Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
The present volume comprises three more or less independent essays and a postscript written for the English edition. They share a single concern: the use of the Holocaust to advance anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli claims. Anti-Zionism has recently gained momentum and become a powerful ideological adversary of Israel. Beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli policies, the occupation, Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and so on, what is at stake in the anti-Zionist campaign is the basic legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, the right of the Jews to self-determination, and the fundamental morality of a Jewish polity. One of the more disturbing aspects of this ideological all-out war is the systematic use of the Holocaust as a major weapon. This is not just a curiosity, for the strategic use, or rather abuse, of the Holocaust has proved its effectiveness. The Holocaust has come to be perceived – and this is how anti-Zionism makes use of it – as the main, if not the sole, justification and explanation for the existence of Israel. In what follows, I refer to this thesis as the “master postulate,” to borrow a term suggesting all-pervasiveness and longevity from an old and altogether different philosophical context. Undermining this alleged foundation and justification of the Jewish state is – in the logic of the master postulate – tantamount to a complete denial of the state's legitimacy.
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- Post-Zionism, Post-HolocaustThree Essays on Denial, Forgetting, and the Delegitimation of Israel, pp. vii - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009