258
HAROLD WilSBER6
smacks of the most uninformed kind of Christian fundamentalism. Worse
yet, Miss McCarthy is careless in comparing Jewish and Christian value!.
She does not compare the
behavior
of Christians to the behavior of Jews,
but rather the
ethic
of Christianity to the behavior of Jews. Surely, pity
and forgiveness have not been characteristic of Christian behavior, espe–
cially with regard to the Jews.
Jewish attitudes toward Miss Arendt and her book have been varied.
No doubt, some have slandered her, but even at the hands of the most
zealous guardians of the American Jewish establishment she has fared
no worse than some critics of the American Jewish community- Philip
Roth, for example. Some have questioned the reliability of her sources
and her documentation; others, unlike Miss McCarthy, have not discov–
ered irony in Miss Arendt's comments about Eichmann's Zionism. This,
not only because in context they do not seem like irony, but also because
in her other writings Miss Arendt exhibits no particular talent for irony
or ever indulges in it. The main lines of criticism center, of course, on
Miss Arendt's interpretation of Eichmann and her criticism of the
leadership of the
Judenriite.
Both Miss McCarthy and Miss Arendt ap–
pear to believe that the latter's analysis of Eichmann is the true one and
that the Israeli interpretation is both false and morally inferior. But Miss
Arendt's analysis is also an interpretation and a questionable one.
It
is
"cute," "sophisticated" and "modem" in a way which makes the Israeli
analysis appear crude and naive. Nevertheless, as Mr. Podhoretz demon–
strates, it is perverse and does not make the Israeli view appear less plausi–
ble. Perhaps Mr. Hausner did shout too often, and perhaps there has
been a great deal of loose talk about monsters, but the fact remains that
the straightforward Israeli version of Eichmann, his crimes and his
motives, has not been discredited by Miss Arendt; it has only been dis–
puted. Miss McCarthy writes with such indignation that she cannot
conceive of anyone wanting to support or defend the more conven–
tional interpretation of Eichmann, but she has not answered those like
Miss Syrkin, Mr. Abel and Mr. Podhoretz who, in varying degrees, find
this version quite reasonable and acceptable.
On the issue of the complicity of the
Judenrat
leadership in the
"Final Solution," there are several lines of legitimate criticism. Mr. Abel
clearly shows that the existence of a
Judenrat
was not a
necessary
con–
dition for mass destruction of Jews. Miss McCarthy's reply that "the
story of the Jews of the East was separate from the story of Eichmann,
to which Miss Arendt restricted herself as much as possible" is beside the
point.
If
mass exterminations of Jews took place without benefit of
