READING: Isaac Asimov on Dominationist Ethnonationalism
It is for everyone, and everyone catches it…
I publicly expressed my view on this only once, and in delicate circumstances. It was in May 1977. I was invited to a round-table discussion whose participants included Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust and hasn’t spoken about anything else since. That day, he irritated me by claiming that you couldn’t trust academics, or technicians, because they had helped make possible the Holocaust. What a sweeping generalization that is! And precisely the kind of remark that antisemites might make: “I don’t trust Jews, because once, Jews crucified my Saviour”.
I let the others argue for a moment while I brooded over my resentment; then, unable to contain myself any longer, I spoke up:
Mr. Wiesel, you’re wrong; the fact that a group of people has suffered appalling persecution does not mean it is inherently good and innocent. All that the persecution proves is that this group was in a position of weakness. If the Jews were in a position of strength, who knows if they wouldn’t become persecutors?…
To which Wiesel replied, very angrily: “Give me one example of the Jews persecuting anyone!”
Naturally, I was expecting this:
At the time of the Maccabees, in the second century BCE, John Hyrcanus of Judea conquered Edom and gave the Edomites the choice of conversion to Judaism, or death. Not being idiots, the Edomites converted, but afterwards they were still treated as inferiors because even though they had become Jews, they were still originally Edomites…
Wiesel, even more upset, said: “There is no other example.”
“There is no other period in history where Jews have exercised power”, I replied. “The only time they had it, they behaved just like the others.”
That put an end to the discussion. I would add however that the audience was entirely on the side of Elie Wiesel.
I could have gone further. Alluded to the fate of the Canaanites at the hands of the Israelites in the time of David and Solomon, for example. And if I’d been able to predict the future, I could have mentioned what is happening in Israel today. The Jews of America would have a clearer understanding of the situation if they could imagine the roles reversed: with Palestinians governing the country and Jews throwing stones at them with the energy of despair.
I had the same kind of argument with Avram Davidson, author of brilliant science fiction, who is of course Jewish, and was – at least at one time – conspicuously Orthodox. I wrote an essay on the Book of Ruth, which I saw as an appeal for tolerance in opposition to the cruel edicts of Ezra the scribe, who encouraged Jews to “renounce” their foreign wives. Ruth was a Moabite, a people the Jews clearly detested; yet she is portrayed in the Old Testament as a female role model, and is even listed as an ancestor of David. Avram Davidson took offense at my insinuation (that Jews could be intolerant), and I was treated to a very sarcastic letter in which he too asked me if the Jews had ever been persecutors. I replied in part: “Avram, you and I live in a country that is 95% non-Jewish, and that doesn’t pose any particular problem for us. What would happen to us on the other hand if we were Gentiles living in a country that was 95% Jewish Orthodox?”
I never received a reply.
Even as I write, Jews are immigrating from the former Soviet Union into Israel. They are fleeing their country because they fear religious persecution. But the moment they set foot on Israeli soil, they become Zionist extremists who are merciless toward the Palestinians. They change from persecuted to persecutors in the blink of an eye.
That said, the Jews are not alone in this. If I’m sensitive to this particular problem, it’s because I’m Jewish myself. In fact, this phenomenon is universal. In Roman times, when the first Christians were persecuted, they pleaded for tolerance. But when Christianity prevailed, did tolerance reign? Not on your life. Instead, persecution was soon going on in the opposite direction. Or take the case of the Bulgarians, who demanded freedom from their dictatorial regime, but once they had it used it to aggress against their Turkish minority. Or the people of Azerbaijan, who demanded of the Soviet Union the freedom denied it by the central government, only to immediately attack the Armenian minority.
The Bible teaches that the victims of persecution must in no circumstances become persecutors in their turn: “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”(Exodus 22:21). But who follows this teaching? Personally, whenever I try to spread the word, I get hostile looks and make myself unpopular…
I miss Isaac Asimov, even though he did not handle the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s well…
