Story teller masquerading as historian
One of hundreds of Jewish members of the French resistance Denise Gamzon of the E.I.F. (Jewish Scouts of France) |
Edouard Drumont - leading French anti-Semite and anti-Dreyfusard - friend of Herzl |
Simon Schama - Story teller masquerading as historian |
Simon Schama's History of the Jews was a travesty of history. Faction not factual.
By his own admission Schama is a Zionist, one of whose central tenets is that anti-Semitism cannot be fought. Schama thus made the facts of the Dreyfus Affair fit into a preconceived mould and botched them all.
Theodor Herzl - founder of Political Zionism and an opponent of combating anti-Semisim |
Schama did mention the leader of the anti-Dreyfusards, Edouard Drumont but ‘forgot’ to mention that Herzl befriended him and went out of his way to seek a favourable review of his pamphlet 'The Jewish State' (Der Judenstaat) in the anti-Semitic newspaper 'La Libre Parole' which Drumont duly praised.
Captain Alfred Dreyfuss whose exoneration Schama 'forgot' to mention. |
Schama did not attempt to place the Dreyfus Affair in the context of French politics and the attempt by the clerical-military caste to reverse the French Revolution and its Emancipation of the Jews. As Clermont-Tonnerre said in the Constituent Assembly in 1789'To the Jews as individuals everything, as a nation nothing.'
The fact that over 75% of French Jews survived the Nazi occupation was the legacy of the Dreyfus Affair.
I wonder whether we will see a history of Palestine written by a Palestinian historian such as Walid Khalidi? Or would that be a breach of BBC neutrality?
BBC 'neutrality' prevents any mention of the expulsion of the Palestinians |