Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left Quotes

“Lacking trust in the world, as a Jew I am alienated and isolated from my environment. All I can do is come to some sort of arrangement with this alienation. I must accept it as an essential element of my personality and insist on it as though it were an inalienable possession. Even now, I am engulfed by loneliness every day.”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“Society wanted me to be a Jew, and I had to accept this verdict. To withdraw into a form of subjectivity that might have permitted me to say that I did not “feel” like a Jew would have amounted to no more than inconsequential, purely private gameplaying. Only a decade later did I read in Sartre’s Réflexions sur la question juive that a Jew is somebody whom the others consider a Jew. This was precisely my case.”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“now wants to call me a wicked racist, so be it!”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“myself, for example, find the stubborn implacability with which Israel insists on its ownership of the Old City of Jerusalem bewildering; indeed, as a theological if not theocratic form of obsession, it makes me profoundly uncomfortable. I believe, and am hardly alone in doing so, that the various governments of the state of Israel have committed grave sins of omission by not developing a thought-out, humane, and progressive policy in relation to the Arabs when it was still possible. Neither do I agree with every repressive Israeli measure nor do I consider it a healthy state of affairs that the Israelis are turning themselves into a “master race” by importing Arab guest workers to support their economic and industrial expansion. To be sure, these workers are better off in material terms than they ever were back home and under their traditional leaders, but their circumstances are nevertheless disgraceful.”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“Well, the matter is straightforward enough: for every single Jew the world over, whatever his political orientation, whether he is an intellectual or a businessman or a craftsman, the existence of the small Jewish state is an “existential” issue because not only have the Jews in Israel, to use a formulation Ernst Bloch coined in another context, themselves acquired the “upright gait,” they have also taught the Jews who live in the diaspora and may have no intention of ever going to Israel, not even on holiday, how to adopt a firm step and straight posture. The state of Israel has so resoundingly disproved the most stupid antisemitic legends—that the Jews were cowards, that they knew what to do with a bank note but not how to operate a plow, that they were incapable of forming a state—that even the most dogged old Nazi or neo-Nazi no longer dares repeat them. Every”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“the most extreme impositions and demands placed on us are of a physical and social kind. I appreciate that this experience has rendered me incapable of profound and lofty speculation. My hope is that it might have placed me in a better position to comprehend reality.”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“Metaphysical angst is a concern of the highest standing, and those who have always known who and what they are, and why, and that they will always be permitted to continue being who and what they are may continue to address it. That it is their preserve is not what makes me feel wretched when I compare myself to them.”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“have often interrogated myself as to whether it is possible to lead a truly human life under the pressure of being caught between fear and ire in this way. Those”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“awareness of the fact that I am a catastrophe Jew is not an ideological construct. It”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“is with considerable unease that I read the following definition of what characterizes a Jew in the study of a very young Dutch Jew: “A Jew can be described as somebody who is more anxious, distrustful and irritable than his fellow citizen who has never been persecuted.” This seemingly valid definition is rendered erroneous by the fact that its author has left out an indispensable addendum, which should read, “. . . because he has good reason to assume that a new catastrophe could occur any time.” The awareness of yesterday’s cataclysm and the legitimate anticipation of its possible future recurrence constitute the ultimate vanishing point.”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“it is not I who was, or is, disturbed. It is in fact the historical development that is neurotic. It is the others who are mad, and I stand among them, perplexed, like somebody who is entirely sane and, having joined a guided tour through a psychiatric clinic, has suddenly become separated from the psychiatrists and minders. And yet, the verdict handed down by the insane could be executed at any time; I have absolutely no recourse against it, and my own clarity of mind is entirely irrelevant.”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left

“assist me in doing so. Hence, I am as alone as I was when I was being tortured. Those who surround me now I do not, however, consider my adversaries, as I did my torturers. They are not against me; they simply exist alongside me, unaffected by me and the menace that slinks around with me. As I walk past I greet, and feel no hostility toward, them. They offer me no security. Only the fact that I am, in a manner that defies positive definition, a Jew does so. It is my burden and my prop.”
― Jean Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left