You can see in the latest article written by Shmuel Rosner a
typical description of a crisis of identity. It came under the title: “What
Anti-Semitism in America Looks Like From Israel,” but it is more than that.
The article is nothing less than the display of someone's
agony as he tries to describe a mirage using terms that apply only to the
physical existence of what the mirage is deceptively showing. Here, the agony
is not that of the writer alone, but that of the Jews in whose name he
expresses the mental torment. That article was published on September 16, 2017
in the New York Times.
A preamble of about 400 words in an article of about 1000
words sets the stage for the display of the confusion experienced by the Jews
of Israel at the events which are currently unfolding in the United States of America
with regard to the “Jewish” question. Buried deep in that preamble is where
you'll find the key to understanding the source of Jewish misery, manifested as
it was throughout space and throughout time.
The writer tells the story of Ben-Gurion explaining that
“there were three types of Jews in the world before Israel was established: The
Jews who lived among Muslims, who adopted Muslim customs; those of Europe who
never considered themselves a part of the society in which they lived; and
those of America who see themselves as immigrants like any other”.
Rosner goes on to explain that Ben-Gurion who was of
European descent claimed that he never understood what he called “the Jews of
the Arab world” or the Jews of America .
Rosner then adds, “the truth is, even now many of us Israelis still don't.” But
why is that? Well, what was wrong with Ben-Gurion; what is wrong with Shmuel
Rosner and the other Israelis, is that they are looking at the mirage of a Diaspora
that isn't a diaspora but a vision constructed by their imagination.
The fact is that a diaspora is made of individuals who are
members of one and the same people. For example, all Vietnamese people outside Vietnam –
whatever their religion or political affiliation – make up the Vietnamese Diaspora.
Whereas the Jews of the Arab World were one and the same people according to
that definition, the Jews of Europe were not. And they certainly were not the
same as the Arab Jews.
Thus, to think of all Jews everywhere in the world as being
one and the same people, is a confusion that was created by the likes of
Ben-Gurion who deliberately pursued a line of intellectual dishonesty for a
reason. You see a manifestation of that when you consider Ben-Gurion's saying:
“the Jews who lived among Muslims, who adopted Muslim customs”.
The problem here is that Ben-Gurion refused to see all Arabs
– Muslim, Jewish or Christian – as being one and the same people adopting an
Arab set of customs. Instead, he chose to call the customs adopted by them,
Muslim customs, and added he fails to understand why the Jews among them did
not break away to adopt a “Jewish” set of customs; one that would have been
alien to them. But why did Ben-Gurion want that?
It is that in order to legitimize the stealing of the
national heritage of the Palestinian people (whatever their religion)
Ben-Gurion was trying to replace the right of inheritance from going down the
progeny – parents to children – with that of the inheritance going sideways
along the line of religious conversion.
That is, because some of the ancient Hebrews were thought to
be Jewish, Ben-Gurion wanted to make it so that the Land of Palestine
Considering that there is an affinity we cannot deny bonding
together many of the Jews around the world, we must accept Judaism as being a
movement of some sort.
Considering that the Jews have a platform with planks which
are amended to reflect the global situation as well as harmonize with local
flavors, we cannot ignore that the movement resembles a political manifestation
with local chapters that evolve in tandem with the local and the international
situations as they change. We must, therefore, see Judaism as a worldwide
political movement.