Zone1 A look at - George Steiner’s profound criticism of Zionism will haunt us forever

[Procrustes Stretched]

"In an essay called “Our Homeland, the Text,” Steiner used the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem as a poignant example. A beautiful exhibit in the Israel Museum houses the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish manuscripts dating back over 2,100 years found in Qumran. Steiner pointed out that there is a security system in place that, in case of attack, that will sink the texts underground, protecting them from incoming bombardment. “Words cannot be broken by artillery, nor thought live in bomb-shelters,” Steiner writes. To acknowledge the Shrine of the Book as just that, a shrine, is to lose sense of what is truly important in the realm of Jewish ideas and writings: that they cannot be lost in a physical attack." - from the link (free, paywall is down for a period of time)

Opinion | George Steiner’s profound criticism of Zionism will haunt us forever

In my own mind Steiner will perhaps live on forever as elucidating one of the greatest and most profound critiques of Zionism.

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I do not know what to say here about Steiner, the man, nor do I believe there is much I should say. Steiner was such an intellect, it's almost impossible to comment on him personally without...

I believe this calls for a musical interlude:

Toward the end of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche criticized Euripides for making tragedy an optimistic genre by use of the device, and was highly skeptical of the "Greek cheerfulness", prompting what he viewed as the plays' "blissful delight in life".[30] The deus ex machina as Nietzsche saw it was symptomatic of Socratic culture, which valued knowledge over Dionysiac music and ultimately caused the death of tragedy:[31]

But the new non-Dionysiac spirit is most clearly apparent in the endings of the new dramas. At the end of the old tragedies there was a sense of metaphysical conciliation without which it is impossible to imagine our taking delight in tragedy; perhaps the conciliatory tones from another world echo most purely in Oedipus at Colonus. Now, once tragedy had lost the genius of music, tragedy in the strictest sense was dead: for where was that metaphysical consolation now to be found? Hence an earthly resolution for tragic dissonance was sought; the hero, having been adequately tormented by fate, won his well-earned reward in a stately marriage and tokens of divine honour. The hero had become a gladiator, granted freedom once he had been satisfactorily flayed and scarred. Metaphysical consolation had been ousted by the deus ex machina.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

 

[EMH]

add in Einstein...

Einstein Letter Warning Of Zionist Facism In Israel

 

[Lemmi]

Zionism is no excuse for The Final Solution. Cut it out people or we're going to have to outlaw anti-Semiteism.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

add in Einstein...

Einstein Letter Warning Of Zionist Facism In Israel

Why?

This is about the polymath Steiner.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Zionism is no excuse for The Final Solution. Cut it out people or we're going to have to outlaw anti-Semiteism.

Will you ever grow up to posses the mentality of somebody over 13 years of age?

 

[EMH]

Why?

This is about the polymath Steiner.

Two geniuses criticizing what the Pro Israel Christian and the Jew Supremacist Zionist Fascist claim is "anti semitic" to criticize....

 

[Lemmi]

Will you ever grow up to posses the mentality of somebody over 13 years of age?

Strange you should bring up my mental age. I grew up in a family that never had any issues with Jews. Didn't know they were any different than Catholics or Baptists until after I reached adulthood.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Two geniuses criticizing what the Pro Israel Christian and the Jew Supremacist Zionist Fascist claim is "anti semitic" to criticize....

Please don't hijack a thread using attempts to show you believe you know something..
You remind me of why we can't have nice things.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Strange you should bring up my mental age. I grew up in a family that never had any issues with Jews. Didn't know they were any different than Catholics or Baptists until after I reached adulthood.

Jews? I didn't know any until my teen years. I never had an issue with people identifying with being Jewish, although I was puzzled by Jews who professed being Jewish rather than a nationality of where they lived

 

[ding]

I do not know what to say here about Steiner, the man, nor do I believe there is much I should say. Steiner was such an intellect, it's almost impossible to comment on him personally without...

I do and can, what he has said about himself is accurate.

"...For several thousand years, approximately from the time of the fall of the First Temple in Jerusalem, Jews did not have the wherewithal to mistreat, or torture, or expropriate anyone or anything in the world. For me, it was the single greatest aristocracy that ever existed. When I’m introduced to an English duke, I say to myself, “The highest nobility is to have belonged to a people that has never humiliated another people.” Or tortured another. But today, Israel must necessarily (I stress this word, and would repeat it 20 times if I could), necessarily, inevitably, inescapably, kill and torture in order to survive; Israel must behave like the rest of so-called normal humanity. Well, I’m a confirmed ethical snob, I’m completely arrogant ethically; by becoming a people like others, the Israelis have forfeited that nobility I had attributed to them. Israel is a nation between nations, armed to the teeth. And when I look from the top of a wall at the long line of Palestinian workers trying to get to their daily jobs, standing in blistering heat, I can’t help seeing the humiliation of those human beings in that line, and I say to myself, “It’s too high a price to pay....”​

You Really Need To Read This Terrific Interview With George Steiner

George Steiner is one of the most significant Jewish minds of the 20th and 21st centuries. He's anti-Zionist but pro-Israel. He's a European Jew but not a Jewish thinker. He wants to learn Hebrew but it's too late.

forward.com

 

[ding]

Please don't hijack a thread using attempts to show you believe you know something..
You remind me of why we can't have nice things.

It's probably the only coherent thing I've ever seen him write. It's actually a valid observation. He's saying Steiner can make these arguments because he's Jewish.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

I do and can, what he has said about himself is accurate.

"...For several thousand years, approximately from the time of the fall of the First Temple in Jerusalem, Jews did not have the wherewithal to mistreat, or torture, or expropriate anyone or anything in the world. For me, it was the single greatest aristocracy that ever existed. When I’m introduced to an English duke, I say to myself, “The highest nobility is to have belonged to a people that has never humiliated another people.” Or tortured another. But today, Israel must necessarily (I stress this word, and would repeat it 20 times if I could), necessarily, inevitably, inescapably, kill and torture in order to survive; Israel must behave like the rest of so-called normal humanity. Well, I’m a confirmed ethical snob, I’m completely arrogant ethically; by becoming a people like others, the Israelis have forfeited that nobility I had attributed to them. Israel is a nation between nations, armed to the teeth. And when I look from the top of a wall at the long line of Palestinian workers trying to get to their daily jobs, standing in blistering heat, I can’t help seeing the humiliation of those human beings in that line, and I say to myself, “It’s too high a price to pay....”​

You Really Need To Read This Terrific Interview With George Steiner

George Steiner is one of the most significant Jewish minds of the 20th and 21st centuries. He's anti-Zionist but pro-Israel. He's a European Jew but not a Jewish thinker. He wants to learn Hebrew but it's too late.

forward.com

Brutal honesty escapes ...

People usually cannot handle it. They misunderstand it. They develop emotional responses that aren't tied to reality.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

It's probably the only coherent thing I've ever seen him write. It's actually a valid observation. He's saying Steiner can make these arguments because he's Jewish.

Wrong

 

[ding]

Wrong

Clearly you haven't read many posts from EMH.

 

[ding]

Brutal honesty escapes ...

People usually cannot handle it. They misunderstand it. They develop emotional responses that aren't tied to reality.

I think balance would have served him better, especially since he didn't live there.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

I think balance would have served him better, especially since he didn't live there.

Balance? What are getting at?

 

[ding]

Balance? What are getting at?

He's a little too righteously indignant for my tastes.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

He's a little too righteously indignant for my tastes.

Strong opinions usually do come across that way. I guess it all depends -- each case looked at individually.

 

[ding]

Strong opinions usually do come across that way. I guess it all depends -- each case looked at individually.

If he lived there it might carry more weight.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

If he lived there it might carry more weight.

Really?

That's an inane argument