Beyond Innocence and Redemption
Fein, Leonard
cially shortage of trained personnel and a disadvantage in the amount of money it is able to expend, Pentecostalism seems likely to continue to grow among uprooted and BOOKS marginal segments of...
...The right hand giveth...
...Everything...
...The first thirty pages of Ellis's book are devoted to a searching critique of the uses the Jewish people in general and the state of Israel in particular have made of their suffering (the Holocaust/innocence) and their subsequent empowerment (Israel/ redemption...
...This we may discern from earlier pas- sages in the book...
...But no...
...The branch: in accents of sweet reason, Ellis puts forward a message of collective guilt: the collective guilt of the Jewish peo- ple...
...After all, "Jews are essentially a diaspora people who choose BEYOND INNOCENCE AND REDEMPTION Confronting the Holocaust and Israeli Power Marc H. Ellis Harper & Row, $21.95,214 pp...
...hnmediately, how- ever, he qualifies: "...though some of the behavior may in fact be comparable...
...This opening argu- ment might deserve to be taken more seri- eusly did he not devote the rest of his book to a polemic against Israel, root and branch...
...So, for example, in dis- cussing Jewish writings on "the connection between the Jewish experience of suffering in Europe and the Palestinian experience of suffering at the hands of the Jewish peo- ple in Palestine and Israel," Ellis starts by tion in the continent...
...What was done to the Jews is now being done by the Jews to another people...
...in 1982, as Begin presid- ed over Israel's siege of Beirut, Beirut became for him Berlin, and that is what he said to the nation he misled...
...The root: "Solidarity with the Palestinian people," Ellis's principal commitment, "means preparing for the transformation of the Jewish state into something else, perhaps a confederation or even a unified state with autonomous and integrated com- munities" (emphasis added...
...Its effect (I trust that Ellis would deny the intent) is the delegitimation of Israel...
...What can such a sentence conceivably mean...
...not merely "taking on some of the characteristics of our oppressors," but "becoming everything we loathed about our oppressors...
...The tone may be sor- rowful, but it cannot conceal Ellis's animus toward Israel...
...Ellis inserts, as is his irritating habit, an exculpating qualifier: We are merely "in danger of becoming," we have not yet arrived...
...Yes, Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians is both stupid and wrong, and threatens to corrupt Israeli soci- ety...
...And the left hand taketh away...
...The twin themes, he argues, have produced a theology that enables the Jews to evade responsibility for their (wretched) behavior...
...Though the claim of sincerity is belied by the extraordinary selectivity in the 25 January 1991:63...
...it is the very idea of a Jewish state...
...I believe that Begin was sincere about all that, not consciously manipulative...
...No" not merely because the comparisons are odious, not even merely because they are mistaken nor because the line between criticism and delegitimation, a line the doves among us have never crossed, is a line that Ellis, taken as a whole, simply ignores...
...It may be that at this point a state organization of the Jewish community of Israel is important, but that hardly means forever...
...The sociological prob- ability that Latin America will turn Protestant, in majority numbers, strikes me as culturally and statistically unlikely, l/ asserting that "it is important to see that [these] are not primarily c,-sons between Nazi and Israeli bel~a,'lor...
...But the threat will not be overlooked by Catholics who are, already, calling for new and imaginative programs of re-evangelizaThanks, but no thanks arc Ellis offers us in his new book less a critique of Israel than an indictment of Israel...
...And why not...
...Leonard Fein to live among the people of the world" (emphasis added...
...Yes, there are Israeli Jews whose behav- ior is indistinguishable from the behavior of the accursed Nazis...
...And what, therefore, is the place of Israel...
...No," in the end, because Ellis commits and extends what we may think of as "the Begin error...
...In other words, it is not Israel's control of or behavior in the ter- ritories, in the West Bank and Gaza, that is the problem...
...And yes, one terrible lesson we have learned from these y~ ::, of conflict is that being Jewish offers no immunity against the follies and flaws which afflict all peoples...
...Jews," Ellis informs us toward the end of his book, "are in danger of becoming everything we loathed about our oppres- sors...
...his is not a call for reform of Israeli practice but a demand for revision of Israeli principles, including the very first principle--that there is merit to the notion of Jewish self-determination...
...Yes, "it" can happen anywhere, even, may God help us all, in Israel...
...Not merely "some Jews," but "Jews...
...In Menachem Begin's world, Arafat was Hitler...
...And it may be that Marc Ellis is equally sincere when he inverts the Begin analogy, now placing the jackboot on Israel's foot...
...But the qualifier fails...
...Or, "The choice to pursue a small or enlarged Jewish state demands either subservience of the Arab population or, better yet, their dis- appearance into neighboring countries" (emphasis added...
...cially shortage of trained personnel and a disadvantage in the amount of money it is able to expend, Pentecostalism seems likely to continue to grow among uprooted and BOOKS marginal segments of the population...
Vol. 118 • January 1991 • No. 2
