Showing posts with label self-identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-identity. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 06, 2022

From Ian:

Jewish Life Is Cheap
For the past five years, the dominant media narrative about race—perhaps the dominant media narrative, period—has built up a hierarchy of racial justice. At the top are the perennially marginalized “BIPOCs,” victim to the lash of the ever-present colonial whip. At the bottom lurks the “white male,” inherently and ineluctably racist, even when (or perhaps especially when) they’re trying hard not to be.

In a manner true to our history, Jews have been sucked into this Manichean whirlpool, cast by radical academics and their media acolytes as an essential, almost distilled element of the global system of racial oppression. We are not just white; we are the plotters and financiers of the entire sysyetm of white supremacy.

Worse still, if Jews are white then they are not, well, Jews. The largely successful effort to assign Jews to the white race means Jews do not have the moral privilege of determining our own identity. The perverse result of dispossessing Jews of their own history is that it grants the mantle of Jewishness to our enemies. Thus Ye, in the same Twitter thread where he threatened to go “death con 3” on Jews, also claimed: “I actually can’t be antisemitic because Black people are actually Jew also.”

When Whoopi Goldberg asserted on The View that the “Holocaust was not about race,” she was advancing a version of the same arguments made by virulent Black Hebrew Israelite hate preachers, professors who insist on the indelible whiteness of Jews, and anti-Zionists who deny the legitimacy of Jewish historical identity. It’s true that only the last two groups tend to have their ideas promoted by the media, but all three share the idea that “Jew” is not a meaningful or legitimate category. Palestinians can be Jews—thus the Democratic political activist and Louis Farrakhan fan Linda Sarsour is invited to participate as an expert in a prominent panel on antisemitism. And by the same logic, Black Hebrews can be Jews. Ye can be a Jew. Only Jews are not allowed to be Jews.

Over and over, Jews have watched this trend play out, and largely we’ve been silent.

In a key scene in the 2014 Oscar-nominated Selma, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a group of activists and protesters across a bridge alongside Black civil rights leaders. Not pictured in the scene was a man who walked in that front line of protesters, fighting for civil rights: the great American Jewish rabbi and leader Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Why would Ava Duvernay, the film’s director, compromise the film’s historical integrity to erase one of America’s most prominent Jewish spiritual figures out of the image? The answer is that over the past decade, the anti-racist movement that has been the media’s single most championed social cause has turned a syllogism into a truism: Whites are by definition white supremacists; Jews are the whitest of whites because they falsely hide behind their fake ethnicity; Jews, therefore, are at the top of the white supremacy totem.

The media has actively spread these ideas by turning woke racialism into the defining moral cause of our time, while at the same time ignoring the consequences of this campaign. While Ye was “canceled” for making open threats and affirming his love for Hitler, little more than a week earlier hundreds of Black Hebrew Israelites marched through central Brooklyn, uniformed and in formation, chanting “we are the real Jews.” Save for some coverage in the New York Post and in Tablet’s daily newsletter, The Scroll, the rest of the media was virtually silent. The media is still talking about the alt-right’s 2017 hate march in Charlottesville, treating it as one of the defining events of the modern era, but when hundreds of virulent antisemites march in Brooklyn—the mecca of America’s media establishment—it was crickets. The silence was appalling but also unsurprising given that the same media has largely ignored the routine violent attacks against religious Jews in New York.
Ben-Dror Yemini: How academia omits facts to make Palestinians the perpetual victim
Recently, Prof. Shay Hezkani claimed in an article he wrote for “Haaretz” newspaper that I misled my readers when I wrote that the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine faced an existential threat in 1947 and 1948.

I challenge Hezkani to an intellectual debate. I am even willing to provide him here with some of the arguments at my disposal - shall he answer my call.

“Every week Ben-Dror Yemini tells readers of ‘Yedioth Ahronoth’ about Arab leaders in 1947 who called to throw the Jews into the sea, planning to systematically murder them,” Hezkani wrote in his Haaretz column last week.

“Throughout 15 years of my research, looking into hundreds of propaganda pieces from 1947-1949, I ran into only one case in which Hassan al-Banna - founder of the Muslim Brotherhood – mentions the ‘sea’ and ‘Jews’ in the same sentence - while calling to expel the Jews from Egypt,” Hezkani wrote.

“The quote [used by Yemini and attributed to ex-Secretary General of the Arab League in Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam] is not backed by credible sources in Arabic, and it’s unclear whether or not it was actually ever said.”

I read the Haaretz article and could not believe my eyes. In the book I published titled “Industry of Lies,” I presented a more detailed list of threats made against the Jews, with credible sources, during that time period.

But, Hezkani looked into hundreds of documents and somehow found nothing. It’s a little weird that I did not spent 15 years researching this topic in an academic setting, yet found so much more information. To clear all doubts, prior to publishing the research-backed chapters of my book, they were reviewed by three prominent academics.

It could be that Hezkani has difficulty reading books. So, let’s start with the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who in 1941 arrived at Nazi Germany and called to kill every Jew, before returning to lead the Palestinians.

If Hezkani believes that al-Husseini had changed his mind later on, he should refer us to the relevant sources. In an interview to the “Al Sarih” newspaper, al-Husseini said the Arab goal during the 1948 War of Independence wasn’t to undo the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, but to “continue to fight until the Zionists are dead.”
Hadley Freeman: It sucks to be a Jew on the left
As Hadley Freeman leaves the Guardian for the Sunday Times, she opens up about her Jewish experience

Honestly, what a dumpster fire that whole period was, to the point that it’s almost hard to remember what actually happened. But just off the top of my head, here is a list of things I remember lefty non-Jews saying to me back then:
1. “I don’t think you should write about antisemitism because you obviously feel very passionately about it.”
2. “What, exactly, are Jews afraid of here? It’s not like Corbyn is going to bring back pogroms.”
3. “Jews have always voted right so of course, they don’t like Corbyn.”
4. “It’s not that I don’t believe that you think he’s antisemitic. It’s just I think you’re being manipulated by bad-faith actors. So let me explain why you’re wrong…”
5. “Come on, you don’t really think he really hates Jews.”

All of the above were said to me by progressive people, people who would proudly describe themselves as anti-racism campaigners. And yet. When Jews expressed distress at, say, Corbyn describing Hamas as “friends”, or attending a wreath-laying ceremony for the killers at the Munich Olympics, or bemoaning the lack of English irony among Zionists, we were fobbed off with snarky tweets and shrugged shoulders.

What we were seeing, they said, we were not actually seeing. You could not design an exercise more perfectly structured to cause madness. It was, to be blunt, gaslighting.

Anyway, that’s all in the past now, right? Well it is for me, because I’m walking away. A lot of illusions were broken, and I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people I thought I knew, but it turned out I didn’t. Not really. Not at all. So I have left the garden. And it feels bloody great. (h/t messy57)
A rock star channels Jewish outrage at antisemitism
The antisemitic utterances of Kyrie Irving and Ye (formerly Kanye West) prompted condemnations from many celebrities, both those with Jewish backgrounds and those who weren’t Jewish but who issued solemn pledges of support for their Jewish friends and colleagues. Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon went as far as to tweet, “This is a very scary time,” to which one follower chimed in with an anti-Israel rejoinder.

Solemnity, however, unexpectedly yielded to outrage at the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles. What was no doubt expected to be one of the evening’s least momentous junctures, the honoring of lawyer-agent Allen Grubman, turned into a consciousness-raising session when rock star John Mellencamp took the stage for a profanity-laden introduction speech.

“Allen is Jewish, and I bring that up for one reason,” Mellencamp said. “I’m a gentile, and my life has been enriched by countless Jewish people.”

Mellencamp then turned it up a notch. “I cannot tell you how f***ing important it is to speak out if you’re an artist against antisemitism,” he continued. “Here’s the trick: Silence is complicity. I’m standing here tonight loudly and proudly with Allen, his family and all of my Jewish friends and all of the Jewish people of the world. F*** antisemitism!”

Whoa.

What was surprising about Mellencamp’s speech was not his principled stance, but the sheer indignation and the unbottled emotion that gave voice to it. For millions of Jews who have fearfully observed the growing normalization of antisemitic motifs in today’s popular culture, such a righteous outburst was surely a welcome surprise, but it begged a question for the entertainment industry: “Where have you been until now?”

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Last week, junior  at Northwestern University Lily Cohen wrote an op-ed for the campus newspaper the Daily Northwestern about her pride at being Jewish in the face of antisemitism. It took up a full page in the print edition, with the headline "I am more proud of my Jewish identity than anyone can ever hate me for it."

She described how the slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is a hateful attack on Jews that hurts her personally:
“From the River to the Sea” is a slogan used by Hamas — a terrorist organization — as a rallying cry to destroy the entire State of Israel and all of its Jewish inhabitants. The phrase originated more than 30 years ago, evolving from language in the 1988 Hamas charter that promoted the destruction of Jews, echoing Adolf Hitler’s messaging on the merits of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This is where I draw the line.

When that slogan is plastered around the walls of buildings where I study, when it’s hung across The Arch that I walk under every day, when it’s painted over The Rock that I helped paint only five hours earlier — in support of voting for gun safety and reproductive rights — I take offense. I feel hurt. I get angry.

Spewing hate will never end in peace, and tearing down other causes is not a constructive way to promote your own.

When similar situations have taken place on campus in the past, I’ve remained silent, writing down how offended, hurt and angry I am, leaving it in the safety of my Google Drive. But, nothing ever changes, so I’m done staying silent. I’m done being blamed for the actions of the Israeli government. I’m done being told I’m undeserving of a safe, secure Jewish homeland.

I will still go on Birthright. I will still attend Hillel services. I will still don my Hebrew necklace. I will not relinquish my pride in my Jewish identity just because someone doesn’t like all that my identity entails.  

In response, antisemitic students decided to directly attack her pain.

They took 42 print copies of her print column and used them as a background to a large poster saying the very words that she said hurt her.



The amount of time and effort it took to make this sign and aim it directly at Lily Cohen shows, with no doubt, that this was an act intended to hurt her and to tell the campus that Cohen's feelings and opinions are to be utterly disregarded and ridiculed.

This is not microaggression. This is aggression against a specific student.

Let's see if Northwestern takes this at all seriously.

(h/t Andrew P)


 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Friday, November 04, 2022



At Berkeley Law School, faculty and staff members are encouraged to include their preferred pronouns in email signatures. Students can indicate their preferred pronouns on their law school applications, as well as on their name tags during student orientation.

Clearly, the right to identify oneself as one wishes is important at the law school, and anyone who chooses to ignore those wishes and tell students and staff that they refuse to address them as they self-identify would be marginalized as a bigot, and probably censured.

There is one exception, though.

This fall there has been a controversy at Berkeley Law when nine student organizations will not host events or invite speakers who have expressed views in support of Zionism. Many Jews protested, saying that this effectively discriminated against them as Zionism and Judaism are tightly bound.

The lawyer defending the student organizations, Liz Jackson of Palestine Legal, who is herself an alumnus of the school, defended the discriminatory bylaws in a most curious way:

“Some students say that their Jewish identity is so deeply identified with Zionism that this effectively discriminates against them," Jackson said. "But that’s their subjective view and choice about how they understand their own Jewish identity.”

According to Palestine Legal's lawyer, Jews do not have the right to say that their Judaism includes love of Israel. Self-identification is not a right for Jews, rather, Jewishness is defined by others and Jews must adhere to the definition that anti-Zionists impose on them.

This doesn't sound very progressive. But this is the argument of the Berkeley Law student organizations to defend their blocking any speaker for whom Israel is a central part of their Judaism, which includes the vast majority of Jews.

Jackson herself says she is Jewish. According to her own standards, I can declare that this is only her subjective view and that she is in reality not Jewish. How do you think that argument would go over at Berkeley? Yet that is exactly what she is saying about 95% of all Jews. 

Jackson's hypocrisy doesn't end there. 

Not only does she deny the right of Jews to define Judaism, she denies the right of Zionists to define Zionism!
In an Oct. 3 statement released by ASUC Senator Shay Cohen addressed to LSJP and student groups that adopted the bylaw, student groups alleged that the bylaw was “a deliberate attempt to exclude Jewish students from the community,” and likened anti-Zionism to antisemitism.

“When we say ‘Zionism,’ we mean the Jewish right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, which is Israel,” said Amir Grunhaus, campus senior and president of Tikvah, a Zionist student group that signed the statement. “This does not say anything about the self-determination of Palestinians.”

Jackson expressed disagreement with this definition of Zionism, alleging that it was “colonial ideology” and that it is “problematic” to believe that a religious group has a right to a state of their own as it “requires discrimination” against people outside of that group.
This is "1984"-level thought police stuff. This lawyer defines what her political opponents believe. 

Note also that Jackson here is defining Jews as a purely religious group, not as a people. According to her words, atheist Jews aren't Jews, either. 

Jewish and Zionist identity can only be defined by those who oppose Jewish and Zionist identity.

And this is still not the height of Liz Jackson's hypocrisy.

She wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times against the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act where she falsely claimed that the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, which is incorporated in the Act, makes criticism of Israel illegal on campus. She's lying - the IHRA definition explicitly says that criticism of Israel similar to criticism of any country is not antisemitic.

Jackson wrote:
The State Department standard is highly controversial because it conflates criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Jewish hatred, shutting down debate by suggesting that anyone who looks critically at Israeli policy is somehow beyond the pale. It has no place on college campuses in particular, where we need students to engage in a vigorous exchange of ideas.
Jackson claims she supports a vigorous exchange of ideas on campus. No Zionist I know of disagrees.  But at Berkeley, she has taken the exact opposite stand, and defends organizations making bylaws that ban not only speech that supports Zionism, but they ban Zionist speakers from speaking on any topic whatsoever!

To anti-Zionist hypocrites like Jackson and her organization Palestine Legal, these are the rules:

The right to self-identify is sacred - except for Jews. 
The right to define your own beliefs is sacred - except for Zionists.
The right to free speech is sacred - except for nearly all Jews. 
And calling out this obvious hypocrisy is anti-Palestinian racism. 

(h/t Andrew P)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, October 26, 2022


By Daled Amos

Last week, a piece "In Defense of Hamas" appeared in The Amherst Contra, an anonymous student publication at Amherst College. The article whitewashes the terrorist group as "the perennial bogeyman" and defends it against being "consistently portrayed as a terrorist organization". There really is not much more to say about it -- or The Amherst Contra itself, which prides itself on publishing "unpopular opinions," starting this year with "Would We Be Better Off Without Democracy?" But it is an example of the ease with which Israel is condemned on campus.

Unlike that anonymous article, last year, following the outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, a letter was circulated with the signatures of rabbinical and cantoral students, decrying the situation in Israel, and blaming Israel:

What will it take for us to see that our Israel has the military and controls the borders? How many Palestinians must lose their homes, their schools, their lives, for us to understand that today, in 2021, Israel’s choices come from a place of power and that Israel’s actions constitute an intentional removal of Palestinians?

These students inform us: "we are future leaders of the Jewish community" -- though that may not be the way most Jews view cantors. For that matter, not every rabbinical student is a future leader of "the Jewish community."

Be that as it may, there is no indication of what grasp, if any, these students have of the full situation in Israel. But even putting aside the question of the depth of their understanding of current events in Israel and of the history -- issues arguably outside their areas of expertise -- there are also the areas that are supposed to be their area of expertise.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, notes a lack of what one would have expected to find in a letter by rabbinical students and future Jewish leaders:

There wasn’t a word about Ahavat Yisrael – a love and solidarity with our fellow Jews in Israel, with the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our own homeland, to the very real sacrifices this experiment in Jewish national self-expression has imposed from its inception.

But this vacuum goes beyond Jewish students.

There was also a letter from scholars in Jewish and Israeli studies in response to last year's conflict who condemned Zionism as being

shaped by settler colonial paradigms that saw land settlement as a virtuous means of solving political, economic, or cultural problems, as well as modern European Enlightenment discourses that assumed a hierarchy of civilizations and adopted the premise that technological progress and development of an ‘underdeveloped’ territory would be an unqualified good. [emphasis added]

While they follow this with a passing reference to "the challenges and limitations of applying a settler colonial paradigm to the Zionist case, the unique historical Jewish connection to and presence in the Land of Israel," that does not stop these scholars from accusing Israel of "unsustainable systems of Jewish supremacy." 

Jewish supremacy?

No mention of the ongoing integration of Israeli Arabs in the Israeli military, government and Israeli society in general.

They conclude their letter with the obligatory 

commitment to upholding student and faculty free speech and academic freedom. [emphasis added]

by which they mean a commitment to non-violent protests and boycotts at a time when pro-Israel free speech on campus by students and professors can be dangerous both to one's person and profession.

Both the rabbinical students and these Jewish and Israeli scholars proclaim their Jewishness while attacking Israel, all while at the same time lacking Jewish empathy with Israel. 

In his article The Demise of Jewish Studies in America—and the Rise of Jewish Studies in Israel, Joshua M. Karlip writes about how "American Jewish studies, like American Jewry itself, is fast becoming de-Judaized." Karlip is a professor of Jewish history at YU. He sees this rejection of Jewish particularity as a major contributing factor behind these attacks by Jewish scholars on Israel. Whereas in the past, Europe demanded a "disavowal of Jewish national particularism" in exchange for acceptance, today's academic community demands "the de-Judaization" of their scholarship. 

Karlip claims that part of the problem is that these scholars lack depth in their Jewish background:

Their own often scant Jewish knowledge has abetted this process. With up to 80 percent of contemporary American Jewish scholars not able to read Hebrew sources fluently, is it any wonder that they have adopted the progressive left’s rejection of Zionism and Israel as a “settler colonialism” that displaced “indigenous populations”? If they had bothered to master Hebrew, perhaps they would have studied the Jews who prayed three times a day for the return to Zion rather than the acculturated elites who sought home in Russia, Poland, Germany, and France.

What they are missing, he writes, is what makes it possible for Jews from Morocco, Yemen, Ethiopia and Russia to make aliyah and bond together with an Israeli identity, which is "more than a 'constructed,' 'invented' identity."

Without that consciousness of our own nativeness in the Holy Land, of a people exiled and yearning to return home, the national culture, language, and civil society of Israel would not exist, let alone thrive, today. 

Writing in May 2021, Ruth Wisse gives another example of Jewish scholars who de-Judaize in their scholarship, in this case seeing Jewish self-perpetuation and continuity as nothing more than an exercise in corrupt male power. She quotes from The History and Sexual Politics of an American Jewish Communal Project to illustrate her point:

A Jewish continuity paradigm emerged forcefully in the 1970s as a set of expert pronouncements and community policies that treated women and their bodies as data points in service of a particular vision of Jewish communal survival...Condemning intermarriage and decrying low child-bearing rates became signature features of the affective work of Jewish communal research. [emphasis added]

As Wisse describes this approach, "every sensible Jewish communal initiative to encourage Jewish marriage, family, and education as the sustaining features of Diaspora survival is defined as a suspect tool of indoctrination."

Again, Jewish particularity is rejected with a total apathy for the richness of Jewish life, history and culture.

But what are we supposed to make of this "free speech" and "academic freedom" that the scholars above claim to support in the context of their condemnation of Israel and its alleged crimes? Is academic freedom just a variety of free speech for scholars?

According to an article this year in The New Republic, academic freedom not only covers research and teaching, but also statements that scholars make outside of that ("extramural utterances") -- for instance on social media.

The point is that academic freedom of expression is an extension of their recognized expertise and competence in their field, which is why what they outside of academia -- what they say publicly -- gets respect. But by the same token, shouldn't they be held responsible when they go off the rails? 

For instance:

the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) has consistently held that faculty should not be fired for extramural speech unless that speech calls into question a professor’s fitness to serve. Ordinarily, that speech has to bear directly on the faculty member’s field of study. The idea is that a historian who is a Holocaust denier is obviously unfit, whereas an electrical engineer who is a Holocaust denier is just a crank. This position makes perfect sense, though few people realize that it entails the unsettling corollary that professors enjoy greater protection for extramural speech when they have no idea what they’re talking about than for speech within the areas of their research and teaching. (emphasis added)

And academics who talk and write outside of their field of expertise -- and say outrageous things, are not all that hard to find.

One example of this is Joy Karega:

Karega was a professor of rhetoric and composition who promoted a panoply of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including the claims that ISIS is a CIA/Mossad front and that the 2015 Islamist attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo was in fact a false flag operation conducted by Israel. Both were rightly determined to be in the ballpark of Holocaust-denying historians.

Sure enough, Oberlin College originally defended Karega on free speech grounds, and only months later finally fired her.

But what about less blatant examples of academics going outside their area of expertise?

Phyllis Chesler wrote last year about how Academics Use Propaganda, Not Expertise, to Bash Israel. She describes an open letter by Palestinian Feminist Collective, claiming that "once again, Palestinians from the far north to the far south of our homeland are defying settler colonialism's attempts to partition the land and the people." Academic feminists enthusiastically joined in with a statement that ignored both facts and context. Chesler writes:

Subsequently, academic feminists, issued a statement "In Solidarity With Palestinian Feminist Collective," which links to non-scholarly boilerplate propaganda, none of which is concerned with the Islamic gender apartheid that afflicts Arab Palestinian women in Israel, Gaza, and on the West Bank. They focus on "evictions in East Jerusalem" without understanding the history, legality, or nature of this dispute.

...The gender studies people link to facts about the "humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip," which fail to acknowledge that Israel left Gaza in 2005. Whatever the situation there may be, it is due to Hamas's greed, corruption, and terrorist goals.

Dear God: How is it possible to claim that "Palestine is a feminist issue," which they do, without even mentioning forced child marriage, forced veiling, and honor killing – which are indigenous customs – not caused by the alleged Israeli occupation?

Chesler describes how she took a random sample of 1 professor at 10 gender, women's studies and sexuality departments and found only one professor who even addressed the issue of honor killing -- and even then, only to attack Trump and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

But none of these randomly chosen 10 have an advanced degree in the history and nature of the Middle East, the Arab World, Islam, Judaism, or Israel. None are teaching courses in such areas as experts. They are merely using their expert credentials to support propaganda. [emphasis added]

But spreading propaganda in the guise of academic scholarship is not limited to feminist academics. Chesler points to "Palestine and Praxis: Scholars for Palestinian Freedom," an open letter featuring 70 pages of signatories with about 45 names on each page. The signers claim to be "scholars" who identify with "the Palestinian struggle as an indigenous liberation movement confronting a settler colonial state." These "scholars" call for "boycott campaigns – and to anti-Israel campus activism and to "pressure (their) government to end funding Israeli military aggression."

But...

Guess what? Only 11 of the first 450 signatories teach in Middle East, Palestine, and Arabic Studies.

Both the feminist academics and the "scholars" are recycling Palestinian Islamist propaganda and trying to pass it off as scholarly opinion. Do not fall for it. [emphasis added]

This is not just an issue of academics and scholars going outside of their areas of expertise. There is an issue of a lack of objectivity and the pursuit of personal agendas. As Menachem Kellner, who teaches philosophy and Jewish thought at Shalem College writes, the concept of academic freedom is being abused:

the concept of “academic freedom” is meant to enable academics to research and teach evidence-based truths in the fields in which they are competent. It is not meant to protect academics who introduce their personal politics into their research and teaching in order to browbeat their students and foment an atmosphere of prejudice and hate designed to silence rational inquiry.

Such academics share responsibility for the atmosphere of fear that Jewish students suffer on college campuses.

Jews have all kinds of opinions about Israel, and are certainly free to express them -- so does anyone else for that matter. But the fact that someone is Jewish doesn't mean he knows what he is talking about. Jewish scholars are free to condemn Israel, but in turn, we are free to question their motives and agenda, and even whether they really have the expertise to back up what they claim. The same applies to any scholar who signs on to a condemnation of Israel -- we can question what agenda they or their group is pursuing.

And we should.





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Friday, August 26, 2022


By Daled Amos

Ben & Jerry's was in the news again this week, as a federal judge rejected their attempt to prevent their parent company, Unilever, from allowing their ice cream from being sold in Judea and Samaria -- or as Ben & Jerry's prefers to call it: "Occupied Palestinian Territory."

Just a little over a year ago, they formally joined the BDS movement when the company announced they would no longer sell their ice cream in the West Bank.

Just last month, Ben & Jerry's found themselves accused of being hypocrites for claiming it was inconsistent with their values for their ice cream to be sold "on occupied land" while they themselves based their headquarters on tribal Indian land -- according to a letter signed by over a thousand Israeli students and academics affiliated with Students for Justice in America, with the support of Shurat HaDin.

The New York Post covered the story: Israeli students accuse Ben & Jerry's of occupying tribal land:

Israeli students claim that ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is “illegally” occupying land in Vermont that once belonged to a Abenaki native American tribe and should practice what it preaches and immediately evacuate the properties.

...“We have concluded that your company’s occupation of the Abenaki lands is illegal and we believe it is wholly inconsistent with the stated values that Ben & Jerry’s purports to maintain. Ironically, in July of the last year you announced that you would discontinue the sale of your products in Israel because you object to the Jewish State allegedly occupying Palestinian territories,” the letter to B&J’s chairperson, Anuradha Mittal said.

This double standard had already been noticed just a few days after Ben & Jerry's original announcement last year, by lawyer Stephen Flatow:

Ever hear of the Abenaki Tribe?

Neither did I, until the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company this week started accusing Jews of illegally occupying other people’s territory, and I got curious about whose territory Ben & Jerry’s is occupying.

After all, if you’re going to go around calling other people “occupiers,” well, you better not be an “occupier” yourself, right? I mean, wouldn’t that be just the height of hypocrisy?

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield launched their business empire in 1978 by setting up an ice cream parlor in Burlington, Vermont. Today, the headquarters of their multi-billion-dollar enterprise is located in South Burlington.

It’s a safe bet that neither Ben nor Jerry ever asked permission from the territory’s original inhabitants. Like most white, imperialist, colonialist settlers, they just moved in and did what they wanted, the natives be damned.

The natives, in this case, were the Abenakis, a proud, peaceful group of indigenous tribes who had been living in that part of the country since forever... [emphasis added]

Yet not everyone had ignored the issue of the Abenaki's rightful place on the land. Legal Insurrection notes that just 3 miles from the Ben & Jerry's headquarters in Burlington, Vermont, the University of Vermont features a land acknowledgment on their site that -- unlike Ben & Jerry's -- formally recognizes the history of the Abenaki and their historical connection to the land:

The UVM HESA Program acknowledges that the University of Vermont rests upon the traditional territory of the original inhabitants of this land – the Abenaki people – and the State of Vermont now occupies the lands of the Mahican and Pennacook tribes. We acknowledge that Indigenous Peoples were forced to leave Vermont during the 1600’s, and eastern tribes were displaced by colonial expansion.

The university goes on to note records indicating that in addition to efforts to force them off their land, during the early 20th century, the Abenaki were also subjected to forced pregnancy terminations and more than 3,400 of them were sterilized. They faced attempts to physically reduce their numbers, the kind of physical threats that Jews too have faced in their history.

As Jeff Benay testified in 2010, during testimony for recognition of the Abenaki by the state of Vermont:

As noted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, “The Vermont Eugenics Survey of 1925 and the sterilization law of 1931, which were intended to anglicize the state’s population, identified the Abenaki as undesirable – along with Catholics, such as French Canadians, Irish, and Italians; Jews, the poor; the mentally ill; and criminals.”

Interestingly, Benay notes that while the tribe was recognized by the state governor in 1976, it was rescinded the following year by the next governor.

The reason?

The new governor said that he could not give recognition to a “sovereign nation within a sovereign state” -- a problem that Jews are very familiar with over the centuries, having been told that they could not be fully accepted because they constituted "a people within a people."

Another parallel between the Abenaki and Jews is the attempt to rob each of their history. One of the hurdles placed in the way of the Abenaki was meeting the Federal definition of "tribe" before they could be recognized as indigenous. According to the Federal government, they had to prove that they were an autonomous and existing entity since colonial times -- a test that the Abenaki could not pass to the government's satisfaction.

As Abenaki activist Fred Wiseman put it:

They said the Abenakis were genetic, political, and cultural fakes.

How often have we seen antisemitic attacks accusing Jews of something similar -- of being descended from Khazars or of having no historical and cultural connection to the land Israel? 

Apparently, during the American Revolution, the Abenaki retreated north into Quebec, to the extent that 2 centuries later they “were indistinguishable from the general population in Vermont.” In other words, their skin color was white. Not only could they not be visibly identifiable as Indians, they also hid their Indian identity from the Census Bureau.

Again, a point of comparison:

It’s happened before. In 15th Century Spain, Jews converted to avoid getting burned at the stake, lived outwardly Christian lives, but secretly observed Jewish rituals at home.

Wiseman sums up the situation that the Abenaki face:

Whatever happens, the Abenaki will once again be defined by others. Indians don’t have the right to self-identify. We have to be recognized by white people.

This again is a situation that Jews are very familiar with, where others get to define what can be considered antisemitism, antisemites lecture us about what Zionism is and international agencies assume the authority to give our cultural heritage away to others.

Ultimately, what ties the Abenaki and Jews together is that they are both indigenous peoples, born in their respective lands with historical and cultural ties to it.

And both have struggled to return to their land and have their connection to it recognized.

In this, the Jews have been extraordinarily successful after thousands of years. And that is a problem for some.

According to the UNHCR Resettlement Handbook

Indigenous groups are descendants of the peoples who inhabited land or territory prior to colonization or the establishment of state borders. They often have strong attachment to their ancestral lands and natural resources, an attribute that can distinguish them from other minority groups. They may also have distinct social, economic and political systems, languages, cultures and beliefs. Their right to self-determination has frequently been impeded by subsequent migration of other ethnic groups into the territory where they reside.

Indigeneity is defined, in part, in the context of colonization. That may be helpful to the Abenaki, but in the case of the re-establishment of Israel, enemies of the Jewish State accuse Jews of being the colonists. Yet the distinct social, political, language, culture and belief systems of the Palestinian Arabs originate in Arabia -- and are not indigenous to Judea.

But because the definition of indigeneity is made in the context of being a victim of colonialism, the history of the Arab invasion and conquest of the land is forgotten and they are held up as the native population in the face of the return of Jews to their home.

The world is just not ready for indigenous populations that successfully re-establish their home.

Ben & Jerry's can glibly explain to an interviewer the rightness of their refusing to sell their ice cream in Judea and Samaria, but when challenged as to why they sell their ice cream to areas in the US where there are problems with human rights issues -- the 2 men are totally dumbfounded:


It seems likely that Ben & Jerry's will not be recognizing the indigenous rights of either the Abenaki nor of Jews in the near future.





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Sunday, April 26, 2020



If the Star of David on Israel's flag upsets you but the crescent, crosses and other religious symbols on more than 60 other flags doesn't bother you, you just might be an antisemite.

If you believe that the Palestinian Arabs, who never thought of themselves as a nation until the mid-20th century, have more of a claim to nationhood than Jews who have been a nation for 3000 years, you just might be an antisemite.

If you deny that the Jewish people are a nation altogether, you just might be an antisemite.

If the idea of a Jewish state feels vaguely racist to you but the idea of an Arab or Muslim state doesn't, you might be an antisemite.

If Israel is the only nation you ever call an "apartheid state," you just might be an antisemite.

If you get a thrill comparing Israelis to Nazis, you just might  be an antisemite.

If you think "Zionists" control Congress, or the banks, or Hollywood, you just might  be an antisemite.

If you believe that it is a moral duty to boycott Israeli Jews but not Israeli Arabs, you just might be an antisemite.

If you believe that Ashkenazic Jews are descended from Khazars and have no Middle East ancestry, you just might be an antisemite.

If you ever claimed Israel steals organs from Palestinians, you just might  be an antisemite.

If you think Israel is behind the coronavirus, you just might be an antisemite.

If you aren't Muslim but refer to Jewish shrines like the Temple Mount, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs by their Muslim names that came centuries later,  you just might be an antisemite.

If you claim that Israel poisons Palestinian wells, you just might be an antisemite.

If you believe that Israel intends to take over all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, you just might be an antisemite.

If you cannot to bring yourself to write the word Israel without scare quotes,  you just might be an antisemite.

If you want to see the only Jewish state replaced with another Arab state, you just might be an antisemite.

If you claim to be pro-Palestinian but ignore how Palestinians have been and continue to be treated by Arabs, you just might be an antisemite.

If you say you are against occupation but never said a word about any occupation that cannot be blamed on Israel you just might be an antisemite.

If you claim that Israel does moral things to cover up for immoral crimes, you just might be an antisemite.

If Jews must pass a test of being anti-Israel for you to allow them to speak publicly, you just might be an antisemite.

If you've ever called someone a "Zionist" as an insult, you just might be an antisemite.

If you are offended by the lyrics of Hatikva but have no problem with the Palestinian national anthem that extols violence and vengeance, you just might be an antisemite.

If you regard Leila Khaled, Rasmea Odeh and Dalal Mughrabi as feminist role models, you just might be an antisemite.

If the idea of Jews respectfully visiting their holiest spots makes you angry, you just might be an antisemite.

If you think that terrorism against Jewish targets is sometimes justified, you just may be an antisemite.

If there are any parts of the world that you believe Jews should not be allowed to live, you just might be an antisemite.






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