Lev Grinberg and
the Meaning of “Symbolic Genocide”
Joel Fishman
Professor Lev Grinberg, Director of the
Hubert Humphrey Center for Public Affairs at Ben Gurion University of the Negev,
published an article entitled, “Symbolic Genocide”, in the Belgian daily
newspaper, La Libre Belgique of March 29, 2004. There he accused Israel of
perpetrating “symbolic genocide” against the Palestinian people. After reading
some extracts of this article in translation, Education Minister Limor Livnat
declared that Ben Gurion University can no longer serve as Lev Grinberg’s
academic home and communicated her position to the University’s President,
Professor Avishai Braverman. In its lead editorial of April 25, 2004, Ha’aretz,
took the position that the Minister’s intervention was outrageous, and that if
Greenberg had committed the crime of incitement, he should be brought to law, but basically,
his academic freedom should be
respected.
Rather than joining the public debate in Israel, our first step will be to give some
of the original French text of the article in La Libre Belgique. We shall
then place these statements in context and fill in some of the missing steps
of the author’s reasoning process. The article’s first paragraph reflects Grinberg’s
basic views:
The murder of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin is part of a general policy
carried out by the government of the State of Israel which could be described as
symbolic genocide. Incapable of getting beyond the trauma of the Shoah and the
insecurity that it caused, the Jewish people, supreme victim of genocide, is
currently inflicting a symbolic genocide on the Palestinian people. Because the
world will not permit a total elimination, it is a partial annihilation that is
going on. As a child of the Jewish people, and as an Israeli citizen, I condemn
this abominable act and appeal to the international community to save Israel
from itself; specifically, I exhort the European community to intervene in a
direct and forceful manner to stop this blood bath. The complex ties between the
Jewish people and Europe have not yet been severed, and it is time to act; not
because Europe should exorcize its guilt, but indeed because it is also
responsible for the future of the world.
In this succinct statement, Grinberg has managed to include quite a few different
thoughts:
-
Israel has a policy
of perpetrating symbolic genocide against the Palestinian people;
-
Israel suffers from the collective
trauma of the Holocaust and, as a result, is behaving psychotically, which
means that having reached a state of collective insanity, it is
no longer responsible for its actions;
-
Having once been the victim, Israel
is perpetrating the same crime against the Palestinians. Today’s Israel is
behaving in a manner similar to that of Nazi Germany;
-
If it were not prevented from doing
so by world opinion, Israel would carry out a full program of annihilation
which means that Israel’s
intentions are basically criminal
(and that the Jewish state is criminal);
-
Because of Israel’s collective psychotic
condition that results in irresponsible behavior and criminality, the
world and particularly Europe must intervene for its own good and to save
Israel from itself. (Later in the text Grinberg recommends UN – but
not American intervention).
Despite Grinberg’s carefully formulated
language, the term “symbolic genocide”, represents a false accusation. The main reason why
it lacks merit is that the
Palestinians target Israeli civilians, while, in the exercise of its
legitimate right of self-defense, Israel does not target Palestinian civilians. One may
observe that Grinberg has actually reversed the role of the criminal and the
victim, portraying Israeli society as sick and attributing to it genocidal
intent which does not exist, but which, on the contrary, may be clearly identified on the other side.
During the Cold War, Soviet propagandists first developed this technique which
has later become known
as “the moral inversion of terms” or the “reversal of culpability”.
As Alan Dershowitz wrote, all the
casualties of terrorist attacks are victims of murder in the first degree.
Nothing that the Israelis have ever done can match the Palestinian targeting of
civilians in murderous and even genocidal intent. To make his point, Dershowitz
quoted Phyllis Chesler, who wrote:
Israeli female fatalities far
outnumbered Palestinian female fatalities by either 3 to 1 or 4 to 1.
Israeli women and girls constituted almost 40% of the Israeli
noncombatants killed by Palestinians. Of the Palestinian deaths over 95% were
male. In other words, Palestinians purposefully went after women, children, and
other unarmed civilians and Israelis fought against armed male soldiers who were
attacking them.
When one considers the Palestinian culture
of suicide and death that makes human bombs out of young people, one is
confronted with a real example of collective insanity. There is no comparison
between Israel and the Jewish people with this truly sick society. It is a disservice
to give the other side equal moral status by resorting to a discussion of the
“cycle of violence” and the use of such terminology as “tribal vengeance”.
Further, Israel has preserved its justice system during wartime, while the
Palestinians have totally failed in this respect.
Grinberg negates and trivializes the unique
experience of the Holocaust, which is part of the collective Jewish heritage, and
by implication, he compares the Israelis with the Nazis. Although Grinberg began
with a discussion of “symbolic genocide”, he has explicitly and without
qualification accused Israel of criminal intent: that Israel, given the
opportunity, Israel would commit real genocide against the Palestinians. This
means that regardless of scale, “symbolic” or not, the full weight of the
accusation is there.
This type of accusation seems to be
fashionable these days. Alan
Dershowitz reported that Jose Saramago in March 2002 characterized Israeli
efforts to defend its citizens against terrorism as “a crime comparable to
Auschwitz”. When Saramago was pressed about “Where...the gas chambers are?” he
responded, “Not here yet.” Similarly, the Telegraph (UK) of April 28,
2002 reported that Prof. Martin van Creveld had predicted that, with the outbreak of
war in Iraq, Israel would seize the opportunity to expel two million
Palestinians. (The charge in this case is not genocide but ethnic cleansing.) In
both cases, criminal intent is assumed. The reversal of roles which this
accusation implies,
of the victim becoming the aggressor, is also not original. It has appeared
before in Belgium. In his article, “Anti-Semitic Motives in Belgian Anti-Israel
Propaganda”, Joel Kotek wrote, “It is worthwhile noting the words of
Simon-Pierre Nothomb…in the daily Brussels-based Le Soir of December 18,
2001:
How can such a talented and perceptive people as the Jews, who
experienced so many atrocities and pain in flesh, blood, and spirit, accept
today that its government and army inflict upon others who are not guilty of
anything, precisely what they suffered themselves?
Grinberg seems to have quite a bit of
company who mouth the same line. One might have expected something
much more original from a person who in this noisy and public act has declared himself a child of the
Jewish people committed to the pursuit of justice.
The next issue that must be addressed is
the intent of such statements in the light of the current conflict. Our enemy is
waging a war against the State whose objective is to bring about
its collapse by isolating it internationally, fomenting internal divisions and
destroying its morale. In this form of conflict,
which is fought primarily on the political level, a central objective is to
destroy Israel’s legitimacy and reattribute it to the Palestinians. To achieve
this goal one must undermine any justification for the continued existence of
the Jewish state. In this context, an article such as this, written by a high level civil
servant and published abroad, represents a particularly valuable asset for the
other side in its propaganda war against Israel, not the least because this political act
undermines the consensus of support for Israel. (Further, a quick look at the
web reveals a strange coincidence: the Palestinian Authority would
very much welcome outside intervention, particularly by the UN.)
Ha’aretz has viewed the situation
from a legalistic position: whether or not Grinberg’s words
consist of incitement. They may or they may not. However, there is more at stake here
than freedom of speech, because Grinberg has in effect committed a political act
of some consequence. He accused Israel of criminal intent without presenting
real evidence. The important
issue here is the basic and fundamental assault on the legitimacy of the State,
because, if the State is criminal, its authority
cannot be legitimate, and it then becomes a moral duty to rise up against it. This is the dangerous and harmful message that Professor
Lev Grinberg has propagated.
