L'antisémitisme est un programme politique pleinement assumé (Ruth Wisse)

Ruth Wisse enseigne la littérature yiddish et la littérature comparée à l'Université de Harvard. Ruth Wisse et son frère David Roskies sont considérés comme deux des plus éminents auteurs et professeurs de yiddish dans les universités américaines.  William Kristol est un commentateur politique et le fondateur du magazine The Weekly Standard.

Transcription d'une interview de Ruth Wisse par William Kristol (extrait):

KRISTOL: And again I’m struck by your understanding of anti-Semitism as this really self-conscious political program. You said something the other day that – I think heard you say or heard about your saying it that struck me in this respect about anti-Semitism. Let’s talk a little more about that. Yeah.

WISSE: Well, the, I guess the thing that one would like to convey is that anyone who thinks about politics seriously should begin to understand that anti-Semitism is a very sophisticated subject for them to address themselves to. Not parochial, not small, but very large, very important and –

KRISTOL: And not only important to Jews. I mean, the major part of European history and Middle East history now, right.

WISSE: Absolutely. And that it actually harms those who are infected by it so that the ultimate casualties of anti-Semitism are always going to be those who misdirect their politics at the Jews because by misdirecting, they postpone dealing with the problems that they actually have and they only get worse and you can see these societies becoming more and more violent, more and more frustrated because they are not solving the problems really.

Anti-Semitism may be a very successful politics of grievance and blame, in one sense, that it in the short run misdirects the problems and scapegoats the Jews, the Jews, the Jews. But since these problems are never solved, they keep growing and they keep festering, and you can see what is happening in Arab society. 

I think there’s a direct correlation between the refusal to deal with internal problems, the use of Israel as a means of really misdirecting attention away from the problems at home and away from actual reforms to let’s get rid of you know this intruder in our midst. There’s a direct correlation between that and the astonishing rise of this pathology in the Arab world and the rise of violence. The same thing that happened in Germany, the same thing that happened on the European continent can be witnessed in Arab and Muslim societies. 

So that’s the complexity that I would wish with that people would pay more attention to. On the other hand, I think that there’s a – there are some things which are very, very simple, much plainer than one may think. Since politics direct themselves against the Jews and since anti-Semitism can be defined as a politics of grievance and blame, it’s very simple to see that an anti-Semite is someone who holds the Jews responsible for the sufferings of another people. So, anyone who held Jews responsible for the evils of capitalism was an anti-Semite. Those who held Jews responsible for the evils, the repressions of communism was an anti-Semite. Those who held Jews responsible for the misery of Germany in the 1930s was an anti-Semite. And for the misery of Poland. 

Now, I think that one to understand the misery was real, the problems were always real, but the attribution of blame was completely false; and, therefore, exacerbated the problem by not really dealing with it. And the end thing to say about this is that the worst case of this has been that Israel has been held responsible for the misery of the Palestinians. Anyone who thinks that Israel is to blame for the misery of the Palestinians is absolutely an anti-Semite. That is the definition of anti-Semitism. 

Now, anti-Semitism is legal. And anyone who wants to can become an anti-Semite, and there are plenty of them around. But they should understand that by definition, to hold Jews responsible for the suffering of an Arab people, given the amount of land that the Arabs have, given the fact that the Arabs were the ones who denied the Palestinians their state, etc., etc., this is really the crux of anti-Semitism. And it does not make things for the Palestinians. 

The longer this fantasy is allowed to, you know, perpetuate itself, the more desperate the situation of the Palestinian people will become because the suffering is real but to say that Jews – Jews are the last people who can do anything about it because we know what lengths Israel would go to if it could to solve that problem. The fact is that the Jews are the last people who are able to solve it; it is not their problem and I think that those who think that they want – that they can sort of parachute in and solve it by this means or by that means really contribute to the problem.

Lire l'interview complète 
La vidéo de l'entretien (2014)

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