The Jewish fighting model
The Jewish fighting model
This chapter investigates one by-product of over-riding significance that derived, yet was radically different, from all traditional forms of political philosophy. Previously dominant strategies frequently pictured the Jew as a supplicant, a picture reinforced by the internalisation of a persistent anti-semitic accusation. This chapter examines how Anglo-Jewry sought to eradicate such images at a time when Hitler's war highlighted Jewish powerlessness. The counter-image was that of the Jewish fighter. This paradigm depicted Jews both as they were and as they could potentially become in the future. The spiritual resistance of Jews to Nazism, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the bravery of English Jews fighting in Allied forces, even the dignified demeanour of Anglo-Jewry's leaders, all suggested in the minds of many British Jews an alternative image to a European Jewry killed passively and without resistance. Quite inevitably this image came to be linked with that of Zionism. The struggle to understand and create this picture played an increasingly dominant role on the Anglo-Jewish agenda.
Keywords: counter-image, Jewish powerlessness, Jewish fighter, Jewish resistance, Zionism, Anglo-Jewish agenda
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