You probably know this one: Yankel the beggar goes to the rabbi and pleads for a handout. “Please, Rabbi,” he says, “I haven’t eaten in days.”
“Poor fellow,” the rabbi replies. “Here’s a ruble. Go buy yourself a meal.”
An hour later, the rabbi is walking past the tavern and sees Yankel eating a big slice of cake. Indignant, the rabbi rushes up and rebukes him: “You should be ashamed of yourself! I gave you a ruble in good faith because you were hungry! How dare you eat cake?!”
“Excuse me,” Yankel replies. “Yesterday I was broke and I couldn’t eat cake. Now I have a ruble and I shouldn’t eat cake. So tell me, Rabbi, when can I eat cake?”
The story was brought to mind by a recent Jerusalem Post blog entry from David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee. Harris is distressed over a January 22 New York Times report by Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner, “For Israelis, Mixed Feelings on Aid Effort,” about responses to the Israeli medical team in Haiti.
“Israelis have been watching with a range of emotions,” Bronner wrote, “as if the Haitian relief effort were a Rorschach test through which the nation examines itself. The left has complained that there is no reason to travel thousands of miles to help those in need — Gaza is an hour away. The right has argued that those who accuse Israel of inhumanity should take note of its selfless efforts and achievements in Haiti.”
Bronner quoted four observers from the left, including columnists at The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz and two former aides to Yitzhak Rabin. In fact, not one said anything like “there is no reason” to help Haiti. What they all expressed was sadness at Israel’s situation vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
Here’s the most biting of them: “The remarkable identification with the victims of the terrible tragedy in distant Haiti only underscores the indifference to the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza,” wrote Haaretz columnist Akiva Eldar.
More typical was a quote given by Uri Dromi, a former spokesman for the Rabin government: “There is such a gap between what we can do in so many fields and the failure we feel trapped in with the Palestinians. There’s nostalgia for the time when we were the darlings of the world, and the Haiti relief effort allows us to remember that feeling and say, you see we are not as bad as you think.”
Harris, however, quotes Bronner’s “Rorschach” paragraph in full and then counters: “Forgive me, but this is nuts.”
Israel “responded magnificently to the immense tragedy unfolding in Haiti,” Harris correctly observes. Detailing some of the Israeli medical team’s achievements on the ground, he protests: “Israel’s role in Haiti should be a source of national pride, not a trigger for a ‘Rorschach test.’”
Now, there has been a handful of Israelis publicly belittling the Haiti operation, though they’re hard to find. There has also been a minor flood of criticism from Israelis who admire the Haiti mission but contrast it sadly with other deeds left undone. A filmmaker writes in Maariv of the glaring poverty just outside Ben-Gurion Airport that awaits an Israeli aid mission. A retired colonel, now a Technion national-security scholar, argues that Israel shouldn’t wait to aid others until front-page disasters hit. A rabbi at a West Bank seminary, Rafi Ostroff, had his class recite psalms for the victims the morning of the earthquake, but learned he was “among the very few teachers who did it” and now concludes “that the religious community is a little detached from global events.”
Any serious bashing of Israel’s medical team is happening outside Israel, where some critics call the Haiti mission a cynical P.R. exercise to cover up misdeeds in Gaza. There’s even a rumor making the rounds, apparently started by a YouTube user in Seattle, that the Israelis were stealing Haitians’ organs. The Anti-Defamation League does a good job of deconstructing it on its Web site.
Alan Dershowitz, writing on his own Jerusalem Post blog, scolds those critics who he feels are ignoring the very real difference between the privation in besieged Gaza and the apocalyptic cataclysm that struck Haiti. He also points out that Gaza is at war with Israel and Haiti isn’t. Moreover, he notes approvingly, “many Israelis are advocating medical and other assistance to Gaza.” Dersh’s bottom line: “Continue to criticize Israel when it fails to live up to generally applicable international standards, but praise it when it exceeds those standards” by helping others.
Harris is after other game. It’s not just that Gaza is at war with Israel and Haiti isn’t. It’s not just that Gaza showered Israel with rockets and provoked an Israeli response. His complaint is that some Israelis “anguish over Israel’s purported responsibility for Gaza’s travails.”
“One could argue,” Harris writes, “that this is eloquent testimony to their ethical reflex, their desire to heal the world of Gaza. That might well be laudable but for the simple fact that Gaza is at war with Israel, a seemingly obvious proposition to all but those Israelis blinded by their own self-generated ‘guilt,’ which prevents them from confronting reality and those ultimately accountable for the facts on the ground.”
Israel’s generosity in Haiti wasn’t unique, Harris observes, recalling similar efforts in war-torn Kosovo and after a 1999 earthquake in Turkey. He could have named a dozen more.
“Yet,” Harris writes, “according to the Times’ story, all of this, at least for a few Israelis, is, in the end, rather meaningless as a source of national pride. Instead, the litmus test for Israel must be Gaza.
“This is when self-reflection turns to the instinct for self-destruction.”
And here’s where I get confused. I understand that when Jews live in the Diaspora we shouldn’t criticize Israeli actions because we’re too far away and we don’t bear the consequences. Now I’m told that when Jews live in Israel they shouldn’t criticize Israeli actions because it’s their own country and they must stand tall.
So tell me, Executive Director, when can we criticize?
Contact J.J. Goldberg at goldberg@forward.com and follow his blog at http://blogs.forward.com/jj-goldberg
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As much a critic of Israel's ongoing brutal Occupation and repression of Palestinians, be it its colonialist policies in East Jerusalem and the West Bank or its continued use of torture and ill treatment in Interrogations, I must admit a minute moment of national pride but it was momentary at best because then, as Akiva Eldar so poignantly points out in his article cited by J.J. Goldberg (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143313.html) , I thought of Gaza and what we are and continue to do there. I think of the West Bank... if and when there is a major earth quake here does Israel realize that it is responsible to take care of the Palestinian population no less than Israelis? Will the home front command set up a field hospital in Ramallah? When I was in the army here... for a very short time they asked me where I would serve and they gave me a few options I said only in the search and rescue unit. So that is what I did and then after training me to save lives I had to do a reserve duty and they sent me to guard at the Megido prison which was then under the army command...there I witnessed from the guard towers... i.e from a distance the way Israel treated its detainees, and it was not a particularly humanistic vision, and then on my last day there I was told to go with an officer and 2 army prison staff as they were to release a prisoner… a kid, he was not more than 17 maybe younger because they made him take his pants down and his pubic hair was barely visible. Of course this did not take place in a closed room with some semblance of privacy and dignity (I cynically joke when I use the word dignity in the same sentence as the Israeli military in its relationship with Palestinians…) but outside in the open…
Of course the officer did not just ask that the kid take his pants down, he proceeded to hum a strip tease melody… and then put on a rubber glove and told the kid if you do not give up the film (supposedly there was photography going on in the prison camp…the officer of course claims that there is a security issue… I suspect that any photography that escapes the prison would have exposed the inhumanity of it all) he would find it… the kid was scared and gave him a role of film… I was pretty new in Israel then, a few years… working in human rights but still did not have my bearings… But never the less that was the beginning of my gray refusal…The officer wanted me to continue to accompany them I told him to find someone else… I should have told him to go screw himself... When they next called me up to go get 'better military training' I told the communications officer that I will not go and learn to throw a grenade especially after what I witnessed at Megido… I should have declared then and there that I will not have any more contact with the army under any circumstances because any service any place actually furthers the Occupation in general and the Occupation in practice… That is the little people, the officer with the glove the 30 year old left wing reservist with an M16 that if he fired it would probably back fire in his face…those are the ones who fuel the ongoing inhumanity… So the Gaza connection that Akiva talks about is so strong, so poignant and so real… The Israeli rescue teams fly over Gaza on their ways to Haiti… I wonder what they felt, Maybe like Dan Halutz described as some sort of a tug in the wing…as they flew over their destruction on the way to save lives in Haiti… (of course we can ask the same questions of the Chinese teams… did they pass over Tibet, the Russians and Chechnya, the Americans… but if we are Israelis or 'supporters of Israel' we need to ask ourselves, how we continue to let this - The Occupation - go on and how we can afford to let it pass…)
Mr Goldberg - It's hard to believe that the blog of David Harris is the focus of an opinion column in the Forward. Anyway, now that we have learned that (amazingly) it does deserve to be the focus, what is the conclusion? Are you suggesting that anyone is seriously making an attempt to stifle the criticism of Israel? At times, some anti-Israel readers of the Forward "complain" in their comments that criticism of Israel is being silenced. I find it all to be absolutely wonderous. The criticism of Israel is so intense, so widespread, so omnipresent - that one can only wonder if those "complaining" about its being stifled are really adults from Planet Earth.
There are really quite a lot of news-worthy questions regarding criticism of Israel - and its very unusual intensity, passion and imbalance. The sarcastic question that you ask ("so tell me, Executive Director, when can we criticize?") was really out of line. It didn't present any real topic for discussion or thought.
In a pluralistic society such as Israel or the United States, criticism is a healthy form of dissent no matter how naive or short sighted it may be at times. It certainly does not exist on the other side of the fence. As an American it is protected by the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Israel has similar provisions. Will the other side please step forward?
:) good point. along with Holocaust and Antisemitism, Israel is our new Jewish religion. dogmatically speaking, an Israeli infallibility :))
Ahh, Mr Frankenthaler, a "good" Israeli. He believes that writing letters to the Forward atones for his sins. If he was a good person, he would not have participated in the armed forces of the apartheid zionist entity. I have more respect for right wing ziothugs who claim, yes, we stole the land because we believe in some Biblical mythology, than a supposed progressive who commits the same crimes, but tries to gloss over it with a veneer of morality. Yes, we know that Ivan Demjanjuk was not Ivan the terrible, but just a camp guard, and he has been harassed for decades. Your actions are at least the equivalent of Demjanjuk and you have the temerity to believe that writing letters to the Forward will absolve you of your sins. If you are a "good" israeli, go to the Hague and voluntarily turn yourself in
Tarshisha - The Holocaust, antisemitism and the modern State of Israel are topics of history or topics of current events that interest the Jewish public. The Jewish public takes an interest also in religion - but religion is not the only issue in the lives of Jews, just as it's not the only issue in the lives of others. Just reading the Forward, you'll notice that just a handfull of articles are about Judaism. Most articles are about Jews as a social phenomenon. Calling Israel "our new religion" is an old anti-Israel sarcastic slogan which is meant to deny the legitimacy of taking an interest or taking pride in Israel. In actuality, however, one could accuse the anti-Israel Jews of having turned their dogmatic obsession with Israel into a new "religion".
It's puzzling to me why you attack the legitimacy of taking an interest in the Holocaust. Are there other such traumas in human history that you would deny someone's right to talk about?
In Freud's telling, it's lox and a shmear
Yehuda - I'm Israeli. What my Israeli government is doing, af mayne sonim gezogt :)))
It funny, thаt our Israeli life became a cult in America and no critique allowed. All Judaism is about critique, even critique of Judaism, even of the professional Jews. The modern cult of Holocaust – presumably Abba Evan, not me, said ‘It is no business like Shoah business’.
Tarshisha - Muzar meod lit'on she-ein biqqoret 'aleinu be-qerev yahadut America. Harei at qoret et ha-'ittonut ha-yehudit (ke-dugmat ha-Forward).
I have read the JPost and Haaretz articles plus others on this subject. The time to criticise is when there is something that deserves criticism !! How original is that ? Israel's effort in Haiti was flawless, especially compared to Saudi Arabia who just sent a letter of condolence or the other Muslim states who gave Haiti minimal media coverage and minimal support. Regarding Gaza, how many countries at war, have a daily three hour ceasefire to allow supplies to reach their enemies ? How many countries bring enemies into their hospitals because they may have better facilities ? When the Allies bombed German and Japanese cities I suspect there may have been a few civilian casualties, yet we don't regard FDR and Churchill has 'war criminals.' More recently, how many missiles did Cuba fire into the USA before JFK threatened to start WW III ?
Do a search for "arab contributions to haiti relief." There seems to be some sort of urban legend/propoganda machine working to praise Israel by mocking others: the efforts of so many countries, agencies, and individuals should all be praised, just as it should be possible to care about both Gaza and Haiti.
Situation is obviously fluid, and some debate about whether Saudi $ is has beenn given or just pledged (it would be 3rd largest after US and Canada). Still...
This from a press release of Arab American Institute: http://www.aaiusa.org/press-room/4487/arab-nations-unite-in-relief-effort-for-haiti
"Following is a list of Arab and other Muslim nations that are providing assistance to Haiti earthquake victims.
Countries listed in alphabetical order:
ALGERIA Granted $1 million in emergency humanitarian aid.
BAHRAIN Sent a disaster relief team to provide aid, pledged $1 million in relief and the Bahrain Red Crescent Society appealed for donations for Haiti.
EGYPT Allocated medical supplies and personnel.
Indonesia Sent $2.1 million aid supplies in form of 40-tons of medicine, food and emergency telecommunication equipments. Along with this, it also sent 75 rescue personnel comprising 30 medical doctors, 10 rescuers, 10 electricity technicians, 25 construction and telecommunication experts.
IRAN Iranian Red Crescent Society officials announced that the country's first aid cargo has reached the quake-hit Central American state of Haiti.
JORDAN Established a 12-bed military hospital in Port-au-Prince, and are also feeding children who enter; dispatched two planes carrying a mobile field hospital, rescue team, doctors and six tons of aid supplies that include food, medicine and clothing.
KUWAIT Sent 100 tons of food, medical supplies, tents and blankets; donated $1 million, delivered through the country's Red Crescent Society;
LEBANON Airlifted 25 tons of tents, 3 tons of medicine, vaccines and other supplies; sent aid workers to help in relief effort.
MALAYSIA Several organizations in Malaysia have launched a Humanitarian Appeal for the Haiti Earthquake victims. Islamic Relief Malaysia, Mercy Malaysia, Malaysian Red Crescent
MOROCCO Sent $1 million worth of medical and pharmaceutical supplies.
PALESTINE Individuals donated money, food and clothing to the Red Cross.
QATAR Mobilized 26-person rescue team of soldiers, police and medical professionals; sent 50 tons of aid.
SAUDI ARABIA Donated $50 million, which will be directed through the United Nations.
SYRIA Airlifted 30 tons of humanitarian aid.
TUNISIA Allocated $1 million to the United Nations Emergency Fund that was created for Haiti relief.
TURKEY According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry Turkey has sent three cargo planes carrying search-and-rescue teams, medical personnel and aid materials to Haiti on Saturday January 16, two more planes left Sunday. Turkey continues to expand its relief efforts in Haiti.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Contributed over $2.6 million; three UAE charities donated more than 200 tons of medical equipment, tents and blankets, food and drinking water.
OTHER Muslim-American Doctors have set up clinics for the Haiti Disaster. "We are commanded by our creator to help a fellow man in need," said Dr. Ismail Mehr, Committee Chair of the Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA).
Adapted from Press Release of Arab American Institute
Yes, charity is one of the requirements of Islamic faith.
Regarding Joe's comment,
>When the Allies bombed German and Japanese cities I suspect there may have been a few civilian casualties, yet we don't regard FDR and Churchill has 'war criminals.'
It's appropriate that he should have written this right after the death of Howard Zinn, who bombed German forces in Europe. Zinn returned to find out first-hand what happened from the people who were on the ground, as a historian knows how to do. The experience turned Zinn into a pacifist. He decided that there was no military advantage to the bombing, and the officers who ordered the bombings did it to further their careers. You might call that being a "war criminal."
The Wikipedia article on Zinn has a good account:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn
Zinn learned that the aerial bombing attacks—in which he participated—had killed more than 1000 French civilians as well as some German soldiers hiding near Royan to await the war's end, events that are described "in all accounts" he found as "une tragique erreur" that leveled a small but ancient city and "its population that was, at least officially, friend, not foe."
The official history stated, that the famous Skoda works in Pilsen "received 500 well-placed tons, and that "Because of a warning sent out ahead of time the workers were able to escape, except for five persons."
Zinn wrote, "I recalled flying on that mission, too, as deputy lead bombardier, and that we did not aim specifically at the "skoda works" (which I would have noted, because it was the one target in Czechoslovakia I had read about) but dropped our bombs, without much precision, on the city of Pilsen. Two Czech citizens who lived in Pilsen at the time told me, recently, that several hundred people were killed in that raid (that is, Czechs)--not five."
And if this makes you wonder what Zinn thought about Israel, here's his article in Tikkun http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/HowardZinn-Thepoisonsofnationalism
Tarshisha, I welcome you comments. Its time to officially join our BDS movement (Boycott, DIvestment, Sanctions) and make concrete steps to dissociate yourself from ziostan. Norman, you too need to make an official statement on BDS. Its the only solution
Rabbi Tony Jutner, I first need you to explain your comments about Louis Frankenthaler.
He was in the IDF, and by his account he did the best he could to avoid harming the Palestinians and by vocally objecting to it he let other soldiers know that someone was watching and possibly restrained them.
Yet you accuse him of war crimes and tell him to give himself up in the Hague.
I don't understand what Louis Frankenthaler did wrong.
Here is what Mr Frankenthaler did wrong 1) He voluntarily moved to the apartheid zionist entity 2) He voluntarily joined the IOF 3) I should have told him to go screw himself...well why didnt you? 4) He didnt leave the IOF as soon as he knew what they stood for, ie he didnt desert, therefore he gained from the Occupation 5) He still lives in Jerusalem, which even though he expresses the right opinions, solidifies the theft of Palestinian land
If Demjanjuk knew that he would be harassed for 20 years because of his camp duty, he might not have done it. I would guess that in a private moment, Demjanjuk would express remorse. So how is this situation different?
Rabbi Tony Jutner, I wonder whether you are an ordained rabbi, and if so where were you ordained?
Many Iranians - including those in exile - claim that currently there is not any antisemitism in Iran. They point to the fact that the Jews of Iran today constitute the largest Jewish community in any Muslim country, which is true, and that even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not attack “the Jews,” but rather “the Zionists.”
At the same time, no other regime in the world is as antisemitic as that of the Mullahs in Tehran. It is true that Ahmadinejad does not attack “the Jews”, but instead claims that “two thousand Zionists want to rule the world.[1] He says, “For sixty sears now, the Zionists” have blackmailed all western governments.”[2] “The Zionists have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors.”[3] “The Zionists” are responsible for the Danish Muhammad cartoons. “The Zionists” are responsible for the destruction of the dome of the Golden Mosque in Iraq.[4] Of course, he invests the word “Zionist” with exactly the same sense with which Hitler once invested the word “Jew”: namely, that of being the incarnation of all evil. Whoever makes Jews responsible for all the ills of the world - whether as “Judas” or “Zionists” - is clearly driven by antisemitism.
Thus, in the special case of Iran we have both individual Jews, who are afforded some degree of protection as long as they agree to live in accordance with the religious concept of Dhimmitude and maintain a low profile, and the Jews in the abstract, i.e. “the Zionists,” who are considered to be the embodiment of global evil.
It is not hard to explain why individual Jews are more or less accepted in Iran: At least since the beginning of the rule of Reza Shah in 1925, the Iranian concept of “Aryanhood” included non-Muslim religious groups such as Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews. This concept of national integration (which also embraces Jews) remains somewhat applicable to this day.
The hatred of the abstract “Jew” and of Israel is more difficult to explain. Israel and Iran have no territorial disputes and there is no Iranian refugee issue; indeed, the pre-1979 period saw decades of good relations with Israel quite unlike the strained relation between Iranians and Arabs. In addition, the delusion of a “global Jewish power” was unknown in the Shia Muslim tradition. It is a hallmark of modern European antisemitism.
Thus the main question is when and how this kind of modern antisemitism, this hatred of the “abstract Jew”, was transplanted to Iran?
In the course of researching my study on the German-Iranian relationship over the past hundred years, I discovered archival documents that at least partly answer this question - documents relating to a period when the intensity of German-Iranian relations reached its peak: during World War II.[5]
It would behoove us to look at a few basic facts about the origins of the special relationship between Tehran and Berlin before examining new evidence about Nazi Germany`s antisemitic propaganda in Iran and drawing conclusions about its political ramifications.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Germany and Persia have made a great team. Persia needed Germany because it distrusted all the other great powers but was dependent on foreign technical assistance. Germany needed Iran because it was the only raw material-rich country as yet unconquered in the nineteenth-century struggle for colonies. These mutual interests produced an unparalleled level of cooperation between a Christian and a Muslim country.
Politically, the two countries shared common enemies from World War I onwards. Although Iran was officially neutral in both world wars, the hearts of most Iranians beat for Germany. They were battling the same adversaries: the Russians and British and later the Americans and Zionists or Jews. In addition, Germans became immensely popular in their role of technicians and engineers. In the mid-1920s, Germany provided Iran with both the backbone of its industrial infrastructure and the trained personnel needed to run it. Soon the German work ethic was legendary in Iran.
By the beginning of the World War II, bilateral cooperation between Iran and Germany had become extremely strong. In 1940, Germany accounted for 47,1 percent of all Iranian exports and 42,9 percent of imports.[6] Eighty percent of all machinery in the country came from Germany. But that is not all that was imported: at the same time, European antisemitic ideology was brought to Tehran in Farsi via a Berlin-based short-wave radio transmitter.
Iran was of strategic importance to Germany. As Hitler envisaged it, after the assault on the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht would also occupy the Caucasus and in so doing, open the way to the Middle East. Then Iran and Iraq would be conquered and the British Empire destroyed from the south. A pro-German movement in Iran reinforced by a concentrated propaganda effort would prepare for the German invasion of that country.
At that time, most Iranians were illiterate and used to listened to the radio in town squares or in bazaars and coffee houses. The German short wave radio station, called Radio Zeesen, was the most popular one in the country.[7]
“Even if we do broadcast in Persian,” British Ambassador to Tehran Reader Bullard wrote in 1940, “we cannot hope to rival the Germans in interest, as their more violent, abusive style, with exaggerated claims … appeals to the Persian public.”[8] Bullard had identified one reason for Radio Zeesen’s success. The programs were rabble-rousing rather than factual. Their aim was not to inform, but to incite antisemitism and to boast of German successes. They were targeted at a mass audience rather than intellectuals. Thus, the United Nations was dubbed the “United Jewish Nations,” and the Jordanian king, Emir Abdullah, was mocked as “Rabbi Abdullah” for wanting to negotiate with the Zionists.
The programmes were, however, produced professionally. Inflammatory harangues were skilfully interspersed with Koranic citations and musical interludes adapted to local tastes. In addition, the reception of Radio Zeesen was better than that of any other station broadcasting, since its Berlin transmitter had been upgraded for the 1936 Olympics. Last but not least, in the person of Bahram Sharokh, Radio Zeesen had a first-rate presenter with a good voice and excellent diction at its disposal. A 1941 survey of German propaganda achievements in Iran boasted that “Sharokh [was] always praised as a brilliant speaker and was more popular than even others, including the enemy ones.”[9]
After the occupation of Iran by Soviet and British troops in August 1941, Radio Zeesen became all the more important. “They [Persian listeners] turn to the German wireless now as the only means of getting Axis news”, states a BBC report of June 1942. “Although action is being taken to make effective the ban on public listening to Axis broadcasts, it seems that listening in private houses is still widely practised. As a result it appears that many people are still convinced that the Axis powers will win the war; Hitler, moreover, is said to enjoy great personal popularity.”[10] Some Sheikhs even deemed Adolf Hitler to be the Shi’ite Messiah, the “Twelfth Imam”.
During World War I, many Shi’ite clerics had already demonstrated reverence for the German Emperor as a protector and a secret convert to Islam. Hitler, for as long as the Germans were winning, was an even better figure upon which to project such a myth. A report on this matter by the German Ambassador in Tehran, Erwin Ettel, of February 1941 is illuminating: “For months, reports have been reaching the Embassy from the most varied sources that throughout the country clerics are speaking out, telling the faithful about old, enigmatic prophesies and dreams which they interpret to mean that God has sent the Twelfth Imam into the world in the shape of Hitler. Wholly without Embassy involvement, an increasingly influential propaganda theme has come into being, in which the Führer and therefore Germany are seen as the deliverers from all evil.”[11]
The German short-wave radio station was happy to exploit these fantasies in its Farsi broadcasts. However, Erwin Ettel was not satisfied. The Imam-belief strengthened the love of Germany, but it contributed little to hatred of the Jews. Here was still work for him to do.
It was understood that German-style antisemitism would have little resonance in Iran. “The broad masses lack a feeling for the race idea,” explained the propaganda expert of the German embassy in Tehran. He therefore laid “all the emphasis on the religious motif in our propaganda in the Islamic world. This is the only way to win over the Orientals.”[12] But how exactly could Nazi Germany, of all countries, conduct a religious propaganda campaign? Ettel had an idea.
“The way to directly connect up with Shi’ite ideas is through the treatment of the Jewish question, which the Muhammedan perceives in religious terms and which, precisely for this reason, makes him susceptible to National Socialism on religious grounds.” Just as hatred of Jews would provide the point of entry into the Shi’ite faith, so religion would serve as the natural medium for the propagation of Jew-hatred. “A way to foster this (anti-Jewish) development would be to highlight Muhammad’s struggle against the Jews in ancient times and that of the Führer in modern times,” Ettel recommended to the Foreign Office. “Additionally, by identifying the British with the Jews, an exceptionally effective anti-English propaganda campaign can be conducted among the Shi’ite people.”
Ettel even picked out the appropriate Koranic passages: firstly, sura 5, verse 82: “Truly you will find that the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans”; and, secondly, the final sentence of chapter 2 of Mein Kampf: “In resisting the Jew, I do the work of the Lord.” “By successfully bringing the country’s clergy under the sway of German propaganda, we can win over broad layers of the popular masses,” Ettel wrote in February 1941.[13]
Ettel’s proposal demonstrates that the Nazis sought to use religion to create an implacable hostility to the Jews. The first step was to awaken religious anti-Judaism, using references to Muhammad and the Koran. Thus, they built on the foundations of a centuries-old Muslim anti-Judaism while at the same time radicalizing it. One way of doing that was to depict Britain as being under Jewish control. Britain was in any case detested by the majority of the Iranian people. They were well-disposed, however, towards the US, as Ettel bitterly complained.
Thus, from late summer 1942 onwards, Radio Zeesen’s antisemitism was mixed with a special type of anti-Americanism as well. For example, Radio Zeesen emphasised “that the Jewish power policy in the Middle East is being implemented by the Americans.” This linkage is “regularly employed to reinforce our anti-American propaganda in Iran.”[14] The former Ambassador to Iraq, Fritz Grobba, advocated the same approach on July 2, 1942. “It must be stressed even more strongly than before that the Americans are acting as the pacemakers for the Jews in the Oriental sphere. Every American who comes to the Orient does so on the instructions of the Jews. The Jews have sent him there, even if he is not aware of this. The Jews are pulling the Americans’ strings.”[15] The closer came the defeat of the Nazis, the more frenzied became this anti-Western antisemitism - according to Josef Goebbels some 70-80 percent of the spoken material on Radio Zeesen in 1943 consisted of attacks on the Jews.[16]
Among the regular listeners to this material was a man of whom the world was later to hear much more: Ruhollah Khomeini. “Germany’s Persian service was, during the war, to enjoy the widest possible audience in Iran and Iraq”, writes Amir Taheri in his biography of Khomeini. When, in winter 1938 Khomeini, then aged thirty-six, returned from Iraq to Qum in Iran, he “had brought with him a radio set made by the British company Pye which he had bought from an Indian Muslim pilgrim. The radio proved a good buy. … It also gave him a certain prestige. Many mullahs and talabehs would gather at his home, often on the terrace, in the evenings to listen to Radio Berlin [= Radio Zeesen] and the BBC.”[17] The long-term consequences of this listening experience are well known.
Research on the impact of the Nazi’s radio propaganda in Iran has just begun and many additional discoveries can be expected. What we can conclude today is that this radio propaganda changed the perception of the so-called Jewish danger in two respects. Firstly, Radio Zeesen radicalized the hatred of Jews by fusing early Islamic Jew-hatred with the myth of the Jewish world conspiracy.
In 1963, twenty years later, these Nazi seeds bore fruits when Khomeini enriched his anti-Shah campaign with anti-Jewish slogans. Now his religious warning cry “Attack on Islam” was replaced by the antisemitic battle cry “Jews and foreigners wish to destroy Islam!” “Remind the people of the danger posed by Israel and its agents”, he ordered his supporters in Tehran and elsewhere. “Recall and explain all the catastrophes inflicted upon Islam by the Jews and the Baha’is.” Khomeini’s most important book, The Islamic State, published in 1971, is full of antisemitic invective. “It is the Jews who were the first to begin with anti-Islamic propaganda and ideological conspiracies,” he says in his foreword. “And that continues, as you see, until the present day.” Thus, by connecting Mohammad’s story of the seventh century with the present time, he unwittingly follows Ettel’s concept.
The second way in which radio propaganda changed the perception of the “Jewish danger” was that Radio Zeesen propagated the kind of genocidal anti-Zionism which is prevalent today. We have to analyse the revival of this ideology, keeping in mind that no other Muslim country between 1906 and 1979 had a more enlightened religious leadership, a leadership that also accepted Iran’s excellent relationship with Israel. As early as 1967, however, Khomeini started to preach a genocidal hatred against the Jewish state. It is the “duty” of all Muslims, he told his followers during that year, “to annihilate unbelieving and inhuman Zionism … The duty of the Palestinian people is the duty of every Muslim even in the most distant lands.” He also insisted on a comprehensive boycott of Israel: “The whole Islamic nation must know that whoever deviates … will be considered an enemy of Islam and the Muslims.[18]
Today, the heirs of Khomeini are praising the “strategic alliance” between Nazi Germany and Iran as a model for future times. In their view, Iran was occupied in 1941 by exactly the same forces that occupied Germany in 1945. After the “liberation” of Iran in 1979 and the “liberation” of Germany in 1989, they can now revive their alliance which was interrupted in 1941.
“With the collapse of the strategic alliance between the two countries during the Second World War,” Iran’s former president Hashemi Rafsandjani wrote in 2006, “the Allies were able to divide Germany into eastern and western parts. … During the same period, Iran was also technically under the influence of foreign powers. … The reunification of East and West Germany into a sovereign, politically independent Germany in 1990 … provided leaders of both countries with a suitable opportunity to take steps toward the revival of historical ties and the adoption of a new diplomatic approach.”
Rafsandjani developed these ideas in his foreword to a recently published book by Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, Irans’s Ambassador to Germany from 1990 to 1997.[19] Mousavian’s reading of history is the same as Rafsanjani’s. “The allied forces occupied Iran, because of its close cooperation with Germany in the war,” he writes. “After half a century of division and weakness, Germany has regained its unity.” Thus, the bilateral cooperation since 1990 “was as much the revitalization of an old established relationship as the creation of a new one.”[20]
Today, Khomeini’s heirs also repeat the rhetoric of Radio Zeesen verbatim. A Nazi party directive in May 1943 prophesied: “This war will end with antisemitic world revolution and with the extermination of Jewry throughout the world, both of which are the precondition for an enduring peace.”[21] Ahmadinejad, in his speeches, has revived this kind of genocidal utopia: “The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liberated”, he promised to the audience at the Holocaust deniers’ conference in 2006 in Teheran. “If peace prevails in the world, the people of the world will eradicate Zionism.”[22]
It is true that Ahmadinejad has received, and even embraced, some members of the Jewish renegade sect Neturei Karta. It is also true that some Iranian synagogues are open. However, what is of more importance is that firstly, even before Israel was founded, a particular stream in Iranian Islam had fallen prey to the demonizing delusions of the Nazis. Secondly, the leaders and adherents of this stream views the world through a lens with two superimposed distorting filters: one of early Islamic Jew-hatred and the other of modern antisemitism. Finally, Ahmadinejad’s anti-Jewish statements today resemble the statements of the Nazis.
It is not the technology that makes the Iranian nuclear programme so dangerous, but the ideological context within which it arises. For the first time since the splitting of the atom, we find the destructive force of the bomb linked to the fury of a holy anti-Jewish war.
“Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it”, suggested Tawfik Hamid, a former member of Jamaa Islamiya, an Islamic terrorist group led by Dr. Aiman Al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of Al-Qaeda.[23] Today, this challenge applies not only to Iran, where hundreds of thousands of opponents of Ahmadinejad want to know what went wrong with Khomeinism and why. The impact of Radio Zeesen also ought to be discussed also in the Western world, where still too many pundits are wrongly trying to scapegoat Israel for the old and new antisemitism of the Iranian regime
Matthias Kuenzel, I wish people wouldn't post entire articles verbatim to these comments pages. You could just as easily make your point and link to the original article.
I'm interested in knowing what my fellow Forward readers think, but I don't want to scroll through screen after screen of an article that, in this case, has nothing to do with the original column or anything that anyone has mentioned in the comments.
Some of the programs for online magazines can limit the length of comments to, say, 5000 characters. I wish The Forward could do this.
Norman I am a graduate of HUC. Thanks for pointing out the neo-zionist screed of Kuntzel
Did you go to the campus in New York or Los Angeles?
Moreinu Verabbeinu Harav Hagaon Rosh Kol Bnei Hagolah Tony, Shlit'a (With your HUC ordination, I'm sure you know what all this means): Is there any reason that you do not capitalize the appellation Zionist? After all, even the word "Nazi" gets a capital letter in the English language. No hatred is as intense as self-hatred.
People shouldn't be waisting time on the likes of Jutner. Thank G-d there are only a few like him - although they do make alot of noise and certainly give those wishing Israel's demise much strength.
To answer the question - Israeli's have the right - and the obligation - to criticize anytime. They have earned that right. Timeing is in the eye of the beholder.
Non-Israels have not earned that right. Only if/when they move to Israel, serve in the IDF, pay taxes, etc, then they will have earned that right.
In terms of the 'poor' Palestinians - when they stop teaching their kids to hate, and when they stop supporting terrorism, then they will have earned the right to be treated as human beings. Until then, they - and most of the Muslim world - are a cancer - and we all know that if you do not cut out a cancer it will kill you.