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Vortrag von Dr. phil. Clemens Heni, Direktor des Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA) an der Technischen Universität Darmstadt, Ringvorlesung Wissenschaftskritik:

Islamwissenschaft und Jüdische Studien in Deutschland – »wie stehen sie zu Israel?«

Mittwoch, 11. Juni 2014 – 18:30 bis 20:30, Ort: Schlosskeller

Der Vortrag kann hier oder hier angehört werden:

Timeline:

Intro: FAZ und das Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Teil 1

Teil 1: Islamwissenschaft

1:00 Schadenfreude an 9/11

2:45 Gudrun Krämer, Professor für Islamwissenschaft, FU Berlin; in ihrer Dissertation (1982) diffamiert sie Kritik am ägyptischem (nazistischen) Antisemitismus der 1950er Jahre

5:03 Wochenzeitung jungle world promotet etwas vorschnell die Islamforscher Peter Wien und René Wildangel

9:00 „Mythos pro-faschistischer Araber“ und der „dämonisierte Großmufti“

11:09 Bettina Gräf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi

14:40 Barbara Freyer-Stowasser: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Frauen, Gleichberechtigung und suicide bombing ohne Zustimmung von Vater/Ehemann und gar ohne Kopftuch

20.:08 Kritik an einer direkten Linie vom Koran zu Hitler/Eine Werbekampagne in USA

22:58 FAZ und das Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Teil 2: Bernd M. Scherer und das Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin promoten ein Buch über al-Qaradawi: der »Global Mufti«

23:45 Der Islamwissenschaftler Peter Heine, Humboldt-Universität (HU) Berlin, und der „Kinderarzt“ und PFLP-Terrorist George Habash

28:16 Rüdiger Lohlker (Wien) und die Medien zu Israel als „Kindermörder“

33:40 Kritik an Götz Nordbruch – gibt es „Teilzeit-Nazis“?

Teil 2: Jüdische Studien

36:45 Professor Alvin Rosenfeld: progressive Juden und der neue Antisemitismus

38:50 Stefanie Schüler-Springorum und Jüdische Studien in Berlin und Brandenburg

40:20 Brian Klug im Jüdischen Museum Berlin

41:13 Deutscher Historikertag 2010 und Binationalismus für Israel/Palästina

42:30 Gershom Scholem: von der Hoffnung der Gruppe Brit Schalom auf ein binationales Zusammenleben mit den Arabern hin zum politischen, bewaffneten Zionisten auf den Dächern von Jerusalem 1936ff.

44:44 Teilungspläne für das Mandatsgebiet Palästina 1937/47

45:55 Bedeutung der Archäologie für Israel

46:30 Abbas und die PA leugnen historische Existenz der Juden im Land Israel

47:10 Dan Diner und die binationale Ideologie, 1980

48:17 „zionistische Gesetze abschaffen“ (Diner, 1980)

49:49 „Gesamtpalästina“

51:00 Prof. Christian Wiese im Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook und sein Bezug auf Jacqueline Rose

53:38 Jacqueline Roses antisemitische Fantasien: Hitler sei spätestens im Mai 1895 während eines Konzerts mit Richard Wagner-Musik in Paris dazu „inspiriert worden, Mein Kampf zu schreiben“ und Herzl dazu, „Der Judenstaat“ zu schreiben

56:40 Raphael Gross publiziert Christian Wiese

57:16 Robert S. Wistrich und die internationale Kritik an Jacqueline Rose

Frankreichs 9/11 und die „Je suis Charlie“-Heuchler

von admin

am Januar 11, 2015

in Allgemein

Zuerst publiziert bei den Ruhrbaronen

ch_stift

In Verneigung vor Stéphane Charbonnier (Charb), Chefredakteur von Charlie Hebdo, der 2012 sagte:

»Ich habe keine Angst. Ich habe keine Kinder, keine Frau, kein Auto, keinen Kredit. Es klingt aufgeblasen, aber ich will lieber aufrecht sterben, als auf Knien leben.«

Das jihadistische Massaker an der Redaktion der Satirezeitschrift Charlie Hebdo am 7. Januar 2015 mit 12 Toten, darunter zwei Polizisten, der Mord an einer weiteren Polizistin einen Tag später und die antisemitisch motivierte Geiselnahme und Ermordung von vier Juden in einem jüdischen Supermarkt am 9. Januar, die mit der Aktion vom 7. Januar in Verbindung steht, schreien nach weitreichenden politischen Konsequenzen und einer Analyse der politischen Kultur. Plötzlich sind viele betroffen, nicht nur in Frankreich. Dabei zielt der Jihadismus und Islamismus auf westliche Werte, Religionsfreiheit, Freiheit von Religion, Religionskritik, Meinungsfreiheit, Demokratie, Pluralismus und Heterogenität, Satiriker wie Charlie Hebdo, wie auf Juden und den jüdischen Staat Israel. Doch allzu viele ignorieren die antisemitische Dimension, weil das den allseits beliebten antizionistischen Antisemitismus beinhaltet, den viele partout nicht aufgeben wollen. Auch die Verharmloser des Islamismus melden sich sofort und rabiat zu Wort. Schließlich: wer hatte denn schon Mut die letzten Jahre? Wir haben Angst, sind mutlos und vorsichtig, auch der Autor dieses Textes. Von unserem Gastautor Clemens Heni.

CH_911

Zum ersten Mal seit 1945 und dem Ende des Nationalsozialismus und des Zweiten Weltkriegs wurde die Große Synagoge in Paris am 9. Januar 2015 aus Angst vor einem antisemitischen Angriff geschlossen, ebenso alle jüdischen Geschäfte im Herzen von Paris, dem Marais-Viertel im dritten und vierten Arrondissement der französischen Hauptstadt. In Amsterdam wird aus Sicherheitsgründen eine proisraelische Demonstration abgesagt.

25 Jahre nach dem Fall der Berliner Mauer zeigt sich, dass der „Kalte Krieg“ unmittelbar nach 1945 und bis 1989 eine jedenfalls für Europa relativ harmlose, ja weitgehend friedliche Epoche war. Der brutale, aber berechenbare Terror der Antisemiten wie der Revolutionären Zellen (RZ), der Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF), der das Land teils komplett stilllegte (Deutscher Herbst 1977), Naziterror, die Kämpfe am Bauzaun von AKWs oder Wiederaufbereitungsanlagen von Whyl über Brokdorf nach Wackersdorf, die Angst vor dem Waldsterben oder dem „atomaren Holocaust“ als Folge der Stationierung von Pershing II Raketen und selbst so widerwärtige Vorfälle wie der Besuch des (auch) SS-Soldatenfriedhofs in Bitburg durch US-Präsident Ronald Reagan und Bundeskanzler Helmut Kohl im Mai 1985 waren gar nichts gegen den jihadistischen, antijüdischen und antiwestlichen Krieg, den wir nach 9/11 in Europa erleben – von der dramatischen und von jihadistischem Massenmord geprägten Lage in Syrien, dem Irak, Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan, Jemen und vielen anderen Staaten und Gegenden ganz zu schweigen.

Das Ende der Blockkonfrontation und die Auflösung der Sowjetunion führten zu einer viel größeren und realen Gefahr: den Islamismus und Jihadismus. Das islamistische Massaker vom 11. September 2001 war ein Fanal.

Für Jihadisten war es das Startsignal für weltweiten jihadistischen Massenmord – nicht nur im Westen – wie wir ihn seither in Bali, Madrid, London sowie in Afghanistan, im Irak, in Syrien oder Nigeria erleben, mit Hunderttausenden Ermordeten, die aus islamistischen Gründen massakriert werden und nicht weil die bösen USA „Lunte“ legen, wie es der zwar pro-israelische, aber den Islamismus völlig derealisierende und antiamerikanisch fanatisierte Herausgeber der linken Monatszeitung Konkret, Hermann L. Gremliza, im Dezember 2014 schrieb. Verschwörungswahnsinnige sahen und sehen Geheimdienste oder andere hinter den Anschlägen. Für viele Linke wie Rechte und die kulturelle Elite evozierte 9/11 Schadenfreude, von Bin-Laden-Drinks schlürfenden Autonomen über Adrienne Goehler und Wolfgang Benz hin zu Klaus Theweleit, Horst Mahler und der PDS.

Islamforscher sahen 9/11 gar als wunderbare Gelegenheit mehr Gelder und Anerkennung für ihr Fach zu bekommen, um Islamismus und Islam zu predigen oder zu unterrichten und nicht die Kritik am Islamismus oder Israelhass zu fördern oder einzufordern.

Die Islamwissenschaftlerin Birgit Krawietz, Professorin am Institut für Islamwissenschaft der Freien Universität (FU) Berlin, schrieb 2008:

„Humor darf nicht zur Missachtung religiöser Kernbestandteile einladen und in Untersagtes oder gar Verbotenes ausarten. Klassisches islamisches Recht kennt ferner die Sanktionierung von Nichtmuslimen im islamischen Reich, welche sich blasphemisch geäußert haben. Die Proteste verunsicherter Muslime gegen Rushdie und Co. knüpfen auch an solche Erwartungen von Respekt an und sind eben kein Ausdruck einer irgendwie gearteten essentiellen Humorferne des Islam.“

Homepage des Satiremagazins Charlie Hebdo

Diese „Erwartungen von Respekt“ sind es, die dem Jihad und Terror Tür und Tor öffnen und Islamismus nicht bekämpfen, sondern rationalisieren wollen. Der Verlag Yale University Press weigerte sich in einem Buch die Mohammed-Karikaturen nachzudrucken.

Bernard-Henri Lévy trifft den Nagel auf den Kopf, wenn er jetzt in Le Monde bzw. im Wall Street Journal schreibt, es müsse endlich mit der „leninistischen“ Art und Weise Schluss sein, den „radikalen Islam“ zu verharmlosen und ihn als Resultat von „Verarmung und Frustration“ herunter zu deklinieren und als Phänomen sui generis zu leugnen. Eine Karikatur von Mohammed, Allah oder dem IS ist genuines Resultat von Pressefreiheit und Religionskritik, Kernpunkte westlicher Zivilisation, zumal in Frankreich. Muslime können keinerlei „Respekt“ für ihre Religion erwarten, ebensowenig wie zum Beispiel Christen. Da hat Krawietz einfach nicht gelernt, dass Europa einen Prozess der Aufklärung durchgemacht hat und jene Muslime, die Kritik nicht vertragen, satirische, sind nicht „verunsichert“ sondern reaktionär, antiwestlich und islamistisch. Doch Lévy wird umgehend übertönt werden von den Verharmlosern, den Rationalisieren wie dem Berliner Tagesspiegel, wo Mohamed Amjahid sehr aufgeregt davor warnt, jetzt „kein neues 9/11“ in dem Massaker zu sehen. Es trivialisiert den Terror wie wir es seit 9/11 kennen und redet entgegen Lévy von der „Perspektivlosigkeit, fehlender Anerkennung, Armut“. Doch, das Massaker an Charlie Hebdo ist das 9/11 Frankreichs. Und es ist die gleicher Tätergruppe: Islamisten/Jihadisten und die gleiche antiwestliche, antisemitische islamistische Ideologie, die als Motivation für die Morde dient, damals wie heute und morgen.

Es gibt jetzt auch wieder antisemitische Verschwörungsmythen wie von Greta Berlin, einer antizionistischen BDS-Aktivistin, die meint, Israel wolle das Votieren Frankreichs für einen Staat „Palästina“ im UN-Sicherheitsrat nicht unbeantwortet lassen und nun würden wir das Resultat sehen.

Es gibt zudem einige Texte, die zeigen, wie wenig Widerhall die „Je suis Charlie“-Kampagne in Australien, Großbritannien und den USA hat. Ein australischer Autor windet sich hin und her und mag zwar schon den Ermordeten von Charlie Hebdo irgendwie gedenken, aber betont vor allem, wie wenig diese Art französischer Humor in der angelsächsischen Welt verstanden werden kann. Das amerikanische Slate-Magazin geht noch weiter und findet es geradezu unerhört, dass die französische Regierung aus Solidarität mit dem Satireblatt staatliche Gelder bereitstellt. Und die New York Times sagt ganz klar und ehrlich, sie sei eben „nicht Charlie Hebdo“ und eine solche linke, respektlose Zeitung hätte auf jedem Campus der USA maximal 30 Sekunden Überlebenschance, was durchaus stimmen mag. Das müsse sich zwar irgendwie ändern, aber die Distanz zu Charlie Hebdo dominiert den Text. Diese Reaktionen deuten in der Tat an, dass es einen Riss innerhalb des Westens gibt, hier Frankreich als Mutterland der Religionskritik sozusagen, dort die „Inklusiveness“ und die Biederkeit der USA, des UKs und Australiens.

Dabei ist Frankreich auch ein Problemfall, da Clermont-Tonnerre im Zuge der Französischen Revolution am 23. Dezember 1789 sagte:

„Den Juden als Nation muss man alles verweigern; als Individuen muss man ihnen alles zugestehen.“

Dieser Antizionismus avant la lettre hat bis heute enorme Bedeutung für die politische Kultur in Frankreich und weit darüber hinaus. Es ist der sich gut fühlende, kosmopolitische Antizionismus. Frankreich hat ganz ernsthaft etwas gegen Islamismus, da dies dem laizistischen Charakter der Republik widerspricht. Doch das führt zu solch grotesken und absurden Phänomenen, dass Frankreich keine Muslime als Muslime kategorisieren möchte und z.B. israelische Hilfe beim „Profiling“ von Jihadisten ablehnte und selbst die Rede von Islamisten sei verpönt.

Über diese dunkle Seite des ach-so-aufgeklärten Frankreich wird selten diskutiert. Es bräuchte eine neue „Dialektik der Aufklärung“, eine, die sich der Notwendigkeit der Aufklärung und Religionskritik bewusst ist und zugleich Islamisten als Islamisten ins Visier nimmt und zwar ganz gezielt und langfristig. Islamismus muss beim Namen genannt werden, sonst ist der Kampf gegen ihn von vornherein verloren.

Und es ist jetzt alles andere als Zufall und hat einen äußerst bitteren Beigeschmack, dass Frankreich aufsteht und sagt „Je suis Charlie“ – aber wer sagt ebenso „Je suis Juif“? Und wer betont den islamistischen Charakter des Verbrechens? Wo ist der Aufschrei, wenn es um Judenmord geht? Wo waren die Abkürzungsnazis, als im Sommer Muslime und Islamisten „Juden-ins-Gas“ brüllten und die NPD, Linksparteipolitikerinnen und viele andere ganz neidisch wurden ob so ausgesprochen aggressiven Antisemitismus‘? Und wo waren damals die Anti-PEGIDA-Aktivisten? Wo war der große, weltweit hörbare Aufschrei als in Toulouse im Rahmen einer Serie von islamistischen Anschlägen 2012 vier Juden einer jüdischen Schule gezielt ermordet wurden?

Im Sommer 2014 und schon lange davor waren viele auf der antizionistischen Seite, von Jakob Augstein über Günter Grass hin zur Linkspartei.

Es geht um Pressefreiheit, Meinungsfreiheit und Religionskritik, daher sind alle Aufgeklärten jetzt Charlie Hebdo. Aber es geht um eine Bekämpfung der islamistischen Gefahr in all ihren Facetten. Ein ideologischer Kern des Islamismus ist der Antisemitismus, die Tötung von Juden, die Leugnung oder Trivialisierung der Shoah mitsamt der Schuldprojektion auf die Juden und die Zerstörung des jüdischen Staates Israel, der von Islamisten inmitten der muslimischen und arabischen Welt niemals akzeptiert werden wird. Ebenso werden die Juden in Europa zum Ziel der Islamisten und Jihadisten. Immer mehr Juden verlassen Frankreich und andere europäische Länder und gehen nach Israel.

Den Antizionismus teilen die Jihadisten mit weiten Teilen der westlichen kulturellen und politischen Elite, auch vielen, die jetzt schweigend sagen „Je suis Charlie“. Doch allzu viele schwiegen zu oft und zu lange, wenn Juden in den letzten Jahren in Europa von Jihadisten und Islamisten ermordet wurden, als dass man deren Schock ob des islamistischen Massakers und der Geiselnahme wirklich ernst nehmen könnte.

Es ist gerade der kosmopolitische Antizionismus, exemplarisch symbolisiert in der Adorno-Preisträgerin 2012, Judith Butler, und ihren Anhängern, der symbolisch steht für das Einverständnis der westlichen Eliten mit dem Jihadismus gegen den jüdischen Staat.

Danke an Thomas Weidauer für hilfreiche Hinweise.

Dr. phil. Clemens Heni ist Politologe und Direktor des Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), www.bicsa.org.

Vortrag Kritische Theorie und Israel

von admin

am Januar 10, 2015

in Allgemein

Am 7. Januar 2015 hielt ich auf Einladung des Jungen Forums der Deutsch-Israelischen Gesellschaft Nürnberg-Mittelfranken in Erlangen den Vortrag „Kritische Theorie und Israel“.

Hier kann der Vortrag angehört werden:

Hier das dazugehörige Handout, das auf der Veranstaltung verteilt wurde:

A Bahrain Prince against “fascist theocracy”

von admin

am Dezember 11, 2014

in Allgemein

In a fascinating post, Islamic studies scholar and Middle East expert, President of the Philadelphia based Middle East Forum (MEF) Daniel Pipes, points to yet another example of Muslims in the Middle East who come out against the “real enemy” in the region: Islamism – and not Israel or Zionism. Pipes writes:

In a remarkable but thus-far unnoticed address on Dec. 5, Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain (an island kingdom in the Persian Gulf and home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet), candidly analyzed the Islamist enemy and suggested important ways to fight it.

The address is a very fascinating, powerful, courageous and timely message by an important political leader of a Muslim country.

Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa

Salman wants to get rid of the term “War on Terror,” as it is a misnomer. He is right. He wants it to be replaced, for example, by “War on Theocracy” or “War on fascist theocracy” aiming at the Islamic State (IS or ISIS), al-Qaeda, and all other Islamist groups worldwide. Salman correctly says that “terror” is not an -ism or an ideology; it is a “tool.” Fighting terrorism is a misnomer, too. We have to fight the ideology behind it. He mentions “Communism” as such a threat in the 20st century, and is now focusing on Islamism, without using that word. “War on fascist theocracy” is indeed an option, as the world knows that a core example of that is the Islamic State in the Middle East.

Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa’s speech is all the more important as it provides yet another example of the difference between Islam, the faith, and Islamism, the ideology. Pipes writes:

This new tendency has great importance. As I often say, radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution. Now, we may add another influential leader, indeed a crown prince, to the ranks of those Muslims who wish to find a solution.

In Germany, though, like in many other countries, there is now a movement against “Islamization,” that aims at Islam as such and not at all at Islamism. In the German city of Dresden, for example, there is a dangerous movement on the streets. Since October 2014, they rally each Monday, reminding us of the anti-GDR rallies prior to the end of that regime in 1989. The Dresden group is called “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Christian Occident.” The German acronym is Pegida (“Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes”). They have no problem with Islamism in Muslim countries, though, as their organizer said on TV. They want Muslims to behave like “German” Germans in Germany. The Dresden activists, counting up to 10,000 this last Monday, praise “German traditions,” as if there was never a problem with German traditions, take antisemitism, nationalism, and National Socialism as examples.

They have no problem with Islamism in Egypt or any other Muslim country. They just want Germany to get rid of Muslims, more or less. They fight refugees, many of whom are fleeing Jihad and Islamism in Syria, Libya or Iraq. Sadly, the extreme right-wing organizers and participants of those events represent a growing number of ordinary Germans who detest Islam as such. Many people in the so called pro-Israel camp in Germany have no problem with that kind of agitation against refugees and Islam. Some of them go so far and say that Jews are facing a “second Shoah,” which started hundreds of years ago, including pogroms in 1840 or 1929 etc. Logically spoken, Hitler followed hundreds of years of Muslim Jew-hatred. This shocking denial of German antisemitism and the unprecedented character of the Holocaust stands pars pro toto for an increasingly fanaticized movement. It is also a form of post-Holocaust antisemitism to frame antisemitic murder, like the killing of rabbis in a synagogue in Jerusalem a few weeks ago, as a “Shoah.” The Shoah was a whole complete different story, based on the industrial killing of six million Jews by Germans, and their allies.

Most of the anti-Islam and Holocaust distorting agitators, by the way, are not experts in the Middle East, but pretend to be experts. Most of them are just bloggers, or journalists in best case. They are not scholars, with a very few exceptions. They do not following Pipes’ and others advice to distinguish between Islam as a faith and Islamism as an ideology.

Therefore, speeches like this one by the Bahrain crown prince are of tremendous importance. They stand for the only realistic way to fight Islamism, or fascist Theocracy. German and other Western defamations of Islam as such are racist, misleading and dangerous answers to the Islamist threat. Supporting well-educated and moderate Muslims like Salman should be essential for any discussion about Islamism. His viewpoint should become part of new textbooks throughout the world that address the contemporary debates about the Middle East, terror and jihad. Islamism or fascist theocracy is the enemy. Political leaders like Salman bin Hamad Al-Kahlifa are well aware of this. They are allies in the fight against fascist theocracy and should be taken seriously in their approach.

BICSA Director Dr. Clemens Heni's talk in Barcelona at the third seminar on antisemitism

von admin

am November 13, 2014

in Allgemein

On Wednesday, November 5, 2014, BICSA Director Dr. Clemens Heni spoke at the third international seminar on antisemitism in Barcelona, Spain. The event was in Spanish, but he spoke in English. You can find Dr. Heni’s talk here (some 56 minutes, plus discussion). The introduction is in Spanish, by Prof. Xavier Torrens, political scientist from the University of Barcelona, who organized the conference.

David Grebler, President, Fundacion Baruch Spinoza
Prof. Xavier Torrens, University of Barcelona and Prof. Gerald Steinberg at the third seminar on antisemitism, held in Barcelona, Nov. 5, 2014

Below you find the hand-out of the presentation:

Presseerklärung: Kein Platz für Verschwörungstheoretiker und Israelfeinde in der KZ-Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen am 20. Juli 2014

von admin

am Juni 6, 2014

in Allgemein

Pressemitteilung: Kein Platz für Verschwörungstheoretiker und Israelfeinde in der KZ-Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen am 20. Juli 2014

Huge event at Mount Scopus honors leading researcher on antisemitism

von admin

am Juni 3, 2014

in Allgemein

By Dr. Clemens Heni, Director, The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)

25–28 May, 2014, Israel’s biggest and one of the biggest conferences world-wide ever on the topic of antisemitism was held at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, on the occasion of the retirement of historian Robert Solomon Wistrich. The International Conference was entitled “Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, Delegitimizing Israel.”

(View from the Maiersdorf Faculty Club over Jerusalem*)

The location was beautifully chosen. From the terrace of the Maiersdorf Faculty Club, where the event was held, one has a stunning view over Jerusalem. On the other side of Mount Scopus, just a five minute walk away at the gorgeous Amphitheatre, one looks out over the Judean Mountains and desert up to the Dead Sea and Jordan.

(Hebrew University, Campus, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem*)

Robert Wistrich is the author of 17 books and the editor of 12. His work has been translated in many languages. He published over 350 articles between 1973 and 2011 – you find a complete list of his writings from 1973 through 2011 in the German edition of his Muslim Antisemitism, published in 2011 by Berlin based publishing house Edition Critic.

(Prof. Robert S. Wistrich’s German edition of his bestseller brochure from 2002 with the American Jewish Committee on Muslim Antisemitism, published in December 2011 with Berlin based publishing house Edition Critic)

I know of no other scholar who has such a record and continued reflection on antisemitism, the “longest hatred” and “lethal obsession,” as Robert frames it very precisely. His first article was published in 1973 about “Karl Marx, German Socialists and the Jewish Question.”

(Amphitheatre, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus)

Wistrich is known for “stepping back” and looking at the big picture, as he emphasized during his long talk at the conference. He focused on Jewish anti-Zionism, starting with famous Austrian literary critic Karl Kraus. The outstanding nature of Robert’s scholarship became again obvious during his presentation: like almost no one else he is able to jump from 19^th century Jewish anti-Zionism and Reform Judaism to Judith Butler and Noam Chomsky’s 21^st century Jewish anti-Zionism. He is not drawing direct lines and is very well aware of the differences between Hannah Arendt and Judith Butler, for example. The latter needs the German-Jewish thinker to bolster her own anti-Zionism. Arendt’s criticism of the nation-state, though, is indeed dangerous when it comes to the Jewish state. Still, this might differ from the very outspoken hatred of Zionism known from many Jewish-Austrian thinkers through the 1930s and that of the Butlers, Chomskys or even Finkelsteins of our time.

(Prof. Robert S. Wistrich during his presentation at the SICSA conference, Tuesday, 27 May, 2014)

Robert Wistrich dedicated several of his books to his mother Sabina. She made aliyah age 100 in 2010. When asked at Ben-Gurion Airport if she was so fascinated about Zionism to make aliyah at that age, she said: “No, I just want to see the book of my son. That is the reason I came to Israel.” She was thinking of her son’s comprehensive history of antisemitism, A Lethal Obsession. Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, a 1184-page volume, published that year.

Robert Wistrich’s research can be put in five categories:

1) The Left and Antisemitism

2) Jewish History

3) Hitler, National Socialism and the Holocaust/Shoah

4) Theories and the analysis of antisemitism and anti-Zionism

5) Muslim antisemitism

Contrary to many, Robert sees Friedrich Nietzsche in the most positive sense of the word as the most anti-German philosopher ever. Nietzsche was not a forerunner of fascism and Nazism. Instead, he embraced the Old Testament and the Jewish “naiveté of the strong heart.” One of the best talks at the huge conference was given by Margaret Brearley (not only because of her wonderful British accent). She dealt with German anti-Jewish esoteric and occult or paganist thinking from Friedrich Schiller through German romanticism and Schopenhauer.

Robert Wistrich was born in April 1945 in Kazakhstan. His father, Jacob Wistreich, a former member of Hashomer Hatzair, was displaced by Stalin (I do intentionally not use the word „deported“ as this means in German to be deported to a Holocaust site). This displacement by Stalin saved his life. Robert Wistrich lost half of his family in the Shoah.

Robert grew up in England, learning Polish, French, then English, German and Hebrew. He also knows or can read and listen to several other languages, including Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Dutch, and Arabic. His focus on Jewish history in Habsburg Austria is of tremendous importance. For example, he analyzed in his 1985 study Hitler’s Apocalypse the antisemitism of Hitler, including the time before 1914. Hitler lived in Vienna from 1907 until 1913. I mentioned this during my presentation at the conference, as we are increasingly facing scholars and authors who distort Hitler’s antisemitism. Take Brendan Simms from Cambridge, England, as an example. He argued in 2014 in an article for International Affairs that the First World War made Hitler an anti-English soldier. Only later did he become antisemitic, according to Simms. The same holds for American journalist Jonah Goldberg (National Review Online) who claims that Hitler was a leftist and “socialist” as he writes in his truly troubling and barely scholarly book Liberal Fascism. I emphasized that the notion that Hitler was left is utterly wrong. For example, “German Socialism,” as we call it, was based on private property and capitalism. The core of this “German Socialism” was hatred of Jews and the creation of the “people’s community” or Volksgemeinschaft in German. Hitler was an antisemite and the most far right politician ever. He was not an anticapitalist and not a “man of the left.”

At least in passing I could mention that there were Marxist (and later post-Marxist) pro-Israel scholars. Take Leo Löwenthal, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno and Critical Theory as an example. Most pro-Israel scholars and authors in America, the UK, South Africa, Australia and Israel think a priori that Critical Theory is anti-Zionist. That is not the case. But one has to be able to read German to discover the truth behind the origins of Critical Theory, founded in 1937 by Max Horkheimer. He had to struggle with Zionism, but supported Israel. He was aware of the Nasserist and Egyptian threat in the 1950s, for example. I have just published a comprehensive study on the topic of Critical Theory and Israel.

Gershom Scholem, one of the most famous Israeli and Hebrew University professors ever, became a political Zionist by the mid 1930s, turning his back on the “Brit Shalom” period of 1925–1933, based on binationalism and rather cultural Zionism. In my talk, I focused on scholars like Christian Wiese from Frankfurt University who embraces the binational ideology of Hans Kohn. In 2006, Wiese went so far as to quote from one of the most absurd anti-Zionist books so far, Jacqueline Rose’s Question of Zion from 2005. In that book, Rose wrote that Hitler was perhaps inspired to write Mein Kampf and Theodor Herzl to write Der Judenstaat at the very same concert of Wagner music. The problem is that Herzl finished his manuscript in May 1895. Hitler was born in 1889 and was never in France until 1940 when he conquered the country with the German Wehrmacht. Wiese quoted from the very chapter (pages 58–107) in Rose’s book where this antisemitic fantasy of the Hitler/Herzl association by the same taste in music appeared. Finally, I analyzed the scholarly shortcomings of Yale historian Timothy Snyder in his study Bloodlands, which distorts Auschwitz and the Shoah. I also emphasized his close relationship with anti-Zionist Tony Judt. Likewise I criticized Yale’s Seyla Benhabib and her defamation of Israel in 2010. Then, I mentioned troubling tropes in contemporary scholarship in postcolonial studies that distort the history of the Shoah.

At the conference at SICSA there were almost 40 speakers and presentations from four continents (America, Europe, Africa, Asia). Rabbi Abraham Cooper from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles analyzed the shocking new wave of anti-circumcision and anti-kosher-slaughtering discourse all over Europe, including Germany. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin dealt with the BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement in California at the huge University of California (state sponsored) educational system. New York’s Ben Cohen with his deep “Alabama” English accent (that remark was funny, as his accent obviously is British) focused on some core features of today’s antisemitism. He distinguishes between historical German “bierkeller” antisemitism and today’s “bistro” antisemitism. Rude agitation and the defamation of Jews as Jews were replaced in many western societies by the more sophisticated version of 21^st century anti-Zionist antisemitism. Stephen Norwood showed the overlapping of left-wing and right-wing antisemitism in the United States. He also emphasized that there was significant support in the American Catholic mainstream and the Church during the 1930s and World War II for far-right Jew-hatred like that of Catholic priest Charles Coughlin.

A very few presentations, though, gave several people pause. One speaker said that there is “no Palestinian people” – who, then, should acknowledge the Jewish state, one must ask. Another speaker went so far as to say that the “West Bank is temporarily occupied by the Palestinians.” This was portrayed as supposedly pro-Israel. In fact, it is damaging the Israeli society from within the pro-Israel camp. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this year said that a future Palestinian state in the territories should think about including Jewish citizens. In fact, since 1948, Israel has some 20% Arab and Muslim citizens as well. Why is everybody a priori thinking of a Palestinian state with no Jews? Today, some 20% Jews are living in parts of the disputed territories. Daniel Pipes wrote about Netanyahu’s “master stroke.” Although I was not able to attend all presentations I did not hear people discussing that idea. This master stroke by Netanyahu includes the acceptance of Jews living in Judea and Samaria and in an Arab state. That would be a signal to the entire Arab and Muslim worlds that Jews are accepted as citizens and are not the “sons of pigs and apes” as the antisemitic discourse in parts of the Arab world always suggests.

Another speaker at the conference said that Norwegian killer Breivik is a criminal, “but” he killed “socialist anti-Zionists and possible future anti-Zionists.” This was shocking not just to me and I left the room soon after.

Another speaker stressed that EUrope is already “Islamized” which was a rather racist comment and had nothing to do with a specific criticism of Islamism, Jihad and Muslim antisemitism. One speaker said that Islam as such is the reason for antisemitism and every single (believing) Muslim will become an antisemite sooner or later. Jihadists and Islamists are antisemites today, other Muslims will become antisemitic later. This is of course not the case. Take groups like British Muslims for Israel as an example, among many other pro-Israel Muslims. They are a tiny and oppressed minority in the Muslim community, but they exist. Or look at people like Irshad Manji, known for her modern translation of the Quran. She is pro-Western, pro-Israel and anti-Islamist. The ontologization of Muslims as “the enemy” sooner or later has of course to be rejected.

In addition, I would state: In May 2014, American anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller and her allies started an ad campaign in New York City. They show the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, talking to Hitler in November 1941. It is tremendously important to focus on that alliance, indeed. But what does the ad say? On the right side of that big picture one can read “Islamic Jew-hatred: It’s in the Quran”:

This reminds me, sarcastically, of leading Sunni Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He said in January 2009 on TV that Allah installed Hitler to “punish the Jews.” This Holocaust affirmation is unbelievable. Geller, who is of course pro-Israel and against antisemitism and Jihad, now insinuates that not just the Mufti but also Hitler was inspired by the Quran. The Quran and Islamic Jew-hatred was first and then came Hitler. This is also distorting the history of Islamism as a modern phenomenon in the Muslim world. To claim that today’s Islamist antisemitism is in the Quran – and promoting this ideology with a picture of Hitler – denies or obfuscates the very history of Islamism.

In addition, it also obfuscates the history of Austrian and German modern antisemitism that lead to the Shoah. Islamism is a very modern ideology, as historian and Islamic studies scholar, president of the Middle East Forum (MEF) in Philadelphia, Daniel Pipes, tirelessly emphasizes. Take Hassan al-Banna’s founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt as a kind of starting point for 20^th century modern Islamism as a mass movement. Old Islamic Jew-hatred rather resembled Christian Jew-hatred, and is distinct from German eliminationist antisemitism during Nazi Germany and the Shoah. Pipes is also always emphasizing the historical and political difference between Islam and Islamism, take 1798 as a starting point for the demise of the Muslim world and the emergence of Islamist ideology.

Holocaust remembrance is used as a tool to fight the Jewish state. This was a core message of one the most fascinating greeting remarks at the gala dinner at the first evening of the conference by Canadian scholar in law and politician, Irvin Cotler. He is known worldwide for his fight against antisemitism and he is using law to fight Jew-hatred like the incitement to genocide by Iran. Cotler focused on the supposedly well-meaning and for sure more sophisticated anti-Zionist activists of today. They say that the Holocaust was a horrible crime, like South-African apartheid. At this point I ignore the Holocaust distorting aspects of that very comparison or equation, by the way. For liberals in particular Israel has become in some respects the new “Apartheid State” or even “Nazi State.” And here is what Irvin Cotler emphasized: IF Israel is an apartheid state or even a Nazi state people have to fight it. The terms apartheid state and Nazi state are not just meant to defame the entire project of a Jewish state. It calls liberals, leftists and all other people of “good will” to arms, according to Cotler. Anti-Zionist antisemitism is seen by those activists as a form of “anti-fascism.” There is a moral “necessity” to be anti-fascist and therefore today “anti-Israel,” as those people insinuate. Cotler’s vibrant and impressive remarks were a model for the entire conference. People truly feel good to fight Israel as this is seen in their delusional worldview as an act of “anti-fascism.” Cotler grasped and criticized that ideology splendidly.

British legal scholar Lesley Klaff showed the mainstreaming of “Holocaust inversion” in the UK, using the example of the Liberal Democratic Party’s MP David Ward. Since 2010, the Liberal Democratic Party is a coalition partner of the British government under the Conservative Party’s leadership of Prime Minister David Cameron.

Political scientist Matthias Küntzel from Hamburg analyzed the failure of the international community to deal with the antisemitism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime. Meir Litvak from Tel Aviv University also dealt with Iranian anti-Zionist antisemitism. However, Litvak also said that Iran is much more a rational country and not driven by Islamist messianism, as some might think. Esther Webman focused on aspects of the Arab antisemitic discourse, including Holocaust denial. Milton Shain from Cape Town, South Africa, focused on left-wing and Muslim anti-Zionist activism in the former apartheid state.

Historian Laurence Weinbaum from the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Jerusalem spoke about Polish antisemitism in recent decades and the failure of Poland to deal with its involvement in the Shoah and with its own Jew-hatred before and after 1945. At the end of the day, though, the glass of water is rather “half full” and not “half empty,” Weinbaum said, given the fact that Poland is the first country of the former East Bloc that tries to deal emphatically with antisemitism and its own history, thanks in particular to the scholarship of Jan Tomasz Gross. Sarah Fainberg and Samuel Barnai dealt with Russian antisemitism and anti-Zionism, like far-right groups that embrace Nazi antisemitism and the “8. SS Division Florian Geyer” which has supporters among hardcore antisemitic (and anti-Western) groups in today’s Russia, as Barnai showed in his vibrant talk. Fainberg underlined that it is very difficult to take sides in the current crisis in Ukraine. For sure Russia has to be criticized for its policies, but Ukraine is not just a victim: the conflict is much more troubling. Particularly when it comes to antisemitism, this becomes obvious. In addition one could say: take Stepan Bandera statues and pro-OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) propaganda during the uprising this year at the Maidan and in many parts of Ukraine as examples. Russian antisemitism and anti-Western ideology is also very troubling and not every Russian criticism of “fascist” tendencies and antisemitism in Ukraine is necessarily honest in nature, given similar tendencies in Russia which are not condemned by the Kremlin.

French philosopher Shmuel Trigano gave yet another proof of his deep insights in contemporary antisemitic tropes in philosophy, including post-modernism. Trigano frames contemporary antisemitism as disguised as “philosemitism,” which is in fact true. Remember Cotler’s focus on Holocaust remembrance and its abuse by anti-Zionists. Historian Dina Porat underlined the importance of the EUMC working definition of antisemitism. She knows that this was never a legal document. However, it is important, according to Porat, to have a document that states, for example, that comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany are not criticism of Israel but antisemitism.

One of the highlights of the conference was for sure the talk by Indiana Professor emeritus in Jewish Studies, Alvin Rosenfeld. He dealt with the reactions – today we would say “shitstorm” – on his world-famous brochure “Progressive” Jewish Thought and the new antisemitism from 2006, published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC). In his monograph Rosenfeld analyzed Jewish anti-Zionist thought, including Jacqueline Rose, Michael Neumann and Tony Judt. The New York Times set the pace for the denunciation of Rosenfeld’s masterpiece. Several authors criticized terms and events that Rosenfeld did not even mention in his piece, like the “Iraq War” or terms like “liberals” or “the liberals.”

Finally, there was a small concert for the conference participants at the Botanical Garden at Hebrew University. The four Israeli Irish folk musicians, among them a kind of young Jerusalem version of Paul Simon, gave the participants a wonderful rest. The place was other-worldly, typical Jerusalem stones surrounded by trees and flowers. At some point, a bird joined the concert. Before, the visit of the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis I, in the Middle East, could not overshadow the fantastic experience at Mount Scopus.

The entire conference was just possible thanks to the support by the Knapp Foundation, New York, and Charles Knapp, who also gave a powerful greeting address at the very beginning of the event and thanked all participants at the very end of the gathering with an exceptional statement: we, the speakers, shall keep on doing our research the way we do it and the way he witnessed it. This would be like a “thank you” to him…

In addition, Felix and Daniel Posen were supporters of SICSA and the event. I was a happy Felix Posen Fellow of SICSA in 2003 and 2004, after having been a speaker at Robert’s first international conference as new head of SICSA in December 2002.

Many conference participants said that they are looking forward to the future work of the honoree. His focus on the “longest hatred” paved the way for many scholars in recent decades. People who know the current situation among research centers on antisemitism world-wide are aware of the fact that this is an exception from the rule. It was a privilege for all speakers and participants to share their views on antisemitism, anti-Judaism and the delegitimization of Israel with the historian of antisemitism of our time.

However, we have to be realistic. Future generations of scholars even in Israel are not necessarily very much involved in the study of antisemitism. Nor are they known for a vibrant Zionist approach… Time will tell what research in antisemitism will look like in the years to come. Perhaps this conference was the peak of an entire generation or even several generations of scholars in antisemitism, headed by Robert Solomon Wistrich.

(Backcover of the German edition of Robert S. Wistrich’s Muslim Antisemitism, Dec. 2011)

* Many thanks to Lesley for sharing these pics with me and for her encouragement; as ever, I would like to equally thank Leslie for her editing; finally and in addition, the support and encouragement in recent days by friends and colleagues from around the world was wonderful, thanks so much to Simon, Steffi, Elena, Peter, Thomas, Milton, Jonathan and Neil.

Jetzt lieferbar: Kritische Theorie und Israel

von admin

am April 12, 2014

in Allgemein

Clemens Heni

Kritische Theorie und Israel
Max Horkheimer und Judith Butler im Kontext von
Judentum, Binationalismus und Zionismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Einleitung 1

1) Von Stuttgart als modernem Zion zum Kulturzionismus 9

2) Eine Zukunft für die Vergangenheit? Die binationale Ideologie 17

2.1) Ein jüdischer und ein arabischer Staat: UN-Teilungsplan von 1947 17

2.2) Jüdischer Kampf gegen Israel: Judith Butler 21

2.3) Hat Butler zu Recht den Adorno-Preis erhalten? 28

2.4) Micha Brumliks Judith Butler 31

2.5) Mit Kant gegen den Nationalstaat und Israel? 38

2.6) Transnationale Ideologie gegen den jüdischen Staat 46

2.7) Von der „Israeli-Apartheid-Week“ zum Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
und zurück: Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin im deutschen Mainstream 50

2.8) Binationale Jüdische Studien oder ist Jacqueline Rose zitierwürdig? 61

2.9) Habilitieren und die Welt (vor dem Zionismus) retten, 1980 70

2.10) Lévinas: Israel als „großes Ereignis in der Geschichte der Menschheit“ 75

3) „Ohne Angst verschieden sein“ – Kritische Theorie versus Zionismus? 79

3.1) Kann Adorno ‚zionistisch‘ gelesen werden? 79

3.2) Kurt Blumenfeld versus Hannah Arendt, 1946 98

4) Adorno statt Hebräisch oder Kommunisten und Israel –
ein Missverständnis? 103

5) Israel als Schutzraum vor einem „zweiten Holocaust“ 113

6) Max Horkheimer, die Kritische Theorie und Israel 117

6.1) Forschungen der Kritischen Theorie zum Antisemitismus 117

6.2) Horkheimer und das Judentum: was sagt die Forschung? 122

6.3) Horkheimer und das Judentum: was sagen seine Texte? 128

6.4) (Erich) Fromm gegen Israel 136

6.5) Adorno: kein Zionist, aber Pro-Israel? 138

6.6) Herbert Marcuse: Juden brauchen einen jüdischen Staat 141

6.7) Leo Löwenthal: ‚Auch Juden haben ein Recht auf Waffengewalt‘… 142

6.8) Ist die Kritische Theorie pro-israelisch? 144

Epilog) Fünf Worte, die den Nahen Osten verändern würden 149

Literatur 153

Personenindex 171

Dr. Einat Wilf: The Essence of Peace

von admin

am Februar 23, 2014

in Allgemein

This article was first published in German in the weekly Die Zeit, February 20, 2014 under the title „Wir sind wie ihr. Warum uns die Palästinenser anerkennen müssen“. We publish the English original with the permission of the author. Dr. Wilf is a member of the Advisory Board of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA).

The Essence of Peace

By Dr. Einat Wilf

Chancellor Angela Merkel and her entire government are coming to Israel as great friends of the State of Israel and its people. The talks between the two governments will take place in anticipation of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Framework Agreement for Peace. Early leaks indicate that the document will include a statement, requested by Israel and its Prime Minister that, as part of any final peace agreement, the Palestinians recognize Israel as the “Jewish State” or as the “Homeland of the Jewish People.”

While this request is supported by the vast majority of Israelis, as well as the Chair of the Opposition and the Labor Party Itzhak Herzog, some have not understood what it means and why it is necessary. Others have argued that it is merely a hawkish ploy to avoid reaching any agreement with the Palestinians, or that it is a sad mark of Israel’s low self-confidence that it needs the Palestinians to tell it what it is.

The Prime Minister’s request is none of the above. It is the one core demand that, once met, will mean that peace is possible. Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people is not a condition for peace – it is the very essence of peace.

Israel does not need Palestinian recognition in order to know what it is. Those who have dreamt, founded, and built it have done so with one purpose in mind: create a sovereign state for the Jewish people in their ancient homeland. It doesn’t matter if those who established the Jewish state were secular atheists who set out to build an egalitarian socialist utopia in the spirit of the Hebrew Prophet, religious Jews who hoped to restore biblical traditions to the modern state, or national liberals who imagined Jew and Arab, Christian and Muslim, living side by side in peace in a Vienna inspired Judenstaadt. They all wanted a Jewish state, but their visions of it were very different.

Being the Jewish state was never to be a simple concept. Jewish civilization, like all ancient civilizations, is so rich as to support any system of governance and any set of values that its bearers choose. Unlike what Palestinian leaders say when they reject the Israeli request for recognition, there is nothing in the concept of Jewish state that is necessarily religious rather than secular nor that it is only for Jews. Like all ancient value systems that have been constantly evolving, Judaism serves as a repository of liberal, as well as ultra-conservative values; it is in the eye of the beholder and the interpreter. It is partial to neither of them. Being the Jewish state simply means being the one place in the world where the Jewish people, as a people, are free and sovereign to interpret Jewish civilization and determine their own fate. Being the Jewish State means nothing more, but also nothing less.

The Palestinians need to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, not for the sake of the Jews, but for their own sake and dignity and for the cause of peace. Time and time again, the Palestinians have rejected opportunities to live freely in their own sovereign state because in doing so, means coming to terms with the Jewish state. Already in 1947, the Arab world, including the Arabs of Palestine (later to be termed Palestinians), rejected the partition of the land into a Jewish State and an Arab State as proposed by the United Nations. They did so because they told themselves that Zionism is not the self-determination movement of the Jewish people, but rather a colonial movement that has brought strangers to their land, strangers who – faced with determined resistance – are destined, sooner or later, to leave it.

In comparing the Jews in the Land of Israel to foreign colonials who will succumb to sustained resistance, the Palestinians might have told themselves a comforting story about a future without Jews and without Israel, but one that has repeatedly robbed them of their present. They have refused any solution that would create a Palestinian state because the price of doing so meant finally accepting that the Jews should have their own state, too. They preferred to have nothing rather than the dignity of their own state,if it meant sharing the land with the state of the Jewish people.

To build a peaceful future, the Palestinians need to leave behind the idea that the Jewish people were strangers who have come to a strange land and, therefore, will one day go away. Once the Palestinians recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, they will finally be accepting that in creating the State of Israel, the Jewish people have come home. In doing so the Palestinians will signal to the world, to Israel and, above all, to themselves, that they are finally ready to part with a false future in order to build a real present: one in which both the Jewish People and the Palestinians people can live in peace as a free people in their own sovereign states – one Jewish, one Palestinian.

Dr. Einat Wilf is a Senior Fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute and a former member of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset).

Member of European Parliament accuses Israel of “genocide in Gaza and elsewhere”: Philosopher Gianni Vattimo

von admin

am Februar 11, 2014

in Allgemein

By Dr. Clemens Heni

Gianni Vattimo (born 1936) is a Member of European Parliament for the Liberal Democratic alliance (ALDE). He is a renowned Italian philosopher, a follower of both Martin Heidegger and Karl Marx. He is a self-declared gay-communist Catholic. He could be a minority rights activist, right? Europe has plenty of homophobic tendencies, and Iran hangs gay men on a regular basis.

Early in 2014, Vattimo co-edited a book on “Deconstructing Zionism. A Critique of Political Metaphysics,” published by Bloomsbury (New York, London, New Delhi, Sydney). The book is dedicated to leading French philosopher Jacques Derrida, known for his anti-American agenda alongside with his friend Jürgen Habermas in 2003. They were the philosophical supporters of German-French anti-Bush-agitation at the time.

In his contribution to the book, Vattimo admits that his piece is a kind of autobiography: “How to become an anti-Zionist”. He writes about his generation, born around the Second World War, and raised with the idea that Jews deserved a state due to the Holocaust. For him the “myth” of “antifascist resistance” (against the Germans/Nazis) was accompanied and promoted by “American films” about Jews and Israel, which argued in favor of a Jewish state.

Vattimo starts his article with reference to anti-Israeli Ilan Pappé and the encounter with what both call “Nakba” or Palestinian history. Around 1968 Vattimo was a socialist fan of Israeli kibbutzim, ignoring “Nakba” as he recalls. Following conspiracy theories, Vattimo writes about the “unbelievable official version” of the US Government of 9/11. Several thousand of potentially lethal missiles from Hamas launched into southern Israel are called “totally harmless missiles.” For him, Holocaust denier and propagandist of a “world without Zionism,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was and is a hero, who dared to attack Israel, the Jews, and American power.

Vattimo writes:

“Better still: the entire Gaza affair contributed in a decisive way, more than any other aspect of Israeli politics, to the idea (I believe with great likelihood) that against the risk of a return of refugees, which would entail the end of the ‘Jewishness’ of the State of Israel, this situation might see no other solution than the progressive extermination of Palestinian Arabs.”

Gianni Vattimo is a loudspeaker for former Iranian President Ahmadinejad and says:

“As to the idea of making the state of Israel ‘disappear’ from the map – one of the usual themes of the Iranian ‘threat’ – its sense may not be completely unreasonable: it could, and ought, according to us, mean that the State of Israel becomes a secular, democratic, non-racist state, without walls and without discrimination among its citizens.”

Vattimo concludes:

“When Ahmadinejad invokes the end of the State of Israel, he merely expresses a demand that should be more explicitly shared by the democratic countries that instead consider him an enemy.”

For Vattimo, “memory of the Holocaust” “is imposed like a penalty”. He then takes aim at “Nazi hunters” (!) like French philosopher and critique of Heideggerian antisemitism, Emmanuel Faye. Vattimo attacks “Anglo-Saxon” “mainstream thinking of the Atlantic, North American” region and is upset about Chilean philosopher Victor Farias, another critic of Heidegger, for his linking – for good reason – of “Heideggerianism and Iranian Islamic thought”.

Gianni Vattimo’s defamation of Israeli Jews culminates in the following sentence:

“The myth of ‘two states for two peoples,’ another aspect of the Zionist mythology, is all too clearly a way of protracting matters so that it does not appear to be an ongoing excuse by Western democracies to avoid their responsibilities, a way to give Israel the time to continue the genocide, in Gaza and elsewhere, and also to reinforce themselves militarily in every way, including the possession of atomic weapons.”

To accuse Jews of committing “genocide” is the typical antisemitic projection of German and European guilt of the Shoah onto the Jews: as long as Jews today are seen as bad as Nazis, there is no reason to worry about guilt. He is a renowned philosopher but has not a clue about the word “genocide”, the same holds for the word “decimation” (he uses this word as well) when it comes to Israeli policies towards today’s Palestinians. The number of Palestinians is increasing, both in Gaza and the West Bank.

No surprise, then, that Vattimo and his co-editor Michael Marder, co-editor of the US journal Telos, included proponents of the „one state solution” like Duke University’s Walter Mignolo, who was a fellow in sociology at the University of Warwick a few years ago. He was invited by scholar in antisemitism Robert Fine and his colleague Gurminder Bhambra, a follower of “post-Orientalist” enemy of Israel Edward Said (1935–2003). Other authors in the Vattimo/Marder volume are Marc H. Ellis, a “liberation theologian”, “currently a visiting professor at the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica,” feminist Luce Irigaray, post-colonial and feminist scholar Ranjana Khanna (Duke University), political scientist Artemy Magun (European University at Saint-Petersburg), Christopher Wise, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Western Washington University in Bellingham, and Santiago Zabala, a Professor at the University of Barcelona (author of “Hermeneutic Communism,” 2011, co-authored with Gianni Vattimo).

Vattimo and Marder also included Judith Butler in this volume. Her well known anti-Israel article “Is Judaism Zionism?”, was published in a book on “The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere”, including articles by famous philosophers Charles Taylor and Jürgen Habermas in 2011, based on a huge event with some 1000 people attending at New York University in September 2009. Vattimo himself was honored in 2007 with a Festschrift, among the contributors were Charles Taylor, Umberto Eco, German philosophers Manfred Frank, Wolfgang Welsch, Rüdiger Bubner and American philosophical superstar Richard Rorty (1931–2007).

This is just indicating that Gianni Vattimo is not an outsider at all.

Will any one of his fans criticize this volume about “Deconstructing Zionism?” For Vattimo, “anti-Zionism is synonymous with leftist world politics” – and he embraces it and promotes it via the European Parliament. I do not view Vattimo as a freak, despite his fantastical theories. Rather, he is dangerous, because he represents a highly antisemitic climate among the elites in the humanities, the social sciences and the cultural and political elites in Europe and the Western world. At the EU Parliament, he is a member of ALDE – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group – and a member of the Culture and Education Committee of the EU-Parliament. He was an ally of Venezuelan Hugo Chavez and in his contribution to the book he promotes Brazilian pro-Iranian policies:

“That Brazil’s president Lula was among the first ‘Western’ leaders to welcome Iran and Ahmadinejad has an emblematic value that goes far beyond the particular significance of his visit.”

The book “Deconstructing Zionism”, published in 2014 by Gianni Vattimo and Michael Marder, indicates that anti-Zionist antisemitism is on the rise. The ordinary tone of Vattimo also indicates that he has nothing to lose: he knows that the elites in Europe have no problem with his kind of left-wing antisemitism, framed as “left-wing world politics”. No one is shocked that he literally embraces Holocaust denier and antisemite Ahmadinejad and openly welcomes the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. If you want to know anything about the European Parliament, about European philosophy, and European political culture, read this article by Gianni Vattimo. Heidegger would be proud of such an outspoken anti-American and antisemitic approach. Vattimo is very clear: the problem is not the “occupation,” the result of Israel’s victory in June 1967. The problem is 1948, Israel as a Jewish state! That is the anti-Zionist agenda of Judith Butler and her allies in a nutshell.

Dr. Clemens Heni is a political scientist and Director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA)