I thought Robert Wistrich was a committee, and a very old one at that.
I was surprised to learn that this author of many large, learned, standard works on anti-Semitism and Jewish history was actually available for an interview.
His works first appeared so long ago and continued in such profusion that I couldnt believe he was active had to have retired long ago, I thought.
In fact, Wistrich, a world expert on modern Jewish history, heads the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism in the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He graciously gave me an hour of his time before my recent research leave. It is a testament to his in-depth understanding of long term trends that what he said at the end of last January is as fresh now as it was then.
Anti-Semitism Today
Q: What is the state of anti-Semitism today?
My motto is never look back, he told me.
There is no much to do, especially in the field [anti-Semitism] I find myself in. There is never a moment without a challenge. This keeps me highly motivated.
Without any exaggeration or hesitation, the challenge now is the gravest and most existential danger to the Jewish people that we have experienced since the Shoah [Holocaust].
I say this despite the fact that in many ways the situation of Jews around the world in Israel and the Diaspora has never been better. This is one of the incredible paradoxes were living through.
Look at the condition of Jews according to their socio-economic status, the degree of their political influence, their impact in the arts, sciences and general culture plus the success story of Israel, despite the fierce criticisms, the double standards and rabid anti-Zionism that flares up every day. Despite all that, Israel is a fantastic success story, like the Jews everywhere.
And yet, the danger to the foundations of the state, to its survival, and the level of delegitimation from so many different corners and circles are such that we have to organize and coordinate and rethink our strategies.
Anti-Semitism is not the only problem, but its acute, more acute than most Jews even in Israel have internalized.
Jews are not aware of all the facts. That is one of my obligations and something of vital importance to make people aware of what is out there. We cannot afford to be caught by surprise.
I wrote an article today about the possibility: Could there be a second Holocaust? I take that seriously.
The major differences of the tragedy of the 1940s and today are basically in the fact that we have a unified nation, a state, an army, a powerful deterrent, a more aware and better organized Diaspora.
All that didnt exist then. If it werent for that, I think we would-be reliving to a certain degree what happened in the 1930s. That still keeps it under control, but only partially. We have to be very much on our toes.
Iran and Beyond
Q: Is Iran the major instance of anti-Semitism?
We have a major problem with Iran, and are not sufficiently aware of the dangers. But besides Iran and the delegitimation of Israel, we have these major problems:
The Muslim Brotherhood. I wrote my article before final results of the Egyptian elections were made public. But already then it was clear that Islamic parties would win 70-75% of the popular vote a really crushing victory. They will control the government. Its only a question of time.
I am familiar with the Muslim Brotherhood. I studied it in my book, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House; 1,200 pages).
For the moment, the Muslim Brotherhood is playing it cool with the West and the US due to the need for economic assistance. Their anti-Jewish and anti-Israel ideology has never deviated.
They are no less engaged in genocidal anti-Semitism than the Iranians.
Last November, there was a major demonstration organized by the Muslim Brotherhood. Speaker after speaker said to kill the Jews. It is absolutely standard in speaking to their own audiences to say, of course, they will abolish the peace treaty with Israel, when the time comes. They believe in Jihad.
If you look at the so-called Arab Spring, in every single country the Islamists have come out triumphant.
It is a ludicrous idea widely purveyed, quite popular that democracy will be the panacea for the Arab world. This is the exact opposite of the truth.
To a greater or lesser extent, depending on the culture of each Arab country, the Arab Spring has spawned more anti-Semitism and much more hostility to Israel.
The most prominent example is Gaza, when it was taken over by Hamas.
But not only Gaza. If the Israeli army were to withdraw from the West Bank, as so many people wish to see it do, the immediate result of that act of monumental folly would be that Hamas that would extend its rule to the whole of Palestine.
That would be a formula for war. It would just be a matter of time.
Next example: Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Next example: Within a year, in Iraq, the influence of Iran will lead to a completely Shiite-dominated Iraq.
The whole American effort in Iraq has turned out to be a total disaster. The abandonment of Iraq has simply strengthened Irans hand.
The same will happen in Afghanistan. The moment America withdraws, the Taliban will take power.
Have We Learned from the Holocaust?
Q: Has the world learned anything from the Holocaust?
The short answer is, no. The big question is, why? Why have no lessons been learned?
The cynic might say that its human nature, that the capacity for evil appears to be almost unlimited in the human species.
But, of course, that is a very general answer.
One could raise the question as to whether the notion of lessons to be learned from the Holocaust or from other genocides is this a meaningful question? Because the specific chain of causation is so complex, even though there is a vast literature attempting to unravel the reasons for the Holocaust and, indeed, for other genocides. I dont put them exactly on the same level of the Holocaust, but they are genocides.
Nothing has been learned. Does that mean we are exactly where we were on the eve of the Holocaust?
I dont think so. We know a great deal more. Weve re-run that film countless times.
We see warning signs that are perhaps useful.
We see how when you have a massive centralization of power, when the state is run by a fanatical elite that will stop at nothing to achieve its goals, where they are able to harness science and technology, especially if they have an organized bureaucracy, passive bystanders and the elimination of opposition all these are early indicators.
We see a mini-example, a more low level but really sinister example, in Syria.
Every day it kills 20 to 30 demonstrators.
And today everything is known much earlier. Much of it is even filmed, even in a police state like Syria.
Yet, you see the enormous difficulty of mobilizing any assistance from the outside.
Syria is particularly sinister because every day it goes on, and its widely known. Remember, under the German Nazi Holocaust, there were immense efforts at secrecy, in the fog of wartime, in far off places, with none of the means of the access we have today. No one could film and release it to the outside world. The victims were ignored.
Today, genocide still happens despite the fact that were living in an Internet world, where the Nazi-kind of secrecy is almost impossible, except perhaps in a regime like North Korea.
The will to genocide hasnt changed. It is there. Jews are not the only target.
The Jewish people, despite its influence and despite the power of Israel and its influence in America and some other places, is no guarantee of anything at all. There is a need for vigilance and a constant struggle against these tendencies to annihilation. They havent gone away at all.
Iran is just the most brazen and open example of it. For that reason, its particularly chilling.
But theres a lot more out there, coming from many directions, including the Left, which was not the case 70 years ago.
The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism
Q: What is the difference between your work on anti-Semitism and the work of the ADL or Simon Wiesenthal center?
First, there is an enormous difference in the resources. At The Hebrew University we work on a shoestring budget. And we dont go out and try and collect millions of dollars from people who are concerned about these issues.
Partly thats because the university doesnt allow us to do that.
Plus, you need professionals to do that. We are a small number of people in what is essentially a research center.
Only in the last 10 to 12 years has it turned into a major center dealing with contemporary and urgent issues of public concern. Times have changed. The dangers are much more acute. To live in a digital world is to face different challenges.
With all due respect to the Wiesenthal Center, it is not a research body. It does not analyze in-depth the trends, both historical and contemporary. It tracks down Nazi war criminals, though increasingly few are still alive. This has never been our concern, and could hardly be. It would be inappropriate for a scholarly body.
What we do and have encouraged many researchers around the world to do by giving grants, though resources are limited is to pursue topics that in their own countries they are not able to do with the little financing of research at a high level there.
Often they turn to us and we encourage their work and sometimes publish it.
That alone, if we did nothing else, would be a significant service to research and scholarship and general knowledge of this subject.
We have a bibliography that is unique an online bibliography of everything of significance in at least 10 languages on the subject of anti-Semitism.
These are abstracts done by professionally skilled people who read an article, a book, a compendium, and summarize it in an intelligible way.
There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. It is invaluable as a tool.
Our most import activity for me is organizing regular seminars, symposia, conferences all of this is online, at The Hebrew University website (link to Vidal Sasson International Center for Study of Anti-Semitism). Everything is listed there. The bibliography, the conferences, events, past, present and forthcoming.
There are speakers from abroad. More and more I find that people from the US, Europe and elsewhere contact us.
If we can find a way, we integrate them into our program. They have an opportunity to communicate with a very knowledgeable audience in Israel.
Turkey and the Armenian Genocide
Q: Why does Turkey deny the Armenian genocide?
The official position of the Turkish government has always been not to deny that many Armenians died and were killed, but that this was at the same time that many Turks and other groups died in the context of WW I.
In addition to that, Turkey says that the Armenians were in effect a fifth column, allied with Turkeys enemies, particularly Russia. And so and so forth.
Im not an expert on the Turkish-Armenian question. I do think that Turkeys official narrative is sincerely believed in and shows an extraordinarily obtuse and obstinate refusal to acknowledge that decisions were made which resulted in a very large numbers of Armenians in effect being condemned to death.
Its not really comparable to the Holocaust, but it is a genocide.
Maybe one could say its the first of the modern genocides.
The Turkish refusal to acknowledge this? I dont have a clear-cut explanation beyond, perhaps, the fact that this is a case where national pride and a certain kind of obstinacy makes it extraordinarily difficult for a nation implicated in this kind of activity which casts a black mark, a stain over their whole history to come clean, unless theyre forced to.
Does anyone think that Germany after WW II would have come clean if not for massive Allied pressure, making acknowledgement of the Holocaust the condition for Germany to join the family of civilized nations? I dont think they would have voluntarily done that.
Austria was let off the hook after WW II, and it took 40 years until the Waldheim affair brought any Austrian acknowledgement of guilt and complicity in the Holocaust.
For the French it took 50 years to acknowledge that the Vichy Regime was really part of French history.
Not until the 1990s did many of nations in Eastern Europe began to acknowledge, rather grudgingly, any part in the genocide of the Jews.
In that longer perspective, Turkey has not been that much of an exception to the rule.
But I have to admit that it is puzzling pursued to such an extraordinarily obstinate position, where Turkey is willing to cut off diplomatic relations over the Armenian genocide, as theyve now done with France.
The Japanese are another case. It took an incredibly long time for the Japanese government and society to acknowledge the terrible atrocities they committed against the Chinese and the Koreans.
This is a general pattern.
Future of Holocaust Remembrance
Q: With the Holocaust survivors dying out, what is the future of Holocaust remembrance?
This is one of the prime factors which would lead anyone, including myself, to be deeply concerned that the memory of the Holocaust is inevitably going to fade, to be eroded.
Were living through that period now. We just havent arrived there yet.
It has been a steady process of attrition. Survivors played a great role, particularly in the last 20 or so years, not just in keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust, but as witnesses, in a way that only witnesses can.
In the 1990s, I was involved in preparing a video when Holocaust education began in Great Britain. I was on a sabbatical year there. I spent much of it lecturing to high school students around the country, showing the film, meeting with teachers.
I always noted that when I was accompanied by a Holocaust survivor and he or she would tell their story the effect was palpable, much more than if I were to give a lesson on what happened.
There is nothing that can really substitute for that personal testimony.
The fact is that this will inevitably come to an end in a few years. Its something we have to face. We have to find, as best we can, alternative ways.
To some extent, this is possible. Many of these testimonies have been filmed. Thats not quite the same, but it still can help.
What concerns me the most is that for the last decade in particular we have seen the memory of the Holocaust under attack, sullied, defamed, trivialized, relativized, blasted out of existence often for political reasons, but not only that.
In softer kind of ways, there has been the kind of universalization of the Holocaust that actually strips of it of its particularity and certainly of its Jewish content.
Im not one of those who sits day and night saying we have to insist on the uniqueness of the Holocaust. I believe in its uniqueness, but not in addressing it in a militant fashion. Let it come it out on its own by how we present it.
Im not afraid of comparisons, but we dont want to dilute the Holocaust into some kind of anodyne lesson about the brotherhood of man.
I can understand, especially from a human point of view, the emphasis on the rescuers, the need to look for a happy ending.
But in the end of the story there is no happy ending. Escapism is not going to get us anywhere. Im concerned even more about those using, I mean abusing the Holocaust, to score political points.
I dont like it when its done in Israel and even less when its used as a weapon against Israel.
Comparing Israel to Nazis
Were living in a time when comparison to Nazis is becoming so commonplace. Its one the most outrageous libels in history.
A couple of years ago I was in London and I saw this very short play, less than a quarter hour, by an English author, Karen Churchill, Seven Jewish children.
It was very successful, shown in the Royal Court Theatre, sponsored by a Palestinian group. It was a few quick scenes beginning with the Holocaust.
The bottom line of this really nauseating play, which was very well received but anti-Semitic at a deeper level there was nothing openly anti-Semitic said in it the bottom line is that the parents of these seven children were lying to them, as they compared from the time of the Holocaust to what Israel is currently inflicting on the Palestinians.
The lie really derives from something that is connected with this Jewish sense of chosenness; at the end of play a mother says to an Israeli child: Dont worry, theyre all animals. Were the chosen.
This was both incredible and very much a sign of the times this kind of contemporary blood libel. It passes with very little criticism. The play was very often applauded. Seen as a brave gesture, when its nothing of the kind. Its the old, sick demonization.
The author defended it by saying that of course its not anti-Semitic because its about Israel. But the references are only to Jews.
This has seeped into the secular, modern and post-modern culture of today. Its become a part of it. All these images of Jews as wicked, as devilish, as warmongering, as rapacious.
Weve been there before and its come back. Israel is the pretext. Israel is the frame. And its accepted.
Anti-Semitism is not socially accepted, but anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism are totally acceptable. If you indulge in them, youre considered progressive, a good guy.
You can say almost anything about Jews today, provided you put it in that frame. You just say: Im not against Jews, just against Israel. Israel has become the alibi.
This is very dangerous.
Jews have contributed to this. Thats also what you see.
Israel is this very small island. We have our own lunatics, especially in academia, who spent time rubbishing Israel and calling it an apartheid state.
George Orwell in late 1930s said about Communists in Britain: There are some things in this world that only an intellectual would be stupid enough to be believe.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
