Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The acts of perfidious traitors throughout Jewish history

La domanda implicita in questo ottimo articolo di Avnery è: sarà 
possibile stavolta impedire che i pazzi trascinino Israele al disastro?
Analizzando una serie di casi di successo dei pazzi in un certo senso si 
risponde da sé: no, non è possibile, come non è stato possibile nel 
passato, tuttavia è nostro dovere provarci.
------------------------------------
Published 09:48 07.10.11   Latest update 09:48 07.10.11
The acts of perfidious traitors throughout Jewish history
Today they call them leftists, but throughout history, it is those who 
have strived for peace and compromise, and who may have been seen at the 
time as traitors, who are remembered for their moderation.
By Uri Avnery
 
"There are situations in which a real patriot has no alternative but to 
be a traitor," wrote a senior German journalist, the late Rudolf 
Augstein, in a review of one of my books in the late 1980s. The book, 
"My Friend, the Enemy," described, among other things, my meeting with 
Yasser Arafat. It was the first encounter between an Israeli and the 
leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It was held during the 
heat of the battle for Beirut in 1982, and in order to have it I had to 
cross enemy lines.
When I was still on my way home, on the road from Beirut to Rosh 
Hanikra, I heard on the radio that four government ministers had 
demanded I be charged with treason. And indeed, Menachem Begin's 
government, with Ariel Sharon as minister of defense, formally ordered 
the attorney general to launch a criminal investigation. After the 
investigation, the attorney general, Yitzhak Zamir, concluded that I did 
not break any law, partly because I was in Beirut as a guest of the 
Israel Defense Forces and partly because there was no legal distinction 
between the eastern part of the city (which the IDF controlled ) and the 
western part (which was in the PLO's hands. )
In the 14 years that preceded that initial meeting, I maintained regular 
contacts with the PLO's leadership, though it was officially defined, at 
that time, as a terrorist organization, and identified with the 
arch-terrorist Arafat. I reported those contacts to Yitzhak Rabin, while 
he was was prime minister (1974-77 ). Needless to say, it was only 11 
years later that Israel concluded a treaty with the PLO, our prime 
minister hugged Arafat and those ministers who wanted to put me on trial 
as a traitor themselves were making pilgrimages to him.
A routine curse
When Augstein wrote his comment about treason he was thinking, 
especially, of Nazi Germany's most famous case of treason: the 1944 plot 
led by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, in an attempt to assassinate Adolf 
Hitler. Von Stauffenberg, a war hero who lost an eye and several fingers 
in WWII, had many doubts before deciding to strike. As a real patriot he 
came to the conclusion that only the killing of Hitler could save 
Germany from the approaching disaster of defeat, and the unnecessary 
death of hundreds of thousands of people in a lost war. But he had sworn 
allegiance to the Fuehrer, and as a devout Catholic he considered the 
breaking of an oath to be a very grave measure. A rebellion in the 
middle of a war was, of course, treason.
Almost all Germans would agree today that such an act of treason was 
moral and just. Hence, the street where the German general staff 
headquarters was then situated, and in whose yard von Stauffenberg was 
executed, is named for him. Here, then, treason and patriotism dwell 
together.
Claus von Stauffenberg was not a leftist. On the contrary. He was a man 
of the right, very conservative, a scion of many generations of a noble 
family. More often, it is left-wingers who face accusations of treason. 
That charge may be the most common curse that rightists - worldwide, but 
particularly in Israel - level at the leftists: that they betray their 
people and their homeland.
According to the right-wing view, the left undermines national 
resilience and helps an enemy that is scheming to destroy us. Leftists 
almost always oppose increasing the defense budget, arguing that the 
money is needed for social services such as education, health and 
welfare. It raises the individual to a higher level of importance than 
the nation and the state. It seeks peace and to this end, is ready to 
make concessions to the enemy. In the Israeli-Palestinian arena, it is 
ready to cede parts of the land that the Almighty himself promised to 
the Jewish people. In short, despicable traitors.
The leftists in Israel and around the world counter that they are the 
real patriots, for it is they who seek a healthy society, which is the 
real foundation for national security. After all, only citizens who feel 
part of the homeland and the state are willing to fight for it 
wholeheartedly.
Moreover, no state can wage endless wars. The state and the individual 
need peace, and only in peace can a state develop all its spiritual and 
material resources. According to the left, those on the right cultivate 
feelings of hatred, fear and prejudices against aliens, both those in 
other lands and among the minorities who are within the country. In 
order to win the support of the masses, the right seeks constant 
security tension and war adventures, phenomena that can justify their 
own distorted worldview. That is why the right wing is a threat to the 
state and its citizens, and will ultimately bring about national 
disaster, which in our case would be the destruction of the "Third 
Temple" that is the renewed Jewish commonwealth. In short, despicable 
racists.
A murderous civil war
Our own history includes instances of betrayal that long preceded that 
of the German von Stauffenberg. Many years ago I had lunch with someone 
who was then a key figure in the Israeli economy. During the 
conversation I suggested that Shimon Bar Kochba, who led the failed 
Jewish uprising against Rome, in 132-135 C.E., was a crazy adventurer, 
that the Zealots of the Great Revolt who had preceded him were criminals 
and that the Maccabees too, before them, fought a murderous civil war.
The banker stared at me with his pair of blue eyes in a look of endless 
astonishment. He had never heard such strange views. On the spot, I 
decided I would write a series of articles on the subject. They were 
published serially in Haolam Hazeh, and did not cause an uproar.
Some time later, however, Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former head of Military 
Intelligence and at the time a historian at the Hebrew University, wrote 
a book in the same vein, and the dam burst. The Zealots' rebellion 
against Rome, he wrote, was an act of madness. In present-day terms, 
they could be called extreme right-wingers. Sensible people such as King 
Herod Agrippa II warned of the futile adventure against the huge 
military might of the Roman superpower. But the Zealots silenced those 
voices, murdered whoever spoke against the rebels and seized control 
over the Jewish community. When the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, in 
70 C.E., Zealot groups burned one another's stores of grain, certain 
that they were not needed because the Almighty himself would redeem his 
holy city.
One of the sensible people who remained in the city-gone-mad was Rabbi 
Yochanan ben Zakkai; he rightly predicted the future. Ben Zakkai 
pretended to be dead, had himself smuggled out of town in a coffin, 
approached the Roman commander and requested permission to settle in 
Yavneh and open a spiritual center there.
This was out-and-out treason against his people: deserting the front, 
cowardliness, maintaining contact with the enemy, collaboration. When I 
was an adolescent, I was a member of the Irgun pre-state underground, 
and we organized a mock trial of him. He was found guilty of treason and 
was sentenced to death. The Zealots were our heroes.
But the Jewish people's collective wisdom in fact hailed Ben-Zakkai's 
treason. The tendency is to think that his move allowed for the 
preservation of Judaism during the 2,000 years of Diaspora. In other 
words: His treason saved the people. His act was the patriotic one. The 
Jewish community was able to remain on its land and flourished until the 
appearance of the next madman, Bar Kochba, another member of the extreme 
right, to use today's terminology.
The Maccabees' historical fate was better. They are favorably etched in 
the Jewish consciousness, whereas the Zealots' activities are recalled 
in the mourning of Tisha B'Av. The Maccabees' activities, on the other 
hand, are celebrated during the holiday of Hanukkah, and the Zionist 
movement has hailed them as freedom fighters who liberated the Jews from 
oppressive and alien rulers.
And indeed, in contrast with the Zealots and Bar Kochba, the Maccabees 
had a realistic view of the political situation of their day. They made 
alliances and managed the rebellion wisely. But the Maccabees' war, in 
the second century B.C.E., was first and foremost a civil war. We say 
the Maccabees conducted a murderous campaign against the Hellenists - 
but who were the Hellenists? They were the people who accepted the most 
enlightened and advanced culture of their day, something equivalent to 
the status today of American or Western culture in general.
The "national religious" camp of those days and what would be considered 
today as hilltop youth regarded the Hellenists as traitors, precisely 
the way today's leftists are branded. (This, however, did not stop the 
Hasmonaean kings, who succeeded the Maccabees, from adopting Greek 
culture themselves, as some of their names show ).
A scoundrel's refuge
Many centuries later, the baton of crazy messianism passed to Shabbetai 
Zvi. His teachings captivated, with the speed of wildfire, Jewish masses 
around the world. Only a small number of Jews dared oppose this madness, 
and they were the "traitors" of those days. When the bubble burst, and 
the so-called messiah converted to Islam, it became clear that his 
opponents had been right. But this did not move the masses to endear 
them. On the contrary, as Gershom Scholem tells us, after Shabbetai 
Zvi's disgrace, his opponents were hated even more.
And we still haven't mentioned the arch-traitor, the prophet Jeremiah, 
who preached for surrender. He was a real defeatist, from the moment of 
his birth, and for this, the right-wing rulers of sixth and seventh 
century B.C.E. Judah tossed him into a pit of mud. Yet, his words were 
incorporated into the Bible while those of his adversaries were forgotten.
One can draw countless examples from the histories of other peoples too. 
At times of crisis, the real patriots, those who call for peace and 
compromise, in short the "lefties," are considered traitors, whereas the 
nationalists of all types, the warmongers, the inciters of hatred, are 
perceived as patriots. It is of them that the British philosopher Samuel 
Johnson said that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/the-acts-of-perfidious-traitors-throughout-jewish-history-1.388696
-- 
Sostieni Rete ECO
http://rete-eco.it/it/sostienici.html

 risponde da sé:
 
insomma, un tizio che nella vita non ne ha mai azzeccata una, cerca di
dare consigli a una parte che continua a vincere, spingendola verso
una salutare sconfitta.
 
 
 
 


Il pezzo di Avnery è sicuramente una stronzata.
Va detto però che, a giudicare dal riassunto, il nostro pirla non è
riuscito a capirci nulla
 
-- 
Io non gufo l'Inter. Le spacco le corna.