From: Center for Policy Research <cpr>
Subject: Zionism - racism


Diaspora 'a cancer'
------------------- by Julian Kossoff and Lindsay Schusman in:
Jewish Chronicle, London, 22. Dec. 1989

Leading Israeli author and cultural commentator, A.B. Yehoshua,
launched a ferocious attack on diaspora Jewry at a Zionist Youth
Council meeting in North London, last week.

The diaspora, he claimed, "was the cancer connected to the main
tissue of the Jewish people". He was scathing about its failure to
act before the Holocaust.

He said the diaspora's religious and secular leadership had
ignored the warning signs in the 1920s, and had fiercely opposed
Zionism. Consequently, he considered the Holocaust, "the failure
of Judaism".

His talk, entitled "Diaspora: A Neurotic Solution", covered 5,000
years of Jewish history.

Mr. Yehoshua's other targets included Soviet Jews who were, he
said "not staying [in Israel], but running [away]", and all Jews
outside Israel "who were using other people's countries like
hotels".

The only conclusion he could draw was that the diaspora was
immoral, because it looked to Israel for its identity but lived
elsewhere.

Worse, it threatened Israel itself, creating a distraction for her
citizens, who were leaving by the thousands.

Mr. Yehoshua, who described himself as "a soldier for aliyah",
ended by calling for the creation of a new "total Jew", living in
Israel.

Earlier, speaking at a meeting of Jewish students on the
difficulties of forging a national identity in Israeli literature,
Mr. Yehoshua claimed that Israeli writers were paralyzed by the
country's political situation.

He said Israel's wars had once provided writers with a vital
source of inspiration.  Today, Israeli writers avoided writing
directly about the Arab-Israeli conflict. No major work had been
produced about the intifada.

Instead, writers were tackling themes such as Jewish identity,
emigration from Israel and personal and family issues.

Mr. Yehoshua admitted he also felt unable to write about the
Israeli political situation. He could no longer step into an
Israeli Arab's shoes and portray him as a real "flesh and blood
character".

He claimed that after 40 years of statehood, the problem of
Israeli identity had not been solved. He said Jews remained too
pre-occupied with the borders of identity between Jew and non-Jew,
and were not concerned with the nature of that identity.

Jewish values in Israel embraced every aspect of daily life,
unlike in the diaspora, where Jews had no responsibility for the
country they lived in, he said.

He warned that modern Hebrew, a unifying force for the Jewish
people, would have to struggle for its future, especially in
literary circles. It faced fierce competition from the English
language.
