Ook Spinoza in de strijd geworpen
PTT is een Palestijnse Denktank, een website opgericht door mensen uit diverse landen, die zich ten doel stellen de ideologie van het Zionisme te bestrijden en allerlei informatie aan te dragen die van belang kan zijn voor het Palestijnse volk.
Op die site verschijnen uit alle windrichtingen vaak lange artikelen die historisch materiaal en/of ideeën-kritieken aandragen.
Soms wordt daarin ook verwezen naar Spinoza.
Zo schreef ene Mary Rizzo gisteren, 13 mei, een lang (25 A4-pagina's lang) artikel "Zahir Ebrahim – Palestine: The Struggle Forward," over het Zionisme en het joodse superioriteitsgevoel (van de uitverkorenheid). En zie hoe daarin Spinoza wordt opgevoerd:
"In other words, Zionism in the modern context is just another relative concept beyond the purview of absolute definitions of good and evil. It is whatever the reigning power wants it to be. If it says it's moral, then it's moral. In fact, it is seeded in respectable philosophy by Western standards. It is the philosophy of Spinoza and Nietzsche in modern times, and of Plato in ancient times. It is the philosophy of the ubermensch who by the very nature of being uber alles, are licensed to define their own standards of morality (and this is how the Straussian's read Plato's virtuous divine philosopher-king: since divine is dead, so philosopher is king, and therefore can create his own definition of virtue which is effectively what you see Leo Strauss writing above). And this is also precisely how Vladimir Jabotinsky defined the morality of Zionism in his seminal 1923 article The Iron Wall."
Op een andere pagina (van 20 maart 2010) wordt Spinoza weer op een andere manier aangehaald. In "Henry Herskovitz – Will IJAN Challenge Jewish Power?" is te lezen:
"More than 300 years ago, Benedictus de Spinoza, who is often upheld as a great Jewish intellectual, observed that Jews had in fact nothing to commend themselves as superior to others, had acted in such a way as to "incur the hatred of all", and that this hatred was the glue that bound Jews together. Other than, perhaps, a few years during the Civil Rights struggle (and Benjamin Ginsberg casts doubt on even this), Jews collectively have acted in concert NOT for universal well-being, but for the benefit of Jews. IJAN [the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network] does not seem to be an exception."
Een laatste voorbeeld van 6 jan 2009 waarbij het interview dat Time (Tony Karon) had n.a.v. het boek van de kritische joods-Amerikaanse Avrum Burg: The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from Its Ashes (Palgrave/MacMillan):
"Both the internal and the external hemispheres of the Jewish experience are essential. I cannot envisage my Judaism without the input I got from the external world, be it philosophy, aesthetics, even democracy, which was introduced to the Jews in the last 200 years because of our interface with the the world. On the other hand, I can't imagine my Western civilization and Western culture without the Jewish input, without Jesus Christ, who was born, was crucified and passed away as a Mishnaic rabbinical Jew. I cannot image Christian Europe opening up to modernity without a Maimonides reintroducing Greek philosophy. I cannot imagine modern times without a Spinoza, and Mendelson. I cannot imagine the 20th century without Marx and Freud. So, this conversation between Jews and the world is not just a conversation of pogroms and slaughter and Holocaust; it's also a couple of thousand years of a conversation that enriched me and enriched them, and I don't want to give that up."
Een lang kritisch artikel op 25 juli 2009 over de Palestijnen zelf van Sami Jamil Jadallah What is wrong with the Palestinians? A whole lot, riep gespreid over enige maanden, wel 189 reacties op. In een daarvan schreef een verdediger van Israel (Israel is the Holy Land of the Bible. Where else should the Jews have their state?) ineens:
I'm not a liar, sorry for you. I love Spinoza.
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Afbeelding van palestinethinktank.com/
