What does it mean to be Jewish? I must be: my mother is because her mother was because her mother was. So I am Jewish, although, in practice, being a writer or Boca fan defines me more. But I am, even if I don’t quite know what that is. To be Jewish, some Jew said, is to ask what it means to be Jewish.
It is certainly not a religion, and that is its originality. No one would say I am Catholic because his ancestors were. I would say, if anything, I am Spanish, I am Mexican, I am Croatian, and I am Catholic if I believed in my god. Not the Jews: to be one, it is enough to be the son of one. It is not a decision, it is an inheritance; It is not a belief, it is a tradition.
Being Jewish is, for me, a way of reading history, remembering a journey of millennia through all kinds of vicissitudes, remembering so many philosophers and musicians and tailors and workers who were, remembering that my great-grandmother Gusztawa Rosenberg was murdered by the Germans in Treblinka, and remember with pride that the Jews were one of the very few peoples who lived for centuries without a state or kings or money or prisons. That was their distinction, their difference—which earned them persecutions and massacres. Still, in Spanish, the word Jew It can be an insult. He holds it Dictionary of the RAE: one of its meanings is “greedy or usurious person.” And the academics maintain it and many Spanish speakers believe it. How do they believe, now, that Jew and Israeli are synonyms.
It was a shame: in the middle of the last century, when the massacre exceeded everything foreseeable, the response of some Jews consisted of losing their difference, setting up a State, arming it, becoming like the others. I regret that this country was created: it would have been better to continue mixing, moving, disbelieving in armies and leaders. But then it did not seem possible, and now there are many of us who regret that Israel—like Iran, Arabia, El Salvador—has been kidnapped by a far-right clique and that, under the pretext of having been victims, it makes victims of others.
I am Jewish, he said. And that, despite what many ignorant people assume, does not mean that he defends Israel. That is why I also regret that so many Spaniards and Americans believe—or pretend to believe—that Jew and Israeli are the same thing and, worse, that Israeli and the Israeli Government are also the same thing. There are many Israelis and many Jews who do not share their policies—as were many Americans who did not want to fight against Vietnam, many Spaniards who did not support Franco’s murders.
That is why it pains me that the violence of the State of Israel serves to refresh classic anti-Semitism. It pains me, for example, the lightness with which so many journalists attribute American support for Israel to a supposed “lobby Jewish”, so powerful and rich that it forces the US Government to defend its coreligionists. It is the current version of that pamphleteering that, for centuries, claimed that all Jews were rich, greedy, rapacious lenders, liars: the old “Judeo-Masonic conspiracy”, the Dictionary of the RAE. Isn’t it simpler to understand that the United States needs an outpost in one of the most explosive regions on the planet and that is why it has supported Israel for almost 80 years? Or that when it sells countless weapons to Israel, the one that makes fortunes is the famous North American military-industrial complex, its arms manufacturers—all very gentle—who form a lobby so much more powerful than any Jewish junta? Or that this is why the unfortunate President Biden continues to lose votes but does not stop the Gaza massacre?
It seems not: that it is more familiar to us to talk about those “lobbies Jews”, dark and sinister, in the best tradition of European anti-Semitism. Netanyahu’s ultra government kills for the same reason as many others: to hold on to his power. This is what General Galtieri did when he wanted to invade the Malvinas or Cape Hitler when he wanted to take over Europe. Regardless of whether that man is Jewish or Mohammedan or a River Plate fan, what matters are his ambitions, his politics, his idea of the world — which is much more similar to those of Trump, Orban or Bukele than to those of millions of others. Jews.
I – it has already been said – am Jewish: I have nothing to do with men like Netanyahu, in the same way that I am Spanish and reject Abascal, Argentine and reject Milei. But it is convenient for many to maintain the confusion: that the Israeli Government is not doing it because it is far-right, it is doing it because it is Jewish. The fallacy is the product of centuries of discrimination: it would be good to take advantage of this misfortune to begin to correct it.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#word #Jew