this comparison is, but please open your ears, eyes, and hearts."

Many American Jews think that Israel is in trouble today because of
anti-Semitism or because it is surrounded by dangerous adversaries who
threaten Israel's very existence. Israelis themselves, Burg reminds us,
love to emphasize that "the entire world is against us." He dismisses
these wrongheaded beliefs: "Today we are armed to the teeth, better
equipped than any other generation in Jewish history. We have a
tremendous army, an obsession with security, and the safety net of the
United States ... Anti-Semitism seems ridiculous, even innocuous
compared with the strength of the Jewish people of today."

For Burg, Israel's troubles are self-inflicted. Specifically, he
maintains that the principal cause of Israel's problems is the legacy of
the Holocaust, which has become omnipresent in Israeli life. "Not a day
passes," he writes, "without a mention of the Shoah in the only
newspaper I read, Ha'aretz." Indeed, Israeli children are taught in
school that "we are all Shoah survivors." The result is that Israelis
(and most American Jews for that matter) cannot think straight about the
world around them. They think that everyone is out to get them, and that
the Palestinians are hardly any different than the Nazis. Given this
despairing perspective, Israelis believe that almost any means is
justified to counter their enemies. The implication of Burg's argument
is that if there was less emphasis on the Holocaust, Israelis would
change their thinking about "others" in fundamental ways and this would
allow them to reach a settlement with the Palestinians and lead a more
peaceful and decent life.

There is some truth in this defensive psychological argument, but Burg
also provides much evidence for a different interpretation of how the
Holocaust relates to Israeli life. In particular, he shows that Israeli
society is plagued with a host of serious problems that are threatening
to tear it apart and that the Holocaust is a "tool at the service of the
Jewish people," which they use to protect Israel from criticism and to
keep those centrifugal forces at bay. He identifies three basic
problems: 1) Israelis are badly divided among themselves; "the Jewish
world always had colossal disputes between colossal figures"; 2) the
grave danger that large numbers of Israelis will emigrate to Europe and
North America; and 3) the Occupation, which has had a corrupting effect
on Israeli society and has drawn criticism from all around the globe.
Playing the Holocaust card, Burg shows, is thought to be the best way to
deal with these problems. He quotes the Israeli writer, Boaz Evron, to
make this point: the Shoah "is our main asset nowadays. This is the only
thing by which we try to unify the Jews. This is the only way to scare
Israelis into not emigrating. This is the only thing by which they try
to silence the gentiles." Of course, there is another instrument that
Israel and its defenders frequently employ, which is the charge of
anti-Semitism.

To take my instrumentalist argument a step further, Burg provides
evidence that the main reason that Israelis and their supporters
constantly invoke the Holocaust is because of the Occupation, and the
horrible things that Israel has done and continues to do to the
Palestinians. The Shoah is the weapon that Israelis and their supporters
in the Diaspora use to fend off criticism and to allow Israel to
continue committing crimes against the Palestinians. Burg writes: "All
is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed by the Shoah, and therefore all is
allowed -- be it fences, sieges, crowns, curfews, food and water
deprivation, or unexplained killings. All is permitted because we have
been through the Shoah and you will not tell us how to behave."

The best evidence that Israel's obsession with the Holocaust is linked
with the Occupation is found in Burg's discussion of the evolution of
Israeli thinking about the Holocaust itself. He shows clearly that
Israeli thinking about the Shoah has varied considerably over time. The
leaders of the Yishuv "did very little in response to the annihilation
of Europe's Jews" when it was happening. "They did not want to waste
emotional resources that could otherwise be channeled into building the
Jewish state." Moreover, Israelis did not focus much attention on the
Holocaust in the first decade or so after 1948 and they showed
surprisingly little sympathy for the survivors who came to Israel after
the war. But all that changed in the 1960s, starting with the Eichmann
trial, but picking up a head of steam after Israel conquered the West
Bank and Gaza in 1967 and began the Occupation. "To understand the wrong
turn we took," he writes, "we need to go back to the 1960s, the Eichmann
trial, the Six-Day War, and all that lies in between." He goes even
further and notes that the 1990s -- and remember that the First Intifada
broke out in December 1987 -- was the "decade of transition from the
mythology of the early state to the obsessive journeys to the scene of
the crime." The pattern seems clear: the Holocaust has been the main
weapon that Israelis (and their supporter abroad) have employed to
provide cover for the horrors Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians
in the Occupied Territories.

All of this is to say that the best way to rescue Israel from its plight
is not simply to get beyond the Holocaust, but to end the Occupation.
Then, the need to talk incessantly about the Holocaust will be greatly
reduced and Israel will be a much healthier and secure country. Sadly,
there is no end in sight to the Occupation, and thus we are likely to
hear more, not less, about the Holocaust in years ahead.