Yair Rosenberg: How to Learn About Jews From Jews, Rather Than the People Who Hate Them
Jews make up 2 percent of the American population, and just 0.2 percent of the world population. In practice, this means that most people have never met one. What the average person knows of Jews, they know from received cultural stereotypes, television, and the internet. The consequences of this are regularly evident in our public discourse, where ignorant and ill-intentioned ideas about Jews abound. That’s why this newsletter has spent the last three weeks covering anti-Semitism—from the Ivy League to Kanye West—and could easily continue doing so this week. But focusing on the negative ways that outsiders misrepresent Jews has the unfortunate effect of shrinking the Jewish experience to the hampered horizons of their haters. In actuality, Jews are a proud and diverse people who have thrived for millennia, and whose collective experience is far richer than simply surviving oppression. When we view Jewish existence through the lens of anti-Jewish prejudice, we lose the very elements of it that have enabled the tradition to repeatedly overcome efforts to stifle it.Anne Bayefsky: The UN gives a master class in anti-Semitism
So this week, instead of responding to the latest anti-Jewish outrage, I want to offer an eclectic introduction to Jews and Judaism through writings, art, and culture produced by Jews themselves. Of course, there is absolutely no way to reasonably reduce such a vast corpus into a single set of selections. My 10 brief recommendations here are meant to be suggestive, rather than comprehensive. You won’t find any “Intro to Judaism” books or yet another Holocaust movie, because you don’t need me to find those. Instead, my hope is to crack open a wider window into the Jewish experience than one can get through a cursory Google or Wikipedia search, and to introduce you to some of the texts and textures of Jewish life—a panoramic approach to a perennial people.
There are literally thousands of other things I could have included. If you’re Jewish, I’d love to hear from you about what would make your list. And if you’re not, I’d love to know what you’re curious about. Please send those ideas to deepshtetl@theatlantic.com, and hopefully we’ll dive into them in a future edition. Consider this the start of the conversation, not the end.
Not mentioned: Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks, suicide bombings, incendiary kites, pipe bombs, small arms fire, arson, vehicular attacks, assaults, grenades, IEDs, sniper fire, anti-tank fire, anti-aircraft fire, kidnappings, stabbings, rape, torture, stoning and beheading.Pro-Israel advocates decry ‘one-sided’ apartheid panel at New York law conference
In the only other throw-away line on Jewish victims, the report refers to the years 2000 to 2007 this way: “the Commission acknowledges the significant detrimental impact of armed attacks and security incidents.” “Detrimental impact” was how they described the Jews blown apart in the Palestinian suicide-bombing reign of terror. Not as a human rights violation.
The report ends with conclusions and recommendations that take the assault on human decency to the next level.
The inquisitors advocate that Israelis be hunted down, prosecuted and jailed for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC)—for the Nazi-like crimes of “persecution” and the “transfer of populations” (knowing full well that the latter meant transfer to the death camps).
On the other hand, they couldn’t name a single Palestinian crime worth prosecuting.
The list of recommendations is directed only at “the Government of Israel,” the ICC prosecutor, and various U.N. bodies and member states. And not one recommendation is made to Palestinian authorities.
And last but not least, Americans should be under no illusions that they are safe from this toxic international pogrom.
The report demands that the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s “World Court,” be instrumentalized to manufacture duties “of third states” to chase after alleged criminal Israelis.
The final paragraph of this masterpiece of modern anti-Semitism announces just how far the spider is now casting the web. In kitchen-sink legalese, the inquiry demands that U.N. member states start “investigating and prosecuting persons suspected of committing or otherwise aiding and abetting or assisting in the commission or attempted commission of crimes.”
What crimes? Crimes in the eyes of the very men and women committing, aiding, abetting and assisting the criminal enterprise of destroying the Jewish state and decimating its inhabitants.
Pro-Israel advocates have decried a panel on apartheid law at a legal conference in New York this weekend as a “one-sided” assault against the Jewish state.
Saturday’s panel at the International Law Weekend conference, titled “Racism and the crime of apartheid in international law,” features several strident critics of Israel.
The talk is part of the American Branch of the International Law Association’s annual meeting at New York City’s Fordham University.
Among the panelists is Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch. Shakir and his organization have been vocal critics of Israel, and he was deported in 2019 for his alleged support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement.
Close to 100 Jewish professionals and community leaders sent a letter to two prominent law firms sponsoring the conference urging them to withdraw from the event.
The apartheid law event “is slated to present a sharply one-sided, anti-Israel panel,” said the letter sent Thursday, while urging the firms to “separate your institutions from the egregiously biased event.”
“The panel was never intended to be a serious exploration of an unsettled area of law but was designed as an occasion to demonize the Jewish state,” added the letter, which was spearheaded by the advocacy group CAMERA.
The American Branch of the International Law Association, or ABILA, highlighted “the Israeli authorities’ systematic oppression of Palestinians” in an initial description of the event, along with Myanmar’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims and China’s persecution of the Uyghurs.
After ABILA came under criticism, the text was revised and all three references were removed. For balance, the group also added a speaker to the panel who is supportive of Israel, though the other four panelists have accused the country of apartheid or systematic oppression.
“It’s an insult to the intelligence of the public to suggest this late-hour change has created any semblance of balance,” the letter to the law firms said.