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Petra Marquardt-Bigman is a German/Israel citizen with a Ph.D. in contemporary history with a focus on European public opinion relating to the Middle East, Islamic Terrorism, the US and Israel.
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By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
December 31, 2006
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Most people who got their information about Israel from the international press would have a hard time to fathom what a dramatic year it has been for the country. Looking back, even Israelis may find it hard to remember how different everything looked in spring 2006, when voters somehow mobilized the optimism to cast their ballots for a prime minister who promised them "a country that is fun to live in". Perhaps it was not really optimism that motivated most voters, but rather a longing for a country that would simply be "normal" in the sense that Herzl had envisioned.
As we know now, even longing just for normalcy was far too optimistic. Already in May, the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer thought it was time to ask laconically: Never Again?
Krauthammer noted that, for the first time in almost 2000 years, Israel was again home to more Jews than any other country, which made the Jewish state a "tempting target for those who would finish Hitler's work". One could hardly put it in starker terms.
Yet, few wanted to hear it in such stark terms. In the international media and in the blog-sphere there were squabbles whether Ahmadinejad's threat to "wipe Israel off the map" had not been mistranslated, taken out of context, and perhaps grossly exaggerated. Even many Israelis and Jews who were willing to assume that Ahmadinejad meant what he said repeatedly felt almost paralyzed: it was too eerie to be true.
The year 2006 passed without any serious effort to ensure that "Never again" remains a pledge without a question mark. There were obviously many factors that contributed to the failure to formulate a firm international consensus on how to counter Iran's ambitions to become a nuclear power that would dominate the region. But while considerations of "Realpolitik" must clearly be regarded as the decisive factors, the way the world views Israel and the Middle East conflict were not inconsequential.
In the wake of this summer's Lebanon war, some of the major European papers featured articles that discussed how Israel was being portrayed in the media and in the public debate. The perhaps most unsettling of these articles appeared in Le Figaro, where the French philosopher and writer Andre Glucksmann argued that Europe's "surrealistic geopolitics" combined with apocalyptic delusions to create a "Jerusalem Syndrome".
Glucksmann maintained that a "hypocritical geopolitics, which ordains the Mideast as a basic pillar of the world order, has become the religion of the European Union, the belief of the unbelievers and of the doubters of the West. [...We] have secretly exchanged our deceptive hopes for a final battle with a fearful incantation conjuring a catastrophe to end all catastrophes [...] While our head swarms with surrealistic ghosts, our heart perceives, in every photo from Lebanon, the death of humankind. Jerusalem is only the centre of the world because it is considered the centre of the end of the world. Our illusions feed on apocalyptic notions."
Furious and frustrated, Glucksmann denounced the increasingly one-sided condemnation of Israel in the international media and, in almost desperate disbelief, he wondered whether "the public at large implicitly endorses the ideas that Ahmadinejad shouts at the top of his lungs." It was a shocking thought, and perhaps many Figaro readers were inclined to dismiss it outright. But Glucksmann's reasoning is not that easy to dismiss: he argued that the widely held notion that solving the Middle East conflict is crucial for world peace feeds on apocalyptic fantasies that reflect the popular notion's reverse reading, which is that a continued failure to resolve this conflict might mean war for the world. Therefore, as long as the Middle East conflict remains unresolved, Israel, which is perceived as the conflict's epicenter, "is guilty. Guilty of a collectively fomented fantasy of the end of days."
Whether or not one accepts Glucksmann's thesis, it is hard to deny that there is something deeply irrational in the notion that a tiny country with a population numbering just a few million people should be the cause of all the resentment and rage that feeds the restiveness and radicalization among 1.5 billion Muslims. But as irrational as this view is, it is increasingly accepted in the West, which is so proud of its tradition of rationality.
Rationality is of course a much more recent invention than anti-Semitism. The core of the notion that the radicalization of the Islamic world is caused by Israeli policies is ultimately the same as the one that propped up the conviction that German woes after World War I were caused by the Jews; it is the same that made medieval Europe believe that the "black death" brought by the plague was caused by the Jews.
But it will be nearly impossible to explain that to anybody in the West's liberal-leftist camp. There, anti-Semitism is primarily defined in racial terms, and as long as you wouldn't mind that your kids bring home a Jewish partner (with the right -- that is: left -- political orientation), you can condemn the Jewish state as much as you want without worrying for a second about anti-Semitism. The fact that a central theme of the history of anti-Semitism is the theme of Jews being blamed for society's ills is a fact firmly consigned to the history books: whenever Europeans blamed Jews for what was wrong with the world, they felt that, this time, the Jews really, really deserved the blame...
The events of 2006 have sparked deep concern in Jewish communities all around the world. In Israel, many started the year with visions of "a country that is fun to live in" and end it with fears of "apocalypse soon". There is little to cheer at the end of such a year. Yet, as much as the optimism at the beginning of the year may have been an indulgence, despair would be an even greater indulgence at the end of this year.
Israel is likely to face many challenges in the coming year. There are politicians and pundits who have argued that confronting the distorted ways in which the world sees Israel must be an integral part of any strategy designed to meet these challenges. It may turn out to be a rather tricky task, because how the world sees Israel may well have to do a lot more with the world than with Israel.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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