Ruth R. Wisse has
repeatedly proved to be the observer that sees not what is in front of her but
what she wishes to see. It must be that she grew up in a world that's more
fantastic than the famous wonderland of Alice ,
and now that she lives in the real world, she can't help but see everything
through the distorting goggles of that world.
Not knowing what the
goggles are or how they functioned, it was hard to understand what Wisse was
describing, but no more. That's because she is now giving the key as to how the
goggles function. She wrote: “No Apologies for Being Jewish,” an article that
also came under the subtitle: “In the Days of Awe, we examine our sins, but
defending Israel
isn't one of them.” It was published on October 6, 2016 in the Wall Street
Journal.
She begins by
telling of the Jewish ritual that is the equivalent of the confession in
Catholicism. The difference between the two is that individual Catholics take
responsibility for the sins they commit and pray that God will give them the
strength not to repeat them, thus become a better person. By contrast, Wisse
says that in Judaism, individuals attribute their sins to the collective and
leave it at that. She identifies the collective as being the “nation” without
specifying – at this point – which nation that is.
She goes on to say
that confession is the democratic way to scrutinize the self, both as an
individual and a collective. She adds this is good for democracy but is fraught
with danger. She explains why that is by claiming there are those who “believe
in conquest rather than self-conquest, who will hold you accountable for their
misdeeds.” If this is not mysterious enough, she hits you with something even
more cryptic: “The same posture before the Perfect Judge [God] becomes
blameworthy when an enemy has you before a rigged tribunal.” The latter being
the United Nations and world opinion.
The problem with
this literary exploit is that Wisse does not explain how someone that believes
in conquest takes note of the evidence the Jews confess to God, and turn it
over to the UN or the world. You begin to think it may have something to do
with the goggles she is wearing, but for now you refrain from passing a
definitive judgment on the matter. However, what she does next takes you closer
and closer to the realization that Wisse suffers from a form of mental dyslexia
doing to her mind's eye what distorting goggles do to the organic eye.
She skips centuries
of the difficult moments that the Jews have had with the human race everywhere
they went on the planet. Instead, she makes it sound like the difficulties
started in the twentieth century with “some modern European thinkers and
political leaders [who] began singling out the Jews.” That's when the politics
of Jew-blame was started, she says, and upon reaching its genocidal apotheosis,
was taken up in the Middle East .
She argues that the
Arabs should have accepted co-existence with the armed Jews who fled Europe and
invaded Palestine ,
accusing not the Jews but the Arabs of starting a war between the two. It is at
this point that you begin to see what mental dyslexia does. It is that the
writer treats the Arabs as if they were the invaders, and treats the Jews as if
they were the peaceful farmers who minded their business and bothered no one.
Still, she
acknowledges that the advent of the Jews displaced the Palestinians who became
refugees, but blames the problem not on the Jews who caused it but the Arab
nations surrounding Palestine
for refusing to absorb the Palestinians who fled the genocidal tendencies of
the Jewish invaders. And this is the moment she reveals that Israel – a name that replaced Palestine – is what she earlier referred to
as “nation”.
In the way that
Netanyahu recently ignored the fact that Israel was created by the UN and
attacked it viciously, so did Ruth Wisse. She even added that the UN is now
conspiring with Europe and “campuses here in the US ” to blame the Jews for defending
themselves.
If you want to know
defend against what, she says against the Palestinians who stage a sit-in or
throw stones at the tanks that keep bringing in Jewish settlers to chase away
Palestinians and rob them of their properties.
Believing that she
built a solid case for her religion and her “nation,” she formulates a dogma
she throws in the face of the world: “The Jewish nation is owed the
unconditional respect of its fellow nations”.