I am referring to the enormous, self-defeating, dishonest flap about Ilhan Omar's remarks about Israel. Pretty much everything I have to say has already been said by Paul Waldman in this fine Washington Post column from two days ago. By a bizarre twist of fate, Born Again End Times Evangelical Christians have gotten it into their God-besotted brains that the Second Coming and associated final time-ending clash between Good and Evil can only take place in an expanded, reunited, Old Testament Israel from which the Palestinians have been expelled. Since these folks are the base of the Republican Party, in alliance on this matter with AIPAC, which pretty much owns the Democratic Party, there is a United Front in America against anyone who talks sense about Israel. Never mind that both Israel and America are full of Jews who condemn the policies of Bibi and his brethren.
Now, I invite readers to condemn me as a self-hating Jew. Knock yourselves out.
I'm Jewish and in spite of your invitation to condemn you as a self-hating Jew, I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteDear Professor
ReplyDeleteI consider myself a card carrying Jew. As an Israeli, though living in America many years, this tiff troubles me. All the people ganging up on Israel, or most of them, stood idly by when we were hounded and dogged around the world and shipped to the slaughter like sheep. Contrary to the Protocols of Zion, we are not in a quest to take over the world or take over congress, we are trying to survive in an often unjust world. But like a Jewish mother who fancies her son or daughter the center of the world, we act like we are the heroes of world history and the center of the world, just like the Bible is the greatest book ever written. We are not the center of the world, we're just another middling world historical people. People looking for an excuse to be antisemitic like Representative Omar, who is an antisemite on principle, find it in our chutzpah and haughtiness. Freud had his thoughts on this too, I remember. We are tolerated and even celebrated for years, then people decide we are sub human and the enemies of civilization and that social justice demands that the Jews must die.
Get rid of antisemitism, purge the world of antisemitism, and Israel will have no reason to exist, and I will happily consider myself a citizen of the world first and forget about Zion and if I will weep it will be for joy.
The story handed down by my grandparents, first generation Americans, was all we want is peace and a better world for everybody.
That's the default position of Judaism and of the Jewish people.
It is my right, duty and privilege as a Jew, and an Israeli and a man to protest Israeli policies, but a world without Israel would probably not be any more a utopia than it currently is and the answer to the problems of the world isn't death to Israel and death to the Jews
Professor Wolff,
ReplyDeleteI won't comment one way or the other, readers can already guess where my sympathies rest, but it's exactly incidents like these that make people desire anonymity over the internet. In academia I'm 99% candid, but I always stay hush on just this issue.
In all the radical circles I've flirted with, I've never seen anyone, literally ANYONE, advocate:
ReplyDelete"a world without Israel" or "death to Israel and death to the Jews". This is a blatant straw man of, well whose position I don't know? Hamas? Seriously doubt you'll meet any American supporters of Hamas. It's also a false disjunct. It's not support Israeli foreign policy as is, and its present administration OR blow them off the map. Just as no one against the Iraq War and Bush (in America) thought the solution was to remove America from the map. Please don't pigeon hole critics. This is exactly why people are afraid to be critics.
What Chris said. What Omar said. This American Jew agrees with them and I am very glad the backlash from the likes of us squashed (for the time being) that nonsense in the House. AIPAC often brags of its effectiveness, but when they're called on it we this sideshow. As many have pointed out the actual anti-semitism in the US is from the right.
ReplyDeleteone good piece
juan cole
another
more
That comment upthread about "card carrying": Is this a red-baiting trope?
ReplyDeleteI am not a religious man. I never spent much time thinking about the afterlife. As I grow old, however, I find myself wondering if one day I will have to meet my Maker and defend my life before His tribunal.
ReplyDeleteI am no saint. I am not proud of all the things I've done. My life is full of regrets. And if a God of justice exists, I will have to pay for that.
One thing I am not guilty of: I never stood idly by when Jews were hounded and dogged around the world and shipped to the slaughter like sheep. I never witnessed a pogrom, let alone take part in one. I didn't murder Jews. For that matter, I never murdered Native Americans; I did not enslave Africans.
I wasn't sitting idly by when those things happened: I just did not exist then. I accept no blame for someone else's actions or omissions. I do not believe in collective guilt.
If that day of reckoning comes, I'll answer for my sins, not for someone else's. A God of justice wouldn't force me to admit guilt when I'm guiltless. No one else will achieve that.
There is one crime I could be charged with, though. The crime of standing idly by as Palestinians were dispossessed, discriminated against, starved and bombed and massacred. If I were charged with that crime, what would be my defense? That I kept quiet because I was afraid of being spuriously labelled "anti-Semitic"?
Note my words carefully, for they admit no equivocation: the State of Israel is a settler State, much like South Africa was. The institutional racism of the State of Isreal is directed not only against Palestinians whether Muslims or Christians, but also against non-white Jews. The State of Israel has committed crimes against humanity and is ruled by a criminal clique and provides refuge to criminals. The State of Israel is based on terror and sponsors terrorism and is friendly to anti-Semites and Fascists abroad. This is what I believe and this is what I say. I am not saying every Israeli, whether Jew, Muslim, or Christian, is guilty. Much less am I implying all Jews on the planet are. I am not calling for their collective punishment.
If, however, to say those things makes me an anti-Semite, so be it. I rather be unjustly accused of anti-Semitism than be justly accused of cowardice and as an ageing white man I'd be honored to stand next to a brave young black Muslim woman, like Ilhan Omar, against a mob of white dishonest, hypocritical Democratic Party manipulators.
I proudly spit on their faces.
Dear anonymous, we have so much in common. I am a Jew who wants to make the world a better place and you are (or so you say yourself) an antisemite who wants to make the world a better place.
ReplyDeleteWhere do we start?
I'm sure we can meet someplace in the middle
What I find gratifying is that some of the very best, if not THE most insightful and relentless critics of the policies of Israel, come from Jews themselves: Bennis, Finkelstein, St. Clair, Albert, Chomsky, Greenwald, Wolff (s)...and on and on. Bravi!
ReplyDeleteSo Howard, since Anonymous did not claim he was an anti-semite, only that he could be unjustly accused of it, are you arguing that his post is *actually* anti-semitic? (His target was the state of Israel, not Jews in general - I live in the U.S., I'm not a fan of the U.S. State, does that make me anti white/anti-christian or something?)
ReplyDeleteBefore labelling anonymous an "anti-semite" or saying that anonymous himself accepts that label, Chris would do well to note the qualifiers in the post from anonymous:
ReplyDelete'That I kept quiet because I was afraid of being SPURIOUSLY labelled "anti-Semitic"?'
'I rather be UNJUSTLY accused of anti-Semitism'
Does this website have to sink to the level of the criticism of Representative Omar?
Oh...... sorry, it was Howard who falsely said that anonymous is an anti-Semite and had also acknowledged that fact about himself.... not Chris.... who made exactly that point I was trying to make. Sorry for the confusion and for the redundancy.
ReplyDeleteNo worries DZ.
ReplyDeleteAlso just to press my point further, I'm definitely NOT a fan of the state of north korea, would that make me an anti-korean? I also don't care for Saudia Arabia. Am I anti-arab?
Even worse, anarchists in general aren't fans of any states, does that make them, I dunno, anti-human? Universal bigots?
In reply to Chris @1:23 PM, I'm anarchist and a misanthrope. But, you know, correlation does not imply causation.
ReplyDeleteDean,
ReplyDeleteAnarchist and misanthrope? How does that work?
I'm a misanthrope too, and because of that I tend to be Hobbesian. I believe in a strong state, a socialist one, with checks and balances because I don't trust my fellow human beings, with a functioning police force, etc.
S.W.
ReplyDeleteEasy I would think. Two reasons:
1) It's because one is a misanthrope that they don't want X set of humans to have a monopoly of force.
2) It's because we have states that humans presently aren't worth praise, but if we didn't have states, human potential would flourish.
[I'm not saying I believe either of these, but they are forms of anarchism I'm familiar with - Professor Wolff for instance points out in his book that if direct democracy was implemented, it may well instill virtue and a broader sense of responsibility in humans once they could witness the impacts of their voting]
I'm not sure the combination does work, at least not entirely for me. I suppose I'm temperamentally disposed to pick my battles and, consequently, ordinarily to be agreeable and to embrace compromise. Is that Hobbesian?
ReplyDeleteMy (half in jest) point, of course, was that one can be both, but that being both doesn't mean being one necessarily entails being the other.
It's International Woman's Day, which in Chile at least is celebrated with a huge woman's march.
ReplyDeleteA few days ago a jealous husband or boy-friend stabbed his woman partner. She's in critical condition. Yesterday another jealous male shot his woman partner as she dropped off their child at school. She died. Today, on International Woman's Day, another jealous macho shot his woman partner as she walked back from the corner store with the ingredients for lunch (it obviously being her duty to prepare the mid-day meal). She also died.
We need cops with socialist and feminist principles, we need judges with socialist and feminist principles and we need jails which re-educate offenders with socialist and feminist principles. People are so fucked up and have so much shit in their heads that it will take a century to re-educate them and meanwhile, we need a strong government, with, as I said above, checks and balances to keep the monopoly of force from being abused.