Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Jacob Holdt, 2006

Jacob Holdt, 2006

Jacob Holdt, 2006

Jacob Holdt, 2006

Jacob Holdt, 2006

The people in this picture no longer belong to the Klan. The man has died and the two women are now active in their church.

Munson: The best Herzl biography remains Amos Elon’s Herzl (1975). Elon mentions that Herzl initially thought Dreyfus was guilty, but he also notes that when Herzl heard the Parisian mob’s shouts of “Down with the Jews,” he “sensed a kind of evil-smelling fog rise from the massed crowd” (p. 127). Elon states that Herzl’s editors at the Neue Freie Presse changed his account of the Parisian mob’s chant of “Death to the Jews” after Dreyfus’s conviction to “Death to the traitors” to avoid exacerbating anti-Semitism in Vienna (pp. 128-29).

Sarid, A man of action, Haaretz, November 11, 2007

We have been taught that the Dreyfus Affair, in 1894, planted the seed of Zionism in Herzl; that the humiliating public ceremony, by which the French captain was stripped of his rank in the French army, left the Austrian journalist shocked, pained and angry, and suddenly removed the scales from his eyes; that through the hatred directed at Dreyfus, Herzl came to understand the meaning of the situation of European Jews in general.

Now Avineri comes along and changes the picture: It turns out that initially, Herzl was convinced of Dreyfus’ guilt: “It is now clear that Captain Dreyfus sold his country’s defensive secrets to the Germans,” the correspondent calmly reported to his journal, without even noting his subject’s Jewish identity. In a later dispatch, he reports, without qualification, the comment of the French war minister, General Mercier, that “the guilt of Captain Dreyfus is indisputable.” Even in his piece describing the cashiering ceremony, and the breaking of his sword, there is no clear echo of the cries of “Death to the Jews” that we all read about in our textbooks.

Herzl heard the crowd, which watched the ceremony from outside the gates, shout “Death to the traitor,” and he also reported hearing Dreyfus called “Traitor Judas.” That’s what he heard, and that’s what he reported before he and others who also were there decided to rewrite history, and the cry of “Death to the Jews” took on a canonical status. On December 30, 1894, a day before the rejection of Dreyfus’ appeal of his conviction, Herzl published a long and detailed article in the Neue Freie Presse summing up the major events of the preceding year in France: The Dreyfus trial is not even mentioned in it. Herzl left Paris the following summer. When he returned to Vienna, the Dreyfus trial was still an unremarkable event, which hadn’t yet turned into an “affair” that rang of anti-Semitism. The Dreyfus affair came to its conclusion only a decade later, in 1906, two years after Herzl’s death. Emile Zola’s “J’accuse,” in January 1898, a half year after the convening of the First Zionist Congress, in Basel, by which time Herzl’s attention was fully focused on his movement.

Hence, it was not the Dreyfus Affair, as an event in and of itself, that wakened in Herzl the impulse to go along the ways of Zion that mourn, which he tried to pave the way anew after a period of two millennia of neglect, having become finally convinced that all roads must lead to the Land of Israel, and not to Argentina or El-Arish, nor to Uganda, that there’s no point looking for shortcuts. Herzl adopted that road map after trials and errors that almost succeeded in derailing him, and leaving him in the margins of history.

Gideon Levy, The tahini trail, Haaretz, November 23, 2007

It started at my supermarket in Ramat Aviv. Suddenly huge wooden pallets piled with raw tahini (known in Hebrew as tahina) appeared in the store. The packaging was old-fashioned, the labels tattered, the graphic design uninspired, the Hebrew riddled with errors. But the taste was marvelous. The telephone number listed on the underside of the plastic jar piqued my curiosity. The dove of peace is not dead, nor even bleeding. More and more jars with doves on them have appeared on the shelves of the supermarket. There is Dove Symbol tahini from Nablus, Peace Dove tahini from Mishor Adumim (a Jewish industrial area in the West Bank), and the tahini I discovered, which the supermarket poster calls Dove Tahini, also from Nablus.

But this week we discovered that the dove-like bird on the blue label is not a dove at all, but a karawan, or sand partridge. Karawan Tahini is my house recommendation; I always take some to my good friend Imad Saba, who is in exile in Holland. This item, probably just about the last Palestinian product sold in Israel - and made in the West Bank’s most confined city - has become a hit. It’s the New Middle East, and we are hot on its trail….

There is no sign at the entrance to the plant: We followed the pungent smells. There are two floors - a basement and a ground floor - each 600 square meters in area, with seven employees, 13 at the height of the season, with steam boilers and millstones. Welcome to Karawan Tahini. This is a fourth-generation sesame enterprise, in a Dickensian setting: a few workers in ragged dress are stirring, mixing, pouring and packaging amid swirling steam saturated with the aroma of tahini. Workers in the plant make an average of NIS 50 a day. Politicians and purveyors of the occupation need not apply….Thanks or not, the tahini has to pass through at least two checkpoints on its way to Israel: one that dominates Nablus, the other being the Taibeh checkpoint next to Tul Karm, at the entrance to Israel. You will not hear a word of criticism or complaint from the Tamams. Their tahini passes through the checkpoints quickly and has never been held up for more than a few hours.

Poll: Only 20% of Israelis consider themselves secular, Haaretz, November 23, 2007

Just 20 percent of Jews in Israel describe themselves as secular, according to a recent poll. Since the early 1970s, surveys that have measured Israeli Jews’ affinity to tradition have fluctuated among various communities. But the recent figures represent a new low point for the secular community. For example, in 1974, the number of those describing themselves as secular stood at more than 40 percent.

The new Democracy Index conducted by the Guttman Center at the Israel Democracy Institute, is based on 1,016 interviews. It includes a breakdown along general national and cultural origins, namely Ashkenazim (Jews of European descent), Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern descent) and Israelis (both the subjects and their parents born in Israel).
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Of the Israelis, 85 percent claimed some form of religious affiliation, compared with 93 percent of the Mizrahim and 64 percent of the Ashkenazim.

Describing themselves as religious were 56 percent of the Mizrahim compared with 17 percent of the Ashkenazim.

The current survey, as in previous polls, reflects a link between secularism and age, education and political views. Younger people are more religious, people with academic degrees are more secular, and the secular tend to identify more with the left.

Iran seeks 3 million Shiite pilgrims into Iraq a year, Reuters, November 22, 2007

BAGHDAD Reuters - Iran is pressing Iraq to increase six-fold the number of Shiite pilgrims from Iran allowed to visit Iraqs holy sites, a move that could deepen ties between historical foes, the government said on Thursday.

Mohammed Abbas al-Aribi, Iraqs acting tourism and antiquities minister, discussed religious pilgrims at a meeting with Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, a government statement said.

About 500,000 Shiite pilgrims from Iran visit Iraq every year, the statement said, many of whom go to the Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines in Kerbala, two of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims, and the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf.

“We want to bring that to three million,” Kazemi-Qomi said, according to the statement. He said Iran hoped to sign an agreement increasing the number of Iranian pilgrims permitted into Iraq every day from 1,500 to 2,500.