Bush tours Israel's ancient fortress of Masada
By Tabassum Zakaria
MASADA, Israel (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Thursday toured the
Roman-era desert fortress of Masada, a national symbol in Israel of Jewish
fighting spirit and self-sacrifice against powerful enemies and
overwhelming
odds.
A cable car carried Bush to the top of the towering plateau where 960
Jewish
men, women and children committed suicide rather than surrender to Roman
forces cru****ng a rebellion in ancient Judea, in an act chronicled by a
1st-century historian.
-------------------------------
* Ben-Yehuda, Nachum. The Masada Myth. Collective Memory and Mythmaking
in
Israel. University of Wisconsin Press, 1995
Among the most im****tant nationalist legends in the modern state of Israel
(and for many in the international Jewish community) has been the story of
Masada. In Israeli/Jewish lore, 900 Jewish zealots nobly defended
themselves
for months against attack and then committed mass suicide at a remote
desert
fortress near the Dead Sea in 73 AD rather than surrender to besieging
Roman
legions. The Masada tale of desperate Jewish warriors has popularly been
regarded as historical fact and has served as heroic symbol -- a "last
stand" in Jewish collective consciousness, a story where Jews who were
revolting against Roman domination chose to die for their Jewish heritage
rather than suffer oppression at the hands of Gentiles. Masada has
embodied
a range of traditional Jewish beliefs: Jewry as a "nation apart" against
all others, the few against the many, Jewish heroism against Gentile
hordes,
and dedication to each other to the point of death as itself a noble
endeavor. The Masada story has long been a source of Jewish and Israeli
pride, especially since the founding of modern Israel in 1948. "Masada is
not just a story," notes Israeli historian Nachum Ben-Yehuda, "Masada
provides, certainly for my generation of Israelis, an im****tant ingredient
in the very definition of our Jewishness and Israeli 'identity.'"
[BEN-YEHUDA, p. 5] "Masada," writes Yitzhak Landau in his famous
patriotic
poem to Israel and Jewish solidarity, "shall not fall again." [BENVENISTI,
p. 35]
Astoundingly, however, the Masada legend of courageous Jewish
defenders
is false. Its historical basis was distorted and embellished to serve the
propagandistic needs of early Israeli nation-building. Nachum Ben-Yehuda
wrote an entire volume in 1995 that catalogues, not only that the heroic
version of the Masada story is untrue, but that it was consciously
fabricated to serve Israeli propaganda about Jewish identity, especially
in
the early post-Holocaust period when the Jews of Europe were perceived to
have so passively met their fate at the hands of Hitler.
Virtually everything modern scholar****p knows about Masada comes from
the writings of Flavius Josephus, a man -- who born a Jew -- joined the
Romans and is generally considered in Jewish circles to be a traitor to
his
people (an odd source for heroizing ancient Jewry). A close reading of
him,
notes Ben-Yehuda, reveals that the "zealots" of Masada were actually
Sicarii -- "assassins," of both Romans and Jews. The reason they fled to
Masada was not because they were fighting Roman domination, but that they
were driven out of Jerusalem by fellow Jews. The Sicarii then "raided
nearby
Jewish villages, killed the inhabitants, and took their food."
[BEN-YEHUDA,
p. 9] They killed about 700 Jews in Ein Gedi alone, "mostly women and
children." [BEN-YEHUDA, p. 36]
From this core of information about Masada's dubious "defenders"
provided by Josephus, Israeli propagandists "socially constructed a shrine
for Jewish martyrdom and heroism" [BEN-YEHUDA, p. 190] whereby the entire
nation of modern Israel was itself conceived as a Masada, isolated
defenders
against gentile hostility towards Jews everywhere, "a symbol of the
heroism
of Israel for all generations ... [BEN-YEHUDA, p. 87] ... Masada was not
destroyed. It became a symbol of the Jewish will to live as a nation, of
refusal to surrender to the forces threatening its extinction." [
BEN-YEHUDA, p. 123] "In the late fifties and early sixties," says Meron
Benvenisti, "Masada became a national shrine." [BENVENISIT, p. 38]
Yet, "the Masada mythical narratives," adds Ben-Yehuda, "was
consciously invented, fabricated, and sup****ted by key moral entrepreneurs
and organizations in the Yishuv [Israeli community] ... [BEN-YEHUDA, p.
307]
.... [while Masada's defenders were really] "thieves and assassins who
robbed
and killed other Jews." [BEN-YEHUDA, p. 300] For years, Israeli army
recruits were taken to the ruins of the Masada fortress to swear
allegiance
to the Jewish state, ritually stating "endless devotion" to Israel at this
"place of splendor, glory and majesty." [BEN-YEHUDA, p. 147] And Israeli
newspaper in 1964 called Masada Israel's "most cherished national asset"
and
the "mausoleum of the saints of the nation." [BEN-YEHUDA, p. 185] A
popular
patriotic slogan became "Masada shall not fall again." The Mossad's
assassination division was even called "Masada."
Home of a band of fleeing Jewish murderers or not, the Masada story
has
not been without its Jewish critics on other terms. The idea of Israel
itself as a veritable Masada country, a garrison state with a desperate
back-to-the-wall "we against them" worldview (sometimes described as the
"Masada complex") has worried some Israeli commentators. Is collective
suicide an appropriate role model for any people? How would this affect
Israeli self-conception and behavior in the nuclear bomb world? Is an
alienated "last stand" psychology a healthy premise to interact with the
rest of the world? Seymour Hersh quotes the comments of an 'expert who
has
been involved in government studies on the nuclear issue in the Middle
East
for two decades: "Israel has a well thought-out nuclear strategy and, if
sufficiently threatened, they will use it." [HERSH, S., p. 92] "Many
senior
nonproliferation officials in the American government," adds Hersh, "were
convinced by the early 1990s that the Middle East remained the one place
where nuclear weapons might be used [i.e., no other Middle Eastern country
has nuclear weapons except Israel]." [HERSH, p. 92]
"Our nationalists are leading us to Masada," once complained famed
tank commander Yitzhak Ben-Ari, "in the sense that 'all the world is
against
us. We shall fight, and if we have a nuclear bomb, we shall use it.' And
what will remain for us? Nothing." [BEN-YEHUDA, p. 157] "It is
unavoidable," worried Israeli historian Benyamin Kedar, "that
[nationalist]
behavior influenced by identification with Masada will indeed resuscitate
it. If the entire world is against us, then one begins to behave as if we
are against the entire world and such behavior is bound to lead to
ever-increasing isolation." [BEN-YEHUDA, p. 246]
It is clear that this Masada model is, of course, merely a secular,
militant expression of the traditional religious "nation apart" syndrome
itself, Jewish enclaves throughout history self-ghettoized against the
non-Jewish Other. And as for the Masada myth itself, "time after time,"
notes Ben-Yehuda, Jews who are told that the Masada story of heroism is
fake
"elicit expressions ranging from mild discomfort to (much more frequently)
anger and open hostility. My worse encounters have typically been with
[Israeli] history teachers ... Obviously, the realization that a major
element of one's personal and national identity was based on a biased and
falsified myth is not an easy thing to deal with." [BEN-YEHUDA, p. 311]
Among the many forms of Masada mythologizing, in this case for
American
popular consumption, was a 1970 "historical novel," Masada, subtitled A
Novel of Love, Courage, and the Triumph of the Human Spirit, by Ernest
Ganz,
described by a Kirkus Reviews reviewer as "a return to the days of heroes
larger than life." It was also the subject of an "8-hour TV epic from
ABC-TV and Universal." [GANN, back cover and opening page] The Masada myth
also saw American expression in 1987 when Jewish American Marvin David
Levy,
recently released after a two year prison term for his role in a drug
smuggling ring, watched the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform his
"dramatic
oratorio, Masada, in its newly expanded version." The work, noted the
Chicago Tribune, "emphasizes the triumph and tragedy of a heroic band that
chose individual liberty at great personal cost." [VON RHEIM, J., p. 26]
In 1971 Michael Rosenberg summarized American Jewry's irrational
views
of Israel succinctly: "Israel is the ultimate reality in the life of every
living Jew today. I believe that Israel surpasses in im****tance Jewish
ritual. It is more than the Jewish tradition; and, in fact, it is more
than
the Mosaic law itself. The anti-religious Jew who sup****ts Israel is
welcomed as a Jew and as an integral part of the community. The observant
Jew who does not accept the centrality of Israel is not accepted and is
rarely even tolerated. In dealing with those who oppose Israel, we are not
reasonable and we are not rational. Nor should we be." [ROSENBERG, M., p.
82]
Bibliography for Citations, here.
http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/30bibl1.htm
http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/masada2.htm
--
Pucker your lips for the Apocalypse!
Johnny Asia, Guitarist from the Future
http://music.download.com/johnnyasia
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