AR6UMENTS
259
Judenriite,
then the claim that
Judenrate
were
necessary
conditions of
mass destruction breaks down .
A brief comment is in order on the "Zionist-Israeli" vs. the "Hu–
manity-universal" interpretation of the Eichmann case. Miss Arendt,
Miss McCarthy, Mr. Bell and others would have it that the Israelis
missed a golden opportunity to treat the Eichmann case in universal
tenns as a trial for crimes against humanity. Generally, this line of rea–
soning maintains, the Israelis failed to realize that their safety lies not
in a "homeland, an anny, and a foreign policy .. . but in the safety of
humanity." Miss Arendt is universal, the Israelis parochial, and uni–
versality of course is always superior to parochialism. But one wonders,
what is this "safety of humanity"? Is it the safety provided by the Chris–
tian world during the Hitler days? Is it the safety of the world which is
busily reanning Gennany? Is it the safety of Argentina in not prosecuting
or expelling Nazis? The "safety of humanity" has a very hollow ring to
many Jews, and Zionists, who, whatever else their faults, apparently
learned more from the history of the twentieth century then those in–
tellectuals who so brilliantly interpreted it, and still pinned their hopes
on a liberal or socialist millenium. Zionists have always bothered intel–
lectuals, especially American Jewish intellectuals, not only for what
Morris Cohen once called their tribalism, but more importantly, I think,
because they took anti-Semitism seriously.
If
the Jews pinned their hopes
on "humanity" more of them would be dead and many more. would be
victims of a variety of anti-Jewish persecutions. Besides, why is it always
ethically inferior to act "parochially"? Protection of loved ones is a
universal value and crimes against Jews are in a very legitimate sense
t:rimes against humanity.
