Achad Ha'am

Achad Ha'am

It was Achad Ha’am, the famous 19^th and early 20^th century Jewish thinker who wrote the article “Half a Condolence”. In this article Achad Ha’am challenges world opinion. At the time, blood liable relating to Jews dipping Matzah in Non-Jewish children’s blood was popular. Achad Ha’am wrote that we know such practice to be biblically strictly prohibited; thus we know that the whole world can be wrong. “Let this knowledge be,” Achad Ha’am writes, “half a condolence.”

Even today, many of the news people and people of academia discriminate against Israel but there are sometimes obvious erroneous statements that could serve as half a condolence.

Not long ago, the English based Professor Jacqueline Rose published  The Question of Zion. The book’s claim to fame was mirrored inter alia in the fact that it was published by Princeton University Press, a most distinguished academic publication. Dr. Rose ‘knows’ that the origin of both Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kkmph and Theodore Herzel’s Der Judenstadt are somehow rooted in Richard Wagner’s (whom Hitler titled “The Master”) opera Tannhousen. Dr. Rose writes that both Hitler and Herzel heard the opera at the same time in Paris [assuming, Dr. Rose  refers  to the Paris version of the opera initiated by Napoleon III and not to the Drasen version – never performed in Paris] this without knowing each other.

Alas, any high school child who has basic knowledge of the biography of Hitler and Herzel knows these “facts” to be an impossibility. Adolph Hitler was born on April 20^th, 1889. By 1883 Theodore Herzel withdrew his membership from Albia student union in Vienna following a memorial ceremony in memory of Wagner in which one of the speakers called for the introduction “Wagnerian Anti Semitism”. Even if not withstanding this demonstration, Herzel did witness the performance of Tannhousen in Paris and even assuming he did so, after the conclusion of his tenure as the representative of Neue Freie Presse in the city (he arrived there only in 1891) he died on the 3^rd of July 1904 after a long sickness. I hope that even Dr. Rose agrees that Herzel could not have witnessed the performance of the opera after that date. Alas, at this date, the future Fuehrer was a 15 years old, frustrated child, living in a poor neighborhood in Vienna dreaming of becoming a painter. He had no money to travel to Paris, never mind  seeing  an opera. Hitler first came to Paris in 1940 after the fall of Paris to the Nazis. No correction can help amend the damage done by “Fault Dr. Rose”.

Achad Ha'am

This phenomenon of smearing repeatedly the State of Israel, Zionism, and The Jewish People has recently been enhanced by dangerous quarters. Professors from Harvard and Chicago who consider the Jewish lobby an actual threat on The United States. A mathematician who tries to substantiate Israel’s crimes in a book published in Oxford without a single reference.

And what a discrimination! Last week over 100 innocent men, women and children were killed in Afghanistan by an American attack. The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai visiting The United States at the time, did not condemn the tragedy. The writer of this article was in London this week and was surprised to learn that this tragedy did not make it to any front page in any of the English newspapers. While a day after the tragedy the headlines of the London Times discussed the terminating of  television show, the Afghan tragedy was detailed on page 31. The Independent also related to the tragedy on an internal page. The Independent however, did add an article by Robert Fisk, whose anti Israeli approach is consistent and could not be more extreme, analyzes the tragedy – how else? but -  in comparison to Israel’s crimes in Gaza. He ends his article by asking how is it that all the victims are always Muslim? Mr. Fisk whose book The Great War of Civilization about the wars in the Middle East is a brutal attack on Israel while treating Bin Laden with gloves, forgot that the root of all terror in the last 40 years is Arab. As one autobiographer of Yasser Arafat put it, “to talk about world terrorism without mentioning the PLO is like talking about the blood circulation without talking about the heart”. All terror groups around the world, from the 60’s to the 90’s (such as the German Beidr Meinhopf, the Italian Red Brigade, the Japanese Liberation Army, the Basques in the north of Spain and the Irish IRA] all – without exception - exercised in the refugee camps in Lebanon. All terror acts in the last years were originated in the extreme Islam, Every traveler – but Mr. Fisk - who takes a flight and goes through security knows that the measures are to protect travelers against Islamic Terror. There is no other terror actually threatens the world today. Therefore, the war against terror is the war against extreme Islam. Only  an “expert” like Robert Fisk can forget that the victims of 9/11 were not Muslims, that the victims in the busses in Israel were not Muslims, the victims in London were not Muslims the victims in Bali and Japan were not Muslims, and ask why are Muslims always the victims.

It is very easy to distort history for the sake of popularity [Jimmy Carter, in his book Peace not Apartheid actually wrote that Yassir Arafat never wanted to annihilate Israel. Mr. Carter ignored the Palestinian Covenant]. At the and it is up to us to lead the world to understand that (using the heading of another article of Echad Ha’am) “This is Not the Way”. as lying to yourself is a dangerous and guaranteed venue to tragedy.

Zalli Jaffe