January 18, 2003

WHY THE JEWS? THE UTOPIAN TEMPTATION

     As the airways filled with anti-American, anti-Capitalist tirades from "peace protesters" on this cold January Sunday in 2003, I was reminded of my earliest acquaintance, more than 60 years ago with the contradictions of the human heart and mind. It came as a youngster while I was dandled on my grandmother's knee. This beloved woman was an emigre from Minsk to the United States. She was also a devoutly committed Communist revolutionary who traded her family's Judaism for belief in the inevitable Revolution of the proletariat. She worked tirelessly on behalf of local Communists seeking to undermine Capitalism, even though America had given her opportunities undreamt of in her native Russia. I recall fruitless debates she had with her son-in-law, my father, who mistakenly thought rational persuasion could alter her utopian views. I resented the persuasive logic of his arguments because I loved my grandmother and wanted her to be right, yet I couldn't help realizing how illogical her views were. For all her talk of "scientific socialism" and the iron laws of Marxist dialectic, I realized she possessed unshakable faith that resembled the religion she had renounced as "the opiate of the masses". I recall my father announcing to her one day that Stalin had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, and her denial that this was possible; he showed her the New York Times the next day with its complete account of this world historical event but she dismissed the reports as capitalist lies. Soon thereafter, scarcely missing a beat, she was explaining how Stalin's brilliant tactical maneuver would help bring the happy day of world revolution when the proletariat would overthrow their capitalist oppressors. Her devotion to Uncle Joe was so unquestioning that I remember, like a bolt of troubling adult understanding, thinking that if Stalin gave the order for her to execute her family, myself included, she would do it for the cause.
     And yet, years later there came a day when my grandmother lost her Communist faith and lapsed into a disillusioned old age. This woman, who regarded religion as the opiate of the masses and who disavowed her Jewish heritage, was not changed by any rational argument but rather by Stalin turning against the newly formed state of Israel and following it with his purge of Jews--the Jewish doctors' plot. Somehow she was awakened from her lifelong utopian dream when her long forgotten Jewish identity was touched by the birth of the State of Israel.
      I thought of this because again, totalitarians, this time Islamic fanatics, are bent on destroying Israel and, though Communism is the God that failed, the language of the left, numerous Jews among them, remains the same; as always, inculpating capitalism and Amerika. And again it is Jews who are the central target of a world wide tide of utopian fanaticism. But make no mistake, Western democracy along with the Jews must also be destroyed for its decadent tolerance of human failings and its rejection of totalitarian utopianism. Our enemies make this clear: Israel and America are two "Zionist entities" that must be destroyed. We are all infidels. Israel, surrounded by 21 Arab states is more vulnerable than America and is therefore the first target. It is attacked in the language of Communist totalitarianism as an "imperialist" colonial outpost of American capitalism. So when we see war protesters in Washington dressed in Palestinian garb and denouncing Israel, they are continuing the twentieth century's totalitarian enterprise. They are the worthy successors to Lenin's 'useful idiots', ready to submit to the totalitarian temptation. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are equally worthy successors to Hitler and Stalin. All the high minded prattle about peace, love and understanding cannot hide this simple truth: utopians must find a scapegoat for their failure to achieve utopia and Jews are the obvious target of this thwarted longing. We should keep in mind what Eric Hoffer said in 1968: "I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us."
     Even my grandmother chose to abandon her utopian dreams when she realized this truth. Will our contemporary Jewish utopians remain asleep?

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