Showing posts with label Daled Amos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daled Amos. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 15, 2020




With the UAE, and now Bahrain, recognizing Israel -- what would happen to this momentum if Biden were to become president?

In a recent article, Jonathan Schanzer -- of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies -- asks Would Joe Biden be willing or able to take advantage of the progress made with the Israel-UAE deal? At issue is whether Biden would be in a position to take advantage of the willingness of some Arab states to establish peaceful ties with Israel.

On the one hand, there is "the unorthodox approach of focusing on Arab states on the periphery of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (rather than on the Palestinians)" -- going against the established precedent of relying on Arab states to bring the Palestinian Arabs to the negotiating table, the Trump administration is bypassing the Palestinians and bringing the Arab states themselves to normalize relations with Israel. 

This is a new approach that Biden would be free to continue. 

(Unless, of course, the Arab states are wary of the man who, as vice-president, vigorously supported Obama's strengthening of Iran, creating the instability and fear in the region that gave the impetus to Trump's policy in the first place.)

The stakes for the Palestinian Arab leadership are high:
At minimum, they will need to give up the dream of the demise of Israel as a state in which the Jewish people enjoy sovereignty and self-determination. More practically, this means the Palestinians would have to compromise on core issues like borders, Jerusalem, and Palestinians claiming refugee status.
 And if Trump in fact should win in November, some version of his Deal of the Century is very possible.

On the other hand, if Biden were to win, his options could be limited.

First, Schanzer points out, there are the progressives supporting the Iran deal, who consider Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies deserving of US sanctions. Reestablishing the Iran deal would undercut the ability of a Biden administration to act as a broker with those states.

Then there are the progressive Democrats supporting BDS against Israel, and would likewise make a policy de-emphasizing Palestinian Arab demands more difficult. 

Interestingly, prior to Trump becoming president, the Obama administration also worked on engaging foreign countries and improving relations.

But they did not think in terms of alliances -- it focused on Iran, not only to slow down its nuclear program, but also for the influence Iran could have in the region.

If an Iran deal helps forestall development of a nuclear weapon, that has to be seen as a benefit. If it has produced a partner in helping to contain Sunni extremism, that will also be seen as a net good. If it forms the foundation for a new U.S. regional policy that is based on enlightened management of the balance of power between key regional actors to maintain stability and contain threats, that is to the net good...If [Obama] can make that happen through careful, strategic management of U.S. relations in the region and follow through on all the steps required to make this work, it’ll be quite an accomplishment.
Aside from betting on a global supporter of terrorism to get the job done, Obama was relying on the influence of a single, albeit influential state not shy about extending that influence, to hold things together. This was an extension of Obama's policy of engaging other countries one-on-one -- to "extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” even to governments “who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent.”

Like Myanmar, which Obama rewarded with restored diplomatic relations in 2012, following its political and economic changes and reforms, and cease-fire with rebels.

And Cuba, where Obama restored full diplomatic relations in 2014 and opened a US embassy for the first time in over 50 years, vowing to “cut loose the shackles of the past.”

The accomplishments are not insignificant, regardless of how one views Cuba and Iran. But it is a different approach from the policy of the Trump administration, which is focusing on alliances and regional peace as opposed to engaging individual countries and re-establishing relations.

And what about Biden?

As vice president, he has not been in a position to directly conduct foreign policy, though he has claimed to have influenced foreign leaders.

I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b*****. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
Holding back aid in order to strongarm foreign governments appears to be a favorite tactic of Joe Biden.

In a well-known incident in1982, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin appeared before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden went beyond voicing opposition to the Israeli settlements and suggested that he would propose cutting financial aid to Israel. Unlike the Ukrainian leader, Begin was not impressed:
Don't threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.
In this case, instead of bragging, Biden has "hotly denied" the incident, but it is confirmed by both the New York Times and Time Magazine.
        
In another incident, Biden killed 2 birds with one stone -- again bullying Ukraine, this time in order to undermine Israel by ensuring a unanimous vote for UN Resolution 2334, with the US being the lone abstention.

So much for supporting allies.

Schanzer suggests that a Biden administration could both continue the Trump policy of encouraging Arab states to recognize Israel while also leveraging those states to encourage the Palestinian Arab leadership to come back to the negotiating table.

But would Abbas see that as the last opportunity for peace on favorable terms, or as an opening to again scuttle talks and maintain the status quo?

In the meantime, let's see how many more Arab states will recognize Israel before the November elections.




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Thursday, August 27, 2020

By Daled Amos

In a 2004 article he wrote for the Jewish Press, Rick Richman describes an experiment to evaluate John Kerry's support for Israel, in response to a reader who commented that he was going to vote for Kerry because his record on Israel was "second to none."

Intrigued by the idea of how to quantify "second to none" support of Israel, Richman got a list of Kerry's Israel voting record on 60 bills and resolutions -- and applied the following methodology:
I disregarded the 17 measures that passed with 90 or more votes (out of a possible 100), on grounds that these were not exactly profile-in-courage moments.
...Then I discounted the 18 measures that garnered between 82 and 89 votes. You don`t get a "second to none" rating by simply hanging around with the 80-plus percent crowd.
I decided the best indicator of the depth of Kerry`s support would be the instances where the pro-Israel position got 60 votes or less -- by definition the most controversial situations, the ones where Kerry's vote mattered most.
That left 10 bills, of which Kerry voted pro-Israel in six instances.

The measures Kerry did not support were:
the pro-Israel position in the FY 2000 Foreign Aid Conference Report
o  a bill calling on the president not to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state
o  the pro-Israel "Peace Through Negotiations Act,"
o  a letter to the State Department, demanding they include Hamas in its annual report on terrorism.
That gave Kerry a 60% rating -- more 'nuanced' than Kerry's own boast that
I have a 100 percent record -- not a 99, a 100 percent record -- of sustaining the special relationship, the friendship that we have with Israel.
I was reminded of Richman's experiment while writing the first draft of this post, examining the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris record on Israel. I had written something like that on Biden last year, and thought I would update it and add details about Harris as well.

But the issue is larger than political statements of support for Israel.

These days, others have co-opted Jewish issues and grant themselves the authority to define Jewish identity (White supremacy), what qualifies as antisemitism (very little, unless the right-wing does it) and what Zionism is (evil).

And now, with the 2020 presidential election just a few months off, who is the better supporter of Israel -- Biden or Trump?

The answer is probably only academic anyway. Jews vote for Democrats. Period. Besides, while polls indicate that the vast majority of Jews claim to support Israel, Israel is not one of the top issues Jews consider when voting.

One of Biden's major selling points as a 'friend of Israel' is that his long term as senator has given him the opportunity to know various Israeli leaders and lots of stories. Those may be entertaining, but are not much of an indicator, especially when Israel is such a lightning rod for controversy and outright smears.

On the other hand, when discussing Biden it is easy to point to his gaffes and misstatements of fact -- just as easily as one can point to Trump's over-the-top statements and tweets.

There is plenty in the general behavior of both candidates to question and criticize -- their character flaws are not unknown. Having established that both Biden and Trump are human, what each of them says is not as important as what each has done -- not on the campaign trail, but while in office.

As vice president, Biden supported Obama's policies, not all of which were beneficial to Israel.

The Iran deal comes to mind. Biden not only went along with it and supported it, but has also expressed his willingness to resurrect the deal as president. Last year Biden said:
If Iran moves back into compliance with its nuclear obligations, I would re-enter the JCPOA as a starting point to work alongside our allies in Europe and other world powers to extend the deal’s nuclear constraints.
That raises a second issue -- Biden's role in the UN vote on Resolution 2334 at the end of Obama's term, declaring all Jewish settlements in the West Bank -- including the Old City of Jerusalem -- to be in violation of international law. The resolution passed by 14-0, with the US deliberately abstaining.

An article in Tablet Magazine indicates that as part of the Obama administration plan against Israel, Biden called the Ukrainian president in order to ensure that their UN representative voted for the resolution and did not merely abstain:
Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine’s vote from an expected abstention to a “yes.” According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called “the optics” of its own abstention.

“Did Biden put pressure on the Ukrainians? Categorically yes,” said a highly-placed figure within the Israeli government with strong connections to Ukrainian government sources, who confirmed to Tablet that the Americans had put direct pressure on both the Ukrainian delegation—and on Poroshenko personally in Kiev. “That Biden told them to do it is 1000% true,” the source affirmed.
Even if one could claim Biden was merely "following orders," and would not consider opposing Israel so aggressively as president, it is not hard to imagine Biden being guided into doing something similar by his advisors.

Another concern is the decidedly radical change in the Democratic Party against Israel.

Last week, during the Democratic National Convention’s virtual caucus meeting for the Muslim Delegates and Allies Assembly, Linda Sarsour spoke -- confirming that the Democratic Party was their party.

When complaints were made about Sarsour, a Biden spokesman made a statement:
“Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel and a vehement opponent of anti-Semitism his entire life, and he obviously condemns her views and opposes BDS, as does the Democratic platform … She has no role in the Biden campaign whatsoever.”
That was what was said publicly, but apparently, the Biden campaign apologized to Sarsour privately for that statement, as reported by Middle East Eye this past Sunday.

But that was not the end of the matter either:
On Monday, the Biden campaign disputed that the call was an apology for its reaction to Sarsour.

“We met to affirm [former] Vice President Biden’s unshakeable commitment to working with Arab, Palestinian and Muslim Americans, and to standing up against anti-Muslim prejudice, and to make clear that we regretted any hurt that was caused to these communities,” Biden campaign senior adviser Symone Sanders told JNS. “We continue to reject the views that Linda Sarsour has expressed.”
At this point, who even knows anymore where Biden stands on the issue.

But if he is going to condemn antisemites and reject their views, Biden may as well go all the way...

photo
Biden and Sharpton. Screengrab from Facebook

And that is where Kamala Harris comes in.

Last year, Harris defended Ilhan Omar against criticism of her attack on AIPAC and accusations of Jewish dual loyalty






Harris came to Omar's defense:
We all have a responsibility to speak out against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and all forms of hatred and bigotry.

But like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk. [emphasis added]
Harris also joined Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in defending Omar, saying
“I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism,
Daniel Greenfield questions how it is that Harris did not see Omar's comments as a threat to Jews, but saw the protests against those statements to be a threat against Omar.

For that matter, how is accusing people of dual loyalty to Israel a criticism of policy?

Greenfield points out that Harris's choice of chief of staff is also problematic:
Karine Jean-Pierre, was the national spokeswoman and senior adviser for MoveOn. The radical group has a long history of trafficking in anti-Semitism and attacking the Jewish state. It even opposed New York Sen. Chuck Schumer because, in its own words, “our country doesn’t need another Joe Lieberman.”
So it is not surprising that Jean-Pierre claimed:
under [Netanyahu's] leadership of Israel, according to the United Nations, Israel may have committed war crimes in its attacks on Gazan protesters.
This in addition to bashing AIPAC.
And this is Harris's chief of staff.

Putting aside that Harris's step-children call her "momalah" or that as a kid she used to collect money to plant trees in Israel, Harris appears to be part of the radicalizing trend in the Democratic party against Israel. Keep in mind that Kamala Harris has not boycotted AIPAC, has not supported BDS and co-sponsored legislation opposing UN Resolution 2334.

So why does she have a chief of staff who says Israel is guilty of war crimes?

How long can she straddle the widening chasm in the Democratic Party between those who support Israel and those who want to weaken it?

And what would 4 years of Biden, with the pressure to resurrect negotiations for a 2 state solution, mean for Israel against the backdrop of an increasingly 'progressive' Democratic Party?

As for Trump, last year, in a letter to Nancy Pelosi before the impeachment hearings, Trump listed what he considered his pro-Israel accomplishments:
o  The US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,
o  The American Embassy was opened in Jerusalem,
o  The US recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
o  Secretary of State Pompeo announced the new US position that "the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law."
o  Pompeo also gave Israel clear support for its operations against Iran’s presence in Syria and elsewhere
We can throw into the mix that this year Trump came out with his new peace plan, which broke away from the 2 state solution model -- and he played a key role in the new peace agreement between Israel and the UAE.

And of course, Trump pulled the US out of Obama's (and Biden's) Iran nuclear deal.

Accomplishment, no matter how many, are not in and of themselves proof that they are successful and beneficial -- and Jews are still not running from the Democratic camp to vote for Trump.

But compared with where Obama -- and Biden -- left Israel at the end of 2016, Israel is in a better position, and not because aid is being thrown at it to buy US arms to protect itself from enemies like Iran that the previous administration strengthened.

Some, like The Wall Street Journal, think that Trump has made a positive difference in the Middle East in general and for Israel in particular.

The Wall Street Journal's Editor-At-Large, Gerry Baker, writes
For those of you with deficient memories, let’s review this strategic record of the two decades before President Trump took office: the ascent of al Qaeda and 9/11; the catastrophe of Iraq and the messy, bloody stalemate of Afghanistan; the collapse of U.S. authority in the Middle East in the face of civil war in Syria and Libya; the rise of Islamic State; a resurgent Russia gorging itself on Eastern Europe; and the inexorable, unchallenged rise to superpower status of China.

Part of the problem the foreign policy establishment has with Mr. Trump is that it’s hard to stomach that a dilettante has been so effective. Whatever you think of the president, his inconsistencies, his curious taste for the world’s autocrats and his bombast, his efforts have proved more consequential than those of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that came before him. On the three biggest strategic challenges the U.S. confronts—the Middle East, China and the Western alliance—the president has radically reoriented U.S. policy.

...The Trump administration dispensed with it all: no enforced rapprochement for Israel with recalcitrant Palestinians, no American blood shed to build neoconservative sandcastles of democracy, no illusory engagement with the mullahs.
But Baker is not saying that Trump's policies are an unmitigated success -- or necessarily a success at all, (yet):
It’s too soon to assert with confidence that this Trumpian tripod of strategic innovation has irrevocably advanced America’s objectives. But at the very least it represents a sharp break from years of bipartisan failure.
It would be interesting to see what another 4 years of Trump could bring.

Who knows, maybe Trump might even avoid getting impeached a second time.
 

Monday, August 17, 2020

By Daled Amos

The Israel-UAE agreement has been described as groundbreaking.
And rightfully so.

But just for context, how long has this agreement been in the making?

One of the key reasons for this agreement, and for potential Israeli alliances with Arab Gulf states in general, is the need for unity in the face of the common enemy of Iran.

But this is not the first time that Israel and Arab countries found a common enemy in their back yard.

In his book "Personal Witness: Israel Through My Eyes," Abba Eban wrote:

Saudi Arabia, as the pivot of the Desert Storm operation [August 2, 1990 – February 28, 1991], began to see Israel as a fellow victim of Saddam Hussein's Scuds and as a potential collaborator in postwar economic enterprises. A year later, it even proposed a transaction whereby Israel would freeze new settlements and Saudi Arabia would cancel the Arab boycott regulations. If Shamir had accepted this proposal, as any other Israeli prime minister would have done, Israel's economy would have taken a forward leap. (p. 638) [Emphasis added]
That was about 30 years ago.
Back then, the common enemy that inspired cooperation was Iraq, not Iran.

Later, the spark that led to the new peace agreement may be a program that was put into action in 2008 in an effort to "rebrand" Israel. The concept was presented that year at the First Nefesh B'Nefesh JBlogging Conference. In an article in The Canadian Jewish News, Ido Aharoni, founder of the ministry’s Brand Israel concept, described how the goal was to focus on the fact that
...aspects of Israel are worthy of promotion, including its culture and arts; its accomplishments on environmental matters such as water desalination, solar energy and clean technology; its high-tech successes and achievements in higher education; and its involvement in international aid, he added.

Getting Canadians – both Jewish and non-Jewish – to see Israel in that light is part of the branding effort. Not only would that change Israel’s image, it could lead to more tourism and investment, educational exchanges and other benefits, Aharoni said.
The idea that rebranding Israel's image could improve its international relations was not mentioned.

Today, we can see that the focus on Israeli accomplishments, especially on water desalination, high-tech successes and involvement in international aid paid off.

The payoff has been more than just good PR. It has led to improved relations with other countries. For example, Netanyahu has developed key alliances with countries in Eastern Europe such as Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia -- known as the Visegrad Group. One benefit these countries get is that good relations with Israel provide a fig leaf protecting them against accusations of antisemitism.

In return, Netanyahu has gained important leverage against the EU:
o  In 2017, Hungary abstained when the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to reject the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

o  Hungary joined the Czech Republic and Romania in blocking a European Union statement criticizing the US for moving its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.

o  In November 2019, the EU failed to get all of its 28 member states behind a joint statement condemning the US decision to no longer consider Israeli settlements as illegal. Hungary blocked the move. As a result, instead of issuing a joint statement of the entire EU, they had to settle for a statement by then-EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

o  In January of this year, the EU again failed to get a consensus, when it tried to unanimously condemn Trump's peace plan.

o  Hungary and the Czech Republic are also among the countries that will file an amicus brief with the ICC in response to ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's statement last December that there was enough evidence to investigate alleged war crimes by Israel.
Obviously, improving relations and building alliances with Arab countries can bring political dividends, as well as economic -- and of course defense against Iran.

But at the beginning of Trump's term, Arab states in the Gulf were not as open to the idea of Israel-Arab alliances against Iran as they are now.

A February 2017 article in The Wall Street Journal noted that plans for Israel to join an Arab coalition against Iran were limited:
The U.S. would offer military and intelligence support to the alliance, beyond the kind of limited backing it has been providing to a Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, the officials said. But neither the U.S. nor Israel would be part of the mutual-defense pact.

“They’ve been asking diplomatic missions in Washington if we’d be willing to join this force that has an Israeli component,” said one Arab diplomat. “Israel’s role would likely be intelligence sharing, not training or boots on the ground. They’d provide intelligence and targets. That’s what the Israelis are good at.” [Emphasis added]
The article goes on to describe various reasons Arab members of the coalition gave for opposing the idea of including Israel -- reasons that apparently no longer stand in the way:
Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. are putting forth their own demands in exchange for cooperating with Israel, officials said. Those two countries want the U.S. to overturn legislation that could see their governments sued in American courts by families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, they said.

Arab diplomats have told administration officials they would pursue more overt cooperation with Israel if it ceases settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—something Israel refused to do under intense pressure from the Obama administration.

The diplomats also said their countries’ cooperation would be contingent upon the Trump administration refraining from moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, an effective recognition of Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its capital. In recent weeks, the administration has walked back previous statements supporting settlement construction and moving the embassy. [Emphasis added]
And this was years before the idea of "annexation" was broached.

Seen this way, the agreement between Israel and the UAE is something that Netanyahu has been working towards for years.

Commentator Ehud Yaari also sees this agreement as part of a long term plan, referring to this as The Netanyahu Doctrine:
The "Netanyahu Doctrine," as I understood it from many years ago, says simply - instead of letting Israel drown in negotiations that will not lead to an agreement with the Palestinians, we had better make a bypass, a broad flanking movement, that leaves the Palestinian Authority at the end of the line.

According to Netanyahu's view, and not from today, Israel needs to build its international relationship and then leverage it to create a bridge to Arab countries. This is in order to deprive the Palestinians of the right to veto the attitude of the Arabs and others towards Israel.
In 2009, The Telegraph fretted that Israel's isolation -- from the US in particular -- could drive Israel to do something desperate. The problem was that the Obama administration was concentrating on the Arab world -- "Mr. Obama is attempting to rebuild relations with the Arab world in the wake of the invasion of Iraq."

In the end, Obama's success is questionable at best.

But not to worry.

Israel has lots of friends, with the prospect of making even more in the Arab world.


cartoon
Cartoon by Moshik Gulst, The Israeli Cartoon Project, 2017

Friday, August 07, 2020

 

In preparing for last week's post, Intersectionality Makes For Strange Bedfellows, one of the sources I came across while rummaging through the Internet was a 1999 article, Placing Jewish Women into the Intersectionality of Race, Class and Gender, by Jessica Greenebaum.

Greenebaum writes about the refusal by feminists to include Jewish women into their discussion of identity, oppression and intersectionality -- the linking of all forms of social oppression and victimization. The exclusion of Jews implies they are somehow different from other groups that are marginalized, and Greenebaum sets about examining why and how Jewish women are excluded from feminism.

The insights she offers apply to intersectionality in general and the way it is being applied today -- and shows how Jews today are a challenge to the easy stereotyping of privilege and oppression that proponents of intersectionality push.

As Greenebaum sees it, the challenge to both feminism and intersectionality is the apparently unique position of Jews:

American Jews of European descent straddle the fence of difference; they are neither the standard nor are they "totally" different. On one hand, being Jewish is often an identifiable characteristic; yet at the same time, many Jews are capable of "passing" into the dominant white, Christian culture...being different yet similar to both the dominant society and other marginalized groups.
Greenebaum illustrates her point with her personal experience in a feminist organization on campus that should have been open to problems of an oppressed group, yet could not bring itself to accept the request of its Jewish members to add antisemitic and anti-Jewish issues to the agenda.

Today, we see the same deliberate exclusion of Jews, with self-proclaimed feminist Linda Sarsour (who tweeted the names of women about whom she said she wished she "could take their vaginas away") and who has now decided
I want to make the distinction that while antisemitism is something that impacts Jewish Americans, it's different than anti-Black racism or Islamophobia because it's not systemic...


This coming from the person who organizes protests and then refuses entry to the 90% of American Jews who support the State of Israel.



Jews Are Not Oppressed Enough


Greenebaum notes that "the excuses for the exclusions are endless."

For one thing, there is the claim that because Jews are seen as successful and not suffering from the same material inequality as most oppressed groups -- Jewish oppression is "insignificant"
Since economically, Jews have enjoyed 'relative' success, more than other marginalized groups but less than the Christian elite, Jews have 'justifiably' been ignored from the discussions. Thus, the definition of oppression does not include Jews who simultaneously hold positions of privilege or power.
Jews are not alone in this. I've mentioned in a previous post an article Are Asian Americans White? Or People of Color?, which admits that "on average Asian Americans are among the most successful in the United States" yet insists on their 'oppression creds' due to the experience of "discrimination, hate crimes and racial violence, xenophobia, concerning levels of racial/ethnic bullying in schools, and other indicators of racial marginalization in the U.S."

White Is Not A Color...Nor A Race


Speaking of People of Color, Greenebaum quotes the experience of a Sephardic Jew, who describes how she was made to feel unwelcome among other people of color because she was Jewish:
Once I said I was Jewish, not Latina, I felt people's interest in me diminish. It was painful to realize that though my appearance remained the same, my value as a person within a self-consciously multi-cultural context lessened because I was a Jew.
And when it comes to being white, that itself is a fabricated concept -- it is neither a natural distinction nor is it scientific:
Since, the category whiteness is historically and culturally located, the "...cultural construction raceis unstable and has different meanings and different purposes in different times and places..." (Kaminsky 1994:7-8). People did not always consider Jews white - as they do today in America. [emphasis added]
And of course in America itself, Jews at the turn of the 20th century were defined as mongoloid, slavic or even Asiatic before eventually being "accepted" as white.

Purveyors of Intersectionality do not acknowledge the fluidity of "whiteness," a changing definition that is illustrated by the history of Jews in America -- and undercuts the self-righteousness of Intersectionality. Fixating on whiteness while twisting its definition to serve an agenda is itself a bias of oppression.

The fact that Jews can be categorized as white, despite their being oppressed -- both historically and currently -- should bring the concept of whiteness into question.

But it doesn't.

Labeling Jews in America as white does more than malign them as members of a privileged class, according to Greenebaum:
[W]hen we consider Jews 'just' white, we do not see them as having an ethnicity and culture. In fact, many Jews resist the cultural construction of themselves as 'only' white and Judaism as 'only' a religion. Jews interpret Judaism and 'being Jewish' very differently from non-Jews and each other. Many Jews consider Judaism to be an ethnicity and culture as well as a religion. Some Jews incorporate the ethics and morals of Judaism into their politics and lifestyles. Other Jews identify as Jews without practicing Judaism. Restricting the definition of'Jew' erases the multiple identities tied up in Jewish lives.
Labeling Jews as white denies them that choice of identity, which is ironic when those who proclaim the importance of identity are ones so ready to deny Jews their identity, just as those people deny Jews the right to define what is and is not antisemitism.

Saying Jews Are White Negates The Jewish Identity


Being a Jew is more than just being white, and the Jewish identity is formed by a multiplicity of components:
What is ethnicity and why are Jews an ethnic group? According to Nagel (1994:152-153), "ethnicity is constructed out of the material of language, religion, culture, appearance, ancestry, or regionality." Ethnicity is a dynamic form of identity since it is "continuously [being] negotiated, revised, and revitalized" (Nagel 1994:153). While people tend to embrace their ethnicity, outside forces often impose an unwanted identity upon them.
Even in daily life, forms that require a person to identify themselves, leave Jews with little choice -- "there are categories for Whites, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans, but not for Jews...Jews must consider themselves either white or other."

An L. A. Times article last year notes that about 3 million people of Southwest Asian, Middle Eastern or North African descent currently live in the United States, and 80% of them feel forced when filling out the census to call themselves white.

A possible solution for them is to add a category for Middle Eastern or North African descent -- will an option be made available for Jews?
 

How Do Jews "Pass" As White?


An interesting point Greenebaum raises is the claim that Jews are not really oppressed because their white skin allows them to "pass" as white, granting them 'white privilege'.
Non-Jews profess the easy access Jews have to pass (as white, as Christian) and assimilate into American culture; which, interestingly, implies that Jews are not 'originally' a part of this culture. Often people use this to silence the claim of anti-Semitism in American culture. It is interesting that we use the term 'passing' in reference to gays, lesbians, and bisexuals who are falsely assumed heterosexual (intentionally or not). [emphasis added]
The term "passing" in this context, when applied generally, implies that one is mistaken for part of a group, but not really part of it. One's status as oppressed is not diminished because they can "pass" as a member of a more privileged group.

Unless we are talking about Jews.

Then, the implication is that Jews actually are part of that group, are privileged by it and therefore forfeit their status as oppressed. On the one hand, "even though gays, lesbians, and bisexuals can 'pass' as straight, homophobia and heterosexism are still unacceptable." But when it comes to Jews, we are expected to stop complaining.

Jews may be able to blend in, but historically there is a price Jews pay for assimilation as they are swallowed up into the dominant culture.

And assimilation itself is hardly a long-term solution either:
The relative success of Jews does not give non-Jews permission to ignore the existence of anti-Semitism. While economic success has protected Jews from the economic effects of racism in the United States, it has not shielded us from anti-Semitism. The system constructs boundaries of success; when threatened, the reigns tighten and a backlash occurs. Nazi Germany is the prime example in which the success of Jewish men led to the scapegoating of Jews for Germany's economic problems. Historically, Jewish men have always been the scapegoat for the failing economy and a source of fear for the civilized world. [emphasis added]

Antisemitism vs Racism


Contrary to what today's intersectionality leaders claim, this antisemitism is not quite so easy to evade.

Speaking from the standpoint of 1991, Greenebaum writes:
Jews have faced (and sometimes continue to face) discrimination in housing, employment, school, social organizations, and key political positions as a result of anti-Semitic beliefs. Vandalization and desecration of synagogues, graveyards, and other Jewish sites continue to occur sporadically.
Of course today, to the desecration of synagogues, we can add the massacres of Jews in their synagogues. This discrimination is rampant on campus and getting even worse as it spreads now into society in general, especially as Israel has become a proxy for Jews as a target.

In another insight, Greenebaum anticipates the argument today that seeks to belittle antisemitism by comparing it to anti-Black racism -- and finds antisemitism wanting.
But, while anti-Semitism and racism fall under the umbrella category of oppression, they are not identical. First of all, racism only focuses on people of color, and as stated earlier, Jews do not easily fit this category. Secondly, condensing these two forms of oppression into one category can be insulting to both experiences. African Americans did not lose one-third of their population to a Holocaust; and similarly, American Jews were never slaves in the land in which they currently reside and which continues to block their success.

...While racism and anti-Semitism diverge; they are not "equal" oppressions...to ignore anti-Semitism on the basis that Jews are "less oppressed" also ignores history. While Jews do not experience the same daily exploitation, we must remember that Jews consistently experienced persecution throughout history (the crusades, Spanish Inquisition, 19th century Pogroms, and the Holocaust are only a few examples).

The Bottom Line

Perhaps it should not be surprising that just as antisemitism is unique and defies a simple definition as it has metastasized over the centuries -- so too the Jewish identity is not easy to corner either.

Not that those pushing an intersectionality agenda haven't tried.

But the attempt to sweep antisemitism under the carpet demonstrates a fundamental failure to honestly address oppression.

And the exclusion of Jews on the basis of the color of their skin highlights the hypocrisy of those who proclaim their dedication to human rights.

This exclusion of Jews and antisemitism should serve as a warning of ulterior motives and a self-serving agenda by those who claim to act in the interests of "intersectionality."

Friday, July 31, 2020

By Daled Amos

 

Intersectionality has been a big thing for years now, basing itself on the solidarity of various minorities against their oppression that crosses the lines of race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Uniting all minorities, that is, except for Jews who refuse to renounce Israel.



But historically, it's not as if we needed to wait for the concept of intersectionality to come along before people would be willing able to stand up for each other. The idea of minorities standing together in defense of human rights is neither a new nor a novel idea.

For example, the history of Jews standing together with blacks is well known, and pictures of Abraham Joshua Heschel marching together with Martin Luther King in Selma are practically iconic.

photo
Abraham Joshua Heschel with Martin Luther King. YouTube screengrab

Jewish participation in the Civil Rights Movement led King to say in 1965 that Jews
demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways, and often at great personal sacrifice.
Now that the purveyors of intersectionality have made clear that they feel Jews do not qualify as oppressed minorities, what is it exactly that others gain with today's intersectionality?

These days, pro-Palestinian groups have come out in support of the human rights of blacks following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police.

But just what have these groups done for Palestinian Arabs?

Yes, we all know that for years these self-proclaimed pro-Palestinian Arab groups have attacked, harassed and muted speakers who came on campus to speak about and for Israel.

We know who these groups speak against -- but just who are they supposed to be speaking for?

They are not speaking for Israeli Arabs. A variety of different polls show that the number of Israeli Arabs who identify as "Palestinian" is down to as low as 7%. Most Israeli Arabs prefer to see themselves as Israelis (23%), Arabs (15%) or Israeli-Arab (51%). With 76% feeling a degree of Israeli identity, that shows a level of integration, contrary to the out-of-touch groups who accuse Israel of Apartheid. This is still a lot of work to do, but those groups are too busy burnishing their anti-Israel creds to offer anything constructive.

Meanwhile, Arabs in Judea/Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza have sovereign territory under Arab rule for the first time ever in their history -- under incompetent, corrupt governments with poor human rights records.

Which groups in the US are speaking out on their behalf?

At the same time, in Lebanon, Palestinian Arabs are forced to live in camps as second class citizens, suffering under Apartheid conditions where they are barred from 73 categories of jobs, suffer from 65% unemployment and 80% live in poverty.

Meanwhile, in Syria, as of 2017 there have been 3,443 Palestinian Arabs killed, with 79,000 fleeing to Europe as of 2016 and over 60,000 taking refuge in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and Gaza.

Where are the rallies these pro-Palestinian groups have held on their behalf?

If the pro-Palestinian groups won't raise a finger for their own people, what kind of allies are these for the Black community?

Meanwhile, in China, it is estimated that 1 million Uighur Muslims are being held in detention centers. Where is the outcry from Arabs everywhere for their fellow Arabs there?

Contrast that with the Jewish community.

Jews in the old Soviet Union were refused permission to leave while at the same time prevented from practicing their Judaism and expressing their Jewish identity. Synagogues were systematically closed down and antisemitic books were published.

But their fellow Jews around the world fought for them.

And succeeded.

Among those who joined Jewish groups to protest was Martin Luther King, who back in 1966 addressed a national telephone hook-up of Soviet Jewry rallies:
While Jews in Russia may not be physically murdered as they were in Nazi Germany, they are facing every day a kind of spiritual and cultural genocide. Individual Jews may in the main be physically and economically secure in Russia, but the absence of opportunity to associate as Jews in the enjoyment of Jewish culture and religious experience becomes a severe limitation upon an individual.

These deprivations are a part of a person’s emotional and intellectual life. They determine whether he is fulfilled as a human being. Negroes can well understand and sympathize with this problem. When you are written out of history as a people, when you are given no choice but to accept the majority culture, you are denied an aspect of your own identity. Ultimately you suffer a corrosion of your self-understanding and your self-respect.
Among those claiming to support the Black community is American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) -- which the ADL already noted in 2010 "promotes extreme anti-Israel views and has at times provided a platform for anti-Semitism" -- taking up the cause of Black rights following the death of George Floyd by the police.
 
 
 

One difference from the historical Jewish support for Black rights is that among Jewish groups you don't have leaders like the AMP's National Development Coordinator, Mohammed Habbeh, who while president of Students for Justice in Palestine at Rutgers tweeted about Blacks being abeed, a derogatory Arabic word for “slaves,” which Canary Mission points out in their archived copies of Habehh's tweets:


That account was closed.

In his current Twitter account, Habehh now keeps tweets private.
So much for those intersectional allies with anti-Israel, antisemitic agendas.
Come to think of it, if anything, an honest approach to intersectionality would allow for recognizing the basis for solidarity between Blacks and Jews.

In his blog on Times of Israel, Micha Danzig suggests The real ‘intersectionality’ – European and Arab oppression and persecution of Jews and Africans:
If one wants to look at credible examples of “intersecting” and “related systems of oppression, domination or discrimination” one would be hard pressed to find a better example than the millennia plus oppression and colonization by both Europeans and Arabs of Africans on the one hand and Jews on the other.
Danzig reviews the Hellenization by the Greeks, followed first by the colonization by the Romans, and then the massacre of Jews and the expulsion of millions of Jews by them -- followed then by 2,000 years of oppression and massacres of Jews in Europe.

As for the Arabs, in 641CE, the Caliph Omar had both Jews and Christians removed from all but the southern and eastern fringes of Arabia. Those Jews who remained in their homeland after the Roman expulsion were treated after the invasion and conquest of Islam as second-class dhimmis, like any other non-Muslim. The yellow star the Nazis instituted for Jews to wear dates back to the Caliph Omar.
 
As for Black history, the Arab slave trade in Africa continues to this very day.
And one of the loudest exponents of Black pride and empowerment covers it up.

Charles Jacobs, president of the American Anti-Slavery Group, has written about how Farrakhan betrays today’s black slaves:
Cornered at a news conference on March 14, 1996, Farrakhan was asked about the slaves of Sudan. The New York Times reported that an emotional Farrakhan shot back: “If slavery exists, why don’t you go, as a member of the press?! And you look inside of the Sudan, and if you find it, then you come back and tell the American people what you found!”

The Baltimore Sun took up the challenge and dispatched reporters to Sudan where they bought the freedom of two young African slave boys from an Arab slave retriever. Their report ran as a front-page series in the Sun and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Leaders of the South Sudanese peoples’ struggle for liberation then asked Farrakhan for his help. He promised he would help them but betrayed them instead.

Today, there could still be as many as 35,000 Africans in bondage to Arab masters in Sudan. Mauritanian blacks continue to serve as slaves to Arab and Berber masters in Mauritania. The black Muslim soldiers of Boko Haram in Nigeria enslave black Christians. CNN has video of Libyans holding black slave auctions, and in Algeria, Africans seeking a passageway to Europe are being caught and enslaved.

Farrakhan continues to stay quiet about black slavery in Muslim North Africa while blaming the troubles of black people worldwide on the Jews.
Two years later, the March 1998 edition of the Sudan Democratic Gazette had an article entitled Louis Farrakhan: Tormenting the Heart of Africa, on Farrakhan's denial of Arab slavery:
Each time Farrakhan goes on his annual world tour, which always includes Khartoum [capital of Sudan], he makes it a point to slur the struggling people of South Sudan. After the 1995/96 tour, he came back and mounted a vigorous campaign to deny reports that slavery was still endemic in the Sudan. Yet, that was the time when, due to our relative military weakness, government militia were raiding villages and taking women and children to slavery as if it were 1695. Human rights advocates and institutions have vigorously investigated and proven slavery in the Sudan. There are volumes of corroborative literature on current slavery in the Sudan recorded by journalists, human rights groups, and the United Nations. Khartoum says all this is “Zionist conspiracy.” They would say that, wouldn’t they? But why Farrakhan parrots them beats me silly.
The oppression of minorities is real.

And Jews are not the only dependable allies in the fight for human rights.

But the weaponization of intersectionality is as poisonous as the long history of the exploitation of antisemitic rhetoric and hate as a tool to mobilize followers.

The exclusion of Jewish groups by those who claim to stand for the rights of all oppressed minorities is the failure of intersectionality.

Thursday, July 23, 2020

 

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a reporter asked Golda Meir about African leaders that were cutting off diplomatic ties with Israel under Arab pressure. The reporter claimed this proved that Israel's African policy and the aid given was a waste of time. Golda Meir disagreed:

Because what I did for Africa was not just a policy of enlightened self-interest. I did it for the benefit of the African peoples, and deep in their hearts they know this to be true. It was an expression of my deepest historic instincts as a Jew, and a demonstration of my most profound and cherished values as a Labor Zionist. [The Prime Ministers, by Yehuda Avner, p. 236]
Golda Meir was not the first Zionist to speak about helping Africa.

Herzl's novel, Altneuland, describes his vision of what Jewish Palestine would look like. At one point, one of the characters declares:
There is still one problem of racial misfortune unsolved. The depths of that problem, in all their horror, only a Jew can fathom. I mean the negro problem. Don't laugh, Mr. Kingscourt. Think of the hair-raising horrors of the slave trade. Human beings, because their skins are black, are stolen, carried off, and sold. Their descendants grow up in alien surroundings despised and hated because their skin is differently pigmented. I am not ashamed to say, though I be thought ridiculous, now that I have lived to see the restoration of the Jews, I should like to pave the way for the restoration of the Negroes. [Translated from the German by Dr. D. S. Blondheim, Federation of American Zionists, 1916, available online]
Herzl's desire for Blacks to be restored to their homeland was mutual.

In fact, Black support for the Jewish State predates Herzl.

In their book, Israel in the Black American Perspective, Robert G. Weisbord and Richard Kazarian start with a chapter on early Black support for the Zionist idea.

As early as the post-Civil War era, when Blacks were still too focused on their survival and that of their families to concern themselves with foreign affairs, there were still a few Black intellectuals and leaders who kept abreast of events overseas.

Some saw parallels between their own situation and that of the Jews -- and others saw Zionism and the return to the Jewish homeland as the paradigm for the transplanted Africans in the US.

Here is a summary of what the book describes about some of those leaders --

Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912)

Blyden was born in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, which had a significant Jewish population, and later immigrated to West Africa in 1851. He was an editor, a prolific writer of books and pamphlets, a linguist, a professor of classics, secretary of state of the newly established republic of Liberia, Liberian ambassador to Great Britain and president of Liberia College.

photo
Edward Wilmot Blyden. Public Domain

As he describes in his book, The Jewish Question, while traveling in the Middle East in 1866, Blyden wanted to travel to "the original home of the Jews--to see Jerusalem and Mt. Zion, the joy of the whole earth." While in Jerusalem he went to the Western Wall.

Keep in mind that Theodor Herzl wasn't even born until 1860. Instead, this was the time of 'proto-Zionists' like Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, who wrote Derishat Ziyon (Seeking Zion), and Moses Hess, who wrote Rome and Jerusalem -- both published in 1862.

Weisbrod and Kazarian write:
In point of fact, Blyden in the 1860's and 1870's was much more of a Zionist than most Jews. He advocated Jewish settlement in Palestine, a phenomenon which, in his judgment would not have an adverse effect on the Arabs. Blyden reproved the sons of Abraham for remaining in the Diaspora and for not migrating to their ancient homeland, which the Ottoman Turks were misgoverning.
Towards the end of the 19th century, with the resurgence of antisemitism in Russia, France and Germany, that political Zionism came into its own with Herzl and his publication of The Jewish State in 1896. The First Zionist Congress followed in 1897.

Blyden's booklet, The Jewish Question, was published the following year:
Blyden was familiar with Herzl's Jewish State and predicted that it propounded ideas which "have given such an impetus to the real work of the Jews as will tell with enormous effect upon their future history." Blyden also commented on the powerful influence of the "tidal wave from Vienna--that inspiration almost Mosaic in its originality and in its tendency, which drew crowds of Israelites to Basle in August 1897...and again in 1898."
However, Blyden also thought that if the timing was not right, the Jewish State could be established elsewhere as well. He felt that because of the shared suffering of Jews and African Americans, they were specially qualified to be spiritual leaders in the world.

So he invited Jews to come to Africa --
Africa appeals to the Jew... to come with his scientific and other culture, gathered by his exile in many lands, and with his special spiritual endowments.
As it turned out, when the British offered Herzl land in Africa in 1903 for a state, that invitation was nearly accepted.


Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

Booker T. Washington was such a celebrity during the latter part of his life that he was invited to have dinner with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House and to have tea with Queen Victoria.

He was born into slavery, but despite the hardships, he taught himself the alphabet, got an education and went on to found the Tuskegee Institute, which he headed for 35 years.

photo
Booker T. Washington. public domain

From his childhood, Washington had an interest in Jews, based on his familiarity of Bible stories -- and drew parallels between the histories of Blacks and Jews. In a speech he delivered in 1905, Washington said:
In Russia there are one-half as many Jews as there are Negroes in this country and yet I feel sure that within a month more Jews have been persecuted and killed than the whole number of our people who have been lynched during the past forty years.
While Washington believed in thrift and hard work as key to Black equality, he also thought that progress could be achieved through racial solidarity -- just as it had helped Jews:
There is, perhaps, no race that has suffered so much, not so much in America as in some of the countries in Europe. But these people have clung together. They have had a certain amount of unity, pride and love of race.
Washington predicted success for Jews in the US, "a country where they were once despised and looked upon with scorn and derision" -- success that was achieved largely through dedication to education and enabled them to gain positions of power and preeminence.
 
He did not share the back-to-Africanism of Blyden, and did not see it as a solution to Black problems in the South. Similarly, while he was a friend of the Jews, Washington didn't see a Jewish State as much of a solution for Jews either. When asked if there was anything among Blacks that compared to the Zionist movement, Washington responded:
I think it is with the African pretty much as it is with the Jews, there is a good deal of talk about it, but nothing is done, there is certainly no sign of an exodus to Liberia.
Based on the lesser interest in Zionism in the US at the time, it is no wonder Washington was skeptical.
 

W.E.B Du Bois 1868-1963

Du Bois championed the cause of racial justice -- and of Zionism as well. He was born in Massachusetts and was educated at Fisk University in Nashville, at the University of Berlin and received a Ph.D from Harvard. He wrote historical treatises, sociological studies and essays on the important issues of the day. Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP.
 
He saw potential in the Balfour Declaration for a similar solution for Blacks. With the defeat of Germany in WWI,  his dream was an independent free central African state carved out of German East Africa and the Belgian Congo.
 
It didn't happen.
 
 
photo
W.E.B Du Bois Public Domain
 
He believed that such an African state would have a mutually beneficial relationship with Blacks around the world, similar to the Zionist view of a Jewish state.  In 1919, Du Bois wrote an article in the NAACP magazine Crisis that
The African movement means to us what the Zionist movement must mean to the Jews, the centralization of race effort and the recognition of a racial fount. To help bear the burden of Africa does not mean any lessening of effort in our problems at home. Rather it means increased interest. For an ebullition of action and feeling that results in an amelioration of the lot of Africa tends to ameliorate the conditions of colored peoples throughout the world. And no man liveth unto himself.
Du Bois started a monthly magazine for Afro-African children around 1919 called The Brownie's Book. In it, he wrote about Zionism.
In the first issue, he told his readers about the new Jewish state planned "'round about Jerusalem"
Eight months later, he told them that a "great Zionist congress of the Jews is meeting in London"
He also noted proposals to "tax the Jews all over the world for the support of the new Jewish government in Palestine"
In January 1921, he wrote about the finished blueprints for a Hebrew university on the biblical Mount of Olives in Jerusalem
o In 1929, he wrote about the "murder of Jews by Arabs in Palestine."
In 1948, Du Bois published "A Case for the Jews." In it, he described Zionism as a question of
young and forward thinking Jews, bringing a new civilization into an old land and building up that land out of the ignorance, disease and poverty into which it had fallen, and by democratic methods to build a new and peculiarly fateful modern state.
In June 26, 1948 the NAACP adopted a resolution that
The valiant struggle of the people of Israel for independence serves as an inspiration to all persecuted people throughout the world. We havil the establishment of the new State of Israel and welcome it into the family of nations.'

Marcus Garvey 1887-1940

Born in Jamaica, Garvey was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). He wrote that Africa needed to be transformed into a
Negro Empire where every Black man, whether he was born in Africa or in the Western world, will have the opportunity to develop on his own lines under the protection of the most favorable democratic institutions.
His wife described his vision in a way similar to the Zionist goal of a Jewish state:
Garvey saw Africa as a nation to which the African peoples of the world could look for help and support, moral and physical when ill-treated or abused for being black.
 
photo
Marcus Garvey. Public Domain
 
 
In 1920, Garvey told a UNIA meeting that after WWI,
A new spirit, a new courage, has come to us simultaneously as it came to other peoples of the world. It came to us at the same time it came to the Jew. When the Jew said 'We shall have Palestine!' the same sentiment came to us when we said' We shall have Africa!'
At the same time, the Jewish press was aware of what Garvey was doing and also saw the parallels between his pan-Africanism and Zionism. In the book, African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century, edited by V. P. Franklin, Hasia Diner notes in "Drawn Together By Self-Interest" that the Yiddish Press used the idioms of Jewish history to describe Marcus Garvey:
 
 
 
But Garvey was a complex -- and even contradictory -- figure when it came to Jews. There were statements he made that were antisemitic and when British Prime Minister Neville suggested in 1939 settling Jewish refugees in British Guiana, Garvey lashed out, claiming that British Guiana was a "Negro country" and criticized Zionism.
 

Walter White 1893-1955

In 1947, the UN voted on the partition of then-Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. It was an opportunity to finally create a Jewish state -- but a two-thirds majority was necessary to make it happen.
 
Enter Walter White.
 
 
photo
Walter White. Public Domain
 
Zionists approached White, urging him to persuade two Black nations, Haiti and Liberia, to reverse their announced opposition to partition and to vote for it instead.
 
He was opposed to the idea of 'segregating' Jews from Arabs and resented the pressure Zionists put on him. Nevertheless, according to his autobiography, he helped "because Palestine seemed the only haven anywhere in the world for nearly one million Jews of Europe."
 
When the votes were cast, Liberia, Haiti and the Philippines all voted for partition -- and those votes were critical in achieving the 33 to 13 vote for partition.
 
 
Black leaders like these make for a sharp contrast to the likes of Sharpton and Farrakhan.
 
 

Monday, July 20, 2020

 

If Blacks are a minority and Jews are a minority, why is there such tension between them?

One element that caused this friction is the way social interaction between Jews and Blacks was structured in the 1960's.

According to the book "Israel in the Black American Perspective" (1985):

In the Black community Jews were frequently associated with wealth and "parasitism." Under the least propitious circumstances, Blacks usually met Jews as storekeepers and landlords--the most visible representatives of an oppressive economic system. Such meetings were not likely to promote good will and mutual respect. [p4]
But if Jewish storekeepers and landlords are such a significant reason for how Blacks viewed Jews, why would that hatred seem to be so focused on Jews?

In a footnote to that paragraph, the book's authors -- Robert G. Weisbord and Richard Kazarian, Jr. -- point out that Jews were not the only storekeepers and landlords that Blacks had contact with:
In some cities, New Orleans and Newark to mention just two, Italian-black relations were acrimonious for similar reasons. Of late, "exploitative" Korean merchants in Harlem have aroused the ire of Afro-Americans, some of whom have responded with "buy Black" campaigns and organized boycotts of the Korean businesses.

And in Detroit, Arab grocers, mostly Iraqui [sic] Christians, have experienced picketing by Blacks who denounced profiteering outsiders. Burning and looting occurred in 1983 following the killing of a Black youth by an Arab storekeeper.

Antagonism to the Arabs in Detroit was rooted in the frustrations Blacks feel when confronted by the more rapid economic progress made by first and second generation immigrants. Black hostility to the Iraquis [sic] in the Motor City is strikingly similar to that directed at the Jews in Gotham and elsewhere. [p6. Text divided into paragraphs for easier reading. Emphasis added]
Over the decades, Race Riots were not directed only at Jews:
Similar to the 1943 Detroit Race Riots that devastated the Jewish population, and the 1967 Race Riots that left hundreds of Chaldean [Iraqi Arab Christian] businesses destroyed, Koreans too dealt with a destructive riot in 1992 Los Angeles.
The context for the 1992 riots is the reaction to the verdict that cleared the police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King, a year after a Korean store owner shot and killed a 15-year-old Black girl because he thought she was stealing a bottle of orange juice --
The nearly weeklong, widespread rioting killed more than 50 people, injured more than 1,000 people and caused approximately $1 billion in damage, about half of which was sustained by Korean-owned businesses. Long-simmering cultural clashes between immigrant Korean business owners and predominately African-American customers spilled over with the acquittals. [emphasis added]
In Chicago, there was friction between Blacks and Arab immigrants too:
Common complaints about stores predominantly owned by Muslims from Palestine, Jordan, and Yemen, are that they only provide low-quality food and don’t take any ownership over their role in the community. “The reality is that Englewood is changing, and if you don’t improve your model, in time you will go out of business,” says Gunn.
Yet despite tensions between Blacks and other groups -- tensions that let to riots -- have you ever heard Farrakhan attack minorities other than Jews?

Actually, he did.

In 1995, The Chicago Tribune reported about
comments Farrakhan made Friday during a television interview in which he was quoted as saying Jews, Arabs, Koreans and Vietnamese were "bloodsuckers" who set up businesses in the black community but never gave back to those neighborhoods.
Arabs?
Not just any Arabs.

The Buffalo News had the full quote:
In an interview with Reuters Television aped Oct. 4 and made public Friday, Mr. Farrakhan touched on several sensitive subjects that previously outraged Jewish leaders and prompted accusations of anti-Semitism against him.

"When we use the term 'bloodsucker,' it doesn't just apply to some members of the Jewish community. That could apply to any human being who does nothing for another but lays on that human being to suck the value of its life without returning anything," Mr. Farrakhan said in the interview.

"Many of the Jews who owned the homes, the apartments in the black community, we considered them bloodsuckers because they took from our community and built their community but didn't offer anything back to our community.

"And when the Jews left, the Palestinian Arabs came, Koreans came, Vietnamese and other ethnic and racial groups came. And so this is a type and we call them bloodsuckers."[emphasis added]
Later, Farrakhan complained about the media for misreporting what he said: "It is unfortunate that the media is taking words that were spoken out of context to create division."

He never did make clear what the proper context for "bloodsuckers" was.

But the next day, Farrakhan did a turnaround, equating the suffering of Black Americans with other minority groups in the US:
In an address at Operation PUSH headquarters, 930 E. 50th St., Farrakhan said African-American men are dehumanized in the United States in the same way Japanese, Germans, Italians and, more recently, Koreans, Vietnamese and people of Middle Eastern descent have been treated in the U.S. during wars involving Americans.
..."We didn't feel their pain because they were considered the enemy," Farrakhan said to the gathering of about 100 people. "Thanks to the media manipulation, we are seen now as the enemy."
To understand Farrakhan's turnaround, you need to keep in mind:
-- His original comment was on a Friday.
-- His "correction" was the next day, on Saturday.
-- Two days later, Monday -- was his Million Man March.

Farrakhan's statement standing up for other minorities was a cynical move to avoid bad press for his upcoming Million Man March in Washington.

So why did Farrakhan have it in for Palestinian Arabs?

According to The Encyclopedia of Chicago, Palestinian Arabs started arriving at the end of the 19th century, and many settled in Chicago in particular --
By the early 1970s, they owned nearly 20 percent of all small grocery and liquor stores in Chicago, most located in African American communities, although Chicago's 30,000 Palestinians represented less than 1 percent of the city's population. By the 1990s, Palestinians had maintained this niche, but they also diversified into used-car dealerships, gas stations, auto repair shops, ethnic stores, and fast-food restaurants, remaining, however, primarily a community of small business entrepreneurs serving mostly “minority” communities. According to the 1990 census, more than 45 percent of employed Palestinians in the Chicago area worked in retail trade. The second largest concentration—some 14 percent—were professionals. [emphasis added]
As with Jews, Arab Christians, Italians and Asian-Americans, there were Palestinian Arabs, too, who were store owners in Black communities.

This is not to minimize the problem of race relations or deny the validity of alleged discrimination. But the knee-jerk reaction of Farrakhan to accuse such a varied group of immigrants of being 'bloodsuckers' exploiting the Black community reveals more about Farrakhan than it does about the various ethnic groups he attacked.

Maybe that is why Farrakhan ended up focusing his hate on one group alone -- Jews.

Monday, July 06, 2020

By Daled Amos

While writing a recent post on Jews: From Asiatic, Mongoloid, Slavonic, Low-Level Caucasians To Privileged White Supremacists, I came across this on Twitter:

As it turns out, it's a hoax.

But that does not mean that the 'whiteness' of Asian Americans is not an issue.

Yes Magazine, features an article asking the same question Are Asian Americans White? Or People of Color? The answer, of course, is no, Asian Americans are not 'white'. But apparently, you might have thought they are.

Why?

Because "on average Asian Americans are among the most successful in the United States," though there are major differences, depending on the particular segment of the Asian-American population. The underlying assumption being that lack of success for a "person of color" might be due to racism -- and that success itself is a sign of integration and with it, "becoming white."

That would certainly seem to indicate that Jews are white, based on their financial success and apparent integration into society. (And let's not start with the percentage of Nobel Prizes that Jews are awarded).

But more importantly, the article bases Asian American status as People of Color squarely on how they are treated. Regardless of the prosperity of the more successful Asian Americans, the problem of racial discrimination remains:
Asian Americans continue to experience discrimination, hate crimes and racial violence, xenophobia, concerning levels of racial/ethnic bullying in schools, and other indicators of racial marginalization in the U.S.
But if hate crimes and violence are the proof that Asian Americans are not integrated and therefore not 'white', then surely Jews pass that same test with flying colors.

If Muslims are not considered integrated enough to be 'white,' why should Jews -- who regularly suffer more hate crimes each year according to the FBI -- be considered white?

Yet Jews are considered 'white' -- and white supremacists, at that.
Something doesn't add up.

Michael Lerner approached this issue from another angle when he wrote in The Village Voice in 1993:
In the context of American politics, to be “white” means to be a beneficiary of the past 500 years of European exploration and exploitation of the rest of the world — and hence to “owe” something to those who have been exploited. So when Jews are treated as white in the United States, the assessment is not a crude physical one but a judgment of Jewish culture and civilization, history and destiny.
When Rome sent the majority of the indigenous Jews out of their native land, many found their way to Europe. Jews did not share in that exploitation, they were the victims of it -- not to mention those Jews who remained and witnessed the Islamic invasion that came later.

The Spanish, who were explorers and colonizers. Does that mean they are...'white'?
What about the Italians, who did their share of exploration and exploitation?

For that matter, what about Muslims, who invaded:  Syria, Egypt, North Africa and then-Palestine (all then under Christendom) as well as Spain, Portugal, France, Sicily, Rome, Russia (under the Tartars), Anatolia, Constantinople, and the Balkan peninsula. [see: Bernard Lewis, "What Went Wrong" (p.4ff)]

It still doesn't add up.

Obviously, it all depends on whose rules you are following, and now that Jews live in a time when people are drawing up sides to see who qualifies for People of Color -- Jews are again being excluded, despite a history, culture, religion and language that demonstrates a separate ethnicity, and the fact Jews are anything but 'white'.

In an op-ed in the LA Times last year, an African American woman suggested doing away with the term "person of color" altogether:
The terms “women of color” and “people of color” are meant to be inclusive. But, from my perspective, they only help to leave black people behind — specifically black women. While every minority group faces its own challenges in America, a “one size fits all” mentality toward diversity erases the specific needs of the most vulnerable communities. [emphasis added]
Considering how Jews ended up being the odd man out, one would have to agree.

She goes on to write that this is not to deny the important implication of People of Color for common solidarity and struggle --
But even more important is doing the hard work of understanding and fighting to overcome the distinct layers of injustice that face people of different identities — and different layers within those identities. A black person has different challenges than someone who is both Muslim and black, and a black, Muslim woman has different challenges still. Parsing the implications of these differences, instead of flattening them, is what it means to be “intersectional,” an important but widely misunderstood concept — even by the liberals who use it most. Intersectionality is not about building the biggest interracial team possible. It’s about catering to the individual needs of different communities to make sure no one is left behind.
Put this way, intersectionality is not a weapon to be used against Jews, but a group that Jews can not only be a part of but also contribute to -- just as Jews contributed to the black community, long before Black Lives Matter became a weapon to attack the Jewish community today.

But that still leaves the problem of Jewish identity, and the need to recognize and embrace that Jewish identity. At a time when Jews are surrounded by those who want to define for Jews:
What does and does not qualify as antisemitism
What Zionism really means
What a Jew is
-- at a time like this, there is a need to strengthen ties, not only with Israel, but with the Jewish community.

Other ethnic groups talk about the importance of their identity. Jews should too.

  Returning to the article in Yes Magazine:
identifying as Asian American is not a biological destiny or question of geography, which would suggest a passive orientation (i.e. individuals are born Asian) rather than an active choice to identify in solidarity against matrices of oppression. [emphasis added]
For many of these ethnic groups, their identity is an active choice in the solidarity of their identity against what they see as US colonialism and racism.

For Jews, the danger may be more than that.

It is in seeing their Jewishness as simply a matter of birth. Considering Jews are historically threatened by both assimilation and discrimination, Jewish identity is more than an issue of solidarity. It is a question of survival.

And there are Jews for whom simply identifying as 'white' is not a guarantee of survival. 

Intersectionality is being weaponized against Jews.
But instead of a threat, it should be a warning and maybe even an opportunity for Jews to get their act together.

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