Achad Ha'am
It was Achad Ha’am, the famous
19th and early 20th 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 20th, 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 3rd 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 Paris
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| 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
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
