Heinrich Heine was a German Jew (convert) talented as a demon, poet, thinker, cholent enthusiast. His conversion was for livelihood and status. He is forgiven. After all, he said, "It is difficult for a Jew to convert to Christianity, because how can a Jew believe in the holiness of another Jew?" Funny.
On his deathbed, he joked with his wife: "I hope that after I die you will remarry, so that at least one person will regret my death."
But aside from crushing sentences, Heine also prophesied that "where books are burned, people will be burned." 100 years later it really happened. And with us about two weeks ago. The video for Gali Atari's new remake of "Stronger than the Wind" burns the book "Irreversible Damage" by Abigail Schreier published by Sela Meir, a book that describes with sensitivity and detail the epidemic of gender dysphoria in the second decade of the third millennium.
The clip was the opening. On Sunday evening, at Sarona Tel Aviv, for the first time in 99 years in the history of Book Week, a publishing house was under real attack on freedom of expression and the very possibility of discussion. The protesters who stormed the Sela Meir publishing booth challenged the very existence of the books, claiming that they were a provocation against diversity, gender or the common good or the demon knows what.
Writer Ilan Sheinfeld, who describes himself as one of the leaders of the writers' and poets' protest, tweeted: "It should be very imprudent to allow the far-right Sela Meir publishing house a stand at the fair... Without assuming that this will provoke a response from the protesters."
What can we learn from this aversion, from the desire to erase, silence, restrict freedom of expression, shut down the marketplace of ideas, and live in a world where no voices other than your own are heard? After all, books are the vaults of knowledge and ideas, the carbon footprints of the human mind, an expression of imagination, of challenge, of doubt. Books set religions and revolutions in motion, shocked tyrants and crowned kings, untied the chains of thought and tore the veil of ignorance.
The people who want to burn books, cancel book publishers, are just clowns trying to extinguish the sun with water guns. Because even when a book burns and shrinks to ashes, the letters may bloom in the air, but the ideas, like the phoenix, the phoenix, emerge from the rametz.
Moreover, the effort to suppress thought, idea, perception only fuels them. Those who think they stand on the right side of history, those who speak in the name of democracy, do not revoke the freedom of expression of their political opponents, do not censor ideas. Those who believe in freedom are not protesting against publishing simply because it dared to publish a book that boldly exposes the progressive trolling that threatens children.
The gender dysphoria that the book "Irreversible Damage" describes spreading in the West is a phenomenon that has gone beyond a rare exotic disorder and has become an international trend. An increase of thousands of percent within a decade. Especially in young women. The damage is irreversible. And it all sits at a crucial juncture in the history of the West.
Last April, three large professional organizations in Israel published statements supporting gender reconciliation treatments for minors – the Israel Medical Association, the Association of Social Workers, and the Israel Psychological Association. But while in Israel the trend aligns with extreme progressiveness from the United States, Europe is making a U-turn. Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Great Britain have recently realized the enormous damage that medical intervention for gender adjustment at a young age can cause. They are pressuring the Berks to immediately shut down gender reconciliation clinics for minors in their countries.
And here we return to the burning of books. The medical establishment in Israel is blind spot because of politics, because of the tribal war. So let's take azimuth.
Progressiveness is another incarnation of Marxism; It is not surprising that ignoring reality and silencing the opponent stem from the same place
This week, the Skeptical Inquirer published an article by a biologist, Jerry Coyne and Luanna Marroger, on how progressive gender ideology severely harms science. According to the article, biology faces a serious threat from progressive politics, which is changing the way scientists operate and the fields in which research is conducted. Entire fields of biology have become taboo. No studies. The governments will not fund it.
"We wrote this article," they explain, "not to claim that biology is dead, but to show how ideology poisons it. The science that has brought us so much progress and understanding is endangered by political dogma, which stifles our vital tradition of open research and scientific communication. And because much of what we're discussing takes place within academic science, where many scientists shy away from speaking their minds, the public is largely unfamiliar with these issues. Unfortunately, by the time they become clear to everyone, it may be too late."
One example in the article is that of Trofim Lysenko, a "Marxist" scientist who invented a new agricultural system, which won the absolute trust of Stalin and the communist leadership. He decided that there was no evolution and natural selection, and that plants could be taught to develop new traits through willpower.
Linescu became the number one expert, but in 1929 a decision was made that he should not be criticized. It wasn't enough for him.
In 1935 he was appointed head of the USSR Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and also responsible for preventing forbidden thoughts and opinions among Soviet scientists. In his fanatical madness, he was responsible for the imprisonment, exile and execution of hundreds of scientists, among them Professor Nikolai Vavilov, one of the most important geneticists in the Soviet Union, who was starved to death in a dark dungeon.
Vavilov, who founded the world's largest seed bank in Leningrad and worked on developing new and improved plant varieties, was murdered for using methods related to Western biological science.
In the 30s and 40s, Soviet peasants starved to death as a result of Lysenko's scientific practices. In the famine of 1947 alone, more than a million people died. While the West recovered with a baby boom, the USSR was stuck behind.
The Chinese also used the Lysenko method and suffered from starvation in the early 60s. Estimates of the deaths ranged from 20 million to 40 million.
Since progressivism is another incarnation of Marxism, which always takes shape, it is not surprising that ignoring reality and silencing the opponent stem from the same place. But in an age of artificial intelligence, which deals with language from the outset, science subject to political whims can lead to colossal disaster. And we're on our way there.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us