By Yitzhak Laor, Haaretz – 24 Aug 2009
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1109623.html
Yitzhak Laor
There is some truth in what Avigdor Lieberman says, and something pathetic in what his critics say. He accuses the Swedes of what they themselves know – that a portion of their wealth and well-being were achieved thanks to their neutrality in World War II. Swedish companies made deals with Nazi Germany, and with the allies, too.
When Lieberman reminds them of the sin of sitting on the sidelines while Europe burned, he is undoubtedly nourished by that good old ethos that holds that World War II was not just the Holocaust, and the myriad of vain victims were not all Jews. In this regard – and not only in his demand that the Swedish government curb “its” press – Lieberman is a loyal product of the Soviet education system.
But what did his critics do? They reminded him that the Swedes were actually okay. That is, in light of the new ethos that has taken over both Israel and the West – an ethos from which World War II is gradually disappearing – the stage is being cleared for the memory of the Holocaust to stand in for the war as a whole.
And indeed, on this issue, Sweden was okay. It saved Jews, and sent Raoul Wallenberg to save more Jews.
And this is where Lieberman’s opponents reveal just how shaky the ground they stand on is, in order to yell at him. For this is the explanation of how Benjamin Netanyahu runs rings around the opposition: He takes control of the discourse by means of the trap of the nationalist consensus. In this consensus, everything begins and ends with “us,” the Jews, and our Holocaust. There is no other criteria.
But Lieberman’s logic does not end at the spot from whence he sallies forth to blackmail the Swedes. His knowledge may be Soviet, but his code of ethics is Israeli: Sweden’s past begins at the moment they stop supporting us. We will seek out their soft underbelly the moment our actions fail to find favor in the eyes of Swedish public opinion.
Do the Dutch have an anti-Semitic past? We have no idea. But if they dare to support the Breaking the Silence organization, we will recall how they turned in Anne Frank.
The name of this Israeli ethos is “who are you to tell us?” We are destroying Arab East Jerusalem? Who are you to tell us that it is wrong? We killed masses of Palestinians in Gaza? Who are you to tell us anything? We have maintained a brutal dictatorship in the territories for 42 years – longer than any other military occupation of the post-World War II era? Who are you to tell us? We’re allowed. We’re your victims. The past belongs to us. We will do as we please with it.
Nothing in this farce, in which Israel is demanding that the Swedes denounce an article in the paper even as it piles obstacles in the path of international commissions of inquiry into its actions in the territories in general and Israel Defense Forces atrocities in Gaza in particular – nothing in this farce deviates from the Israeli consensus, a consensus that Netanyahu is expert at bolstering. And this consensus is clearly right-wing.
Those stupid outbursts of Moshe Ya’alon’s spoil the line a bit, because they resurrect things that do not really exist (for instance, Peace Now, or those “leftist elites;” who are they?). But in the main, Israeli public opinion lives and breathes the “who are you to investigate us?” ethos.
Our army is wonderful the moment a Swedish newspaper writes something horrible about it.
And if the Swedes were to follow the Israeli logic of flagellating others via the past, they would now pull out Count Folke Bernadotte, whom our former prime minister executed because he sinned against Jerusalem – the city eternally in our control.
