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Israel Shahak

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Israel Shahak (April 28, 1933 – July 2, 2001) (Hebrew: ישראל שחק) 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.

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 (only to be shot down), 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 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]

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, then continuing through his time in the United States. Following the Six-Day War of 1967, Shahak joined the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights; he was elected president of the League in 1970.

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.

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. They introduce the latter by stating "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."

Jewish History, Jewish Religion controversy

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. He further claims to have met with members of the Rabbinical court of Jerusalem who, he claims, confirmed to him 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. Shahak published his claims in Haaretz which led to significant publicity.

In 1966 Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, 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, "in true Protocols style", fabricated the incident in order to support his thesis. Jakobovits also cites a lengthy responsum of the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Isser Yehuda Unterman, who, in line with earlier precedents going back as far as Menachem Meiri, had actually ruled that "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives". [3] 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."

Shahak repeated his story 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." In the work he argued, based on this and other alleged doctrines, that traditional Orthodox Judaism was a chauvinistic religion, that discrimination against non-Jews was prevalant in the psyche of Israeli Jews because of the influence on them from Talmudic laws governing the relations between Jews and non-Jews, and that this chauvinism had been carried over into many aspects of contemporary Israeli society, particularly in what he perceived as institutionalized racism and human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Reviewing Shahak's account after Shahak's death, Rabbi Gil Student also casts doubt on its veracity, questioning 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 has also written that "Shahak criticized Judaism of being racist by denying medical treatment to Gentiles on Shabbat", and has disputed what he interprets to be Shahak's argument concerning medical treatment 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. [4]

Praise

Shahak was widely admired in pro-Palestinian and left-wing circles. 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." [5] 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." [6] On Antiwar.com Alexander Cockburn described him as a "tireless translator and erudite footnoter" and "a singular man, an original", [7] 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," [8]

Shahak's works also found an audience among antisemites and Holocaust deniers. Ernst Zündel praised him as "a voice of reason and decency in a country where 'the people of the lie' live and hold sway - and, sadly, also govern," [9] and David Duke described Shahak as "one of the Jews I have most respected" and dedicated his book Jewish Supremacism to him. [10] Shahak's books can be found in breach of copyright on Holocaust denial websites widely considered anti-Semitic, [11] such as Radio Islam, "Bible Believers", Jew Watch, CODOH, and "Historical Review Press".

Shahak himself expressed a strong opposition to racism and anti-Semitism. [12] In the introduction to the 2002 edition of the book Norton Mezvinsky, Shahak's co-author on Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, writes that anti-Semites and anti-Semitic 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. They allege that what Shahak wrote confirms their generalizations about the 'evil nature' of Jews."

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. [13] [3] [4] [14] The Anti-Defamation League listed Shahak as one of four authors of polemics in its paper The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics, [15] and Edward Alexander stated that Shahak "was a disturbed mind who made a career out of recycling Nazi propaganda about Jews and Judaism." [16] Paul Bogdanor accused Shahak of "recycling Soviet antisemitic propaganda",[17] and claimed that 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."[18] Steven Plaut and the Conservative Voice have described him as an "anti-semite", [19] [20] while CAMERA asserted he was "one of the world's leading anti-Semites." [14]

Footnotes

  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. ^ a b Jakobovits, Immanuel. A Modern Blood Libel--L'Affaire Shahak, Tradition, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966.
  4. ^ a b Student, Gil. Shabbat and Gentile Lives, AishDas Society website, 2001. Retrieved July 26, 2006.
  5. ^ Mezvinsky, Morton. In Memoriam: Israel Shahak (1933-2001), Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 2001, page 11.
  6. ^ Hitchens, Christopher. Israel Shahak, 1933-2001, The Nation, "Minority Report", July 23, 2001.
  7. ^ Cockburn, Alexander. Remembering Israel Shahak, Left Coast, Antiwar.com, July 13, 2001. Retrieved July 21, 2006.
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ Zündel, Ernst. Good morning from the Zundelsite, Zundelsite Zgram, July 7, 2001. Retrieved July 21, 2006.
  10. ^ Should Christians support Israel?, David Duke website, 1/11/2006. Retrieved July 21, 2006.
  11. ^ The E.U. Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia, Anti-Defamation League, Stephen Roth Institute,[1] [2] American Jewish Committee,[3] the Southern Poverty Law Center,[4] Political Research Associates, [5]and various academics (e.g. [6]) have described these websites and groups as anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi hate sites/groups that engage in Holocaust Denial.
  12. ^ For example, he writes in Jewish History: "Modern racism (of which antisemitism is part) although caused by specific social conditions, becomes, when it gains strength, a force that in my opinion can only be described as demonic."
  13. ^ Mathis, Andrew. The Interpretational Errors of Israel Shahak, June 8, 2000. Retreived May 12, 2006.
  14. ^ a b Edward Said's Documented Deceptions, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, August 1999. Retrieved July 7, 2006.
  15. ^ The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics, Anti-Defamation League, February 2003. Retrieved May 12, 2006.
  16. ^ Glazov, Jamie. Jews Who Hate Israel, Frontpagemag.com, February 22, 2006.
  17. ^ Bogdanor, Paul. "Chomsky's Ayatollahs", in Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor (editors), The Jewish Divide Over Israel, p. 122.
  18. ^ Bogdanor, Paul. "Chomsky's Ayatollahs", in Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor (editors), The Jewish Divide Over Israel, p. 119.
  19. ^ Plaut, Steven. The Jihadnik Prof at UC-Santa Barbara, FrontPageMag.com, June 7, 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2006.
  20. ^ Neuwirth, Rachel. The Chomsky File, The Conservative Voice, January 6, 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2005.


Further reading

  • Oded Yinon (translated by Israel Shahak) Zionist Plan for the Middle East, Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., June, 1982, paperback ISBN 0-937694-56-8
  • 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
  • Paul Bogdanor, "Chomsky's Ayatollahs", in Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor (editors), The Jewish Divide Over Israel, Transaction Publishers, 2006, hardcover, ISBN 0-7658-0327-5
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Criticism

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