Not all in the Yiddish World think the same about Israel
JVL Introduction
As many Jews have been asserting for years, there is no unanimity in the Jewish community on any subject, including Israel and Palestine and we were heartened to learn that there consternation and complaints greeted the decision by YIVO to hold a seminar series on the origins and ideology of Hamas. YIVO, (which began in Vilnius – then in Poland and now in Lithuania) is an institution that exists to “preserve, study, share, and perpetuate knowledge of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide.” decided .
“Critics of the Hamas series disagree that the YIVO program, connecting European antisemitism to a terrorist group in the Middle East, is bringing anything new to the discourse, characterizing it as a rehash of widely disseminated talking points — or even Israeli hasbara.” Some also objected to the absence of any Palestinian or, indeed, Arab speakers.
A possible future series on Jewish antizionism is a small light at the end of this tunnel in which so many Jewish institutions find themselves. However, this could be too little too late.
LL
This article was originally published by The Jewish News of Northern California on Wed 14 Feb 2024. Read the original here.
YIVO’s planned webinar series on Hamas exposes rift in Yiddish world over Israel
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This is a free country. And we are not obligated to present the views of our enemies.”
This condems the author! Why should you make your critic /adversary your “enemy”? Just as Net. spoke of “revenge” as his first response to Oct. 7th instead of wanting to UNDERSTAND what had happened! BH
The “proud Democrat”, professor Herf, when asked why they didn’t invite Arab or Palestinian experts on Hamas, said: “This is a free country. And we are not obligated to present the views of our enemies.”
This bigot is so candid he doesn’t even claim that some of his best friends are Arabs.
If you repeat ad nauseam that those you torment hate you for what you are rather than for what you do, eventually they may indeed come to hate you for what you are.
This is another case for Occam’s razor, which says that you should not believe anything to exist unless its existence is necessary to explain something. Connections between Arab nationalism and German Nazism may be an intriguing subject for specialist historians but they do not explain anything that needs explaining. It was inevitable that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine would be opposed by the indigenous population and by other Arabs.
Seeing “opposition to the establishment [of] the state of Israel as an aftereffect of Nazism” ,as Herf puts it, is a bizarre and even perverse approach. It is understandable that the only speakers invited are people who are unlikely to refer to any other reason for this opposition.