It's another great piece Dave. I think a really important point you make, and I take away from it, is the entire world order was partly built as a response to the Holocaust and Nazi crimes. Antisemites argue that only Israel came into existence in this way, rather than the entire post-war consensus.
"Of course, Mishra is not alone in implying that Israel’s actions in Gaza carry such echoes. The debate over whether Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza constituted a genocide is fiercely contested. While genocide is a criminal charge that ought to be determined solely on the evidential facts, it is also a label with broader political implications. Further, there is a long-standing academic division over whether genocide is an intentional crime knowingly committed by states or other actors, or a consequence of social forces produced by imperialism, or even by capitalism itself. The latter view often comes with the idea that the Holocaust was not unique but rather was just another colonial genocide, committed by a European power looking for lebensraum in Eastern Europe.
This is a deeply flawed argument that fails to explain Germany’s total, obsessive drive to destroy the entirety of European Jewry. The theory that the Holocaust’s purpose was to clear territory for German colonisation cannot tell us why Jews from Paris or Rome were transported eastwards, into precisely the lands earmarked for Aryan settlement. It cannot, for example, explain why the Nazis felt it necessary to capture, transport and kill Anne Frank, hiding in her attic in Amsterdam. Instead, it over-universalises the Shoah, redefining it not primarily as an act of antisemitism but of colonialism. This, in turn, leads some people to place it alongside not just colonial genocides like the destruction of Native Americans or Aboriginal peoples in Australasia, but acts of war such as the bombing of Hiroshima or the onslaught in Gaza."
A deeply flawed argument indeed, which overlooks the glaring fact that the Nazis weren't only intent on "destroying the entirety of European Jewry". The Nazis were just as intent on eliminating Jewish life wherever they found it, and made a start in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria before the Axis powers were defeated and were at one point creating a database of the names and addresses of Jews living on the other side of the Atlantic.
"Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza is clearly questionable"
I have been struggling with the details of this for a long time. What precisely could Netanyahu have done differently in properly defending Israel after 7/10?
You're at it again Dave! trying to smear Pankaj Mishra as an antisemite - just as you try and smear any critic of Israel whilst simultaneously claiming that as a British Jew Israel doesn't concern you.
I agree that Bondi and Manchester were terrible crimes. But Israel has killed more civilians every single day of its ceasefire. of course as a British Jew that doesn't concern you...
Excellent, as always, Dave. Mishra’s grotesque Holocaust inversion seems to me like a barely veiled supersessionism, repurposing Christian replacement theology in the secular language of human rights and decolonization. Jews, once the universal symbols of victimhood, have forfeited their status by virtue of the war in Gaza, and are now cursed to wander the earth as the eternal symbols of oppressors and colonizers.
Maybe if Israel stopped slaughtering civilians in their tens of thousands and israeli settlers fresh from the terrible oppression they face in Brooklyn or Melbourne stopped stealing land in the West Bank then they would have a slightly better reputation.
There were other kinds of Zionism that were possible. But Israel went with Irgun and the Stern gang. The murderers of Count Bernadotte morphed into the murderers of Yitzhak Rabin. Israel became a terror state that assassinated critics and supported Hamas because Netanyahu seemed to like the cut of their jib
It's another great piece Dave. I think a really important point you make, and I take away from it, is the entire world order was partly built as a response to the Holocaust and Nazi crimes. Antisemites argue that only Israel came into existence in this way, rather than the entire post-war consensus.
From the full piece in Prospect:
"Of course, Mishra is not alone in implying that Israel’s actions in Gaza carry such echoes. The debate over whether Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza constituted a genocide is fiercely contested. While genocide is a criminal charge that ought to be determined solely on the evidential facts, it is also a label with broader political implications. Further, there is a long-standing academic division over whether genocide is an intentional crime knowingly committed by states or other actors, or a consequence of social forces produced by imperialism, or even by capitalism itself. The latter view often comes with the idea that the Holocaust was not unique but rather was just another colonial genocide, committed by a European power looking for lebensraum in Eastern Europe.
This is a deeply flawed argument that fails to explain Germany’s total, obsessive drive to destroy the entirety of European Jewry. The theory that the Holocaust’s purpose was to clear territory for German colonisation cannot tell us why Jews from Paris or Rome were transported eastwards, into precisely the lands earmarked for Aryan settlement. It cannot, for example, explain why the Nazis felt it necessary to capture, transport and kill Anne Frank, hiding in her attic in Amsterdam. Instead, it over-universalises the Shoah, redefining it not primarily as an act of antisemitism but of colonialism. This, in turn, leads some people to place it alongside not just colonial genocides like the destruction of Native Americans or Aboriginal peoples in Australasia, but acts of war such as the bombing of Hiroshima or the onslaught in Gaza."
A deeply flawed argument indeed, which overlooks the glaring fact that the Nazis weren't only intent on "destroying the entirety of European Jewry". The Nazis were just as intent on eliminating Jewish life wherever they found it, and made a start in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria before the Axis powers were defeated and were at one point creating a database of the names and addresses of Jews living on the other side of the Atlantic.
Not to mention that Hitler also gsthered up the anti-Jewish hatred already thriving across Middle Europe, Russia and in other parts of the world.
"Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza is clearly questionable"
I have been struggling with the details of this for a long time. What precisely could Netanyahu have done differently in properly defending Israel after 7/10?
You're at it again Dave! trying to smear Pankaj Mishra as an antisemite - just as you try and smear any critic of Israel whilst simultaneously claiming that as a British Jew Israel doesn't concern you.
I agree that Bondi and Manchester were terrible crimes. But Israel has killed more civilians every single day of its ceasefire. of course as a British Jew that doesn't concern you...
Excellent, as always, Dave. Mishra’s grotesque Holocaust inversion seems to me like a barely veiled supersessionism, repurposing Christian replacement theology in the secular language of human rights and decolonization. Jews, once the universal symbols of victimhood, have forfeited their status by virtue of the war in Gaza, and are now cursed to wander the earth as the eternal symbols of oppressors and colonizers.
Maybe if Israel stopped slaughtering civilians in their tens of thousands and israeli settlers fresh from the terrible oppression they face in Brooklyn or Melbourne stopped stealing land in the West Bank then they would have a slightly better reputation.
There were other kinds of Zionism that were possible. But Israel went with Irgun and the Stern gang. The murderers of Count Bernadotte morphed into the murderers of Yitzhak Rabin. Israel became a terror state that assassinated critics and supported Hamas because Netanyahu seemed to like the cut of their jib