[Peace-discuss] IPRH/Unit Discussion on the New Anti-Semitism: Please disseminate and attend

[David Green]

Unfortunately, the program on Thursday listed below
does not promise to be enlightening, unless Adam
Sutcliffe (who is knowledgeable) is willing to
challenge the nonsense of the invited guest. I am
offended by the IPRH, which has invited many Jewish
speakers, but to my knowledge, never a Palestinian,
Arab, or Muslim. I am appalled by this particular
choice, for reasons that should be obvious in the
article posted below. Just exactly who is genocidal,
Arabs or Israelis?

There is currently a propagandistic and really quite
stupid literature--Abraham Foxman, Alan Dershowtiz,
Phyllis Chesler, etc.--making these ridiculous
assertions--always, of course, completely devoid of
the context of Israeli and American behavior.

As this event will focus on Arab and Islamic
anti-Semitism, it is important that arabs and Muslims
attend, and that this information be disseminated to
interested students and faculty.

I think that the argument that there is a "new
anti-Semitism," when made in this context, constitute
racism and hate speech. They should not go
unchallenged in the form of a Zionist pity party.

David Green
> 
> The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
> and The Unit for
> Criticism and Interpretive Theory
> 
> present
> 
> The New Anti-Semitism A Discussion
> 
> 
> - Is anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe and the
> rest of the world? - What
> is the response by Europe's political leaders? - Has
> anti-Semitism mutated
> from a right-wing to a left-wing phenomenon? - What
> is the role of
> Israel/Palestine in the new anti-Semitism? - Are
> anti-Semitism and
> anti-Zionism the same thing? - Are Europe's Jews in
> danger?
> 
> 
> PARTICIPANTS
> 
> * OMER BARTOV (History, Brown University)
> * ADAM SUTCLIFFE (History, UIUC)
> 
> 
> CHAIR
> 
> * MATTI BUNZL (IPRH & Anthropology, UIUC)
> 
> 
> 
> Thursday, September 2
> 4:00 p.m.
> Humanities Lecture Hall
> IPRH, 805 West Pennsylvania Avenue
> 
> 
> 
> Participants
> 
> OMER BARTOV is John P. Birkelund Distinguished
> Professor of European
> History at Brown University and Krouse Family
> Visiting Scholar at UIUC. He
> is among the world's leading historians of the
> Holocaust and its
> aftermaths as well as a preeminent scholar of modern
> Europe.  Among his
> many path-breaking books are Eastern Front 1941-45:
> German Troops and the
> Barbarisation of Warfare (1985); Hitler's Army: 
> Soldiers, Nazis, and War
> in the Third Reich (1991); Murder in our Midst: The
> Holocaust, Industrial
> Killing, and Representation (1996);  Mirrors of
> Destruction: War,
> Genocide, and Modern Identity (2000); In God's Name:
> Genocide and Religion
> in the Twentieth Century (2001);  and Germany's War
> and the Holocaust:
> Disputed Histories (2003).
> 
> ADAM SUTCLIFFE is Associate Professor of History at
> UIUC. Among the
> leading young historians of European Jewry, he is
> the author of Judaism
> and Enlightenment (2003) and the co-editor of
> Renewing the Past,
> Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From Al-Andalus to the
> Haskalah (2004). His
> research interests range from the intellectual
> history of the early modern
> period to contemporary Jewish politics.
> 
> MATTI BUNZL is Associate Professor of Anthropology
> and History at UIUC and
> the Director of the Illinois Program for Research in
> the Humanities. He is
> the author of Symptoms of Modernity: Jews and Queers
> in
> Late-Twentieth-Century Vienna (2004).
> 
> 
> 
> Omer Bartov's visit is sponsored by the Program in
> Jewish Culture and
> Society and the George A. Miller Endowment Visiting
> Professor program.
> 
> 
> For more information, please contact the IPRH at
> 244-3344 or go online at
> www.iprh.uiuc.edu
> 
> --
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 
> Matti Bunzl
> 
> Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> 805 West Pennsylvania Avenue
> Urbana, IL 61801
> Tel.: (217) 333-3138
> Fax: (217) 333-9617
> e-mail: bunzl at uiuc.edu
> 
> Department of Anthropology
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> 109 Davenport Hall
> 607 South Mathews
> Urbana, IL 61801
> Tel.: (217) 265-4068
> Fax: (217) 244-3490
> e-mail: bunzl at uiuc.edu

When memories are short, hatred is forever  
 
BY OMER BARTOV LA Times March 19, 2004 
East Galicia was once the site of a rich Jewish
civilization dating back several centuries. But last
March, when I visited what is now West Ukraine, the
snow-swept streets and squares were silent. Ancient
cemeteries had become marketplaces, ruined synagogues
were garbage dumps, mass graves were unmarked and
forgotten. The Nazis killed the Jews; in the years
that followed, the local population erased their
memory. But not quite. The local Ternopil newspaper
carried a headline: Jewish Pogrom. The Jews, the
article claimed, were again trying to take over
Ukraine. It was as if the 500,000 murdered Jews were
going to rise from the mass graves and crematory ashes
and reclaim their space (and stolen property) in this
ethnically cleansed province. 

The fear of Jewish return is one element in the new
anti-Semitism spreading in many parts of the world.
Two-thirds of European Jewry was killed by the Nazis
in World War II. For Adolf Hitler, the Jews
represented ultimate evil. They polluted the German
race and culture, brought pernicious modernity and
capitalism, promoted internationalism, caused and
profited from wars, became parasites on the labors of
others and plotted to take over the world. This was a
potent mix of anti-Jewish Christian prejudice and
newfangled ''scientific'' racism. 

For a while after World War II, anti-Semitism became a
bad word. But memories are short, and vows tend to be
broken, whereas deeply embedded cultural and religious
prejudices are hard to eradicate. 

Europe's anti-Semitism did not vanish. It was banished
to the fringes of society; it was buried in the
recesses of people's consciousness; it was transformed
into philo-Semitism and fads for things Jewish; it
seeped back in as self-righteous indignation against
Israel; and it was exported into the Muslim world. Now
that it is back, we can see where it was hiding all
these years. 

The new anti-Semitism uses images strikingly similar
to Hitler's. It condemns the Jews as controlling the
world's only superpower and seeking to take over the
rest of the world, as promoting a destructive policy
of globalization, as supporting the allegedly criminal
and illegitimate Nazi-like state of Israel. Like its
Nazi predecessor, it promises to do to the Jews what
they are supposedly doing to the world. It is
inherently, then, genocidal. 

But rather than being the policy of one state, this
new anti-Semitism is the domain of very different
cultures, political ideologies and religious
teachings. Its more soft-core manifestations can be
found in the European left, camouflaged as
anti-Americanism and an anti-Zionism that denies
Israel's right to exist. 

The effect on public opinion is tremendous. A majority
of Europeans see Israel as the most dangerous country
in the world. Although criticizing Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's policies is legitimate and
necessary, denying the right of Israelis to live in
peace in their own country is unjust. 

Hitler's obsession 

But the new anti-Semitism has found its most lethal
incarnation in the Muslim world, where it has become a
prevalent subculture, a focus of identity, a rallying
cry for the masses, a tool to divert attention from
the real reasons for poverty and despair, and a cause
for militant mobilization and destructive urges.
Ranging from the speech of former Malaysian Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad to the charter of the
Palestinian organization Hamas, this rhetoric is
infused with the same terrifying images of Jews that
were haunting Hitler. And we know where Hitler's
obsession led. 

We must not wash our hands of the scourge of genocidal
anti-Semitism. For the power of the word resides in
rhetoric and in silence. Prophesies of destruction
must be taken seriously, and silence facilitates their
realization. 

Even after the deed, silence ensures its recurrence,
for it erases the memory of what has been destroyed
and obscures the guilt of the murderers. It allows us
to forget that when some people say they want to kill
you, they mean what they say. 

Omer Bartov is professor of history at Brown
University. 

©2004 The Los Angeles Times 
 

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