MASADA
From:
WHEN VICTIMS RULE. A CRITIQUE OF JEWISH PRE-EMINENCE IN AMERICA.
The bibliography for the citations below are are
here.
Among the most important 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. 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 important
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 not true, 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 scholarship 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 Sicarri -- "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 Sicarri 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 supported 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]
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