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June 2001 Metaphysical GuiltIn the February update I mentioned that there is nothing new under the sun, when it comes to human behavior as exemplified by the allegations against Senator Ashcroft during his confirmation hearings. On p.36 of Whither Zionism? there is a quote from Josephus in regard to events just prior to the onset of the Jewish war against Rome which had the result that: "many of the most eminent of the Jews swam away from the city [Jerusalem], as from a ship when it was going to sink [II 20:1]." The June 5, 2001 issue of the Salt Lake Tribune carried an article headlined "Moderates Fleeing Middle East" The article starts with: "Worn down by eight months of violence that shows no sign of easing, many Israelis and Palestinians are packing their bags for the United States or Canada...." Two millennia have made no difference in that part of the world. The question arises, therefore, what is the responsibility of the individual citizen both here and in Israel in order to bring about a degree of sanity in that troubled land. We Americans will be held responsible, whether we like it or not, because it is no secret that Israel is our client state. Why does this bother me personally? Because, as a former citizen of Austria and subsequently the Greater German Reich, I am told that I bear personal guilt for Hitler's atrocities! This is no exaggeration. Karl Jaspers, the renowned German existentialist philosopher wrote a booklet in 1946 during the Nuremberg trials Die Schuldfrage. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Frage.(The question of guilt. A contribution to the German Question). In it he explained that there are four types of guilt. 1. Legal guilt for criminal behavior, 2. Political guilt for allowing a repressive regime to come to power or when in power to tolerate it, 3. Moral guilt for personal misconduct, even when under orders, and 4. Metaphysical guilt which flows from the demand that every human being is co-responsible for all the wrongs and injustices which are being perpetrated in the world when one knows about them and simply stands by without taking action. Ergo in relation to the Nazis I am absolved from criminal or moral guilt because I didn't do anything bad but I am supposed to have political guilt because I had to live under them and did not volunteer for an act punishable by death or concentration camp. I am also supposed to be co-responsible for their criminal acts on the metaphysical plane. Jaspers writes of himself : "Dasz ich noch lebe, wenn solches geschehen ist, legt sich als untilgbare Schuld auf mich" (the fact that I am still alive I carry with me as inexpungeable guilt). Please note the term untilgbar - inexpungeable. Whatever one does after the fact is irrelevant for this particular form of guilt and one Jewish author has proclaimed that the German people have been stamped with the mark of Cain on their foreheads for eternity. This has, of course, practical uses because German as well as Austrian citizens can now be collared for financial retributions in perpetuity. Inexpungeable guilt! There is obviously some hyperbole in Jaspers' exposition. If one were to follow his thoughts to their logical conclusion one would have to say that all the citizens of the former Soviet Union had political guilt for allowing Lenin to come to power and for submitting to Stalin's crimes. All the millions of Cambodians whom Pol Pot drove into the rice paddies and who didn't die were guilty for having survived. The more than a billion Chinese are guilty of still tolerating the communist regime, not to speak of the North Koreans, Vietnamese, or the Cubans who have to make do with Castro on their island. These are just a few examples for the difference between philosophic ideas and the harsh realities of this world. Nevertheless, Jaspers is correct that when one sees a catastrophe in the making, shrugs ones shoulders and says I can't do anything about it anyway, one may incur a degree of metaphysical guilt. In a closed society the individual is severely limited in his options, but what possibilities exist in the so-called free world? To explore these Whither Zionism? was written and distributed to all the members of the Bush administration, as well as all the members of the House and Senate: International Relations Committee, Armed Services Committee and Appropriations Committee. In addition, review copies were sent to all the major daily newspapers in the country and the major TV pundits. The Wiesenthal Center, the Holocaust Memorial in Washington and the Anti-defamation League also got copies. Furthermore, Steven Spielberg is known for his interest in the fate of the Jewish people and I thought that the reasons for the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple when depicted accurately, rather than from a propaganda point of view, could provide an excellent lesson for chauvinistic hotheads. The result was, of course, predictable. DreamWorks returned the book with the comment that they have a policy to reject all unsolicited material and, therefore, the book is being returned unread. I can't even use it any more for anybody else because it carries an autograph to Spielberg. There were no replies from any of the magazines, newspapers or TV personalities. As far as politicians are concerned there was also mostly silence apart from eight notable exceptions where I received polite form letters or cards, including one from Dick Cheney's office who thanked me and wished me well On the other hand our National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was too busy to even ask her staff to reply, although she was contacted on repeated occasions. During the Easter recess I tried to get in personal touch with my senators but got no further than their secretaries. They are just too busy to bother seeing constituents. In olden days you could get an audience even with the emperor or give Caesar a personal petition, but no more when "the people" rule! The irony is that the senators I did vote for didn't give me time of day but my Congressman, Jim Matheson, for whom I did not vote, was willing to lend me his ears and I could put the book personally into his hands. He is new on the job, not yet infected with the disdain for the constituents who pay his salary and obviously wants to get re-elected. The senators have nothing to fear, their secretaries who shield them know it, so why bother? Thus, we have a very effective censorship in this country for ideas which do not emanate from well known public figures. In the first instance a "reputable publisher" will not take your manuscript because a) the editor may not agree with the contents and possibly more importantly b) it won't bring in huge quantities of money. In our free country one can then take the self-publishing route which gets the book in print but that's the end. Papers will not review it and even if you want to give it to your local library one lady told me in regard to War and Mayhem after leafing through it in a cursory fashion: "We only take books from reputable publishers." Therefore, unless one has the good fortune to be a member of the old boys, or gals for that matter, network your chances of getting heard or read are astronomically small. The same applies, of course to this website. Who in, literally, all the world is going to find it, even when it is submitted to all the search engines. There is just too much stuff on this "information superhighway" and its bumper to bumper traffic. So, what has been accomplished? I have shared my "metaphysical guilt" with the movers and shakers of this world and deprived them of excuses. To read a hundred pages is no chore but to disregard them is a mistake. The Middle East continues to drift into chaos and the Mitchell Commission recommendations - although well meant - have predictably been rejected by both sides. Youngsters who aspire to heaven via martyrdom cannot be restrained by anybody and to make their disappearance the precondition for negotiations is a lame excuse. So is the necessity for continuing to expand the settlements. Since the relations between the U.S. and the UN have soured considerably in the past few month a UN commission as suggested in Whither Zionism? may at this time not have much chance of coming into being but some unimpeachable third force seems to be the only hope for letting intellect overcome passion. In conclusion I might mention some thoughts of a revered icon of the twentieth century on the topic of Palestine which can be found in Churchill and the Jews by Michael J. Cohen. Although Churchill had been early on an outspoken supporter of Zionism he had begun to develop second thoughts later on. There may also have been personal reasons involved for his change of mind. His close friend Lord Moyne, Minister of State Resident in the Middle East, was murdered in November 1944 by a Jewish terrorist organization led by Menachem Begin, who later became Prime Minister. At the end of WWII during his last weeks in office Churchill said: "I do not think we should take the responsibility upon ourselves of managing this very difficult place while the Americans sit back and criticise...I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else should have their turn now..."(p.260). America has assumed Britain's burden and is now saddled with "managing this very difficult place" but the prospects for bringing stability to the area by the U.S. are no better than they were for the Brits, or the Romans for that matter. In 1946 Churchill said in the House of Commons: " The idea that the Jewish Problem could be solved or even helped by a vast dumping of the Jews of Europe into Palestine is really too silly to consume our time in the House of Commons this afternoon" (p.327). Well it did happen, the migration was unavoidable, the state of Israel came into being and people of good will are now forced to spend considerably more time than just an afternoon to deal with the consequences of this "silly idea." |
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