Israel Shahak

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Israel Shahak (Hebrew: ישראל שחק‎, April 28, 1933 – July 2, 2001) was a Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the former president of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and of Israeli society in general. Shahak's controversial writings on Judaism have been both acclaimed[Who?] for outstanding intellectual and moral merit[dubious — see talk page] and criticized[Who?] for inaccuracy and antisemitism.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Warsaw, Poland, Shahak was the youngest child of a cultured Polish Jewish family. After Nazi Germany occupied Poland, his family was forced into Warsaw Ghetto. His brother escaped and joined the Royal Air Force and his father disappeared. His mother paid a poor Catholic family to hide him, but when her money ran out he was returned, and in 1943 they were both sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Israel Shahak was liberated in 1945, and shortly thereafter emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, where he volunteered for a kibbutz, but was turned down as "too weedy".[1]

After graduating from high school, Shahak served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in an elite regiment.[2] After completing service with the IDF, he attended Hebrew University where he received his doctorate in chemistry. In 1961, he left Israel for the United States to study as a postdoctoral student at Stanford University. He returned two years later to become a teacher and researcher in chemistry at Hebrew University, where he remained until his retirement in 1990. He published many scientific papers, mostly on organic fluorine compounds.

After the 1967 Six-Day War Shahak became critical of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, and a supporter of a Palestinian state. He wrote a number of works that are popular among anti-Zionists and which argue that Israeli law and society contains entrenched attitudes of Jewish supremacism.

Shahak died in Israel at the age of 68 due to complications from diabetes. In his obituary in The Guardian Elfi Pallis described him as "an old-fashioned liberal".[2]

[edit] Politics and works

Shahak reports having been radicalized first by the Suez War and his feeling of betrayal by David Ben-Gurion's push to occupy the Sinai Peninsula, and then through his experiences in the United States. In the 1960s he became involved in the Israeli League Against Religious Coercion. Following the Six-Day War of 1967, he disavowed his former affiliation with the Israeli League against Religious Coercion, believing them to be "fake liberals" who used liberal principles to fight religious influence in Israeli society, but failed to use those same principles to fight Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Shahak instead joined the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, was elected president of the League in 1970. That same year he established the Committee Against Administrative Detentions.

He began publishing translations of the Hebrew press into English, alongside his own commentaries, arguing that Western activists needed better knowledge about conditions in Israel, and that the English-language editions of Hebrew newspapers were being intentionally distorted for Western audiences. This practice, along with writing letters to the editor, remained staples of his work for decades.

He became a well-known activist in international circles, co-authoring papers and giving joint speaking engagements with American activist Noam Chomsky, and winning plaudits from Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said.

Reviewer Sheldon L. Richman explains that for Shahak, Zionism was both a reflection of, and capitulation to, European anti-Semitism, "since it, like the anti-Semites, holds that Jews are everywhere aliens who would best be isolated from the rest of the world."[3]

In 1994 he published Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, in 1997 he published Open Secrets: Israel's Nuclear and Foreign Policies, and in 1999 he published Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel, co-authored with Norton Mezvinsky. In the introduction to the latter book, Mezvinksy and Shahak explained that, "We realize that by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others."

[edit] "L'Affaire Shahak"

In 1965, Shahak claimed to have witnessed a Haredi Jewish man refusing to allow his telephone to be used to call an ambulance for a non-Jew as it was the Jewish Sabbath, and published a letter in Ha'aretz describing the incident. In the letter, Shahak claimed members of the rabbinical court of Jerusalem confirmed that the man was correct in his understanding of Jewish law, and that they backed this assertion by quoting from a passage from a recent compilation of law. As a result, the issue was also taken up in The Jewish Chronicle, leading to significant publicity. Werner Cohn remarked in 1994 that, "Dr. Shahak does not seem to notice that this clamor, which he duly notes, is in itself a refutation of his charge that current Jewish life is dominated by orthodox inhumanity."[4]

In 1966, Immanuel Jakobovits, who was later appointed Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, disputed the veracity of Shahak's story, and asserted that Shahak had subsequently been forced to admit that he had fabricated the incident (according to Jackobovits, "in true Protocols style") in order to support his thesis. Jakobovits also cites a lengthy responsum of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Isser Yehuda Unterman, who stated that, "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives."[5] Jakobovits gives two possible rationales for this ruling; first, that "Even biblical violations of the Sabbath are warranted for non-Jews 'on account of enmity', i.e., if the refusal to render such aid may imperil Jews," and second, that the Rabbis may have "deliberately introduced...a purely ethical counter-indication to laws which might otherwise be conducive to immoral results."[6] Jakobovits also notes that, as long ago as the 13th Century, "R. Menachem Meiri had stated that the prohibition to desecrate the Sabbath for the sake of Gentiles applied only to 'the ancient heathens ... because they professed no religion at all, nor did they acknowledge their duty to human society.'"[7]

Shahak repeated his account in the opening chapter of his 1994 book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, stating that "Neither the Israeli, nor the diaspora, rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that if the consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake."

Reviewing Shahak's account after Shahak's death, Rabbi Gil Student questions whether there was any actual rationale for the alleged actions in the first place, stating: "it is certainly difficult to understand exactly what prohibition is involved in allowing someone else to use one's telephone on Shabbat." Student criticized Shahak's claim that Judaism was racist for denying medical treatment to gentiles on Shabbat on three separate grounds:

  • First, that Talmudic injunctions against providing medical aid on the Sabbath are not practiced today, as Orthodox Jewish medical professionals routinely treat both Jews and non-Jews on the Sabbath.
  • Second, that even though purely theoretical, in any event the determination of who should not be treated on the Sabbath is not determined by race, but rather by belief and behavior; thus there are non-Jews who may be treated on the Sabbath, and Jews who may not be treated.
  • Third, that the prohibitions against violating the Sabbath are not a measure of relative worth of an individual's life.[8]

[edit] Praise

In his memoirs, To Be an Arab in Israel, Palestinian poet Fouzi El-Asmar described Shahak as a "remarkable and outstanding individual",[9] and Gore Vidal, who wrote the introduction to Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, described him there as 'the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets.'"

After his death, Shahak received tributes from a number of sources. His co-author Morton Mezvinsky stated he was "a rare intellectual giant and a superior humanist", and Edward Said described him as "a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity."[10] Christopher Hitchens, who considered Shahak a "dear friend and comrade", said he was a "a brilliant and devoted student of the archeology of Jerusalem and Palestine", and that "during his chairmanship of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, [he] set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate." [11] On Antiwar.com Alexander Cockburn described him as a "tireless translator and erudite footnoter" and "a singular man, an original",[12] while Allen C. Brownfield writing in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, described him as having a "genuinely prophetic Jewish voice, one which ardently advocated democracy and human rights."[13]

Shahak's works also found a receptive audience among neo-Nazis, antisemites and Holocaust deniers, and his articles and the full texts of his works can be found on websites such as Radio Islam, Bible Believers, Jew Watch, CODOH, and "Historical Review Press".[14] David Duke mourned Shahak, stating he had exposed "numerous examples of hateful Judaic laws... that permit Jews to cheat, to steal, to rob, to kill, to rape, to lie, even to enslave Christians,"[15] and dedicated his book Jewish Supremacism to him.[16][17] In the introduction to the 2002 edition of the book Norton Mezvinsky, Shahak's co-author on Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, writes that antisemites and antisemitic groups "utilize unduly Shahak's criticisms in trying to justify their hatred of Jews. They have continued to do this either by citing and/or using out-of-context some of Shahak's points."

[edit] Criticism

Shahak's books and articles have been controversial; his critics have accused him of fabricating incidents, "blaming the victim", distorting the normative meaning of Jewish texts, and misrepresenting Jewish belief and law.[8][18][19][20] According to Paul Bogdanor, Shahak "regaled his audience with a stream of outrageous libels, ludicrous fabrications, and transparent hoaxes. As each successive allegation was exposed and discredited, he would simply proceed to a new invention."[21] Edward Alexander stated that Shahak "was a disturbed mind who made a career out of recycling Nazi propaganda about Jews and Judaism."[22]

[edit] Accusations of antisemitism

In reaction to his writings about Judaism and the Talmud, a number of sources have accused Shahak of antisemitism.[23] The Anti-Defamation League listed Shahak as one of four authors of polemics in its paper The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics,[24] while Paul Bogdanor accused Shahak of "recycling Soviet antisemitic propaganda".[25] Steven Plaut and the Conservative Voice described him as an "anti-semite,"[26][27] and CAMERA asserted he was "one of the world's leading anti-Semites."[23]

Irfan Khawaja has claimed that Israel Shahak - and other anti-Zionist writers like Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens - are often accused of antisemitism due to what he describes as a "reflexive equation, by defenders of Israel, of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism." He argues:

Focusing on the undeniable fact that many anti-Zionists are anti-Semites, and that anti-Zionism can easily be used as a disguise for anti-Semitism, writers in this genre simply insist over and over that no one can be an anti-Zionist without simultaneously being an anti-Semite ... What is at work here is less a discernible principle than a robotic sort of cut-and-paste procedure: Come up with a list of people who a priori must be anti-Semites; then cast about for ‘evidence’ of this claim by finding sentences here or there to which you give an anti-Semitic interpretation regardless of the intention of the author or the context of the utterance. Where the evidence is simply too thin to support a straightforward accusation, insinuate that anti-Semitism is at work without actually making an assertion that it is. Repeat the process until you run out of people.[28]

Emanuele Ottolenghi argues that Jews like Shahak act as enablers for antisemites, stating that their rhetoric plays a "crucial role... in excusing, condoning, and — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism." In his view:

Anti-Semites rely on Jews to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur to such language and advocate such policies, how can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism for making the same arguments? [...] The mechanism through which an anti-Semitic accusation becomes respectable once a Jew endorses it is not limited to Israel’s new historians... Israel Shahak made the comparison between Israel and Nazism respectable — all the while describing Judaism according to the medieval canons of the blood libel.[29]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "After setbacks - he was rejected as 'too weedy' when he volunteered for a kibbutz - he became a model citizen." Pallis, Elfi. "Israel Shahak", The Guardian, July 6, 2001.
  2. ^ a b Pallis, Elfi. "Israel Shahak", The Guardian, July 6, 2001.
  3. ^ Sheldon L. Richman. "Book Review of Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections (eds. Roselle Tekiner et al. 1989, 358 pages)". Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. 
  4. ^ Cohn, Werner. "The Jews are Bad! (review of 'Jewish History, Jewish Religion,' by Israel Shahak)", Israel Horizons, vo. 42, no. 3 of 4, Autumn 1994, pp. 28-9.
  5. ^ Jakobovits, Immanuel. A Modern Blood Libel--L'Affaire Shahak, Tradition, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966, p. 59.
  6. ^ Jakobovits, op. cit., p. 62.
  7. ^ Jakobovits, op. cit., p. 63.
  8. ^ a b Student, Gil. "Shabbat and Gentile Lives", AishDas Society website, 2001. Retrieved July 26, 2006.
  9. ^ El-Asmar, Fouzi (1975). To Be an Arab in Israel. London: Frances Pinter, 138. ISBN 0903804085. 
  10. ^ Mezvinsky, Morton. "In Memoriam: Israel Shahak (1933-2001)", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 2001, page 11.
  11. ^ Hitchens, Christopher. Israel Shahak, 1933-2001, The Nation, "Minority Report", July 23, 2001.
  12. ^ Cockburn, Alexander. "Remembering Israel Shahak", Left Coast, Antiwar.com, July 13, 2001. Retrieved July 21, 2006.
  13. ^ Brownfield, Allen C. "With Israel Shahak’s Death, A Prophetic Voice Is Stilled", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2001, p. 71. Retrieved July 21, 2006.
  14. ^
    • "...his writings appear on neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial websites around the world." "Solomon Socrates", "Israel’s Academic Extremists", Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2001.
    • "It's a truism that you can tell a man by the company he keeps, and if you go to just about any neo-Nazi or fundamentalist Islamic website you'll see the company that keeps Shahak: His articles and commentaries are lovingly preserved under such titles as 'The Jewish Hatred Towards Christianity'; 'The Jewish Laundry of Drug Money'; and Israel's Discriminatory Practices Are Rooted in Jewish Law." Jason Maoz, "Media Monitor", The Jewish Press, September 19, 2001.
    • "Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1994) is... more likely to be cited on a neo-Nazi website, than your local synagogue's... (Radio Islam contains the full text of Shahak's work) as well as groups that are often openly anti-Semitic (David Duke and Bradley Smith include Shahak's book on their websites)." Ari Alexander. "Israel and Anti-Gentile Traditions", MyJewishLearning.com. Accessed January 1, 2007.
    • "The site [Radio Islam], it turns out, does not present Islam as the only victim of Judaism, but speaks of other religions whose followers allegedly have been persecuted by Jews. One column by Professor Israel Shahak, for example, discusses a supposed Jewish tradition of spitting on the Christian cross, a practice he contends has gone on since 200 A.D. and continues to grow in popularity." Ron Strom. "The mother of all anti-Jew sites", WorldNetDaily, May 27, 2002. Accessed January 1, 2007.
    • "it should be noted that the French edition of Shahak’s book is published by La Vielle Taupe, described by Cohn as a “neo-Nazi sect in Paris that publishes books denying the holocaust.”" Alex Safian. "NPR's Special Bias", Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, September 30, 2002. Accessed January 1, 2007.
    • "...the present-day disciples of Hitler were equally enthusiastic: 'Dr. Israel Shahak risked all...' mourned the American Nazi leader David Duke..." Bogdanor, Paul. "Chomsky's Ayatollahs", in Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor (editors), The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders, Transaction Publishers, 2006, p. 124.
    • "In most of these anti-Semitic websites, homage is paid to one Professor Israel Shahak who is described as a courageous and knowledgeable Jew presumably for his resurrection of the old distortions and canards about the Talmud in his book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion. Laudable reviews, quotations and even whole chapters from the book appear on many anti-Semitic websites." Posner, Laurence. "Anti-Semitic Groups Maintain Talmud Websites", The Jewish Journal, September 17 - September 30, 1999.
    • "Shahak's book and the articles may also be found on Radio Islam's Internet site, and Radio Islam acts as a retailer for the book." Sweden, Antisemitism and Xenophobia Today, Institute for Jewish Policy Research, December 1996.
    • "... Radio Islam's voluminous online library [contains] such anti-Semitic "classics" as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, Hitler's Mein Kampf, Henry Ford's The International Jews, and the works of [...] Israel Shahak." Neuwirth, Rachel. The Chomsky File, The Conservative Voice, January 6, 2005. Retrieved March 15, 2007.
  15. ^ Bogdanor, Paul. "Chomsky's Ayatollahs," in Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor (editors), The Jewish Divide Over Israel, p. 124.
  16. ^ "In 2000, David Duke published in Russia his latest controversial book: Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening on the Jewish Question. The book eschews the layout of his first autobiographical work, and instead purports to "examine and document elements of ethnic supremacism that have existed in the Jewish community from historical to modern times". The book is dedicated to Israel Shahak, a critical author of what Shahak saw as supremacist religious teachings in modern Jewish culture. Duke denies the book is motivated by anti-Semitism." David Duke, The Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism, 2006. Retrieved March 15, 2007.
  17. ^ "My book is dedicated to Israel Shahak". "David Duke Visits Syria In Support of Bashar al-Assad". Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series - No. 1035, November 29, 2005.
  18. ^ Mathis, Andrew. "The Interpretational Errors of Israel Shahak", June 8, 2000. Retrieved May 12, 2006.
  19. ^ Jakobovits, Immanuel. A Modern Blood Libel--L'Affaire Shahak, Tradition, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966.
  20. ^ Edward Said's Documented Deceptions, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, August 1999. Retrieved July 7, 2006.
  21. ^ Bogdanor, op. cit., p. 119.
  22. ^ Glazov, Jamie. Jews "Who Hate Israel", Frontpagemag.com, February 22, 2006.
  23. ^ a b
    • "Shahak is one of the world's leading anti-Semites. Indeed, notwithstanding Shahak's claims that he opposes anti-Semitism, hatred for the Jewish religion is the defining characteristic of his writings. For example, in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Shahak levels numerous grotesque charges, such as that Jewish children are taught 'whenever passing near a cemetery, to utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the mothers of the dead if it is non-Jewish.' (pages 23-24) Later Shahak accuses Jews of worshiping Satan: 'both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands, uttering a special blessing. On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God ... but on the other he is worshiping Satan ...' (page34)". Edward Said's Documented Deceptions, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, August 1999. Retrieved March 28, 2006.
    • "...a book by the late Hebrew University professor Israel Shahak (yet another Jewish anti-Semite) which attacks the Jewish religion as such as inherently racist. Shahak is especially harsh in his attacks on the Talmud - a traditional target of anti-Semites for centuries... Shahak even justifies the notorious Chmeilnitsky pogroms in the 17th century Ukraine, which may have killed up to 100,000 Jews, on the grounds that the Jews had exploited the Ukrainian peasantry and deserved what they got. Amongst so many accusations against the Jews and Judaism, one, perhaps, especially stands out: Shahak's claim that the Jews worship Satan." Neuwirth, Rachel. The Chomsky File, The Conservative Voice, January 6, 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2005.
  24. ^ The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics, Anti-Defamation League, February 2003. Retrieved May 12, 2006.
  25. ^ Bogdanor, op. cit., p. 122.
  26. ^ Plaut, Steven. The Jihadnik Prof at UC-Santa Barbara, FrontPageMag.com, June 7, 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2006.
  27. ^ Neuwirth, Rachel. The Chomsky File, The Conservative Voice, January 6, 2005. Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  28. ^ Irfan Khawaja (28 March 2005). Poisoning the Well: The False Equation of Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism. History News Network.
  29. ^ Ottolenghi, Emanuele. "The War of the Jews", National Review, September 20, 2006.

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books (partial)

  • Israel Shahak, (ed.), The Non-Jew in the Jewish State; a collection of Documents, Jerusalem, 1975
  • Israel Shahak (ed), Begin & Co as they really are, Glasgow 1977
  • Israel Shahak and Noam Chomsky, Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression (Studies in Geophysical Optics and Remote Sensing), Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., April 1982, paperback, ISBN 0-937694-51-7
  • Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Stylus Publishing, LLC, December, 1994, trade paperback, ISBN 0-7453-0819-8
  • Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Foreign and Nuclear Policies, Stylus Publishing, December, 1997, hardcover, 193 pages, ISBN 0-7453-1152-0
  • Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Middle Eastern Series), Pluto Press (UK), October, 1999, hardcover, 176 pages, ISBN 0-7453-1281-0; trade paperback, Pluto Press, (UK), October, 1999, ISBN 0-7453-1276-4; 2nd edition with new introduction by Norton Mezvinsky, trade paperback July, 2004, 224 pages, ISBN 0-7453-2090-2
  • Israel Shahak, Israel's Global Role : Weapons for Repression (Special Reports, No. 4), Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982, paperback

[edit] Articles by Shahak (partial list):

Collections of articles:

[edit] Interviews with Shahak (partial list)

  • An Interview with Israel Shahak, interview in Journal of Palestine Studies, 4, no. 3 (Spr. 1975): 3-20.
  • No Change in Zion, interview in Journal of Palestine Studies, 7, no. 3 (Spr. 1978): 3-16.

[edit] Obituaries

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