[A-List] The attitude of Arg Jews re Gaza [was Re: EL PERIODISTA HERMAN SCHILLER PRESENTARÁ AL EMBAJADOR PALESTINO]

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

Yoshie Furuhashi escribió:
 > Is it possible that the Gaza massacre is galvanizing Jewish
 > communities worldwide like nothing else before, left-wing voices in
 > the communities finally approaching a critical mass?
 > Yoshie
 >

In Argentina in particular, and if one wants to stick to facts, it is 
paramount to distinguish between "the Jews" w(very broadly defined) and 
"the community". The "community", which still acts more or less like a 
Russian "kehilah" of the 19th Century, is, and has historically been, 
captured by Zionism. I can´t give the particulars, but at least since 
the 1920s the Jewish Community in Argentina is in their hands. Usually, 
BTW, in Left or Liberal Zionist hands. Now it has fallen into the hands 
of the Religious Right, which says more about the transformations of the 
Jewish community here than a ton of books. No anti-Zionist development 
of any importance can be expected among the Jews who are linked to the 
"community". It is fully committed to Israel, to the point that it 
boasts its endeavour to nail "Jewishness" on support to Israel as a 
State (we have traversed a long, long road since the old days of Achad 
Ha´am...)

As to "the Jews" in general, who (we) are subject to a process of 
assimilation that has always alarmed the Zionist authorities and Israeli 
envoys, well, they (we) don´t have a formal representative structure as 
Jews nor a particular community life as such either. Most "Jews" of this 
kind are gripped by the "community" when it comes to burying relatives 
in Jewish cemeteries, etc. That´s all that there is to it.

There was something like a representation of these secular and/or non(or 
anti)-Zionist Jews in Argentina up to the mid seventies, when the 
Stalinist branch of the Community, which indeed was a paralell 
"community" in friend/enemy relation with the Zionist ruled 
"commmunity", used to be very strong. But after the Six Days War they 
entered in conflict with themselves (their life was quite comfortable in 
the Good Old Days when the Soviet Union supported Israel), and their 
relations with the Community dimmed away, as well as their relations 
with the new generations of lay or non-Zionist Jews: this was due to the 
strong process of integration of the middle classes of immigrant origin 
to Argentinean popular nationalism, which reached its apex by those same 
years, with a strong rejection by most Leftist Jews of either the 
"reformist" Comm Party or, better still, its stale anti-Peronism and 
subservience to the Soviet Union. So that this side of the Community 
(???) has become a rubber stamp long, long ago.

What remains are either memories of the dead (the percentage of Jews in 
the "disappeared" is higher than that in the whole country -and, BTW, 
they were reserved "special treatment" by the thugs), migrants, or 
simply people like me who smoothly get integrated in the general 
population by intermarriage and social life in a country that has always 
been particularly "integratory" at least for European immigrants. No 
special organization can "represent" these "Jews", nor do they (we) 
strive for any kind of such representation.

What I think is happening, in Argentina at least, is that a strong "not 
in my name" wave of outrage has taken all of us. This, I think, is the 
basic fabric of what you are witnessing, Yoshie. Which is not little 
thing, indeed: in the end, we are undergoing assimilation, but we are 
still Jews, and you know what does moral compromise mean for a Jew. And 
  this may well take the last bit of the rug from under the feet of the 
Zionists.

Daniel Barenboim is the most outstanding example: his attitudes are 
perfectly coherent with this cast of mind, and although he was raised in 
Israel the experience of his early years in Argentina can be perceived 
through his current choices: in a certain way, his becoming "Israeli" 
was another way to assimilate, and that is why he is the first person 
ever who has agreed to have BOTH Israeli and Palestinian passports, that 
is, he has agreed to become, in a sense, a living demonstration that 
there CAN exist a single, lay, State. He is still a Zionist in many 
ways, of course. In the end, the Zionism of his parents was one of the 
main factors in his becoming a world class philarmonic orchestra 
director (though Martha Argerich, the pianist living now in Brussels, 
found her own "Zionist" in General Perón himself, something that perhaps 
Barenboim´s parents could have attempted themselves!). But just give him 
(and the Zionist leadership) some time. You will see.

Some figures, to finish this long mail. The Jewish Community in 
Argentina, in a broad sense, seems to have reached its demographic apex 
by the mid 1960s, when the most optimistic guesses pointed to some 600 
000 Jews in a country which by those times had around 20 million people 
(the proportion, of course, rose much higher in urban areas, 
particularly in the great cities of the Pampa region).  Now, Argentina 
is around the 40 million people. And I would bet that there are not as 
many as 300 000 Jews (my own hunch is that the figure is still smaller). 
Don´t blame migration, nor anti-Semitism, which is very mild here. Blame 
assimilation. It won´t be the first time in our history, BTW.