Hebron Massacre

S Pawlett epawlett at uniserve.com
Tue Apr 27 10:25:00 PDT 1999



>
> If memory serves, Goldstein was not really an Israeli but a USer from
> Brooklyn who emigrated to Israel, no?

Yes. Edward Said proposed that Goldstein and Kahane were more a product of American culture than Israeli, Zionist or Jewish culture.

" Baruch Goldstein is not so exceptional. He was a man steeped in the long-distance fantasies of a Jewish revival in Israel that was cultivated with considerable results in America well before he actually set foot in Israel. He was a disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a man whose calls for open violence against Arabs were regularly broadcast in the United States for years befoe he came to Israel in 1971. I happened to be a victim of Kahane's Jewish Defence League violence in the mid-80's when my university office was burned; when asked about it the organization said they didn't know who did it, but added approvingly it was the work of a "Jewish patriot". And while it may be the tendency recently to detach Kahane from "mainstream Zionism" in the United States, and to try and prove he wasn't a "real" Zionist, the fact is that Kahane was very much a product of both Zionism and of American culture, its history of exterminations, and its blind arrogance toward people of the wrong or weaker races."

from Edward W. Said _Further Reflections on the Hebron Massacre_ from Peace and its Discontents p57.

Sam Pawlett



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