THE HOLOCAUST PERSPECTIVE

[Guest Fadi]

"The Holocaust perspective" subtitle from "The Convergent Aspect of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide. A Reinterpretation of the Concept of Holocaust." By Vahakn N. Dadrian (Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2. pp. 151-169, 1988)

 

 

 

pp. 160-165

 

 

THE HOLOCAUST PERSPECTIVE

 

 

In depicting the common determinants of the two episodes of genocide, the claim of uncommonness advanced by the victims of each genocide is implicitly put to the test. If the similarities of the factors of victimization are striking, can the end result they help produce be significantly dissimilar? From the perspective of the perpetrators, genocidal victimization is in substance and thrust, if not in form, a more or less consistent practice of extermination, or what Horowitz calls 'taking lives'. The practice extends over a whole range of activities involving designs, deliberations, planning, organization, and supervision — all geared to reducing, concentrating, trapping and annihilating the targeted victims.

 

But when one shifts the locus of attention to the victims, a discrepancy in perception and interpretation sets in, for these victims are no longer the objects reduced for the purpose of destruction, but subjects enveloped with the conditions of destruction as a national destiny. The Armenian and Jewish perspectives of victimization throughout the centuries have been gravitating toward distinct self-images at the center of which is a martyrdom complex. This is a special type of victim response which gives to the perspective a kind of existentialist-phenomenological character through which subjective experiences are elevated to the altar of apocalyptic but elusive truth. The rationale is that no outsider can grasp the uniqueness of the personal experience, and if one tries, one is bound to distort it. As Elie Wiesel, the Jewish proponent of this school of thought, has stated: 'The Event remains unique, unlike any other... the Event defies all analogy; it can only be compared to itself... To explain is to diminish it, to generalize it, to mutilate it.'39

 

American sociologist W. I. Thomas' concept of 'the definition of the situation' is exemplified here. When people define situations as real they are real in consequence. The subjective definition rather than the objective content of the situation becomes the basis of the response. Thus arise unique responses which should not be confounded with unique experiences. By delineating in broad terms the holocaustal dimensions of the Jewish genocide, Wiesel articulated a response, the uniqueness of which exceeds in importance the objective features of the genocide itself. Several questions pose themselves. How personal and deep is the experience in terms of what the Germans call Erlebnis? More importantly, what is exactly the relationship of the personal to the more abstract ethnic or national sense of identification? Involved here are various categories of survivors who, in the grip of immediate or delayed trauma, are prone to project into and reemphasize the collective aspects of the trauma.

 

As noted above, the very rudiments in the formation of these two peoples are bound up with a special kind of religious fervor discernibly presaging disastrous persecution. Viewed historically, religious separateness in an inhospitable geo-political locus was full of conflict with 'out-groups'. By the same token, that conflict was likely to take on the form of persecution inasmuch as such an 'in-group' separateness was critically handicapped by vulnerability and impotence. It is in this sense that the objective fact of victimization, sustained through millennia, was harnessed by these two peoples by way of transforming it into subjective images highlighting a model of unique victims. To be weak and still insist on a system of beliefs that implicitly challenges the belief systems of the stronger and militant out-groups is a form of tacit defiance, full of risks. To persist in such beliefs in the face of unrelenting persecution is perilous. But to survive these perils despite the attendant decimations may well be defined as a type of heroism denoting the concept of unique victims, while connoting unique forms of victimization.

 

This idea was underscored by two renowned British historians in their discussion of the World War I genocide of the Armenians: The most fiendish ingenuity of man was defeated by the superhuman constancy of the Armenian nation. It should never be forgotten that nearly three-quarters of a million of Armenians could have saved themselves from death by abjuring their faith. Even the remnant of such a nation is immortal by its sufferings and self-sacrifice.'40 A similar appraisal is warranted for the Jews. Here, the convergence of both genocides has a historical-developmental feature as part of the configuration in the incidence of a unique genocide.

 

We may now turn to the question of the application of these images of uniqueness to the concept of 'holocaust' through which a distinction is made between 'the universal' and 'the unique' in genocides. As a social phenomenon, albeit cataclysmic in nature, genocide may be analyzed mechanically, detached from given historical roots. Not the cumulative developments leading up to it, but the immediate incidence of occurrences producing the fact of genocide, are of interest here. Historically speaking, genocide is a problem of aggregate factors, constituting an organic whole. The mechanical approach, on the other hand, addresses problems of precipitation. Genocides which are single-time experiences for the victims, having no specific historical rudiments, and no general antecedents involving any significant level of domestic persecution and atrocities are of this kind. The instances identified with Cambodia, Indonesia and Nigeria may be treated as belonging to this class oî cases. From a historical perspective they are more or less accidents of aberration. Sociological categories of power, domination, minority status, intergroup conflict, conflict resolution, state authority, decision making, etc. are the parameters of consideration. In other words, when genocide is subjected to conceptualization, it is reduced to a set of common denominators and, acquiring 'universal' properties, it becomes divested of its unique attributes. Inveighing against this method described as a manifestation of 'the genius of scientific progress [which] covertly carries the destruction of unique events', Protestant schoter Franklin Littell pleads for the acceptance of 'the unexamined and mysterious'. Addressing specifically the problem of genocide, he takes to task the adherents of this 'scientific' method by exposing what he considers to be their fallacy:

 

There may have been a destruction and desecration of Jerusalem in 70 and 135 CE, but Rome and Constantinople and Moscow and Dresden went through similar experiences. There may have been a Holocaust, but there is a large volume o( other illustrations of 'man's inhumanity to man'... In terms of the unique, the style of thinking moves from avoidance of the particular to generalization to abstraction to banality. In snort, the critical*analytical/comparative/abstraclive method — unless balanced by aesthetic and/or religious awareness — can lead easily to absurdity in the treatment of the mysterious and the sacred.41

 

When national history is perceived to be largely a history of national tragedy, marked by episodes of sustained persecution and intermittent massacres, the experience of genocide for the victims acquires special meaning. History, world outlook, ethnic-national self-images, and future aspirations are eventually subjected to the centrality of that meaning. The result is the growth of a pervasive sense of uniqueness, and its corollary, an inveterate ethnocentrism, which is a melancholy response to endless suffering as a collective destiny. Such responses are in part a way of coping with the residues of a lingering trauma, and in part a compensatory mechanism through which survivors and their progeny may be attempting to reward themselves for endurance and survival perceived to be extraordinary feats. The tormenting problem of impotence and unabating vulnerability in the vicissitudes of power play dominating international and inter-group relations is dealt with by collective sublimations. The principal vehicle for this is self-elevation through a self-recognition in which a sense of distinctness coincides with a sense of uniqueness. The poem that follows illustrates a particular type of sublimation in which nihilistic heroism is carried to the threshold of Divinity that stands thus challenged. It is written by Vahan Tekeyan who, by sheer accident, escaped the fate of his fellow poets who were annihilated by Turkish swords.

 

WE WILL REFUSE AND SAY

 

Should it happen that we do not endure this

unfair struggle, should there be no cure, should

our strength fail us, should we agonize fallen

upon the ground never to rise, when death

closes the last Armenian eyes, and when the

last martyred Armenian dies without having

known one victorious day, let us all swear that

when at last we meet.

 

God in his paradise coming to greet

and comfort and make amends for our pain, let

us swear to refuse his aid, and say:

 

'Send us to hell. Send us to hell again.

You made us know it alas, but too well.

Keep paradise for Turks. Send us to hell.’

 

(Translated by John Papasian, painter and poet.)

 

 

In the genocidal experience of both Armenians and Jews survival has had a dual dimension. One dimension refers to the outcome of centuries-old persecutions which could not extinguish either people and their nationhood. The other, and more significant aspect concerns the survival from the blow of the 'Final Solution'. That solution aimed at total or near-total destruction. One has to take into account in this respect not only the scale of victims but, equally important, the scope of ruination of the social and cultural bases of both peoples. With the purposeful devastation of the network of institutions enabling the national existence of the Armenians in their ancestral territories, an end has been put to the existence of historical Armenia. A similar fate befell European Jews. As to the scale of human losses, one has to rely on informed estimates in the absence of exact figures. According to Hilberg's computations, out of a five million Jewish population, 'upwards of 1,500,000 Jews did succeed in eluding the grasp of the mobile killing units' in Russia. Furthermore, between 1933 and 1938, the number of Jews in Germany proper shrank from 515,000 to 350,000, due to Nazi-encouraged emigration, and natural causes, Still, the losses were enormous. While Hilberg estimates the total loss of European Jews at 5 million,42 Dawidowicz offers the 5.5 million figure, not including the estimated 0.5 million who died in the ghettos.43 The 'most authoritative estimate' in this respect is said to be 5,978,000.44

 

Two kinds of Armenians survived: those from the eastern provinces which, being border areas made it possible for about a quarter of a million Armenians to escape into Transcaucasia and Persia; those from the cities of Smyrna and Istanbul in which deportation and subsequent annihilation was incomplete.45 The 'optimal' dimensions of the Armenian genocide46 are attested by high-ranking Turkish authorities. Interior Minister, and subsequently Grand Vizier, Talat bluntly told American Ambassador Morgenthau that 'it is no use for you to argue, we have already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians .. .* Later in the war, during his last meeting with the American Ambassador, Talat signaled the end of the Armenian Question with the words, 'What's the use of speaking about them? We are through with them. That's all over.'47 In his memoirs, Count Johann Bernstorff, the last German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (7 September 1917-27 October 1918), likewise quotes Talat, whom German Ambassador Metternich described as 'the soul of the Armenian persecutions1.48 As Bernstorff relates, 'When I kept on pestering him on the Armenian Question, he once said with a smile, "What on earth do you want? The question is settled, there are no more Armenians."' Bernstorff explained this assertion as relating to the ancestral territories of the victims, namely, 'Armenia, where the Turks have been systematically trying to exterminate the Christian population'.49 The only authoritative figure provided by the Turkish authorities on the number of Armenians annihilated in connection with the deportations is an admission, made in a rare moment of candor, by a post-war Interior Minister. According to figures compiled by his ministry, of all the Armenians deported, 800,000 of them were 'actually killed'. Interior Minister Cemal's figure excludes the tens of thousands of Armenian soldiers and officers executed by fellow military, a larger number of victims absorbed in the mainstream of the population through conversions, and those multitudes who succumbed to the ordeals of deportation.50

 

The methods of destruction are no less relevant in considering the singular aspects of the types of mass murder involved here. The trauma and the response to it cannot be divorced from the ferocity and degree of heinousness of the crime itself. Speaking of the Armenian case, the bulk of the victims were dispatched to death through manual slaughter, usually by 'clubs, hammers, axes, scythes, spades and saws', to quote Ambassador Morgenthau, who went on to say:

 

Such instruments not only caused more agonizing deaths than guns and pistols, but as the Turks themselves boasted they were more economical, since they did not involve the waste of powder and shell, ., bodies horribly mutilated were left in the valley, where they were devoured by wild beasts. After completing this destruction, the peasants and gendarmes gathered in the local tavern, comparing notes and boasting of the number of 'giaours' that each had slain.51

 

After citing several examples of atrocities, Ambassador Morgenthau continued:

 

I have by no means told the most terrible details, for a complete narration of the sadistic orgies of which these Armenian men and women were the victims, can never be printed in an American publication. Whatever crimes the most perverted instincts of the human mind can devise, and whatever refinements of persecution and injustice the most debased imagination can conceive, became the misfortune of this devoted people. I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this ... the utter depravity and fiendishness of the Turkish nature, already sufficiently celebrated through the centuries, had now surpassed themselves.52

 

Moreover, tens of thousands of hard core criminals were released from public prisons and assigned to massacre duty, according to Toynbee, who alluded to 'the blood-lust of the pack' whose ferocity was 'the most signal modern instance [as evidenced in] the attempt to exterminate the Armenians in 1915. In this case hundreds of thousands of people were done to death and thousands turned into robbers and murderers by the administrative action of a few dozen criminals in control of the Ottoman Empire.' Toynbee bemoaned learning 'all that there is to be learnt to the discredit of the Turkish nation'.53

 

In the Nazi case, among many notorious practices, two which stood out were: The Central Security Department of Himmler (the RSHA) assigned 6000 'professional criminals' to concentration camp duty; and the case of SS Lieutenant-General (Obergruppenführer) Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who was in charge of the Waffen-SS and police in the eastern territories, and

 

whose record of looting, arson and mass murder is equalled only by the Huns and Mongols of days past. General von dem Bach was the deputy Genghis Khan of this horde. The troops which he commanded included the notorious Dirlewanger Brigade which was composed of habitual criminals ... one single report. .. shows that, among others, 363,211 Jews were executed by these formations.54

 

The task of collecting, transporting and 'resettling' the deportees was generally entrusted, however, to Einsatzgruppen and other SS units (assisted by Feldgendarmerie), acting as special killer units comprising enlisted men and officers, and comparable to the gendarme units Talat's Interior Ministry had engaged for the Armenian deportations.

 

In one particular respect, however, the Armenian experience of World War I comes closer to the concept of holocaust than the Jewish one, in the strictest sense of the word. Tens of thousands of Armenians were burned alive in several regions of the interior of Turkey. Whereas in the Jewish case the gas chambers almost always preceded the ovens, in the Armenian case, the stables, haylofts, barns and pits were inexorably substituted for both contraptions.55 The concept holocaust, deserves, therefore, to be reinterpreted and redefined in a comparative context. At issue here is a climactic thrust of destructiveness bent on ending a lingering conflict through a decisive resolution meant to be the Final Solution. It is this provision of a final solution that invests the genocide thereby enacted with a property which is distinct and extraordinary, not necessarily quantitatively but certainly qualitatively. Indeed, the eradication of an entire people under the circumstances described above is not a product of random or accidental occurrence, but it is an ultimate event, packing with it the concentrated force of long accumulated enmities and frustrations. The strike is not only destructive but concomitantly innovative (in a devious way) as far as human history and the direction of human relations are concerned. Throughout the history of armed clashes and violence the patterns of destruction arising out oî insoluble conflicts have been more or less subjected to constraints, with the active belligerents remaining as the principal shock absorbers. Indiscriminate and deliberate slaughter on a comprehensive scale as a radical problem solving method represents a new yardstick. It represents an exterminatory assault against one's own species, rarely encountered even in the animal kingdom. In such a phase of innovation, victims, victimizers and the act and fact of victimization configure in unprecedented ways. The term 'unique' is presently understood to denote the idea of extraordinariness, and to connote the idea of rarity rather than exclusiveness. It neither suggests historical discontinuity or disconnectedness, nor precludes historical recurrence that may involve the same victim group or others. While genocide in itself and by itself is a unique experience for any victim group, it is entirely plausible to grant certain types of genocide the attribute of uniqueness within the broader and generic category subsuming that phenomenon. In its broadest sense this is the sense of the holocaust perspective as applied to the two cases in this study.

 

 

 

 

pp. 168-169

 

 

Footnotes.

 

 

39. E. Wiesel, foreword to H. J. Cargas, A Christian Response to the Holocaust (Denver: Stone-

henge Books, 1981), p. III.

 

40. A. J. Grant and H. Temperley, Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1789-

1950), 5th edition (London: Longmans, 1952), p. 452.

 

41. F. H. Litteil, The Crucifixion of the Jews. The Failure of the Christians to Understand the

Jews (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. ROSE Reprints, 1986), pp. 11-12. In a recent article,

under the sub-heading 'What about the Armenians?' Littell enumerates 13 'striking common charac

teristics' which represent 'a significant set of parallels between the Armenian and Jewish experi

ences'. The other 'focus in the dialectic', however, requires the recognition of the Holocaust as

'morally and theologically unique', beckoning us 'to re-enter the domain of history as lived ... an

experience without an equivalent... Unless both foci of the dialectic are respected, maintained in

creative tension with each other, the story of the Holocaust is headed for obscurity and its lessons

for oblivion.' F. H. Littell, 'Holocaust and Genocide: The Essential Dialectic', Holocaust and Geno

cide Studies 2 (1987), 97-99, 102-103.

 

42. R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1961),

pp. 190, 192, 225.

 

43- Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians, op. cit., p. 13.

 

44. L. Poliakov and J.'WuH, eds., Das Dritte Reich und die Juden: Dokumente und Aufsätze

(Berlin: Arani, 1955}, p. 229.

 

45. German Embassy Charge von Neurath informed Berlin on 12 November 1915: 'According

to a reliable source, the Turkish Government has, contrary to all assurances, decided to deport the

Armenians of Constantinople also.' Türkei, 183/40, A33705, German Ambassador Metternich, on

7 December 1915, informed Berlin that 4000 Armenians had recently been removed from Con

stantinople, that the total number of those deported from the Ottoman capital up to that time had

reached 30,000, and that 'gradually a clean sweep will be made of the remaining 80,000 Armenian

inhabitants' of the Ottoman capital. Türkei, 183/40, A36184. For additional corroboration of this pat

tern of deportation of Istanbul's Armenians, see Zurlinden, Der Weltkrieg, op. cit., pp. 44-45.

See also H. Stürmer, Two War Years in Constantinople (trans. E. Alten) (New York: G. H. Doran,

1917), A, Toynbee, Armenian Atrocities. The Murder of a Nation (London: Hodder & Stoughton,

1915), pp. 77-78, and Ambassador Morgenthau's 4 October 1915 cipher no. 1121, in U.S. National

Archives, RG 867.4016/159.

 

46. V. N. Dadrian, 'A Typology of Genocide', International Review of Modem Sociology 5

(1975), 201-212.

 

47. H. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, op. cit., pp. 337-339,

 

48. Türkei, 183/40, A36184, 7 December 1915, report.

 

49. J. Bernstorff, Memoirs of Count Bernstorff, trans, from the German by Eric Sutton

(New York: Random House, 1936), pp. 176, 180, 374.

 

50. The admission appeared in the French-language Istanbul daily Le Moniteur Oriental,

15 March 1919, and the Turkish-language daily Vakit, 15 March 1919. For details of the circum

stances of this singular admission and official and unofficial Turkish reactions to it, see V. N. Dadrian,

The Naim-Adonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: The

Anatomy of a Genocide', International journal of Middle East Studies 18 (1986), 358-359. Subse

quent official Turkish compilations undertaken by the authorities of the Turkish Republic verified

this figure. Y. H. Bayur, Türk InkilâbÝ Tarihi (The History of the Turkish Revolution), Vol. Ill, No. 4

(Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 1983), p. 787.

 

51. H. Morgenthau, Ambassador, op. cit., p. 312.

 

52. Ibid., pp. 321-322, 328.

 

53. A. J. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin,

1922), pp. IX, 265-266, 280.

 

54. L. Alexander, 'War Crimes and their Motivation. The Socio-Psychological Structure of the

SS and the Criminalization of Society', Journal of Criminal Law. Criminology and Police Science

XXXIX (1948), 181-183, 187-192.

 

55. The inhabitants of Muþ city and the rural-agricultural population of the 40-50 mile long and

3-4 mile wide Muþ Plain, involving about 70,000-80,000 Armenians, were subjected to this method

of extermination. This is how the Armenian Catholic Bishop of Trabzon (Trebizond) describes one in

stance of burning. 'Having gathered together 1,000 little children, Governor Mustafa Abdülhalik led

them to a place called Tashod where he had them burnt to death in the presence of notables and

Turkish crowds, at the same time shouting at the top of his voice, "It is necessary to erase once and

for all the Armenian name in these provinces for the security of Turkey." The children were after

wards thrown into ditches prepared beforehand for them especially; the moans of those not yet com

pletely consumed could be heard for days.' Les memoirs de Msgr. Jean Naslian, Vol. 1 (Vienna:

Mechitarist, 1955), p. 146, n. 62. The noted scholar Bernard Lewis, presumably in recognition of this

practice of burning alive, saw fit to describe the Armenian experience as 'the terrible holocaust of

1916, when a million and a half Armenians perished1. The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London:

Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 350.

[MJ]

Ha'aretz, English Edition,

Friday, April 18, 2003

 

No monopoly on absolute evil

By Yossi Sarid

 

The Germans are not the only nation on earth capable of perpetrating

a holocaust and the Jews are not the only nation capable of being

its victims - and Israeli children must be taught this. "The Pain of

Knowledge: Reflections on Holocaust and Genocide Issues in Education -

in Israel and Elsewhere," published [in Hebrew] by the Open University

of Israel, Tel Aviv, 248 pages

 

The Open University did the right thing when it decided to publish

Yair Auron's book, "The Pain of Knowledge: Reflections on Holocaust

and Genocide Issues in Education - in Israel and Elsewhere," for

the general reading public, instead of earmarking it solely for the

participants in Auron's university course on this subject. The book,

which has just been published, is now available for all individuals

who are interested in its topic.

 

May the number of interested readers increase, because "The Pain of

Knowledge" deals with a subject of supreme importance that until now

has been of concern only to a small number of Israelis - although

Israelis, more than any other nation, should consider it both crucial

and fascinating, because it is through that subject that they are

building the ladder of their concepts and values. This ladder, like

the one Jacob saw in his dream in the Genesis narrative, is planted

firmly on earth, but reaches up to the very heavens.

 

Auron first presents his readers with articles that discuss theoretical

issues pertaining to the formation of a collective memory. The second

set of articles are concerned with issues pertaining to the teaching

of the Holocaust in Israel and elsewhere. The third and final set

of articles deals with the teaching of genocide in the world in

general and in Israel in particular. Two chapters are of particular

interest: the one on the annual excursions to Poland during which

Israeli high-school students visit concentration and death camps,

and the second on teaching genocide studies in the school system. The

two chapters raise substantive questions of immense importance that

touch on the very roots of our existence here in this country - as

Israelis, as Jews and as human beings. I personally was powerfully

drawn by these two chapters because they concern two central issues

that are questions of principle, with which I was concerned during

my term as minister of education.

 

Auron generally refrains from expressing his own personal standpoint

and tries instead to offer a methodological, didactic and unbiased

survey. Nevertheless, between the lines, readers can quite easily

discern what Auron's position is. The only exception to this rule is

the last chapter - on genocide - in which he explicitly enunciates the

position he has openly championed for years, where he criticizes the

fact that not all acts of genocide are given the attention they deserve

and where he calls for their universal recognition. This is perhaps

the most important and most interesting chapter in the book. Here is

a classic illustration of the truism that the presentation of a clear

position always augments interest because it sparks either sympathy

or antagonism.

 

The `other victims'

 

During my stint as education minister, I held the view that, in failing

to include genocide studies in the curriculum, the Israeli school

system was neither fulfilling its role nor furthering its own goals

and that, as a result, Israeli high-school students knew nothing about

the Nazi regime's non-Jewish victims: gypsies, homosexuals, political

prisoners, patients of mental health hospitals, persons with physical

handicaps, Jehovah's Witnesses, Poles, Russian prisoners of war and

"other victims." And it is not just the victims of the Nazis who are

forgotten. What interest is shown here in this country in the genocide

suffered by the Armenians, Bosnians and Rwandans? Or in politicide,

which is a form of genocide to which a nation is subjected by its

very own leaders, for example, the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin,

China under Mao Tse-tung, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and democratic

Australia in its treatment of the Aborigines?

 

There are those who argue that, in the 20th century, more acts of

genocide or politicide have been committed than in any other century

in human history and thus they define it as the "century of genocide"

or the "century of violence."

 

In his book, Auron expresses his surprise that, in Israel, school

and university curricula make almost no reference to genocide. The

curriculum entitled "Sensitivity to suffering in the world: Genocide

in the 20th century," which was prepared for the Ministry of Education

in 1994, was not approved. I fully share Auron's surprise and fully

support his protest.

 

I tried to correct this distorted situation to some extent and on April

23, 2000, on the date that Armenians mark their own Memorial Day,

I appeared, as an invited guest of honor, in the community's church

in Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter. I came to the memorial ceremony in

order to deliver the following message:

 

"I have come here in order to be with you, the distinguished members

of the Armenian community, on your memorial day, which today marks the

85th anniversary of the massacre of the Armenian people. I am here,

together with you, as a human being, as a Jew, as an Israeli and as

Israel's minister of education. As you have done in past years, you,

the members of the Armenian nation, are today gathering in Israel and

in other places around the world to remember and to remind others of

the terrible disaster that befell your people in the early part of

the past century.

 

"For many years, for too many in fact, your nation has been alone on

its memorial day. I am well aware of the special significance of my

presence here today, together with other Israelis. Today, perhaps for

the very first time, you are less alone. Armenian Memorial Day should

be a day of introspection for all of us, a day of soul-searching. On

this day, we Jews, victims of the Holocaust, will assess our attitude

toward the pain of others.

 

"The massacre of the Armenians by the Turks in 1915 and 1916 is one of

the most horrific events of modern history. America's Jewish ambassador

to Turkey at the time, Henry Morgenthau, defined the slaughter as the

`greatest crime in modern history.' This good person could not have

possibly imagined in his wildest dreams what awaited us later on in

the 20th century. At that point in time, the worst possible event

imaginable - the Holocaust of the Jewish people - was still ahead

of us."

 

Nurturing sensitivity

 

"One individual who was profoundly shocked by the murder of the

Armenian people and who shocked many readers with his classical work,

`Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh' (`The 40 Days of Musa Dagh'), was a

Jewish author and a native of Prague, Franz Werfel. The idea behind

the writing of this book was born in March 1929 when Werfel visited

Damascus on his way to Palestine. He wrote: `The pitiful sight of

Armenian refugee children, maimed and almost starving to death, working

in a carpet factory provided me with the final impetus to liberate

from the abyss of oblivion the cruel fate of the Armenian people.'

 

"Werfel's book, which appeared in Germany in the spring of 1933,

shocked millions of people. Adolf Hitler was already in power. `The 40

Days of Musa Dagh' was one of the banned books burned by the Nazis. It

was translated into Hebrew in 1934 and had a powerful impact on many

young people in Palestine. I was one of them.

 

"For me and for many of my generation living in this land at the time,

`The 40 Days of Musa Dagh' was a book that shaped our character and our

overall outlook on life. In modern-day Israel, very few of our young

citizens have heard of Musa Dagh and many of them know absolutely

nothing about the massacre of the Armenian people. I know how much

importance Armenians around the world attach to the attitude of Jews,

especially the attitude of the State of Israel, toward the genocide

that the Armenians have suffered. As Israel's minister of education,

I will do everything in my power to ensure that our children will once

more become familiar with this monumental work, `The 40 Days of Musa

Dagh.' I will make every effort to see to it that Israeli children will

learn, and be knowledgeable about, the murder of the Armenian nation.

 

"Genocide is the gravest and most abominable crime imaginable against

humanity. One of the goals of the Israeli school system - indeed,

a central goal - is to nurture sensitivity toward the suffering of

innocent individuals whose sole `crime' is their ethnic identity. We

Jews, the chief victims of murderous hatred, must show an exceptional

level of sensitivity toward, and must feel immense solidarity with,

other victims. We must arouse, among the members of the younger

generation, a natural and profound sense of revulsion toward all acts

of genocide in the past, present and future. Genocide is the root of

all evil and we must make a major political and educational effort

in order to eradicate it and banish it forever from human history.

 

"Those who are eyewitnesses, who sit on the sidelines, who choose to

turn a blind eye, who feel that they have all sorts of accounts to

settle, who remain silent, are only helping the murderers; they are

certainly not helping the murdered.

 

"In 1918, Samuel Tolkowsky, who at the time was personal secretary

to Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who would become Israel's first

president, wrote an important article, with Weizmann's approval,

called `The Armenian Question from the Zionist Point of View.' In

that article, Tolkowsky states the following: `We Zionists look upon

the fate of the Armenian people with a deep and sincere sympathy;

we do so as men, as Jews and as Zionists. As men our motto is `Homo

sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.' As Jews our exile from our

ancestral home and our centuries of suffering in all parts of the

globe have made us, I would dare to say, specialists in martyrdom;

our humanitarian feelings have been refined to an incomparable degree,

so much so that the sufferings of other people - even alien to us in

blood and remote from us in distance - cannot but strike the deeper

chords of our soul and weave between us and our fellow sufferers that

deep bond of sympathy that one might call the solidarity of sorrow.

 

"And among all those who suffer around us, is there a people whose

record of martyrdom is more akin to ours than that of the Armenians? As

Zionists we have a peculiar question of principle. Zionism being

in its essence nothing else than the Jewish expression for national

justice, it is natural and logical for us to be deeply interested in

the struggle for emancipation of any other living nation. ... We are

convinced that the future peace and happiness of that part of the world

- the Middle East - of which our own national homeland, Palestine,

is only a part, will be best assured when `all well-defined national

aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be

accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements

of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to break the

peace. In our opinion, a free and happy Armenia, a free and happy

Arabia, and a free and happy Jewish Palestine, are the three pillars

on which will rest the future peace and welfare of the Middle East.'

 

"These words were written by Weizmann's personal secretary more than 80

years ago. Such true, important statements, which emphasize the value

of human life, irrespective of the individual's identity - Jew, Arab,

Armenian, Gypsy, Bosnian, Albanian or Rwandan. And I want to pass on

this noble message to all the students in our school system. In our

history curriculum, in the new curriculum that is now being formulated,

I want to see a central chapter devoted to genocide, to this immense

atrocity, to this inhuman atrocity, and I want that chapter to deal

explicitly with the genocide suffered by the Armenian people so that

the record can finally be set straight regarding the national and

personal memories of each of you, of each member of your nation. This

is our obligation to you, this is our obligation to ourselves.

 

"We are now in the midst of the intermediary days of the Jewish

festival of Passover, the period that links up the first and last day

of this holiday. This is the festival of our liberation, in which we

were redeemed from bondage, in which we were released from slavery in

order to become free individuals. This is what we wish each nation,

including the Armenian nation: liberty and redemption, redemption

and liberty."

 

Universal lesson

 

Discerning readers will note that I did not define the genocide

suffered by the Armenians as the Armenian "holocaust." At the time,

I did not want to generate yet another controversy over a "semantic

issue" - holocaust or genocide. At the time, I felt that it was more

important to plant in the vineyard of education the central chapter

on genocide rather than get into a quarrel with the gatekeepers.

 

Today, now that I fulfill no official capacity, I consider it my duty

to state that, from my standpoint, there is no difference: "Genocide"

and "holocaust" are synonymous terms - genocide is genocide. Every

genocide - if it is truly genocide and not merely a propagandistic

counterfeit of genocide - is a holocaust.

 

Israelis and many Jews in Israel and in other countries around the

world fear linkage of these two concepts because they sense that

such a link might eliminate the Jewish Holocaust's uniqueness,

that it might turn the Holocaust into "just another catastrophe"

that has befallen one more nation on the globe. I identify with

the position held by Auron, who has written: "We propose that the

teaching of both the Holocaust and genocide take place within a single

context." Furthermore, he writes, the "basic axiom underlying the

preparation of the course in whose context this book has been written

is that all human life is precious to the same degree, regardless of

the individual's identity."

 

Whenever the "lessons of the Holocaust" are discussed, prominence

must be given to the central lesson: This entire atrocity could

repeat itself and, in fact, it has already repeated itself and is

still repeating itself. The lesson is that the Holocaust was not a

just a single, isolated, demonic event, that the Germans are not the

only nation on earth capable of perpetrating it and that the Jews

are not the only nation on earth capable of being its victims.

 

The lesson is thus universal and not necessarily national and specific.

From our perspective, the Holocaust will always be unique even if we

identify more strongly with the horrible catastrophes of other

nations. The person you are closest to is yourself. A nation always

displays the greatest concern for itself. This is only natural, perhaps

only human. It is inhuman to ignore the murder of another nation,

to assume that, if the victims are not Jews, the murder cannot, by

definition, be termed the holocaust of a nation. If we really want

all human beings to consider genocide as the gravest crime that can

be committed against humanity, there is no justification whatsoever

in maintaining a Jewish monopoly on the term "holocaust" - although

the Jewish Holocaust has, without question, certain unique traits,

which are unprecedented in their malice.

 

The basic assumption must always be that absolute evil is not the

exclusive province of Nazi Germany or Germans, just as a bitter and

cruel fate is not exclusively reserved for the Jews, and that, in any

case, no nation (especially if it is strong) is invulnerable to the

possibility of becoming a victimizer, while no nation (especially

if it is weak and dispersed) is invulnerable to the possibility of

becoming a victim.

 

I do not believe in such concepts as good nations or evil

ones. However, I do believe in the existence of good leaders and evil

ones, who champion positive or negative ideologies respectively and

who are capable of bringing their countries and nations into a world

of light or a world of darkness. There are no guarantees against

suffering and pain. Moreover, your own suffering cannot be used as

justification for the suffering of others and does not provide you

with the right to make others suffer, although it might provide you

with the right to bring happiness to others.

 

The seemingly semantic debate goes far beyond semantics and

conceals ugly considerations that are far beyond monopolistic

claims. Indifference and numbness are not the only factors that can

lock your heart and consciousness. We ourselves are helping to promote

denial of the Holocaust for reasons of realpolitik. And, if our reasons

are realpolitik, what right have we to criticize others and to blame

them for their conceptual myopia or for their baseness? We ourselves,

for example, deny the Armenian holocaust that was perpetrated by the

Turks, because we attach great importance to our relations with Turkey,

and because Israel's political, security and economic interests force

us to adopt a policy of denial - a policy that will ultimately wreak

its vengeance upon us when more and more individuals begin to deny

our Holocaust. Holocausts must never be denied - irrespective of the

reasons for the denial, irrespective of the identity of the victims.

 

Thus, it was not surprising that, immediately after I finished my

delivery in the Armenian church, then-prime minister Ehud Barak

and cabinet minister Shimon Peres hastened to emphasize that the

speech given by the education minister did not represent the cabinet's

position. Fear of the Turks enveloped them because the Turkish reaction

was one of great displeasure and, indeed, profound indignation. Peres

even went so far as to adopt, in a sadly inappropriate and obsequious

statement, the official Turkish position that no genocide was ever

perpetrated against the Armenians. I resigned from the cabinet and

thus my plans for including in the school curriculum a special and

extensive chapter on genocide is probably not being implemented. This

is not only unfortunate; it is disgraceful.

 

The State of Israel would justify its definition as the "Jewish state"

if it would spearhead every protest against and every condemnation

of all acts of genocide and Holocaust - and without stopping to

think about the consequences and without making any realpolitik

considerations. This is a far more important precondition for the

existence of a Jewish state than even laws concerning leavened bread

on Passover.

 

"Remember what Amalek did to you" - we must certainly remember. But we

should remember not just what Amalek did to us. Auron writes that what

happened to "us" is supplemented, not contradicted, by what happened

to "others." This sort of merging will add moral significance and

universal strength to the memory of the Holocaust and to our justified

demand that the world must never forget.

[MJ]

Not sure if this is the right thread for it. If something better is identified, please feel free to move.

 

____________________________________________________________________

 

JihadWatch.org

June 17, 2004

 

Reflections on Bernard Lewis

By Hugh Fitzgerald

 

Bernard Lewis is an acute scholar about many aspects of Islam; he writes

beautifully. He is well-trained in languages. He lived during the war in

Egypt. He is lionized in Turkey, and even in small shops off Taksim Square

the proprietors, when they discover a visitor is from the United States, ask

if that visitor may happen to know "Professor Lewis."

 

He has all the right enemies -- the absurd Said, who knew nothing about

Islam but for some reason thought his being an Arab entitled him to act as

an expert (the footnote alone, on "thawra," in Lewis' "The Question of

Orientalism," is enough to delicately dismember all of Said's pretentions;

he does not survive the essay); the apologist Esposito, who is not fit to be

mentioned at the same time as Lewis (Esposito is an out-and-out apologist,

an ignoramus, and the producer of glossy picture-books about Islam that win

the reader over, and distract from the apologetic or vapid texts he has

chosen, with plenty of local color -- venerable mosques, turbans and Iznik

tulips, the usual Mughal miniatures of hunting scenes, or Majnoun and Leyla,

an apothecary jar or two from Abbassid Baghdad, the obligatory Persian

poetry in nastaliq, and of course the Dome of the Rock -- while so many

subjects, including Jihad and the treatment of non-Muslims under Islam, are

yet again ignored, or minimized to the point of disappearance.

 

In Lewis' long academic career in England, he was not listened to

sufficiently by the Foreign Office, and their insulting behavior (stemming

from antisemitism) could not but affect him. He clearly enjoys being

appreciated (who does not?). He enjoys, on his visits to the Middle East,

being made much of by Turkish or Arab hosts. If you had spent years

learning, and learning well, certain languages, and the only people who

could fully appreciate your achievement were, say, Muslim Arabs, or

quasi-Muslim Turks, and if they seemed to you to talk a good game of

"moderate" Islam (in the case of the Turks, it was meant), you too might not

wish to offend those colleagues, those friends, those hosts and patrons.

Some may find it telling that Lewis has reproduced, for both his book of

translations from the Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, and Arabic, and for his

latest collection of articles, "From Babel to Dragomans", a photograph that

shows him sitting in his Western dress -- he never stoops to the clownish

indignity of going native like the mythomane Lawrence, or St. John Philby,

or dozens of others -- in the tent, or something like it, that belongs to

none other than the Hashemite Prince Hassan ibn Talal, that plummy-voiced

"dialogue-of-civilisations" apologist for Islam (the most plausible, the

most outwardly pleasing, the most subtle, and therefore the most convincing

and dangerous of such apologists); that photograph, that desire to have that

photograph used on two of his books, might be taken simply as a way to show

the members of MESA that -- look, the real Arabs know that I tell them the

truth.

 

Lewis in various interviews does seem pleased that he can address two

audiences at the same time. "He doth bestride the world like a colossus." He

is proud of the fact that so many of his books have been translated into

Turkish, Arabic, Farsi. But the truth is: you cannot write with two

audiences in mind, one of the Muslim, the other non-Muslim. That Muslim

audience is so prickly, so defensive, so unwilling to admit to the events of

its own history (the unwillingness, for example, to even read the

scholarship of Bat Ye'or, even among the so-called advanced Arabs in the

West, is absolutely flabbergasting), that Lewis finds himself at every turn,

either pulling his punches, or enveloping the thought in veils of

velleities. It is not a case of being fortiter in re, suaviter in modo. He

is suave in his prose all right, but that suavity is not wrapped around a

sufficient amount of truthful iron.

 

He is attempting a trick that cannot be achieved. You cannot write

simultaneously for an audience of Muslims (to get them to see, gently, and

with constant, almost formulaic, reassurance about the "greatness" of high

classical Islamic civilization -- which Lewis always describes, wrongly, as

being far above any other civilisation of the time -- has he forgotten

China? And does he still accept the older cliches about the "Dark Ages"? He

is a poor historian who appeals to the self-esteem problem of part of his

audience; that is not the historian's task.

 

Lewis now seems, at last, to be fully recognized, and triumphant. But is he?

He was an enthusiastic supporter of the disastrous Oslo Accords. It is

understandable why people such as Clinton, or Tom Friedman, or all the

others who know nothing about Islam, should believe in the efficacy of such

negotiations and such treaties. But Lewis -- who knows all about the rules

of Muslim jurisprudence regarding "treaties" with Infidel peoples and

polities, and knows perfectly well why every treaty Israel has ever signed

with an Arab state has been violated, sometimes completely, and knows too

the significance of the Treaty of al-Hudaiybiyya, which Arafat so frequently

mentioned to his Muslim audiences -- what is Lewis' excuse for supporting,

so loudly and for so long, the Oslo folly?

 

Lewis describes the series of political, legal, financial, social,

sumptuary, and other disablities placed on dhimmis in quite brisk terms,

usually limiting himself to a word or two about the jizya and "other

disabilities." He does not stop to really go into the whole monstrous

system, or to quizzically ask what that phrase "protected peoples" might

mean, or how it was that everywhere that Islam conquered, the treatment of

dhimmis, whether they were Christians or Jews or Zoroastrians or even Hindus

or Buddhists -- was remarkably the same, and in all cases the post-conquest

(i.e. post-Jihad) institution of dhimmitude led to the enforced status of

degradation, humiliation, and permanent insecurity (including intermittent

massacres that Lewis hardly ever refers to) on all of these non-Muslim

peoples.

 

Lewis himself must, more and more, have come to see -- especially as his

beloved Turkey slides away from Kemalism -- that in certain essentials he

got it wrong. He actually got Islam wrong. He underestimated its

malevolence. He underestimated the difficulty of reform. He took as

representative men the scholars, or the well-educated exiles, who came out

of that world but were about as representative of it as Stravinsky,

Balanchine, and Nabokov could have been said to represent Soviet Russia. He

was wrong; he was wrong on the Oslo Accords; he was wrong in his political

advertisement (written with James Woolsey) to promote Prince Hassan to be a

new king for Iraq; he remains wrong if he thinks that the United States

should continue to be preoccupied with Iraq, when there are so many other

ways to expose the political, economic, moral, and intellectual failures of

Islam -- which in the long run, is the only thing which will cause, from

within, the engendering of lots of local Ataturks, who may work to constrain

or limit Islam, as its sacred texts, including the authoritative recensions

of hadith, are immutable.

 

Lewis was asked some years ago by the TLS to review Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am

Not a Muslim." He dawdled and dithered; by the time he told them he just

could not do it, it was too late, in the opinion of the TLS, to run any

review. Contrast that with how the lefist, even Marxist French scholar of

Islam, Maxine Rodinson, treated the same book. He was given it to review by

Le Monde, which assumed that Rodinson, known for his tiersmondiste

sympathies (which probably explains why Edward Said gave an enthusiastic

blurb to Rodinson's quite crticial book on Muhammad -- but then Said was

known to provide enthusastic blurbs for hundreds of books he never opened,

but just guessed as to their general direction; his endorsements were spread

around like confetti, and even cheaper). But Rodinson produced a favorable

review, much to the chagrin of the editors at Le Monde -- and they, acting

true to Stalinist form, simply refused to print the review (it can be found

in Rodinson's other publications).

 

But how could Lewis, after all, praise Ibn Warraq publicly? And he could not

publicly deny that the book had great merit, either. So best to finesse;

delay like Kutuzov; the mere passage of time will solve the problem; solve

it, Time did, and consequently that book, one of the most important in

recent decades, never received a review in the TLS.

 

It is fascinating to compare the behavior of Lewis with two other scholars

of roughly the same age and status. S. D. Goitein wrote his celebrated "A

Mediterranean Society" based on his detailed study of the papers found in

the Cairo Geniza -- a record of the Jewish community in Cairo, and not only

in Cairo, that extended over many centuries. Goitein, who earlier had had a

kind of sympathetic, almost sentimental interest in promoting the idea of

the natural sympathies and similarities of Muslims and Jews, was severely

chastened by his last decades of scholarship. If there was one thing, he

wrote, about which he had to revise his opinion, it was about the severity

of the jizyah. He now realized what a terrible burden it was, especially on

the poor non-Muslims. Just before he died, Goitein was preparing a favorable

review of Bat Ye'or.

 

Even at their advanced ages, both Rodinson and Goitein were willing to

break, in part, with their own pasts, to declare that new evidence, and

final summings-up, had led them to conclusions that were not nearly as

favorable to Islam as they might once have hoped. Goitein's study of the

Cairo Geniza led him to rethink the problem of the dhimmi, to reconsider his

old pieties and sentimentalities. Rodinson, who had been (of course) a great

defender of the Arabs against French colonialism, a die-hard tiersmondiste,

a Marxist, found that Ibn Warraq's relentless assault on Islam, above all

for its intellectual constraints and failures, deserved the highest praise

-- and he was willing to disappoint his editors at Le Monde in insisting

that they either publish his enthusiastic review, or squash it altogether

(of course, they squashed it).

 

Lewis himself once wrote an essay that identified the philo-Islamic strain

in Jewish Orientalists who found what seemed to be the more welcoming world

of Islam, compared to the brutalities inflicted on Jews by Western

Christendom. He was good at diagnosis, but not as good at self-diagnosis. He

has never quite described, for his many admirers and his wide audience, the

full panoply of disabilities placed on non-Muslims under Islam, usually

being content with a sentence or two about the "jizya" and "other

disabilities."

 

Lewis has in the past been unwilling to endorse the scholarship of Bat

Ye'or, describing it as "too polemical." Really? If the scrupulous

scholarship of "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam" is too

polemical (is that a word which one applies when scholarship is sometimes

informed with passion?), what of all the scholarship on which that book

rests? What of Arakel of Tabriz? Or Armand Abel? Or Charles Dufourcq? Or

Levi-Provencal? Or what about the scholarship that Bat Ye'or did not use,

that of Mary Boyce on the Muslim treatment of Zoroastrians, or K. S. Lal on

the Muslim treatment of Hindus?

 

Bat Ye'or managed both to create a work of scholarship and analysis, much of

which was original to her, as well as a synthesis of a large amount of

scholarly literature -- by French, German, Armenian, Greek, Bulgarian,

Romanian, and other scholars -- scholarship which does not paint quite the

picture of the Ottomans as that which Lewis has favored. Not that he has

ever been an open apologist for Islam, but he has failed to convey, in book

after book, the real nature and horror of dhimmitude. To describe, for

example, the forced levy of Christian children by the Turks, as a

"recruitment" (which to the modern mind evokes mental images of college or

army recruiters dangling inducements), which was often envied by the Muslim

parents, is to ignore the scholarship, by scholars from parts of Europe once

under Ottoman rule, detailing the fear and horror of such events as the

devshirme levy. The subject of dhimmitude has not been part of Lewis' main

bailiwick. It is one thing not to treat of a subject, quite another to

mislead as to its real significance; quite another still to simply shut out

of serious consideration a lonely scholar, outside the regular academic

system, who has produced the body of work that Bat Ye'or has produced, and

continues to produce.

 

One hesitates to criticize Lewis for this because of the disgraceful

treatment of him by the members of MESA (the MIddle Eastern Studies

Association). Their relation to Lewis reminds me of a story that the late

Tibor Szamuely once wrote in The Spectator. He described a functionary, the

compleat chinovnik, of the Soviet Writers' Union, giving a speech in Tula,

famed for its samovars, in the southwest of Moscow. "In bad old Czarist

days," he intoned, "we had only one writer from Tula Province." And then he

noted proudly: "But now, but now we have 3,247 members of the Union of

Soviet Writers from Tula Province alone." (Wild cheering, laughter,

applause).

 

Szamuely drily added: "Yes. He was right. But he forgot to add that the one

writer from "bad old Czarist days" was named Lev Tolstoy" and no one would

ever remember any of the 3,247 current members of the Writers' Union from

Tula. Well, something like that comes to mind when one thinks of Lewis, and

his scholarship, compared to the heaps of Rashid Khalidis and Hamid Dabashis

and Joel Beinins, some of whom are former propagandists for the PLO, others

of whom spend their academic leisure beavering about in the busy

"construction of the Palestinian identity" -- which if it really existed, as

more than a transparently useful notion, would not require so much endless

"construction." In relation to the MESA members who continue to deny him the

recognition he deserves, reminds us of Tolstoy, in Szamuely's anecdote, in

relation to his numerous (3,247, to be exact) epigones. But that does not

absolve Lewis of his failures, his elisions, his distortions, his

underappreciations, his allowing vanity to cloud his keen sight (how could

he continue to deny the Armenian genocide? out of what misplaced loyalties

to Ottomanists and Osmanlis, and to decades of friendship with many Turks,

to what perverse parsing of the word "genocide," could he have found himself

denying what masses of evidence, and eyewitness testimony, support? Which

was more important -- the continued friendship of Turks, or the scholarly

approval of Vankh Dadrian and others who have studied the Armenian genocide?

 

 

If one is to believe the Wall Street Journal and other publications, Lewis

has had an important influence on American policy in Iraq. By that, one

means not the original invasion itself, but the

Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project, which was to bring "democracy" to

Iraq, and then that "democracy," in turn, would serve as a model for other

Arab states, and lead to all manner of good things, including the

diminishment of the role of Islam. But Lewis, like those in the Pentagon,

was making judgments on the basis of friendship with highly

misrepresentative men, Iraqis who were well-educated in the West, who had

spent decades in the West (Chalabi has been in the West for 45 years), and

who not only had become Western, rational men, but had themselves forgotten

just how irrational Iraqi society is, with its ever-present substratum of

Islam, the hostility that Islam engenders toward all non-Muslims (which

means, of course, that any gratitude toward Infidel Americans for rescuing

them from the regime of Saddam Hussein will be either feigned, or fleeting,

or both). Lewis likes to think of himself as unswervingly unpolemical, the

historian au-dessus de la melee -- but he did not hesitate to co-sign a

political advertisement (written with James Woolsey) on behalf of Prince

Hassan of Jordan, to become the new king of Iraq -- an advertisement that

required him to praise the ahistoric fantasies of Amartya Sen about the

historically "democratic" strain in Islam, which if we are talking about

modern "democracy" and its connection to human rights, completely misstates

the case). Lewis allowed himself to forget, because he wanted not to

remember, the essential tenets of Islam, the manichaean split between

Believer and Infidel, the inability of the Believer to accept any authority

other than the sharia (and certainly not an authority stemmming from the

votes of mere mortals), the impossibility of their being a real defense of

human rights (beginning with full freedom of conscience, which is impossible

in any Islamic regime).

 

Lewis lived,in Egypt during World War II, when Egypt was essentially ruled

by the British under extraordinary, wartime conditions (it was the British

who jailed Answar Sadat for his pro-Nazi activities). Otherwise, Lewis has

visited the Middle East as a dignitary, and in Turkey a celebrity. He is

feted, treated with famous courtesy. In Amman Prince Hassan himself is a

host and patron. In Princeton, dissenters now eager for support within the

Administration make sure, as Saad Eddin Ibrahim did, to visit Lewis in

Princeton (Lewis was instrumental in putting pressure on the Egyptian

government, through threats to withhold $30 million, to change its treatment

of Ibrahim in the courts). All of this attention, all of this lionizing, has

had an affect. Lewis has retailed on more than one occasion his bon mots to

gathered Arab admirers in Amman; his natural wariness seems strangely absent

in his retelling of a story where his sally met with appreciative laughter.

Few of us would respond otherwise; everyone likes to have a receptive

audience.

 

Lewis did not grow up in the Arab and Muslim world, as did the dry and

brilliant Elie Kedourie; nor did he live, among the Arabs in situ, as did J.

B. Kelly. (It is quite another thing to live among Arab colleagues in the

West). He does not recognize quite as easily, and thus dismiss quite as

completely, the nonsense, lies,and blague that are the stock-in-trade in the

Arab countries as Kelly, for example, is wont to do.

 

What is passing strange is that Lewis' first and greatest interest was

modern Turkey. He admired the Kemalist reforms. He understood how difficult

it was to undertake them. He knew that save for that reforms, the class of

secularist Turks -- the very class from which his own colleagues and friends

came -- would never have attained the critical mass it did. Yet, when

confronted with Iraq, he did not draw any lessons from Kemalism. He did not

stop to think that Kemalism was a result purely from within, a result

derived from an enlightened despot, convinced that Islam explained the

failures, political, economic, social, and intellectual, of the Muslim

peoples, including the Turks -- and it was Islam that would, in its

practice, have to be constrained by government fiat. That was what Kemalism

was all about.

 

Now, confronted with Iraq, Lewis ignores the lessons of Kemalism. Yet he

must know that had the British tried, for example, with their soldiers still

walking the streets of Istanbul, to impose the kind of de-islamizing reforms

that Mustafa Kemal imposed, it would never have worked, now seems to be

promoting the idea that "democracy" can come to that most unlikely country,

Iraq, where tribalism and not the idea of the individual, still rules, where

ethnic (Kurd and Arab) and sectarian (Sunni and Shi'a) rivalries and

hatreds, have a long and deep history, and where the underlying ideology of

Islam is opposed, in every fiber, to the rights enshrined in the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights -- including the right to freedom of conscience

(apostasy), the right of equal treatment under the law for believers in all

religions (directly contradicted by the sharia), the right to equal

treatment of men and women (also contradicted by the sharia), and so on.

 

Why did Lewis not employ the lessons of Kemalist Turkey, the only successful

or quasi-successful, democracy in the Muslim world, and apply them to Iraq?

Surely the goal is not to bring "democracy" which would mean a Shi'a

takeover. The goal for Infidels should be to bring about the kind of

end-of-our-tether conditions that will allow a sufficient number of people

within the Muslim world to see that Islam itself has failed, politically,

economically, morally, and intellectually, and that the Kemalist approach --

not to try, hopelessly, to "reform" Islam but rather to grimly and

relentlessly create the conditions that constrain the practice of Islam, so

that a secularist class may be nurtured. And in turn, that class will have a

stake in continuing to adhere to the local version of Kemalism, to continue

to suppress any signs of backsliding, so that Islam could continue to be

tamed. As Lewis must know from his own encounter a few days ago with the

Turkish Prime Minster, Mr. Erdogan, Kemalism is now under assault, perhaps a

successful assault. The assumption that the gains were permanent, that

Turkey would remain unaffected by Islam's natural distempers (not, as Lewis

would have it,merely reactions to the disappointments of the modern world),

has turned out to be shaky.

 

Lewis has noted, in public lectures, that more has been achieved to bring

"progress" to the Muslim world by those who would be properly described as

enlightened despots, such as King Muhammad V of Morocco, Bourguiba in

Tunisia, Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran, and especially, and most successfully,

by Ataturk in Turkey. Belief in the "people" (i.e. in"democracy") in the

Muslim world is likely to lead to retrograde legislation, and a situation

that makes things worse, not better, for Infidels.

 

So why did he apparently promote the idea of Iraq as a likely candidate for

something called "democracy'? Just how was that to take place, and what was

the final outcome likely to be in Iraq's power structure? And since there is

nothing self-evident about the idea that "democracy" in Iraq will

necessarily be worth the vast allocation of men, materiel, money, and

attention that is now being spent, monomaniacally, on this project, just how

does it relate to encouraging, from within Islam, lots of local and little

Ataturks to recognize the failures of Islam, and in their own way, for the

sake of their own peoples, to cunningly fashion ways to constrain its

practice and dampen its appeal? What, one wonders, does Lewis think of the

many Muslim or ex-Muslim scholars who have written about the total

contradiction between the principles of sharia and the principles enshrined

inthe Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- such scholars, for example,

as Rexa Afshari, or Ali Sina, or Ibn Warraq, or Azam Kamguian. Does he give

weight to their views, or regard them all as malcontents and, as he has

sometimes employed the Muslim word, "renegades"?

 

Particularly when it comes to the Middle East, where Muslims do not brook

the slightest criticism of Islam, its greatness, the greatness of its

civilisation, and so on, it is hard for scholars who perceive things

otherwise to speak their minds fully. There is often a gap between what is

said publicly, and what is admitted privately. And a good many people like

to think that if they spent many decades studying a subject, it must have

inherent worth, its civilisation must have been a glorious thing indeed.

Those mental pictures pass by in vivid array, those mosques in Samarkand and

Tashkent and Bokhara, the Dome of the Rock gleaming in Jerusalem, those

turbaned Turks and Iznik tulips, all the local color of that "high Islamic

civilization" that Orientalists today still feel that they must

formulaically overpraise (and in so doing, either tacitly accept the

long-discarded notions of a European "Dark Ages," or belittle the vaster

achievements of other non-Western civilizatons -- those of the Mayans, or

the Hindus, or the Chinese).

 

Lewis has outlived almost all of his colleagues. The kind of training he

received goes far beyond what the Beinins and the Khalidis can even conceive

of, and much further still beyond what they could ever attain. Because he

towers over those who foolishly attack him, he has been mistaken for a Giant

Sequoia. Had those colleagues remained in the field, he would now be seen as

still something impressive -- a sturdy English oak, Quercus robur, say --

but not quite as tall, or as impressive, as that Giant Sequoia.

 

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/002247.php

[THOTH]

Interesting...though it seems to me the author could have made his point in about 1/4 the words. I think its clear that Benard Lewis has just plainly sold his soul in nearly all matters regading Islam & the Middle East. Where once he was perhaps a fountain of insight and portrayed Islamic culture in history with obvious love of the culture - of late its been simply just pandering. And to some degree I think this all began with his betrayal of the truth in regards to the Armenain Genocide. he got caught in a vicious trap - where pleasing the Turks mattered more then anything else. So as good (and eminantly readable) as some of his past scholorship/histories and analysis has been - at this point I say - let him rot!

 

Interesting also in that I was not aware of his (spiritual advisory?) role in this half-baked concept of bringing democracy to Iraq (as if Islam - as we know it - can ever at all be compatable with Democracy...)

[Nakharar]

I found it strange that they are criticising Lewis, who should in fact be close to their hearts. Bernard Lewis is worshipped in the neocon camp. Not only that, he is their guru. That site jihadwatch is known to belong to those quasi-fascist EuroAmericans. Their dean Bat Yeor, an Egyptian Jew(ess) is a rabid Arab hater and a frequent guest at various meetings and seminars.

[MJ]

I found it strange that they are criticising Lewis, who should in fact be close to their hearts. Bernard Lewis is worshipped in the neocon camp. Not only that, he is their guru. That site jihadwatch is known to belong to those quasi-fascist EuroAmericans. Their dean Bat Yeor, an Egyptian Jew(ess) is a rabid Arab hater and a frequent guest at various meetings and seminars.

Why is it strange? And what is wrong with the neocones, if anything, and why cannot they criticize their own?

 

That site jihadwatch is known to belong to those quasi-fascist EuroAmericans.

This expression itself has a smell of quasi-fascism, don't you think so?

[Nakharar]

Of course they can criticize people in their own camp, but on the question of what is wrong with neocons I have no further explanation to make. I leave that one for you.

 

I agree with you there, I fell into a trap with that statement.

[MJ]

I leave that one for you.

OK. I see no problem with them, or at least not more than with anyone else.