Kibbutz Criminals

Any nation that calls for the destruction of Israel while in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons should expect a muscular U.S. response to any aggression. -- News report
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Haji Mastan, Yusuf Patel, Dawood Ibrahim, Abu Salem, Iqbal Mirchi, Chhota Shakeel… not only do they know precious little about what George Bush is telling Teheran or why he is protecting Israel, but they will be my nemesis.

“Why are all these gangsters Muslim?” I am asked often.

“Because, unlike Madonna, they do not want to attend Kabbalah parties.”

Okay, this was a weak one.

Fact is, a Muslim with a gun needs a “pre-emptive attack”; Jews are allies. Is it mere envy or anger that is making me mock at this?

Let me try and give it some intellectual validity. In a recent paper, The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt*, raise some important points, “The US national interest should be the primary object of American foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering US support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized US security. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state?”

Why are Jews kosher?

I do not know of anyone who has not suffered from a persecution complex. But while individual suffering gets limited to private grief or elevated to martyrdom, community sorrow becomes a self-perpetuating phenomenon.

Often, harmless localities get transformed into ghettos almost unintentionally and, through a process of cultural symbiosis, feel the need to protect it, expand it. It could result in xenophobia and a false sense of complacency.

Sometimes, a persecuted group can even get away with its own misdemeanours. For example, can you ever imagine a Jewish Mob? Can we see any identity for them beyond the rabbi, the kibbutz, the Holocaust? Aren’t Steven Spielberg’s films either cathartic or escapist, because that is the only way he can deal with his Jewishness?

Can we even think about a vengeful Jew? Israelis throwing stones and chucking bombs at Palestinians is like a khandaan ki izzat saga. Old Jews, who had seen victims of the concentration camps, speak even today about doing away with the Nazis. It could be seen as a measure of hate, but it is more about the persecution complex. Over 60 years later, this can be the only reason.

So, has the Jewish persecution machinery been working overtime to keep all talk of false personalities at a safe distance? Besides the occasional banter about miserliness, all we hear about is an enterprising community that keeps most of America well-lubricated.

Therefore, it was a revelation to come across Tough Jews by Rich Cohen. It is through this book we learn that the Italian Mafia was not behind organised crime in America, although the myth was perpetuated. And the man who was pleased as punch about it was Meyer Lansky, who virtually ran Murder Incorporated with fellow Jews.

Of course, Cohen is full of admiration when he says that these were “men who had no idea Jews were supposed to be weak, so they weren’t”. Was that the only impetus? Why did one lot forget about the Holocaust to build – and in some cases rebuild – their lives in a fashion that was completely at odds with their persona as a wronged people? If the writer is to be believed, “The Jewish gangsters were among the first Jews to scrap the notion of Jewish exceptionalism, to set Jews adrift in a world of killers and thieves, to set them free.”

The Jewish Mob cannot be given a special place only because it is assumed by Cohen that, “The most daring among them had been locked up or executed or purged. In the coming years, as Europe ran out of Jews to send across the ocean, as the ghettos dried up, as the universities and medical schools and law firms filled with Jews, as the Jewish people prospered in America, the gangsters would fade even from memory.”

Novelist Philip Kerr, reviewing this, had a different perspective. “Actually it is much more likely that under the influence of Lansky, Jewish organised crime underwent a change of character and was able to move above the line into entertainment, gambling, banking and money laundering.”

I think both Cohen and Kerr, even through their contradictions, make important points. That the “daring” got purged, and the rest got on with life. It is, in effect, a statement that persecution (so what if it is of a criminal community) can inspire a group to great endeavours, to believe that respectability is only a few yards away, in professions that may be dubious but cater to an elite clientele. And money can always buy legitimacy.

But can it make you feel less persecuted? Isn’t the very need to create wealth an aspect of it, to sort of make up for any prospective deprivation? This is, of course, not a mere Jewish phenomenon. There are such pockets the world over, but somehow they have not got respectability nor have their attempts been described as those to get over a persecution complex.

One reason could be the nature of the persecution. Slavery, prejudice, racism, minorityism, the colonial noose etc. are continual and episodic in nature. And when their shackles are broken by some, they come out looking like rebels, not martyrs. This becomes a distinct disadvantage.

If you have a potent incident like the extermination of your people, then you have a reason -- valid in the extreme -- to kick the world back. The Jews went a step further and decided to do it with finesse. They took on the Other’s mantle and took over it. It was a smart strategy to seem to be a contributor and yet retain your distinct identity.

Spielberg may be Hollywood, but he is still a Jewish boy trying to find his feet.

With Woody Allen, Manhattan is a metaphor for all that he has lost and all that he has gained. His diaspora is intellectual.

Henry Kissinger was trying to cope with the deficiency of being a Jew by being more American than the Americans by plotting for the staying power of the US.

Arthur Miller penned plays that talked about emotional displacement.

Of all the peoples in the world, it is the Jews who have enshrined the Persecution Complex – by using it as a trump card, by making demands, by genuinely exposing their hurt, by capitalising on its dramatic potential and, most important of all, by rising above it.

So successful has been their attempt that their reputation can remain untarnished despite talk of the Mob, of bombs, of not giving peace a chance. Whatever be the flipside of the argument, you need to have a cohesive and committed community to create such an indelible image.

There is a lesson in this for the Muslims to acquire the two ‘P’s: public relations and a good dose of persecution.