RSS Feed
November 12th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
The French writer Bernard-Henri Levy made an absurd assertion on the anniversary of Kristallnacht this week: that just as Jews ignored the warning signs in 1938, they are ignoring signs of a coming “storm” posed by anti-Zionism today.
“Anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel” are among the “black stars which are above our heads, which are still under control for the moment but which could be the prelude to the worst,” he told a New York synagogue congregation.
Levy is a frequent guest at New York synagogues, and on Tuesday night, he was interviewed by Rabbi Elliott Cosgrove at the Park Avenue Synagogue during a commemoration of the 1938 pogrom in Germany.
Levy said the warning signs were all there before Kristallnacht, but the world turned a blind eye and even Jews were “caught by surprise.” And he sees the same signs today:
This unpreparation of the Jews [for Kristallnacht] is for me a great mystery, a great source of sorrow, and a great source of concern and mobilization today. Because today in Europe, in the rest of the world, including America, we see signs which are accumulating of storm. One day we see them, one day we choose not to see them…
We have to see the signs without panic, without too much anxiety but without turning a blind eye to what is happening. What do I mean? Denial of Holocaust, anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel, stupid and dangerous plots and conspiracy theories, stupid theories about competition between victims and between suffering and memories. All that — the idea that Jews were warmongers… plutocrats. You have an accumulation of black stars which are above our heads, which are still under control for the moment but which could be the prelude to the worst. We have to know that. With calm, with pride, with moral strength but without political weakness.
Rabbi Cosgrove did not push back in any way on this risible claim. But then, this is the new agenda of the Israel lobby, claiming that leftwing criticism of Israel is disguised Jew hatred, and it is coming on us like climate change (as the ADL says).
Speaking of warmongering, Levy also took time to argue that the United States should have stayed in Afghanistan.
I was so surprised to see the debate in America around the idea of endless war. You had… bipartisan consensus saying that American has to get rid of endless war. Except that it was not an endless war, Afghanistan. It was a military deployment, which is very different. Since 18 months there was absolutely zero casualties. Since 6 or 7 years, the American soldiers… were in a non-combat mission. So it’s not peace or war– and this way of feeding the public, the audience with this armageddon false dichotomy is bad job. The reality in Afghanistan is that we had a sort of political symbolic moral presence of a great country, America, with a great creed, democracy, and this was sufficient… to keep at large… the Talibans and to prevent them from killing, deaths, stoning the women, and closing them in burqa.
Again, no pushback from the rabbi on this neoconservative vision of exporting democracy at gunpoint or worse, on Levy’s claim of “zero casualties.” That’s a hideous statement when you consider that more than 1600 Afghans died just in June, July and August. Reporter Jane Ferguson says the one good thing amid the humanitarian crisis now unfolding in Afghanistan is that war is over. “I think that we have to remember that the one bright ray of hope for now is the lack of fighting, the lack of violence on a war level. I don’t know how long that will last, but I can feel in some rural areas people starting to breathe.”
Mondoweiss is a nonprofit news website dedicated to covering the full picture of the struggle for justice in Palestine. Funded almost entirely by our readers, our truth-telling journalism is an essential counterweight to the propaganda that passes for news in mainstream and legacy media.
Our news and analysis is available to everyone – which is why we need your support. Please contribute so that we can continue to raise the voices of those who advocate for the rights of Palestinians to live in dignity and peace.
Support Mondoweiss from as little as $1. Thank you.
Posted in 
Tags: 
