Israel’s Consul General in New York Dani Dayan tweeted:
Tomorrow, Jews will start 3 weeks of commemoration of the breach of the walls of their Capital by an Empire, the destruction of the city, the subjugation of their country and the forced exile of its population, their ancestors. Tell me more about not being indigenous.
A lot of people argue about what “indigenous” means, and even the UN says there is no standard definition. It seems that too often the people defining the term are more interested in the color of the skin of the people claiming indigeneity than the actual circumstances.
But these same people are often the ones who want to downplay the very real Jewish connection to the Land of Israel. They don’t want to hear that Jews pray to have Jerusalem rebuilt three times a day (not just the Passover Seder’s “next year in Jerusalem!”) They don’t want to hear about the undeniable fact that during the 2000 years of Jewish exile, practically no country that hosted the Jews ever considered them to be truly equal citizens. Everyone throughout history knew that their home was in Israel, and if you look at old books the words “Hebrew” and “Israelite” are used as often as the word “Jew,” emphasizing the Jewish nation in exile.
In exile from where? Everyone knows the answer.
Jews have maintained psychological and physical ties to Israel ever since the current diaspora began. They have no other homeland.
And the current three week period where we mourn the destruction of the two Temples is all the proof you need that Jews have only had one real home.
If that isn’t the definition of indigenous, then you are twisting the word specifically to exclude Jews.
Rome, July 9 - Leaders of the world's largest Christian denomination have commissioned a study to determine whether the body's ages-old ambition to convince adherents of the Mosaic faith to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God and as their savior from Original Sin might meet more success with Jesus not in the role of the divine incarnate - a notion anathema to longstanding Hebraic sensibilities - but in a form of proven palatability to prominent, if not large, swaths of progressive Jews: opposition to Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland.
Pope Francis appointed a committee this week to explore the possibilities of rebranding Jesus Christ as anti-Zionism in efforts to proselytize to leftist Jews, Vatican insiders reported Thursday. The commission will focus on the potential effectiveness of such a change in semantics based on the realization that Jews who seek entree to elite cultural circles have always faced the demand that they renounce core aspects of Jewish identity and fidelity - but that over the last two centuries, shifts in Western culture have in turn shifted which core aspects of Jewish identity and fidelity they must renounce.
For more than 1500 years the dominant Christian culture insisted that access to elite circles required Jews to violate fundamental principles of Jewish faith by accepting, for example, the divinity of a human, when core Jewish tenets preclude the corporeality of God; now however, following centuries of decline in the influence of Church power and cultural hegemony, elite cultural circles now demand that Jews renounce allegiance to more secular aspects of Jewish identity and belonging - Jewish nationhood, for example, Jewish indigenous status in the one place Jews have ever had a sovereign home, or any collective right Jews might have to reestablish themselves as an independent political entity. That cultural shift has prompted the senior figures within the Roman Catholic Church to consider adapting their ancient compulsion to "prove" the legitimacy of their replacement theology - whereby Christians are the new Israel and the Jews, by rejecting Christ, must disappear - to suit the more modern sensibilities of anti-Zionism.
"If we can dress up the Christ as anti-Zionism that should appeal to all sorts of progressive Jews," explained Cardinal Pedro Beinardo, who heads the commission. "Some Protestant denominations already invoke Jesus in railing against Israel, which is fine, and in fact the reemergence of Jewish sovereignty poses a serious theological challenge to Christians, who still, by and large, insist the the New Testament renders the Old non-applicable. But we think to succeed, the approach needs to take things a step or two further, because there's been an erosion of the spiritual, as classically conceived, in the West, and we need to roll with that. Political ideology is the new religion, and we better understand that."
There’s a reason why most Israelis find it difficult to listen patiently to lectures from liberal American Jews. For Israelis, their country is a real place filled with real people and perplexing dilemmas that have no easy solutions. But for all too many American Jews, Israel is a dreamland—a place for intellectual tourism where we can project our own insecurities and anxieties on the Jewish state while expressing our moral superiority over the lesser beings who live there and lack our wisdom.
Which brings us to the problem of Peter Beinart.
Beinart, the former editor of The New Republic and columnist for The Atlantic, sought to carve out a place for himself as the leading liberal critic of Israel with his 2012 book The Crisis of Zionism. The book was as spectacularly ignorant as it was arrogant in its refusal to acknowledge the reality of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
The conceit of the work was that Israelis needed to rise above their fears and recognize that a two-state solution was within easy reach. Anything that contradicted his assumptions—like the nature of Palestinian political culture or the continued rejectionism and obsession with the fantasy of Israel’s destruction—was either rationalized or ignored. Too immersed in their unseemly quest for security and profit, Israelis could only overcome the “crisis” of the title by listening to the wisdom of Beinart, a righteous American pilgrim, whose manifest good intentions should have generated respect and deference from his recalcitrant Israeli pupils.
Much to Beinart’s chagrin, rather than take the advice of a leading American public intellectual to heart, Israelis ignored it. In the eight years since then, Israel has endured more violence and political controversy while the Palestinians have continued to reject peace, whether along the lines laid out by President Barack Obama (whose alleged bona fides as a friend of the Jewish people was discussed at length in his book) or the less generous terms offered by President Donald Trump.
Instead of moving closer to moral and physical collapse as Beinart has been prophesying, Israel has only gotten stronger. Much of the Arab world has tired of Palestinian intransigence and largely abandoned advocacy for their cause, as many now perceive the Israelis as a vital ally in the struggle against Iran, as well as a needed resource in the areas of technology, agriculture and clean water. Peace with the Palestinians is not in sight. But until it becomes possible, the Jews of Israel will hold on and continue to thrive.
Israel has had a long and complex history, stained time and again by many moral failings. Israelis have almost always responded by demanding that we be better, not by suggesting that we end the project. Israelis’ frustration with the peace process, our government’s now catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic, our medieval and misogynist, homophobic rabbinate, Israel’s now massive unemployment, the “Price Tag” racists whom the government refuses to punish, the poverty in which Holocaust survivors live, the inequality that Israeli Arabs face daily and much more has not given rise to anything akin to America’s desire to destroy itself.
The unfettered quest for self-immolation, the intellectual thinness of cancel culture, the rage that pulls down statues of Christopher Columbus and advocates abandoning capitalism for socialism without any regard for how Marx’s and Lenin’s theories unfolded in the Soviet Union, in China, in Cuba or elsewhere – all that is a distinctly American response. Israelis, for all their many faults, show little sign of the cultural fatigue, intellectual sloppiness or willed oblivion-to-consequences that are now emblematic of America’s youth. What Beinart has done is to essentially take America’s desire for self-destruction and ask Israelis to adopt it.
No thanks.
We Israelis, like Americans, have had no perfect leaders. David Ben-Gurion was a racist who had utter disdain for darker-skinned Mizrachi Jews and their culture. Menachem Begin got innocent people killed in the King David bombing and decades later, launched the disastrous Lebanon War. Golda Meir famously asked, “What Palestinian people?” Ariel Sharon allowed the massacre at Sabra and Shatila.
Yet we also know that David Ben-Gurion built a Jewish state against all odds and kept it alive when that seemed impossible. Menachem Begin was instrumental in getting the British to leave Palestine, fought against military rule over Israeli Arabs, made peace with Egypt, returned the Sinai and destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Golda Meir launched Israel’s long tradition of reaching out to African countries, out of a belief that if we had independence and hope, they should, too. It was Ariel Sharon who got Israel out of Gaza.
That is why we’re not tearing down statues (not that we erect that many, by the way, which is also interesting). We prefer to recognize that life is complicated, that great human beings are invariably also deeply flawed. The same is true of countries. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is exhausting and depressing and surfaces much of Israel’s ugliness. No one should “prove” their love for Israel by denying that.
But Israel was created not to be perfect, but to restore the Jewish people to its ancestral homeland, and thus to allow the Jewish people and its culture to thrive and flourish as it can nowhere else on earth. Looked at that way, Israel is not only miraculous, it is an extraordinary success. We Israelis can see our terrible mistakes and still take pride in what we’ve accomplished; many of us are horrified by what it still not right here, but we have no interest in Beinart’s suggestion that we therefore commit national suicide.
Peter Beinart believes that because we cannot get the Palestinians to recognize our right to a state, we should knock over our proverbial king and give up the project. We believe that while we wait for the Palestinians to want a future more than they want revenge, we should build this society and the Jewish cultural, intellectual, religious and historical revival it makes possible. My bet is that Israelis will continue to build the society that is the largest, culturally richest, most intellectually dynamic Jewish community anywhere in the world, and that we’ll still be at it long after Peter Beinart has been entirely forgotten.
Yet according to Beinart, Israeli Jews should hope that once they give up on their state, Palestinians would feel they have all the “freedom” they ever wanted and violence would “decline.” Beinart is at least honest enough not to promise that violence would stop, and in any case, he could calmly watch from the comfort of his home in the US if this “Isratine” experiment pans out.
Fantasizing about the elimination of the world’s only entirely Jewish state by eventually transforming it into yet another Arab-Muslim majority state in order to please — and hopefully appease — the Palestinians is of course a fairly popular pastime in some “progressive” circles. But while most progressives won’t be eager to acknowledge that they could once count on the support of the late Libyan dictator Qaddafi, Beinart is apparently not particularly picky about the company he keeps.
When he shared on Twitter “some of the writing that has shaped my thinking,” his list included “Ali Abunimah’s book, One Country,” which Beinart praised as “both trenchantly argued and deeply generous in spirit. I wish I could assign it in every Jewish school.”
It apparently doesn’t bother Beinart that — starting during the murderous Al-Aqsa intifada almost two decades ago — Ali Abunimah has been single-mindedly devoted to demonizing Israel. At his Electronic Intifada site, the Jewish state is constantly presented as a monstrous evil that must be eliminated, and that if Islamist terror groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad help to achieve that goal, they should obviously be cheered on.
Needless to say, Abunimah is certain that advocating the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state while whitewashing and promoting Islamist terrorism can never ever be antisemitic, and he thinks he should therefore be entitled to his own truly Orwellian definition of antisemitism. Preposterously enough, Abunimah sees himself as a fighter against antisemitism, because as far as he is concerned, “Zionism is one of the worst forms of antisemitism in existence today” and “supporting Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.”
The fact that Beinart believes that anything Abunimah writes is “deeply generous in spirit” tells us all we need to know about his judgement.
But whether it’s Ali Abunimah or Muammar Qaddafi or Peter Beinart, the people who advocate the elimination of the Jewish state will always insist that their motives are pure and noble. Their cynical disregard for the lives and aspirations of millions of Israeli Jews reveal the hollowness of that claim.
Dude @PeterBeinart just endorsed an antisemitic book by a raging antisemite in Chicago who supports Assad's mass murder of over 500,000 people in Syria and various Palestinian terrorist entities. What a topsy-turvy world! https://t.co/cFkjy7WHPy
The likely answer is because cancel culture and antisemitism overlap.
Both the current cancel culture and anti-Zionism is based on a self-righteous, virtue-signaling worldview where the advocates are motivated not by any sense of justice but by appearing to care about justice.
The “Black Lives Matter” – based cancel culture is not led by Black people but by whites who are falling over themselves to tell the world how much they care about Black lives. The anti-Zionists of Jewish Voice for Peace are similarly not led by Palestinians but by Jews who are eager to show how much they care about Palestinians.
Cancel culture’s care for Black lives does not extend to Blacks killed by other Blacks. Anti-Zionists don’t care about Palestinians oppressed by fellow Arabs.
Both cancel culture and anti-Zionists have a one-dimensional view of the world. Real Blacks and real Arabs have much more complex and conciliatory views of whites and Jews, but these two cultures work hard to silence the reality in order to push their virtue-signaling agenda of evil whites and evil Jews.
Cancel cultures look at whites as inherently racist. Anti-Zionists look at Israeli Jews as being racist by definition.
And anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Anti-Zionists are against Jewish national rights; antisemites hate Israel. But beyond that, traditional antisemites almost always couch their hate as positive – they are protecting innocent people, they are warning the world about the dangers of Jews/Israel.
Both are meant to push a political agenda while pretending to be humanitarian.
Both of these ideas are toxic.
So, yes, don’t expect cancel culture to give a damn about Jews. To their members, everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed, and Jews are oppressors because they are Zionist and they are white. The cancel culture members who are both white and Jewish need to distance themselves from both unforgivable crimes, and their penance is to loudly denounce other whites and Jews.
Peter Beinart has gotten a lot of press this week over his essays in the far-Left Jewish Currents and the increasingly far-Left New York Times opinion pages for his proposal that instead of a two-state solution, the preferred outcome is a Jewish “homeland” in a single state that would presumably be called “Palestine.”
This is of course not a new idea. In 1947, when Arabs faced the possibility that the UN would vote for partitioning the land and creating a Jewish state, they suddenly declared that they were interested in a “bi-national” state with the Jews – predicated on the idea that Jewish immigration must end first, which would ensure an Arab majority in any election.
The more modern version of the idea espoused by many English-speaking Arabs also emphasizes to their Western audiences that a one state solution with equal rights is wonderful, as long as millions of Arabs with Palestinian ancestry are first allowed to flood the area and ensure that there is an Arab majority in any election.
Another version of the plan is Iran’s, where only the Jews whose families were in Palestine before 1917 would be allowed to vote.
The New York Times published a similar op-ed in 2009 for a one-state solution. It’s author was that famous peacemaker, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, where he actually pretended to be proposing this plan for Jews’ security:
A two-state solution will create an unacceptable security threat to Israel. An armed Arab state, presumably in the West Bank, would give Israel less than 10 miles of strategic depth at its narrowest point.
Obviously Jews should live next to Arabs who want to kill them rather than across a border. See how much he cared?
These thinkers’ interest in “democracy” is only to ensure that Jews do not have a state, not out of any love of the democratic system. And this is obviously true, because these same people never advocate for democracies in Jordan or Egypt or the UAE; they don’t even demand that Palestinians have elections themselves. They only want a single election meant to dissolve the Jewish state – what happens after that is unimportant.
But let’s look at that very question – what would happen after that?
We just have to ask Palestinians how they would envision sharing the entire area from the river to the sea with a sizable Jewish population.
One indication of their answer can be in polls over recent years about whether Palestinians are willing to share Jerusalem, which is a key part of most two-state plans, and therefore a good proxy for how they feel about sharing all of the country with Jews.
A clear majority of Palestinians demand not only full control over the formerly Jordanian-occupied portions of Jerusalem, but the entire city. 52% of West Bank Palestinians, and 80% of Gazans, agree with the statement “We should demand Palestinian rule over all of Jerusalem, East and West, rather than agree to share or divide any part of it with Israel.” This means that they would immediately ban all Jews from entering the city the way Jordan did from 1948 to 1967. Say goodbye to the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter – Palestinians aren’t quite willing to share anything.
And there is no reason to think that they would consider Tel Aviv to be any more Jewish than Jerusalem is. Their maps make it very clear how willing they are to share the land, although there is no shortage of clueless Westerners who believe the lie that “Arabs and Jews lived in peace and harmony before Zionism.”
Beinart says that a two-state solution is ideal, but Israel has made that impossible. (Palestinians, as always, have no agency or responsibility in his eyes.) But how do Palestinians feel about a two state solution where they can have a state of their own?
Most Palestinians who say they want a two-state solution do not see that as the end of the conflict, but a stage towards the strategic goal of ending any Jewish rule.
And they see the “right of return,” flooding Israel with millions of Arabs, as the ideal way to destroy the Jewish state.
How would Palestinians act towards a significant Jewish minority of Jews in a single state? Again, one needs only to look at the history of Jews in Arab lands, or even in Palestine. Jews were attacked before Zionism. Immediately after the 1947 partition vote, when Arabs solemnly pledged that they would respect Jews as equals in their binational state, they started slaughtering them.
I made a cartoon last night to illustrate the immorality of an American telling Israelis what is best for them:
An Arab-majority state that would treat Jews as equals is nothing short of a fantasy. The reality would be a return to the daily attacks on Jews that were seen in Palestine before 1948.
Beinart’s plan is based on a theory of a peaceful Palestinian Arab population that has absolutely no objective support. Does he seriously believe that Hamas and Islamic Jihad would be disarmed in this fantasy state?
Peter Beinart is supremely concerned over what he sees as Jewish mistreatment of Palestinians yet shows literally zero concern over the certainty – not probability, but certainty - that his plan will result in massive Arab abuse of Jews.
In the book “New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway,” edited by Edna Nahshon, he is described:
Poster for Thomas La-Rue as "Tevya, the Black Cantor," 1920s. The Yiddish text reads: "Tevye, the Black Cantor"; "The World's Greatest Wonder!"; "The famous cantor who has taken America by storm in compositions by Rosenblatt..." Thomas LaRue, who was not Jewish, began his Yiddish career in the successful musical comedy Yente Telebende, produced in 1917 at Boris Thomashefsky's National Theatre. In 1920. LaRue appeared on the cover of sheet music for "Ferlir nur nit dein hofnung reb Yid" ("Do Not Lose Your Hope, Dear Jew"), by Isidor Lash and Sholom Secunda, as "Thomas LaRue Jones,” the song's "exclusive interpreter." It must be around this time that he began to perform cantorial music wearing ceremonial garb. Throughout the 1920s and '30s, LaRue performed across America, and appeared on radio programs, where he was listed as "the colored cantor." The theatrical novelty of a gentile black singer performing cantorial music must be seen within the context of the synergy between the Yiddish stage and synagogue music. It also reflects the show-business star status enjoyed by America's great cantors, who were also recording artists and offered cantorial concerts in secular venues.
Henry Saponzik wrote a most interesting article this week about other black cantors from the 1920s, some of whom considered themselves Jewish and some not. (His Part 2 will be about LaRue Jones.)
Willie “The Lion” Smith had a Jewish father and called himself Der Yiddisher Khazn.
Mendel the Black Cantor was a non-Jew who became an expert in Yiddish singing with a perfect accent. As a Yiddish newspaper wrote at the time, “He sings with a real Yiddish turn, with a real Yiddish moan and sigh. The old time Jewish trope is there and really Jewish....Make no mistake, until now we've only had a Jewish black — Al Jolson — a cantor's son who makes believe he is Black. But here is a Black man who isa cantor who calls himself "Mendel the Black Cantor."
Finally, there was Dovid, di Kalskrite Ha'Cohen der Falash - Dovid, the calligrapher Kohen from Ethiopia.” Dovid HaKohen was Jewish and claimed to know 29 languages.
(h/t Yerushalimey)
UPDATE: A recording of Thomas LaRue was found and uploaded to YouTube. Lyrics in Yiddish and English as well as a link to the "B" side here.
It’s been an interesting week for Israelis, mostly in the bad sense of the word. The news about the application of civilian law (not “annexation”) to parts of Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley is that there is no news. Whatever Netanyahu is planning, if anything, is a secret. Unlike many “secrets” in this country (e.g., the contents of police investigations of Netanyahu), there are no leaks. Naturally, the European Union, the American Reform Movement, the Palestinian Authority, and others continue to react to what hasn’t happened in ways ranging from alarm to death threats. Meanwhile, nothing is still nothing.
A somewhat bright (and loud) spot is a series of explosions and fires in Iran, almost one a day, some in locations critical to its nuclear and missile programs. Did Israel have anything to do with them? Who knows? There are highly speculative reports from various sources that mention everything from cyberattacks, to local regime opponents, to F-35s. Maybe the US is doing it? Regardless, it’s wonderful to wake up to reports of advanced centrifuges wrecked and missile factories burning.
Also loud but not so wonderful have been the rocket attacks on Israel’s south from the Gaza strip. Nobody was hurt, and the IDF bombed underground rocket launchers belonging to Hamas in retaliation. It could be that Iran-linked factions in the strip were responsible, in retaliation for what Israel did or didn’t do in Iran, or perhaps for a recent IDF strike on a weapons convoy in Syria. The “War Between the Wars” continues with little letup. In fact, right now (Wednesday morning) I’m hearing military aircraft. Training or operational? Yes.
In the “I can’t believe she’s still here” department, Australian sex criminal Malka Leifer, who escaped to Israel in 2008, has now appealed to the Supreme Court to delay her extradition yet again. Her extended saga of court hearings and political interference has caused great embarrassment to Israel and pain to her victims in Australia. When a district court judge recently ruled that she was mentally fit to be extradited, we thought we’d finally seen the last of her. Not yet.
The biggest (and worst) news is the explosive growth of the second wave of Coronavirus infections. Yesterday there were 1,473 new cases, by far the greatest number since the start of the epidemic. New deaths and serious cases are up. And the percentage of positive results from the tests being performed is rising. There are outbreaks in nursing homes and a mental hospital. Yesterday, the Director of Public Health in the Ministry of Health, Prof. Sigal Sadetzki, resigned. In her letter of resignation, she sharply criticized the government for creating layers of bureaucracy that made a quick response to changing conditions impossible, and for making decisions based on political considerations rather than professional ones. She was especially critical of the way the public schools were reopened after the first wave, in many cases ignoring guidelines for separating students and teachers into small groups, and almost all at once instead of more gradually as her ministry had recommended. She also noted that the government has adopted guidelines for the number of people at weddings and other events that far exceed the ministry’s recommendations. With the new government, we got a new Health Minister, and a new Director-General of the Ministry (Sadetzki’s boss). They are not up to speed yet, and it shows.
Another example of politicization: MK Moshe Gafni of the Haredi United Torah Judaism party threatened to withdraw his party from the coalition if yeshivot – which have experienced a wave of Corona cases – were closed, as the Health Ministry and National Security Council had advised. The yeshivot stayed open, Gafni’s party stayed in the government – and Sadetzki quit. Naftali Bennett, the former Defense Minister (whose party, Yamina, now sits in the opposition) established his own private “civil corona cabinet” which has already made several very sensible suggestions. Unfortunately, some years ago when he was Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff, he reportedly told Sara Netanyahu that “I work for your husband, not for you.” Netanyahu, following his wife’s instructions, has carried on a vendetta against him ever since, and does his best to prevent Bennett from having influence or getting credit for anything.
Sadetzki’s complaints about the government are on target, but her own ministry is also guilty. The Health Ministry was charged with managing the epidemiological part of the Corona response – researching the people and places with which confirmed patients had contact, tracking down and quarantining those who have been exposed. They couldn’t keep up, and so breaking the chains of infection has been impossible. The Ministry claimed that this work can only be done by qualified public health nurses, and there aren’t enough of them. Bennett suggested that trained and supervised students could do much of this work, and finally they are starting to do this. I am reminded of how Israel won its War of Independence with soldiers that had only months ago been released from internment camps, and before that had been in Nazi concentration camps. El Al, Israel’s flag airline was privatized in 2003. Known for high prices, excellent security and safety, indifferent service, and very high labor costs, it suffered a massive financial blow as a result of the epidemic. Now it will be bailed out by the government, which will probably result in its re-nationalization. There is simply no alternative, because Israel cannot depend on foreign airlines for its transportation lifeline to the rest of the world.
In short, the economic situation of most Israelis can be described as rotten. Official unemployment numbers after the beginning of the second wave of the epidemic aren’t available yet, but some analysts say it is probably close to 10% now. In January, it was only 3.6%. The restaurant and events (weddings, etc.) sectors are crushed, all retail is suffering, and tourism is close to zero. The increasing Corona numbers imply that things are not going to improve any time soon. Government programs to compensate those without income have been slow in starting and have many gaps. Workers in performing arts have been holding demonstrations and blocking traffic to protest. Even where businesses are operating, customers are scarce – they are worried about exposure to the virus or they just don’t have extra money.
Last week I said that I hoped the overconfidence acquired by our success in dealing with the first wave of Corona would be replaced by intelligence. I don’t see that happening yet. On the other hand, someone is doing a great job blowing up stuff in Iran and Syria.
Should we capitalize the “b” in Black? Hundreds of publications across the country, including bellwethers like The New York Times and Associated Press, have adjusted their style guides, arguing that capital-B Black reflects a common identity and heritage.
It’s time for a similarly introspective debate about the language we use to describe discrimination against Jews.
Most leading authorities and publications use “anti-Semitism.” I prefer “antisemitism,” the spelling used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. But this debate obscures the core issue: Whether spelled anti-Semitism or antisemitism, we should retire the term entirely and begin calling it what it really is: Jew hatred.
Consider the history of the word. While the phenomenon of Jew hatred is inscribed in ancient texts, the term “anti-Semitism” is actually of relatively recent vintage, about as old as the telephone or the lightbulb. The German journalist Wilhelm Marr coined the term “anti-Semitism” in 1879 to give an air of modernity to long-embraced animosity toward the Jewish people.
Earlier Germans were blunter: They called it “Judenhaas,” literally Jew-hatred. Wilhelm, himself a deeply anti-Jewish political agitator, sought a pseudo-scientific and therefore more palatable word. He knew the term “Semitic” had historically referred to a family of languages that originated in the Middle East. So he refashioned the word to mean prejudice against Jews alone.
In his 1880 bestselling propagandist pamphlet, “The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit,” Wilhelm freely used the German term “antisemitismus.” And in the same year, Wilhelm founded the Antisemitenliga, the League of Antisemites, the first organization committed to combating the alleged Jewish takeover of Germany and German culture.
In other words, the term “anti-Semitism” was coined not to marginalize Jew hatred but to mainstream it.
It was in this spirit, I think, that the Archbishop of York said, ‘Jesus was a black man, and he was born into a persecuted group in an occupied country.’ The trouble is, it isn’t true. Jesus wasn’t a black man. He wasn’t a northern European either. He was a Jew. A Jew from the Middle East. And that is a scandal. The ‘Scandal of Particularity’, as it is called.
It is a scandal that Jesus was born at a particular time in a particular place among a particular people as a particular sex. It is far easier to believe in a God who never gets tied down by human specifics. If God is nothing, God can be anything: God can be white, God can be black, God can be British (or German or French) and God can cheer us on against our enemies. God can be trans, or straight, or gay.
But when you rip divinity out of its comfortable atemporality and give it – give him – a name (something God stoically refused to tell Moses on Mount Sinai), a family, an education, a station in life, a group of friends, and, of course, a political world with which he interacted… suddenly he cannot be all things to all men.
At its best, art that puts Christ in a different context takes us out of our reality and put us into his scene; we become actors in his drama. At its worst, we end up ripping Christ from his reality and making him an actor in our drama – national, racial, or personal. The gap between good art and bad art is a chasm that is almost as deep as that between good theology and bad theology – and takes us to the same place.
The best art, like the best theology, takes the particular and makes it universal. We should be able to see ourselves (whoever we are) as Thomas putting his finger into the side of Christ, or as Matthew being called from his counting house, or as one of the soldiers pushing the crown of thorns onto Christ’s bleeding head.
The worst, however, cancels historical fact and replaces it with whichever passing particularity suits your narrative at the time. It leaves us without an historical Christ in whom we can (or can’t) believe on his own terms, and gives us an ever-flexible puppet of our own creation – in which it isn’t worth believing whatever the terms. Having removed the Jewish identity of their Saviour, it’s unsurprising that so many Christians are indifferent to that of their Jewish neighbours. Having abandoned the Middle East, you can see why the plight of their Christians can no longer interest us.
Now is not the time to erase the Middle Eastern Jew from the Christian story.
Seventy-six percent of Palestinian Christians gave the Palestinian Authority (PA) failing marks for how schools teach the history of Christians, according to a recent survey commissioned by The Philos Project.
“Palestine has a long, rich history of Palestinian Christians,” said Khalil Sayegh, a Christian from Gaza and Philos Advocacy Fellow. “The Palestinian textbooks and curriculum, however, just choose to deny all of that.”
Sayegh shared his insights during a June 17 online discussion with Robert Nicholson, executive director of The Philos Project, and Dr. Khalil Shikaki of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), who conducted the survey.
Christians are a dwindling minority, accounting for a mere 1 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the comprehensive survey examines challenges this religious minority faces, including Israeli settlements and the PA educational system. The survey has a sample size of 995 with a margin of error of +/- 3 percent.
“The history that we learn [in school] starts with the Islamic conquest of the land,” Sayegh said. “Anything before will focus on the pre-Israelite era. I understand that. It’s trying to deny the narrative of the Torah and biblical history because this, to a certain extent, is used to justify the existence of Israel. However, this leads to Palestinian Christians looking like foreigners.”
Crusader, infidel, and foreigner are all epithets Sayegh experienced in grade school. And the survey revealed he was not the only Christian in the Palestinian Territories who had the same experience. Twenty-seven percent said that they have been exposed to racist curses or epithets, and 43 percent said that they feel most Muslims do not want them in the land.
Taught by his secular-minded father that Christians have little that distinguishes them from Muslims, Sayegh learned in school that they do. One teacher warned him of hellfire if he did not convert to Islam. While only 23 percent of those surveyed admitted to being asked to convert to Islam, 70 percent said they had at one time heard a Muslim state that Christians will go to hellfire.
Bloggers,
compared to journalists, can say more about antisemitism. That’s because the
two disciplines—blogging and journalism—are different. In journalism, one has
to adhere to journalistic standards and avoid bias. But the blogosphere offers
possibilities beyond those standards.
In
a blog I can say what I like—things you just can’t say in a straight news piece.
As a blogger I write the things I think my readers should know—things that may not
be politically correct. My responsibility as a blogger lies only in remaining
faithful to my standards and sensibilities and those of my host. The reader’s
responsibility, on the other hand, lies in accepting or rejecting my words, or
skipping past them altogether.
This
was the basis for The
Comprehensive List of Antisemitic Celebrities. The freedom of being able to
say what a journalist cannot. As a blogger, I don’t have to pussy-foot around a
topic and stay within narrow journalistic confines. I can say more about a
subject, more about antisemitism. I can say what I think. I can go out on a
limb and say, “This too, is antisemitism.”
A List Was
Born
I
had wished for a reference like my list for a long time and when I mentioned it
to others, they said that they too, would like to have such a list. The idea percolated
for at least a couple of years. I was afraid that it would be a herculean task;
that making such a list would be biting off more than I could chew.
But
a couple of weeks ago, I decided to research the topic and see where it went. I
started with the most recent news piece, the now-infamous Chelsea Handler
Instagram post of Farrakhan speaking about racism that so many of her celebrity
buddies liked. The Instagram post is gone, and Handler has apologized.
A
journalist would have reported only the facts of the incident, without labeling
the behavior of Handler and the others. But a blogger is allowed to express an
opinion. And in my opinion, Handler, and all the meek little celebrities who
liked her post, aligned themselves with a known antisemite. As supposedly “woke”
people, I deemed it appropriate to include their names in my list.
Levick
says we should be careful about what we label antisemitism. That we shouldn’t
throw slings and arrows at people and media outlets, but at their behavior. Because
we don’t want to mimic the current cancel culture zeitgeist in which a
misbehaving celebrity loses his/her job and is shunned within both professional
and personal spheres based on spurious charges and slander.
IHRA Is
Subjective
It
makes sense. But as a blogger, and possibly even as a journalist, it’s my right
to say that the IHRA definition is subject to interpretation. This is perhaps
why IHRA saw fit to follow the definition with a list of examples covered by
the definition. The examples are prefaced by this introductory text (emphasis
mine):
“Contemporary
examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and
in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context,
include, but are not limitedto:”
In
other words, the contemporary examples of antisemitism listed on IHRA’s own
page are not comprehensive, not final. The page suggests that we may have to
always be watching things to see if what we see is or isn’t antisemitism
according to the IHRA definition. And that leaves the process in the public’s
hands, to some degree. Which makes the process of determining what does and
doesn’t fit IHRA, at least somewhat subjective.
Strictest
Sense
Now,
as a journalist, I would have to interpret behavior as antisemitic only
according to the strictest, most narrow sense of the IHRA definition. I would
have to give benefit of the doubt and try to think if there’s something in the
behavior that I can use as an out, a way to say “This is not necessarily
antisemitic,” before casting aspersions.
And
as a media consumer, I wouldn’t want it any other way. Don’t interpret my news.
Let me read the facts and decide on my own.
But
as a blogger, I can go broader. I can go all Potter Stewart
and say I know antisemitism when I see it. And my readers expect that of me, as
long as I make my case. I can say “This
is what happened. I think it fits the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Here’s
why.”
As
long as I’m using the IHRA definition as my guide, I’m within my rights to
expand on the examples given on the IHRA page, to interpret behavior according
to my understanding of the IHRA definition. Which is why, as a blogger, I can
say more about antisemitism.
Labeling
Behavior, Not People
In
terms of pointing out antisemitic behavior, rather than naming and shaming, I
see Levick’s point. It’s Parenting 101. You don’t label the kid. You say the
behavior is bad. You don’t say, “Bad boy!” but “It is bad to throw your food on
the floor.”
But
I think this misses the point of my list. “The Comprehensive List of Antisemitic
Celebrities” is not meant to name and shame celebrities, but to offer
information to the reader. It’s my way of saying, “Here’s something you may
want to know about. If this is interesting or useful, fine. If not, next week
I’m writing about squirrels sovereignty.”
In
cancel culture, a call to action goes out. Fire him/her. Boycott this/that.
Protest. Loot a store. But there was no call to action in the “comprehensive
list.” I didn’t tell the reader what to do with the information or whether to
do anything at all. That is the reader’s own business. Which is very different
than the #metoo hashtag campaigns or the aggressive tactics of, for instance,
BDS or BLM.
The
fact is, the “Comprehensive List” includes no instructions on how my readers
should relate to the information it contains. I didn’t suggest a boycott of
Handler, Aniston, Portman, or Silverman. I suggested no action at all. I didn’t
even mention how I personally intend to use this information, if at all. It’s
just something to know.
Follow Your
Conscience
A
person’s private behavior is their own matter. When I found out Alice Walker
was an antisemite, for instance, I decided never to give her royalties, again.
That I would not watch “The Color Purple” or read the book. But I never
suggested to anyone that they should follow suit.
The
same is true of how I see a certain unnamed media outlet. Once I decide a
particular outlet is anti-Israel, I don’t write for them. I don’t read their
articles, but always look for an alternative source for the information. But that
doesn’t mean others must do the same. My advice? Follow your conscience.
Blogging
is da bomb. I can say that because I have done lots of writing in my time. All
kinds of writing. Straight news pieces, blogs, marketing content, op-eds,
classroom resources, and more. But I am content in my spare time to blog.
Because only in a blog can I share the truth that is in my heart.
It’s Something—Take
Note!
It’s
where I can go beyond the strictest, most narrow sense of a definition to say:
“There’s something here, something a journalist might not want to touch. But it’s
something, so take note!”
That
is the freedom that comes with being a blogger. I can say what a journalist
cannot. But what you do with the information is your own business.
Believe
it. Don’t believe it. Agree or disagree.
It's completely up to you.
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.
Israeli occupation forces cut the electricity to 13 villages, in addition to eight Palestinian communities in the Jenin Governorate for a period of three hours, threatening to escalate the cutting of electricity, if these municipalities do not deal with the [Israeli] "Civil Administration" directly.
The Chairman of the Electricity Authority Yabad, Engineer Muhammad Adnan Abu Bakr, said: "The Israeli occupation forces cut off the electricity for three hours today in a warning signal, knowing that the Yabad Electricity Authority, which was established in 2012, is supplying 13 villages in addition to eight Palestinian communities in Jenin Governorate. And its population is more than 55,000Palestinian citizens. "
Abu Bakr added, “We paid the last three months of bills, which amounted to more than 2,400,000 shekels, to the Palestinian Ministry of Finance duly, because they cut off security coordination with the occupation, it seems that the money did not transfer and the Israeli government did not make a monthly clearance and deducted the amounts from the authority.”
Abu Bakr added, "The officers of the Israeli Civil Administration tried to communicate with the councils and municipalities in Jenin, to deal directly with them, but everyone refused to communicate and informed the occupation officers that the only address is Palestinian legitimacy and the Palestinian National Authority.”
Who needs electricity when you have a bizarre sense of pride that prioritizes your principles of not dealing with Jews above everything else?
Bareli explains that the Jewish acceptance of the political partition of British Mandate Palestine demonstrates that they rejected both “exploitation” and “dispossession” of Palestinian Arabs. He notes: “Twice, in 1937 and in 1947, Jews agreed in principle to proposals of a political partition into two states; in 1946-47 they even made substantial diplomatic efforts on behalf of partition — that is, on behalf of living side by side, not one on top of the other (exploitation), and not one in place of the other (dispossession).”
However, because the Arabs rejected these offers and attempted to expel the Jews from the land, a war broke out. Bareli further explains what really happened in 1947 and 1948: “The war broke out because the Palestinian Arabs rejected the principle of living side by side, even though it had been endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly, and sought to expel the Jewish immigrants from the country. When the Arabs’ attempts to expel them were frustrated, at the end of the war the Jews were no longer willing to return to the demographic and geographic conditions that had exposed them to mortal peril in late 1947.”
Those anti-Israel activists associated with the Black Lives Matter movement and other far-left dogmatists fail to understand and explain the causes of the return of the Jewish people to their ancient land; the development by the Jewish people of a modern national movement; and the Jewish emigration, investment, and settlement in Israel. And the reason for this failure is, as Bareli notes, because the goal of the “Colonialist School” attempting to call Israel “a colonialist entity” is not an understanding of the historical processes, but a puritanical judgment that frustrates such understanding.
Referring to Zionism as a “colonialist” movement and Israel as a “settler-colonialist” entity by failing to understand the causes and roots of Zionism has become a misleading but quite popular trend in the West.
Zionists and Jewish citizens of Israel are not colonists, and this has nothing to do with their skin color. It has everything to do with the causes, roots, and historical processes of Zionism. However, those who hold the false view that Zionism is colonialist do not entertain even the slightest interest in understanding the basics of Zionism.
Join me next Thu. July 16 for a Zoom Webinar with professor @EVKontorovich about Israel’s potential extension of legal sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria.
Nothing better illustrates Thomas Mann's famous statement that "everything is politics" than the response of opposing ideological camps to the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
This makes sense. The global COVID-19 crisis affects two fundamental aspects of the human condition. Yes, health and finances affect us all and are a source of obsession for many. It is no wonder then that the first fights surrounding the spread of the highly contagious disease – a novel strain of an existing virus – centered on its point of origin.
Indeed, no sooner had the world begun to grasp that the microbe – initially pooh-poohed by skeptics as merely another type of flu – was stumping doctors and epidemiologists alike, than the battle about blaming China entered the debate. The question of whether it came from bats sold in wet markets or was manufactured in the laboratories of Beijing seemed to override discussions of symptoms and cures.
Another related topic of heated conversation focused on the legitimacy of closing borders to prevent carriers from country-hopping.
Then came the disagreement over the efficacy of lockdowns where containing the virus was concerned, with some leaders opposing them not only for economic reasons, but out of a belief that closures would hinder the creation of herd immunity. When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had been one such head of state, not only contracted the virus but nearly died from it, he changed course and imposed stricter measures on the United Kingdom.
Sweden, which boasted a "keeping everything open" policy – and letting the elderly quarantine themselves if they wanted to – ended up with the highest death rate in Europe and little herd immunity to speak of.
Early on, Israel barred incoming tourism, forced most of the populace to barricade itself indoors, recommended avoiding physical contact between family members not sharing a residence, and even prohibited people from straying more than 100 meters (328 feet) from their homes. It wound up flattening the curve in May, when it reopened most of the economy. Today, with a surge in COVID-19-related morbidity, the powers-that-be in Jerusalem are backtracking by re-shuttering establishments that lend themselves to overcrowding.
None of the above has served to settle the dispute that continues to rage in parliaments, Cabinets and Congress, or among pundits on the op-ed pages of newspapers and experts presenting contradictory data over the airwaves. If anything, the cacophony proves that conclusions will not be reached until the plague passes or after a vaccine is approved, whichever comes first. Or both together, perhaps.
The Jewish Left has often accused members of the Right of engaging in antisemitic dogwhistles. A number of Trump campaign ads were specifically called out as highlighting Jews while saying codewords like “global special interests” and “large corporations.”
Perhaps the most famous recent example from the Left was the London mural of global financiers named Freedom for Humanity that Jeremy Corbyn praised before changing his mind:
I am more reluctant to call either of these antisemitic. Conspiracy theories, sure, but I think the bar needs to be higher for something to be considered unambiguously antisemitic; the mural included four non-Jewish men along with two Jews although it admittedly played on Masonic and Jewish caricature tropes.
Either way, though, if those two examples are considered to be antisemitic, then this graphic made by J-Street certainly is as well:
The President of the United States, appearing somewhat confused, looks up from a position of subservience for advice from not one but four Jews who can tell him what he should do.
It is hard to say that this isn’t evocative of an Elders of Zion-level conspiracy theory of Jews controlling America.
The graphic is designed in a way to hide what the photo was about – President Trump giving Netanyahu the pen with which he just signed the declaration of recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan.
I just saw a “d’var Torah” (using the phrase very loosely) by Rabbi Andy Kahn, an assistant rabbi at the venerable Reform Temple Emanu-El in New York, about supposed Jewish white supremacy.
In a recent article in Ha’Aretz, April Aviva Baskin, a Black Jewish communal leader, reflected on the way that contemporarily White Jews have internalized American systemic white supremacy.
According to Baskin, somewhere in the process of fleeing antisemitism in Eastern Europe and assimilating in the United States, the country’s history of white supremacy and racism “got woven into the fabric of the American Jewish community – not necessarily intentionally, but by joining that status quo and trying to protect themselves.”
The questions White Jews increasingly need to ask themselves, she says, are: “What was the price your family paid to get conditional access to Whiteness? Was it changing your name?...Was it moving the mezuzah inside the house door? Those are options. Black people don’t have those options.”
…
According to Mark Dollinger in Black Power, Jewish Politics, his history of the Black-Jewish alliance,“By the 1950s, American Jews enjoyed the privileges of inclusion in the White middle class. Even as they boasted a disproportionate presence in liberal reform, Jews had already separated themselves from blacks, both physically and sociologically. Restrictive housing covenants eased...Quota restrictions...all but ended.”
So, at the same time Black people were fighting for civil rights in the 60s, (with White Jews disproportionately present in support), White Jews had overwhelmingly assimilated into White America. This is where our moment of change comes in. The Israelites in our Torah believed the next step towards the promised land was too much for them, and they bemoaned their sense of powerlessness. It cost them their dream, and deferred it an entire generation.
We too have a challenge before us today, as our Black neighbors struggle once again for equality. We, who feel we only so recently gained access to this equality, fear that by standing up to systemic racism we may lose what we gained through assimilating. Our own assimilation is a tricky issue for us. We have sought to blend in with our neighbors just enough while still trying to maintain distinctive Jewishness. April Baskin’s questions show us, though, that this striving in and of itself was a way of entering into the institutions of our country that are steeped in systemic racism and white supremacy. Have we, in the pursuit of our own equality, internalized Whiteness as supreme? Each step along the way we adapted ourselves in order to fit into these systems, but, as April Baskin asks, at what cost?
Kahn is speaking to a Reform Jewish audience about how they, alas, are unwittingly white supremacists – because their parents and grandparents decided that they needed to survive in America by casting off the Jewish religion and trying to assimilate into the “white” American culture.
There are a number of problems with this. Defining America as white is a fundamentally racist premise. There is a big distinction between the American dream of working hard to succeed and being “white.” If Jews who are now accepted in American society as equals are “white”, then so are many Asian Americans, so is Barack Obama, so is Condoleeza Rice, so is Oprah Winfrey. If Jews succeeding in the business world is an expression of white supremacy, then It means that Jackie Robinson is not a hero but a traitor to the black race by trying to make it in a white man’s baseball world. If the premise that there is no difference between American society and white supremacy is true, then one must view America as a nation without jazz or the blues. The people of all colors who have succeeded in America are the ones that have changed America from a racist country into a true melting pot, they are not white supremacists.
Pointing out and fighting racism is a necessity, and the battle is far from over, but to say that succeeding in America is akin adopting white supremacy is a false and ultimately racist viewpoint. The concept of what it means to be an American has changed over the years precisely because of hardworking outsiders succeeding in America. That is the American dream, and to demean those people of all colors as somehow trying to be white is bigotry and slander.
Unfortunately, many American Jews chose to succeed by abandoning their Jewishness rather than having pride in it. These are the Jews – from within the Reform movement and who didn’t even identify with that – who decided that being Jewish has nothing to do with Jewish faith or practice; instead Judasim is “social justice.” As documented by Jonathan Neumann, since the 19th century the Reform movement has adopted social justice as its main tenet as it abandoned Jewish law and customs. In recent decades this became known as “tikkun olam.”
Tikkun olam has very little to do with Judaism. It is an attempt to put a Jewish label on a socialist political philosophy. In other words, it is how Jews are attempting to assimilate into the larger gentile society by showing that Jews are just like the socialist gentiles – people who are overwhelmingly white.
By Kahn’s definition, the Jews who are guiltiest of white supremacism are his kind of Jews.
Kahn himself wrote a bizarre article for the Reform movement’s scholarly journal entitled “The Present and Future of Reform Aesthetics and Identity: Performadoxy and Emergent Custom.” He argues that Reform Jews who do Jewish customs are hurting the movement:
Performadoxy is the mode of behavior by which individuals who opt in to Jewish practice without a sense of being bound by halachah pick those forms that visibly set them apart from, and above, their peers in a competition of piety. Most often through dress, kashrut, and Shabbat observance, individuals choose modes of practice that allow them to set the tone for a room or community based on their level of stricture. It is common practice to capitulate to the “frummest common denominator” in elite Jewish spaces, or to behaviorally genuflect to those who most rigidly and outwardly enact their Performadoxy. By and large, Performadoxy is practiced by those few highly active Reform Jews who tend to end up in the professional Jewish world, while those less affiliated Jews, the overabundant majority, tend to veer away from spaces in which Performadoxy holds sway. This trend is, then, leading to professional leadership with increasingly less in common with those who they seek to lead, alienating the base of individuals who could otherwise be engaged laypeople.
Yes, he is arguing that the Jews who want nothing to do with Judaism would be “engaged laypeople” in Reform Judaism if only the Reform leaders would stop doing anything identifiably Jewish.
He further insults Reform Jews who choose to adopt Jewish customs as aping the hated Orthodox:
As ethnic, religious, and national Judaism crumble under secularization and postmodernity, those seeking a new foundation for Jewish identity turn to Orthodoxy’s ready-made stable, simple, and clear narrative both to crib notes and as inspiration for novel aesthetic. Beginning with the defensive argument that “we, too, are authentically Jewish,” Reform leaders striving for a sense of decolonization are instead performing the colonization of Orthodoxy’s realm. This is a self-defeating path. The inherent elitism rooted in a reliance on expensive and time-consuming Jewish education, a problem oft discussed in Orthodox circles, and its proclamation of a divine or miraculous understanding (with or without a wink) of Jewish text and the State of Israel are unappealing to the majority of self-identified but unengaged Jews who tend towards skepticism of anything appearing as organized religion. Further, Performadoxy rooted in the “frummest common denominator” implicitly sets up a spectral dichotomy between Reform and Orthodoxy, granting rich authenticity to Orthodoxy and vapid hollowness to Reform. Rather than buttressing Reform Judaism, Performadoxy disconnects today’s Reform world from the lineage and richness of its foundations as it struggles to find footing in the difficult post- modern cultural climate.
In English, he’s saying that Reform Judaism has nothing Jewish about it, and those who try to remain attached to the religion by adopting customs that Jews have done for thousands of years are abandoning Reform’s rich history – of rejecting Jewish faith and practice and choosing to assimilate instead.
Not only that, but according to Kahn, Reform Judaism shouldn’t lead Jews – it should follow the ones who have the least interest in the religion and take its cues from them:
In BT B’rachot 45a, there is a disagreement as to the proper blessing to be said over water. As a way of settling the dispute, the resolving rabbi responded, “Go out and see what the people are doing.” The Reform Movement began in this way—looking to see what the masses of Jews were doing as a response to civic emancipation. Today in America we have become triply emancipated––that is, not only have we gained political and economic equality, we also have social equality. …Instead of longing for a time that has passed or pushing the masses to capitulate to Performadoxy, clergy and Jewish leaders must go out and see what the people are doing. We must identify their emergent customs and provide both new Jewish forms for old ceremonies and old Jewish forms for new ceremonies. Reforming must not be a top-down process. Jewish leaders must take the emergent customs of the unengaged and mold them into new practices, using our knowledge and authority as tools for co-creation rather than dictation.
Without quite realizing it, Kahn is advocating that Jews do exactly what he decries as “white supremacism” – to assimilate as fully as possible and keeping Judaism to a minimum that leaves people comfortable as Americans. If they want to celebrate Easter, Reform will ensure they paint Jewish stars on the eggs. And somehow, he thinks, these assimilated Jews will respect Reform leaders who will put a kosher stamp on whatever they are doing.
But here’s the real contradiction between Kahn’s two essays.
If the Left defines white supremacy as assimilation into American society, then the obvious solution is to distinguish yourself from other Americans and be proud of who you are. For Jews, this means embracing Judaism – not tikkun olam, but Judaism – returning to the faith and customs of our forefathers and not apologizing for it. It means showing full throated support for having a distinctly Jewish state and showing support for the Jews who proudly identify with it.
But that obvious solution to this supposed white supremacism of assimilated Jews is completely unacceptable to “rabbis” who worship Marx more than God.
The Jewish socialist Left is very happy to promote Black pride and gay pride and Latinx pride – but they are actively against Jewish pride. They are the ones embarrassed by their fellow Jews, ashamed to be associated with people who act too “Jewy,” uncomfortable with Jews who actually believe in God, and disgusted by Jews who want to support and strengthen Israel. If they hate traditional Judaism and proud Jews so much, they aren’t much different from antisemites.
Kahn’s premise that assimilation is white supremacism is not only wrong but racist. Yet he endorses assimilation himself and actively rejects anything that makes Jews Jewish. He is an object lesson in what is wrong with Jews who prioritize socialism and “social justice” over their own religion.
I just stumbled upon this article by Aaron David Miller, one of those experts we hear a lot about.
Miller’s foreseen problems are a little scattershot.
He confidently predicted that it would make Saudi Arabia unlikely to support the Trump peace plan. Yet Saudi Arabia attended the Bahrain economic summit which was the first part of Trump’s plan – only three months later.
Miller says that annexation of the Golan makes peace with Syria less likely. I’m not sure what is less likely than impossible, but sure.
And finally Miller says that the Golan recognition would make it less likely that the Deal of the Century would be accepted. I think we can confidently say that this was not at all a factor.
The most interesting thing about the Golan is that is was a real annexation that Israel did in 1981. The world didn’t end, no one is saying that the Golan Arabs are living in “apartheid,” and if anything the US recognition could make them comfortable enough to not be nervous that they would be bargained back to Syria where they could be imprisoned or executed as Israeli spies.
Aaron David Miller might be very knowledgeable, but knowledge does not translate to wisdom – or the ability to predict what would happen in the future.
Just as the entire world is predicting the terrible things that would happen if Israel extends its laws to parts of Judea and Samaria. All they have to do it look at the Golan, because that is the best analogy to what would happen in the territories.
Twenty years ago, on July 3, 2000, an incident occurred along the Lebanese border with Israel that, at the time, seemed both bizarre and, in the broad span of things, unimportant. But with the hindsight of 20 years, it was a seminal moment and a harbinger for the mob violence now taking place in many parts of America.
That day, Columbia University professor Edward Said was photographed on the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese side of border with Israel throwing a rock at an Israel Defense Forces watchtower 30 feet away.
Said, who passed away in 2003, was no mere professor. He was the superstar of far-Left intellectuals. Even better, he was at once both a professor and a member of a terrorist organization. Said served not only as an academic, but as a member of the Palestine National Council, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terror group's formal governing apparatus.
Still, his action was strange. The PLO had ostensibly forsworn terrorism seven years earlier, when it embarked on a peace process with Israel. True, since then, Palestinian terrorism had risen to unprecedented heights, with more Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists between 1993 and 2000 than had been killed over the previous 15 years. But Said himself insisted that he was a man of peace. So why did he choose to get photographed throwing a rock at Israeli soldiers protecting their border?
To understand his action, it is necessary to understand Said's intellectual record.
Although his field of expertise was comparative literature, Said became a celebrity intellectual for a work that had nothing to do with comparative literature.
In 1978, Said published Orientalism, a polemical analysis of Western study of the Arab and Islamic worlds. Said's work, which became the canonical text of postcolonial studies in the American academy, was a repudiation of all Western scholarship on the Islamic world—and, more broadly, a repudiation of the capacity of Western academics to study other regions and peoples of the world.
In Orientalism, Said characterized all Western—and particularly American—scholarship on the Arab and Islamic worlds as one big conspiracy theory. As Middle East scholar Martin Kramer explained in his 2001 work, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, Said said that Western scholarship on the Arab and Islamic worlds amounted to an expression of white supremacy, "articulated in the West to justify its dominion over the East."
Trump wasn’t stoking a culture war or exploiting social divisions. He was instead responding to the culture war now being waged upon core American and western values of freedom of expression and the rule of law, and declaring that he would not allow it to succeed.
“One of their political weapons is cancel culture, driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and to our values and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.
“This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty must be stopped and it will be stopped very quickly. We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children from this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life. In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us.”
Right from the start of Trump’s presidency I have expressed concerns about aspects of his character: his narcissism and thin skin, his volatility, his short attention span, his transactionalism, his occasional lapses into believing in fantasies, his Twitterhoea. And his leadership during the coronavirus crisis – or rather, the lack of it – has been lamentable.
Yet despite all that, I still believe as I did in November 2016 that if he were to lose the presidential election to the Democratic party, America and the west would be lost. The slim chance of their surviving this great crisis for civilisation would be snuffed out altogether if the morally bankrupt and venomously west-bashing left were to come to power in America. I also thought the west was now in such disarray, and the political and cultural establishment was so uniformly bankrupt, that it was only an individual defying conventional rules of behaviour who – paradoxically – would stand any chance of restoring America’s centre of moral and political gravity. And I believe all that even more strongly now.
I did a video interview with Gadi Taub, a historian at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.
We talked about my novel, The Legacy, and its themes of antisemitism, fractured Jewish diaspora identity and the pull of history, as well as my political and personal memoir, Guardian Angel. Then we talked about the journey I describe in that memoir, “from leftism to sanity” as it’s put on the cover or, as I prefer to style it, from fantasy to realism. We also talked about the reality-denying transformation of Israel in the western mind from victim to victimiser, and the malign processes which had brought this about.
I took part remotely in a discussion held in London by the New Culture Forum to discuss their new book, “The Long March: How the Left Won the Culture War and What To Do About It.” The first part of the title refers to the “long march through the institutions”, the strategy of achieving revolutionary change by infiltrating subversive ideas into all the cultural institutions of society and thus transforming it from within.
As chairman Peter Whittle observed, however, it’s the latter part of the title that’s the most important and difficult bit. The long march has succeeded in Britain to the letter. The great question is whether it can be reversed and if so, how.
Other participants in the discussion were the book’s author, Marc Sidwell, and historian Ralph Heydell-Mankoo. You can buy the book or download a pdf at the NCF website here.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Yesterday Israel preempted a potentially disastrous attack by Hezbollah on
the center of the country. Thirty minutes before launch time, our aircraft
destr...
Yom Hashoah 5784 – 2024
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Israel’s Yom Hashoah began at sundown this evening with the annual ceremony
at Yad Vashem with torches lit in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of
the...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
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With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
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Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Thursday, July 09, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
Rome, July 9 - Leaders of the world's largest Christian denomination have commissioned a study to determine whether the body's ages-old ambition to convince adherents of the Mosaic faith to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God and as their savior from Original Sin might meet more success with Jesus not in the role of the divine incarnate - a notion anathema to longstanding Hebraic sensibilities - but in a form of proven palatability to prominent, if not large, swaths of progressive Jews: opposition to Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland.
