Israelâs struggles from those of all other nations with disputed borders, no matter what the statistics of death and suffering might suggest.
Saramago, shrewder and more sophisticated than the crowds in the Washington streets or the panelist at the Socialist Scholars Conference, did condemn the suicide bombers. He did so in two throwaway sentences at the end of his essay, sneeringly, with his own expressive ellipsis:
âAh, yes, the horrendous massacres of civilians caused by the so-called suicide terrorists. . . . Horrendous, yes, doubtless; condemnable, yes, doubtless, but Israel still has a lot to learn if it is not capable of understanding the reasons that can bring a human being to turn himself into a bomb.â And so, the deliberate act of murdering random crowds turns out to be the fault of the murderedâor, rather, of the monstrous and racist doctrines of their religion, which is Judaism.
I donât want to leave the impression that
El PaÃs
is a newspaper full of editors and writers who share those views. The newspaper right away published a commentary by a philosopher named Reyes Mate, who carefully explained that Nazi analogies tend to downplay the true meaning of Nazism, and a second commentary by the American writer Barbara Probst Solomon, a regular correspondent for
El PaÃs,
who skillfully pointed out that Saramago had written an essay not about the actually existing Israel and its policies but about âthe Jew that is roiling around in his head.â There was, then, a balance in
El
PaÃs:
one essay that was anti-Semitic, and two that were not.
Still, something was remarkable in seeing, in this day and age, a fulmination against Judaism for its intrinsic hatefulness, written with the savage energy of a Nobel Prize winner, published in one of the worldâs major newspapers. Surely, this, too, like the crowd in Washington and the panel discussion in New York, marks something new in our present moment.
IV.
You may object that, in pointing to the anti-globalists in the Washington streets and the Socialist Scholars in New York, I have focused on a radical left whose spirit of irresponsibility isnât news. As for Saramago, isnât he renowned for his Stalinist politics, for being a dinosaur from the 1930s? But the new tone that I refer to, the new attitude, is anything but a monopoly of the radical left. In this age of Jean-Marie Le Pen there is no point even mentioning the extreme right. For the new spirit has begun to pop up even in the most respectable of writings, in the middle of the mainstreamânot everywhere, to be sure, and not even in most places, but in some places, and not always obscure ones. The new spirit has begun to pop up in a fashion that seems almost unconscious, even among people who would never dream of expressing an extreme or bigoted view, but who end up doing so anyway.
A peculiar example appears in an essay called âIsrael: The Road to Nowhere,â by the New York University historian Tony Judt, which ran as the lead article in the May 9, 2002, issue of
The New York Review of Books
. Professor Judt is a scholar of French intellectual history, well-known and much-praised (by me, for instance, in a review in The New Yorker) for his willingness to examine, among other themes, the moral obtuseness of Jean-Paul Sartre and his followers a half-century ago. In his new essay Judt blames Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for failing to understand that, sooner or later, Israel will have to negotiate with the Palestinians, who cannot be expected to abandon their hope for national independence. Judt despairs of Sharon, but he calls on the United States to play a larger role, and he does hold aloft a hope. Everyone in the Arab-Israeli struggle has suffered over the years, but Judt points out that in recent years the world has seen many examples of enemy populations reconciling and living side by sideâthe French and the Germans, for instance, or, on a
Saramago, shrewder and more sophisticated than the crowds in the Washington streets or the panelist at the Socialist Scholars Conference, did condemn the suicide bombers. He did so in two throwaway sentences at the end of his essay, sneeringly, with his own expressive ellipsis:
âAh, yes, the horrendous massacres of civilians caused by the so-called suicide terrorists. . . . Horrendous, yes, doubtless; condemnable, yes, doubtless, but Israel still has a lot to learn if it is not capable of understanding the reasons that can bring a human being to turn himself into a bomb.â And so, the deliberate act of murdering random crowds turns out to be the fault of the murderedâor, rather, of the monstrous and racist doctrines of their religion, which is Judaism.
I donât want to leave the impression that
El PaÃs
is a newspaper full of editors and writers who share those views. The newspaper right away published a commentary by a philosopher named Reyes Mate, who carefully explained that Nazi analogies tend to downplay the true meaning of Nazism, and a second commentary by the American writer Barbara Probst Solomon, a regular correspondent for
El PaÃs,
who skillfully pointed out that Saramago had written an essay not about the actually existing Israel and its policies but about âthe Jew that is roiling around in his head.â There was, then, a balance in
El
PaÃs:
one essay that was anti-Semitic, and two that were not.
Still, something was remarkable in seeing, in this day and age, a fulmination against Judaism for its intrinsic hatefulness, written with the savage energy of a Nobel Prize winner, published in one of the worldâs major newspapers. Surely, this, too, like the crowd in Washington and the panel discussion in New York, marks something new in our present moment.
IV.
You may object that, in pointing to the anti-globalists in the Washington streets and the Socialist Scholars in New York, I have focused on a radical left whose spirit of irresponsibility isnât news. As for Saramago, isnât he renowned for his Stalinist politics, for being a dinosaur from the 1930s? But the new tone that I refer to, the new attitude, is anything but a monopoly of the radical left. In this age of Jean-Marie Le Pen there is no point even mentioning the extreme right. For the new spirit has begun to pop up even in the most respectable of writings, in the middle of the mainstreamânot everywhere, to be sure, and not even in most places, but in some places, and not always obscure ones. The new spirit has begun to pop up in a fashion that seems almost unconscious, even among people who would never dream of expressing an extreme or bigoted view, but who end up doing so anyway.
A peculiar example appears in an essay called âIsrael: The Road to Nowhere,â by the New York University historian Tony Judt, which ran as the lead article in the May 9, 2002, issue of
The New York Review of Books
. Professor Judt is a scholar of French intellectual history, well-known and much-praised (by me, for instance, in a review in The New Yorker) for his willingness to examine, among other themes, the moral obtuseness of Jean-Paul Sartre and his followers a half-century ago. In his new essay Judt blames Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for failing to understand that, sooner or later, Israel will have to negotiate with the Palestinians, who cannot be expected to abandon their hope for national independence. Judt despairs of Sharon, but he calls on the United States to play a larger role, and he does hold aloft a hope. Everyone in the Arab-Israeli struggle has suffered over the years, but Judt points out that in recent years the world has seen many examples of enemy populations reconciling and living side by sideâthe French and the Germans, for instance, or, on a
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