Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 24 July 1996 — Page 13

ook Reviews

July 24. 1996 NAT 7 •ntt* 838 i mmsmm Fleishman s Flight

Self-hating Jews' sickness revealed How words hurt, heal

Reviewed by JACOB NEUSNER

Edward Alexander. The lewish Wars. Rrflections by One of the Belligerents. Carbondale & Edwardsville, 1996: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBNB 0 8093 2011 8. pp. 206. No price

given.

Eloquent and courageous, Edward Alexander takes the theme of anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism and transforms a mere topical debate into profound reflections on the meanings of self-hatred and bigotry, Jews' hatred of themselves, gentiles' anti-Semitism in its most contemporary version. These occasional essays, written in specific contexts of immediate controversy, therefore transcend their occasions as Alexander pursues a single theme through diverse varia-

tions.

Jewish self-hatred presents the more surprising of the two themes, since as a topic of public exposition, Jews' intense dislike of themselves for being Jewish, and the psychological and cultural consequences of that dislike, have found only a few important expositors. One was Theodore Lessing, Czech Zionist, murdered by the Nazis, who in 1930 invented the term, "Jewish self-hatred," and defined its pathology; and the other, Kurt Lewin, whose writings on "leaders from the periphery" and other aspects of ethnic self-hatred, in the late 1940s, proved prescient forthe next half-century of American Jewish life. Now Alexander has shown how American Jews' relationship to the State of Israel — demanding from Israeli public policy self-abne-gation unparalleled by any other nation — and Israeli Jewish self-hatred have governed the very shaping of debates on Israeli policy. He writes, in particular, in the aftermath of the Arabs' remarkable propaganda victory in the Intifada, which dramatically accorded to the Palestinian side the moral authority of the victim and rendered Israelis into oppressors. The Israeli left turned against its own country, ignoring the wisdom of Berl Katznelson, the conscience of Socialist Zionism, who in 1936 wrote (as cited by Alexander), "Is there another people on earth whose sons are so emotionally and mentally twisted that they consider everything their

nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape, and robbery committed by their enemies fills their hearts with admiration and awe?" In his classic essay, "Anti-Semitism, Israeli style," Alexander proceeds to cite chapter and verse of the violent self-hatred characteristic of Israeli criticism of their own

country and its policies. A single, remarkably sick,

example suffices: the invocation of the blood libel of medieval times, which held that Jews use gentile blood to make Passover matzot, in a poem on the Lebanon war by Yizhak Laor. Dedi Zucker, commenting on the murder of Jews, burned to death in their care by a fire bomb thrown by Arab terrorists, said on the fourth day of Passover, "Palestinian brothers, the Jewish settlers need Ofra Moses' blood. They are drinking it." And the equation of Jews w ith Nazis — which began with British officers in Palestinian in 1941 who spoke of Jewish Palestine, in the midst of the Holocaust, as "the Jewish Nazi state" — forms a staple

of Israeli left-wing writing. Alexander's account

records no story sorrier than that of the government-sup-ported Haifa Municipal Theater. They made a specialty of "the Jew as Nazi" plays, and when they performed these in Germany, they got uproarious applause from all but the local Jewish communities, which condemned their plays

as pure anti-Semitism. On the American side,

Alexander picks out Leonard Fein, David Novak, Michael Lemer, Noam Chomsky (the Jews' answer to Timothy Leary), and any number of others who qualify, in one way or another, for classification as self-hating Jews. The definition of a self-hating Jew is simply, a Jew who demands that the Jews be better than everybody else, all together, and condemns them for the slightest failure to conform to this fictive gold standard. And when it comes to Israeli matters, these same Jews leap to the barricades to condemn the slightest Israeli aberration but never find fault with anyone else's. So any passing cloud that shadows the Jews' light to the gentiles betokens the next Flood, and we are not

Noah but Sodomites. The introduction of the metaphor from Nazism in public debate on Israeli policy derives from anti-Semitic gentiles as much as Jews. It is one thing to criticize what Israelis do or do not do; it is another thing to call upon Adolph Hitler as the generative symbol. In this connection Conor Cruise O'Brien said, "If your interlocutor can't keep Hitler out of the conversation... feverishly turning Jews into Nazis and Arabs into Jews — why then, I think, you may well be talking to an antiJewist." Alexander takes on a whole wolves' lair of antiJewists: Edward Said, Alexander Cockburn, Archbishop Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Patrick Buchanan (with special attention to his Rosh Hashanah and his Yom Kippur sermons to the Jews of some years back), and many others. A single essay captures it all: "Why Jews must behave better than everybody else: the theory and practice of the double standard." Alexander places himself not only against a massive movement in contemporary politics, the Jews' own surrender of conscience and character to the care of their worst enemies, and the Western world's reversion to its long history of Jew-hatred. But as it happens, predictably, Alexander also takes a stand against another vile incubus of culture and sensibility. He is a professor of English who actually believes that literature edifies. So he numbers among his enemies not only the multi-culturalists but also the lit-crit movement with its betrayal of literature and its barbaric prose, a self-carica-ture of its barbaric position. To underscore the issue, Alexander for his part writes elegantly, imparting to his prose a dignity and craft that his enemies' writing — cited abundantly — strikingly lacks. One of his principal agents, Edward Said, quoted here, writes like a barbarian, when he is not simply squealing like a stuck pig — he and his many professional advocates. These great essays recall the moral authority and righteous anger of Emile Zola's Continued on page 10

By ALFRED FLEISHMAN I know that I have written about Telushkin's new book, but there is more to say. I didn't think that I would ever be using sources that were

anywhere from several hundred to several thousand years away... and that they could at the same time be so modem and so real. I have, in fact, written and discussed more of the subject for about 50 years. That was about the date when I first waded through Alfred Korzybski's book on General Semantics, Science and Sanity. This was followed by Hayakawa and Wendell Johnson, Irving Lee and dozens of others which have been written since that time. They've all become part of what is often called the "scientific approach to communication." Or, to put it another way, and more simply, but just as meaningful, "what happens when people just talk to each other." And to adopt the often spoken words of former Senator Dole, and now presidential candidate Dole, "That's what it's all about!" I think I have written more than 600 columns or so in the St. Louis Business Journal in the past 12 years on the subject of human communication. But it was in the review of a new and very recent book by a rabbi, which bore a familiar name as its heading. He articulates in a most modern and revealing way what many of us have been saying about "words being the most important tools we have." He brings the subject much closer to home. It is especially timely due to the large number of books recently written and to those that are certain to come. The name of the book? Words That Hurt and Words That Heal. Written between these words appears an even more familiar phrase "How To

Choose Words Wisely and Well." These were familiar terms and I had to have this new book. The book is by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, and it is published by William Morrow and Co. of New York. It should be read by anyone who tries to figure out exactly what is said by many... and what is meant. I could fill up this column with just a review. But as I went through the book I knew that when I read the chapter headings, a review just wouldn't do. I couldn't resist just commenting on many of the headings. Especially those that caught my attention at once. Here are a few. Just the titles tell a considerable story. "The Irrevocable Damage Inflicted By Gossip." "Non-defamatory And True Remarks." "How We Speak About Others." "Negative Truths." "When Gossip Is Falsely Attributed To You." "Rumors." "How To Pass On a Rumor When You Feel Ethically Obligated To Do So." "Slander." "The Lure Of Gossip." "When, If Ever It Is Appropriate To Reveal Information That Will Humiliate Or Harm Others." "Privacy and Public Rage And Anger." "How To Criticize And How To Accept Rebuke." "The Cost Of Public Humiliations." "Is Lying Always Wrong?" This is only the first part of the book! Words That Heal is a big portion of the second part of the publication... as is a closing chapter on "What Do We Do Now?" If some of the writers of today had read the book by Telushkin, before they wrote or published some of the books they have written and published, they (the books) wouldn't have seen the light of day. One of the problems about the book is that you are sorely tempted to quote so much from it. But it must be read to be appreciated. But Telushkin does not aim to have one feel that he has just dreamt up the material Continued on page 14