J'Accuse - My Fiery Protest Is Simply the Cry of My Very Soul
J’Accuse
was the title of the Open Letter by Émile Zola to the President of
the French Republic, Félix Faure . It was
written in support of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the
French army.
Dreyfus had been convicted in December 1894 of treason after
having been framed by fellow officers. J'Accuse was published in L’Aurore on Jan. 13, 1898. The letter denounced
the army for covering up the wrongful conviction of Dreyfus. It was
instrumental in building the campaign to free Dreyfuss. Zola was
himself tried on Feb. 7, 1898, for defamation of a public authority, the Army,
and was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 francs. As a
result of all the attention Dreyfus underwent a new court-martial. Although
still found guilty, he was pardoned by the President of the Republic. Not until
1906 was Dreyfus formally cleared of all wrongdoing. See
The following article is based on Emile Zola’s famous
letter. It is penned by Professor Daniel Blatman who is a Holocaust researcher and head of the
Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For background information on Professor Blatman, who
is a Fellow of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum see.
Daniel Blatman’s letter is an accusation
directed against the political and military echelons of Israel, their blatant
disregard of the basic norms of a democratic society, their contempt for the
most basic human rights of the Palestinians. He openly compares the generals
of the Israeli military to their equivalents in the German and Japanese
armies: ‘Senior German and
Japanese officers and commanders gave exactly the same reasons when they tried
to explain the injustices in occupied Russia and the Philippines.’
Unlike the pathetic apologists for Israel’s war crimes in the
West, who believe that any comparison with the Nazis is anti-Semitic, Professor
Blatman has no such scruples. Unlike the fools who agreed to the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism,
Daniel Blatman know something about the atrocities of the Nazis as well as the
atrocities and similarities of the mentality of Israel’s rulers with the Nazi
state. See for example Professors
Ofer Cassif & Daniel Blatman of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem Compare
Israel to Nazi Germany
In Heading Toward
an Israeli Apartheid State Blatman compared Germany’s Nuremburg Laws,
South Africa’s Apartheid Laws and Israel’s ‘tsunami of racist laws’ passed
in recent months.
Tony Greenstein
 |
| Professor Offer Cassif |
Just like Emile Zola, people of conscience are protesting against the leaders
who have sent Israel’s politics and culture down to levels worthy of a fascist
beer hall
Apr 08, 2018 4:17 AM
The headline of this piece is taken from the open
letter “J’accuse” by the novelist Emile Zola to France’s president on January
13, 1898. It’s about the injustice caused to Alfred
Dreyfus, and about shattering France’s legacy of liberty,
turning anti-Semitism into a force unifying the haters of equality. It’s about
the lies and malice in the army and the corruption, distortion of truth,
ignorance, violence and deceit. Zola protested all these things and accused
those responsible. In Israel on the eve of our 70th Independence Day, we are
also accusing.
 |
| Captain Alfred Dreyfus - Framed Jewish Officer |
We are accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
of selling his soul to the devil of incitement, fearmongering and racism.
Circumstances gave him a chance to appear before the world as a leader who
courageously says the right things: We will deal with the distress of tens of thousands of unfortunate
human beings based on the values of justice and humanism.
Now, a few days before Holocaust Remembrance Day,
when we remember the Jewish refugees who could find no safe haven to which to
flee, we will put an end to this difficult humanitarian problem. My fellow
citizens, a worthy leader would say, this is the way, it’s the right and proper
way and there is no other. But Netanyahu, who is chiefly to blame for Israel’s
current situation, chose to remain a pathetic and scared leader without moral
backbone.
 |
| Emile Zola |
We also accuse Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman,
who defends an army that commits war crimes against civilians demonstrating
against their poverty and distress while they are imprisoned between the sea to
the west and fences, snipers’ rifles and tanks to the east. We accuse him of
incitement against the country’s Arab citizens, corrupt politics and
hooliganism, and of using the norms of a regime that no longer exists, which
are poisoning the shaky Israeli democracy. We accuse him of encouraging
incitement against elected officials – Jews and Arabs – who were legally
elected to the Knesset and faithfully represent their constituencies.
We accuse the heads of the army and the security
agencies of failing to protest against the political leadership and warn that
after 50 years of occupation and oppression the Israel Defense Forces is losing
the ability to distinguish between what is permissible and what is forbidden.
The army’s spokespeople sometimes sound like the officers of armies whose
leaders were accused of collaborating with the worst crimes of the 20th
century. Senior German and Japanese officers and commanders gave exactly the
same reasons when they tried to explain the injustices in occupied Russia and
the Philippines.
There too, adhering to the mission, defending the
homeland, strategic considerations, instructions from the high command and
obeying orders served as excuses to justify firing at unarmed people, arrests
in the dark of night and deadly collective punishment. And there too it began
with 17 people murdered and ended with thousands.
We accuse Education Minister Naftali Bennett of
brainwashing the next generation, of turning Israel into a country whose young
people think democracy is a form of government that’s right only for Jews,
preferably those who observe the appropriate religious ceremonies. He is guilty
of emptying the school system of its universal messages and filling the minds
of the country’s young people with inferior religious kitsch accompanied by
messages with fascist content: the nation’s greatness and the value of
sacrificing one’s life for it. He is guilty of nurturing martyrdom centering
around the Holocaust and worshipping the
rocks of Samaria, creating a philosophy composed of a sacred God,
sacred soil and a sacred race.
We also accuse Culture Minister Miri Regev and
Likud MKs David Amsalem, Miki Zohar, Nava Boker and their ilk – politicians
whose vulgarity and hooliganism is second only to the depth of their ignorance.
These are people who have turned the language of the marketplace into a
language used in public discourse; people who proudly flaunt their ignorance (“I don’t read Chekhov”) as if they
had won a prestigious prize for scientific research or a literary work; people
who turn the elected official’s obligation to shun corruption into nothing more
than a suggestion.
And despite the attempts to claim that this
pathetic gang is the authentic representative of some (Mizrahi?)
revolution, its members are guilty of the deterioration of Israel’s politics and
culture into dark corners of the type that flourished in the beer halls where
hatred, violence and racism reigned. Then it was the Jew, today it’s the
liberal, the leftist, the Arab or any person who doesn’t agree with them.
We accuse Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and
Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, two people whose goal is to take apart the last
defender of Israeli democracy – the Supreme Court. They’re two educated young
people who are advancing bills (the nation-state bill, for
example) and appointments in the judiciary based on a new Zionist
ideology, National Zionism, that
represents an antithesis both to the traditional Zionism of the 20th century
and the post-Zionism of the century’s end. This Zionism is a branch of European
neo-fascism, which contains elements of xenophobia and ultranationalism, subordinating
democracy to other values and restricting individual rights and the freedom and
independence of the law.
We accuse the preachers of hatred who bear the
title “rabbi”: Eli Sadan, Dov Lior, Shmuel Eliyahu, Yigal Levinstein and many
others, for turning Judaism into a religion that supports ethnic cleansing and
genocide, xenophobia, the exclusion and hatred of women and the harming of gay
people. The guilt of these men is great because they educate hundreds and
thousands of young people, and their hate-filled preaching has many listeners
who accept their words because they wear skullcaps and sport beards and are
therefore thought to have special wisdom and knowledge.
They are the spiritual force behind the gangs of
young people who harass the Palestinian and his olive grove in the territories,
they are the ones who grant religious justification for the acts of violence
and murder committed by the kippa-wearing thugs. They are the greenhouse that
nurtures politicians such as MK Bezalel Smotrich, a racist, homophobe and
preacher of genocide. Only in Israel (or in benighted countries in the previous
century) could someone like him become deputy Knesset speaker.
History — or if it isn’t too late, the Israeli
voter — will pass judgment on all of them, and others. Confronting them is a
gradually shrinking group of dissidents who are stubbornly marching against the
prevailing atmosphere. These are the civil society activists who by their
protest are halting the expulsion of asylum seekers, the Holocaust survivors
who are helping lead the protest against the deportation, the members of the
New Israel Fund who continue to support whatever promotes the values of
equality and democracy in Israel. These are the people who petition the High
Court of Justice against the injustice perpetrated by the government, the
activists of the Jewish-Arab partnership, and everyone who still believes it’s
possible to stop the wheel before it crushes us all.
Emile Zola concluded his letter as follows: “As for
the people I am accusing, I do not know them, I have never seen them, and I
bear them neither ill will nor hatred. To me they are mere entities, agents of
harm to society. The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to
hasten the explosion of truth and justice. I have but one passion: to enlighten
those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has
suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the
cry of my very soul.”
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