So antisemites in 1920s North America referred to their Jewish friends, who were much better than the other, disgusting Jews, as "white Jews."
The term is used by antisemites today, too - just they consider "white Jews" to be the bad ones.
Dismantling the Villa in the Jungle: Matzpen, Zochrot, and the Whitening of Israel
Johannes Becke
Abstract
As a contribution to the debate over Zionism and Jewish whiteness, this essay establishes a typological framework that analyzes the history and politics of Israel’s self-whitening. The typology argues the Zionist emphasis on self-westernization has resulted in three modes of Ashkenazi-Israeli whitening: while colonial whitening describes the acquisition of whiteness by means of conquest, anticolonial whitening consists in the self-critique as colonial settlers, a process of acquiring whiteness by denouncing it. In contrast, postcolonial whitening shifts its emphasis to the politics of memory and atonement, a form of becoming white by means of white guilt. In order to explore the continuities and ruptures throughout the process of Israel’s whitening, the analysis focuses on both Zionism and Anti-Zionism, with a special emphasis on the two left-wing organizations Matzpen and Zochrot. Based on the typological framework, the essay argues all three forms of Ashkenazi-Israeli whitening might best be compared to what Edward Kamau Brathwaite describes as “bastard metropolitanism,” the long-distance Eurocentrism and denial of Creolization which characterizes the elite culture of postcolonial societies.
Keywords:Ashkenazi-Israeli whitening, jewish whiteness, matzpen, Zionism, zochrotThe actual paper shows an obsession both from this author and from those he quotes to ascribe "whiteness" to Jews, or mostly to Ashkenazic Jews.
While American Jews became white by suburbanization, Israeli Jews did so by colonization (Brodkin 1998; Goldstein 2006; Sicher 2013). In both cases, the crossing of the colour line coincided with the crossing of geographic boundaries. Like other “ethnic” immigrants from Europe (especially Italian and Irish Catholics), American Jews became white by leaving the inner cities in a process described by Painter as the “third enlargement of American whiteness” (2010, 359). In contrast, European Jews transformed from an “Orientalisches Fremdlingsvolk (a foreign Asiatic people)” (Reinharz and Shavit 2010, 136) into a “white settler community in Palestine” (Owen 2000, 19) by crossing the Mediterranean. Throughout this process of whitening, racialized discourse on Jewish otherness switched into reverse. As long as Jews represented the “internal Orient” (Rohde 2005) of Europe, their Orientalization went hand in hand with speculations about their Middle Eastern descent.1 Once Israeli Jews came to represent the “internal Occident” of the Middle East, their Occidentalization was increasingly expressed in the form of speculations about their whiteness, since (to quote Joseph Massad) “they look like other Europeans,… they speak European languages” (Massad and Morris 2006, 163).So what are Mizrahi Jews? If they are colonialists, they are white, if they are oppressed by whitened Jews, they are black.
Both US Jews and Israeli Jews gained a certain sense of whiteness as part of the boundary expansion of European colonialism, a process in which ever expanding geographic boundaries coincided with shifting notions of racialized discourse.It is obvious throughout the paper that "white=evil" and "black=good." "White" represents colonialism and racism, but only for Jews as alleged European proxies. Arab colonialism is never described in academia as "whitening."
The binary classification of human beings into “black” and “white” seems woefully ill-equipped to capture the multi-ethnic reality of Jewish peoplehood (Azoulay 2001). Given its origins in the pseudo-science of racial theory, the dichotomy could easily be dismissed as too unscholarly, too Eurocentric, and too recent to illustrate the formation of Jewish-Israeli identity. The categorization as “white,” for instance, would have made little sense to earlier generations of Zionists and Arab nationalists: both had been influenced by the complex racial theories of nineteenth-century Europe, which understood Jews and Arabs as too closely related to stand on different sides of the racial divide of “whiteness.”This is academically approved racism. The author admits that there is no scientific distinction between "white" and "black" Jews or Arabs, but there have already been so many papers written that embrace that distinction, so we might as well embrace it.
However, since the discourse on Ashkenazi-Jewish whiteness has come to structure core elements of the Arab–Israeli conflict and Israeli identity [by idiot academics but not by the parties themselves - EoZ] , the process of Israel’s (self-)whitening deserves to be studied from a historical perspective (Sasson-Levy 2013). Whiteness has become a crucial category for the self-understanding of the “white sabra” (Benvenisti 2012),5 the distinction between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews as “white Jews” and “black Jews” (Chetrit 2010) as well as the Arab nationalist understanding of Zionism as a form of settler colonialism by people who “look like other Europeans” (Massad and Morris 2006, 163). The terminology of “whitening” and “self-whitening” deployed here already indicates the fluid, socially constructed, and ultimately contingent nature of racialized discourse (Tessman 2001). Even for a trained observer, it might be hard to distinguish Jews from Arabs and Ashkenazi Israelis from Mizrahi (or Middle Eastern Jewish) Israelis on the streets of Jerusalem.
The colonial whitening of Zionist Orientalism transformed Jewish immigrants in the Land of Israel/Palestine into cultured Europeans, eager to liberate the Middle East (and themselves) from the “Orient.” In contrast, the anticolonial whitening of anti-Zionist Occidentalism turned a handful of New Left activists into “white revolutionaries” who would bring down their Zionist settler-state in order to ensure the survival of their community in a non-Zionist non-state. While both cultural formations still breathed the colonial vitalism of white (or maybe whitish) supremacy, the postcolonial whitening of Zochrot (or rather its elaborate staging of pseudo-postcoloniality) might be interpreted as the reflection of an increasingly post-western world order and a post-western Israel, in which the declining appeal of whiteness can only be savoured in the bitter-sweet aftertaste of white guilt.Note that the German author finds these uber-Leftist Jews to be just as distastefully "white" as other Jews.
Instead of acknowledging their responsibility for failing to combat the drug trafficking, the leaders of Hamas have been trying to blame everyone but themselves.... These leaders are trying hard to convince Palestinians that Israel and Hamas's rivals in the Palestinian Fatah faction, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, are responsible for flooding the Gaza Strip with illegal drugs.
The Palestinians' attempt to establish a connection between Israel and illegal drugs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is no less dangerous than their terrorist attacks against Israel. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas are sending the following message to their people: The Jews are conspiring to destroy Palestinians by delivering illegal drugs to our communities. Therefore, we need to fight these Jews to prevent them from achieving
The Palestinians have never provided a shred of evidence to corroborate this false accusation against Israel. Why should they allow the truth to get in the way of a good story? Palestinian leaders are experts when it comes to blaming Israel and Jews, instead of the real sources, for all the miseries of their people.
Palestinian leaders are also unlikely to denounce the criminals and terrorists who planted the narcotics in the shampoo and cream bottles of ill women before they traveled for medical treatment in Egypt. Instead, Palestinian leaders will continue to incite their people against Israel and Jews, spreading blood libels of every sort at every turn. In that way, Palestinians will continue to hunt down Jews -- whether they are behind trees and rocks or in plain sight.
‘I had a call today with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the possibility of moving forward with a Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Israel, that would further anchor the tremendous alliance between our two countries,” US President Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday. “I look forward to continuing those discussions after the Israeli Elections when we meet at the United Nations later this month!”We thank you, Jason Greenblatt
Netanyahu thanked Trump in a subsequent tweet: “The Jewish State has never had a greater friend in the White House... We will continue full steam ahead with our common battle against terrorism.”
In Hebrew, Netanyahu tweeted: “On Friday, I received support from President Trump, and [Blue and White chairman] Benny Gantz received support from [talk show hosts] Ophira and Berko.”
Thus a treaty between Israel and its greatest ally, the US, was reduced to an election campaign gimmick.
A mutual defense treaty between Israel and US would be a major development – whether good or bad remains to be seen.
The benefits of such a treaty seem obvious. It codifies American support for Israeli defense. The US has generally had our backs in times of trouble, but this would mean an official commitment on paper, that if Israel were under attack, the US would be there to help us, perhaps even with troops on the ground, something that has never happened before.
However, there are quite a few downsides to the treaty. Netanyahu himself opposed it in the 1990s, when then-prime minister Shimon Peres pursued it. On his first visit to Washington as prime minister in July 1996, Netanyahu argued that he would not even consider a treaty that could limit Israel’s military independence. His defense minister, Itzik Mordechai, similarly said that the cost of a defense treaty could be greater than its usefulness to Israel. Former US president Bill Clinton also offered such a treaty to Netanyahu in exchange for concessions of Israeli sovereignty to the Palestinians, according to negotiator Dennis Ross’ memoirs, and Netanyahu turned it down.
I want to express gratitude to Jason who is a great leader. Everything that has happened under the president is because of his leadership and his team. We have honored Jason in the City of Jerusalem with the Friends of Zion Award and we will miss him dearly. We know Jason Greenblatt – nothing will change with his love of Israel and his commitment to Israel.
The award we bestowed on Greenblatt is earned by world leaders and influential figures that have gone “above and beyond” for the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Others who have received this award are: US presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Bulgarian president Rosen Plevneliev, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and, most recently, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
The Friends of Zion Museum reveals fascinating stories emphasizing the support and heroism of the many friends of the Jewish People and the State of Israel. It serves as a platform to fight global antisemitism and to stand strong against the BDS movement.
The Museum is launching a $100 million project to help educate pro-Israel supporters around the world about the Jewish state, its challenges, and its achievements. FOZ is developing an Ambassador Institute, which includes the first Christian Zionist think-tank, a communications center and an online university. It has become one of the top must-see sites in Israel for all tourists and Israeli residents.
Currently sitting on the board is IDF General (res.) Yossi Peled as the head of the FOZ Israeli Board of Trustees, along with other distinguished members. The Friends of Zion Museum was honored to have as its former international chairman, the late president Shimon Peres.
Hatem Abdel Qader |
By presenting this "distorted" content, Netflix raised several questions, the most important of which are: Are the network's officials trying to pass political agendas against Egypt and the Arab countries within a dramatic content?Can you say "paranoid?"
One of the central elements of the Palestinian narrative is the negation of the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel in general and in Jerusalem in particular. Despite numerous sources and archeological finds proving the opposite, the Palestinian Authority regularly repeats this claim because it is the basis for the PA's denial of Israel's right to exist. Recently, the PA Minister of Culture emphasized this Palestinian lie, claiming Israel has "no connection" to Jerusalem, history, geography or even to the future. He then asserted the second fundamental Palestinian historical revision intended to create a Palestinian right to exist. He claimed that Palestinians were Canaanites with a 6,000-year history in the land:
PA Minister of Culture Atef Abu Saif: "Our struggle is with this State [of Israel] that came out of nowhere, without a history and without geography, stole our land, and wants to put an end to our existence... There is a lying author who wrote a story about his false presence on this land, and then comes and wants to realize his tale. There is nothing in history that proves this presence. They have not found one stone... [Israel knows] that they have no connection to this city [Jerusalem], that they have no connection to this history, and that they have no connection to the geography, just as they have no connection to the future... If Israel celebrated the lie of '3,000 years [of Jewish history] in Jerusalem,' we have 7,000 years in Jerusalem - so what? We Canaanites are the first ones who built Jebus more than 6,000 years ago. And perhaps we need no celebrations because it is natural that we are here. Those who celebrate are foreigners."
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Aug. 26, 2019]
Palestinian Media Watch documented that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas himself recently voiced the PA claim that today's Palestinians are descendants of the biblical Canaanites in order to establish an ancient historical connection of "5,000 years" to the land:
Abbas: "[Israelis] will remember that this land belongs to its people; this land belongs to its inhabitants; this land belongs to the Canaanites who were here 5,000 years ago - and we are the Canaanites!"
[Facebook page of the PA Presidential Office, Aug. 10, 2019]
PA Minister of Culture denies Jewish history: Nothing proves it, they have no connection to history.
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) September 15, 2019
One of the central elements of the Palestinian narrative is the negation of the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel.
Read more here: https://t.co/YfsahT5gi0 pic.twitter.com/De4M0QZ548
Its critics have accused Israel of a lot of terrible things over the course of its 71 years of existence, but The New York Times has now added one more to the list that will particularly resonate with intellectuals. While Israeli policies in Jerusalem since its reunification in 1967 have often been blasted, a recently approved proposal to deal with the city’s seemingly insoluble traffic problems is being put down as “Disneyfication.”
The object of scorn is a cable car that will start its journey at the First Station cultural complex in western Jerusalem and then travel over the Hinnom Valley to a stop at Mount Zion before landing in the City of David archeological park in eastern Jerusalem. There, visitors and worshippers will be able to tour the historic excavations at the site and walk to the Western Wall via recently excavated underground passageways that were taken by pilgrims on their way to the Second Temple 2,000 years ago. If planners have their way, this line will be the first of many that will crisscross the city in the future, delivering people to destinations that would otherwise require them to navigate jammed streets.
The accusation that Jews are trashing the holy city and turning it into a theme park due to this plan was the focus of a feature published this week by the Times. The cable-car scheme is fair game for criticism from architects and others who worry about the potential aesthetic damage to the ancient capital. But the subtext of the campaign against the initiative goes far deeper than whether or not it will make Jerusalem look like a Swiss ski resort or even Disneyworld. For Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and many of the Israel-bashers he quotes in his piece, the real story is about how Israel is seeking to emphasize Jerusalem’s Jewish history.
Kimmelman is perfectly entitled to critique the Israeli cable car plan on the grounds of architecture and design. Indeed, one of the critics he interviews is Moshe Safdie, the architect responsible for many Israeli building projects including within Jerusalem. But Kimmelman goes further:
The cable-car project is an example, illustrating how Israel wields architecture and urban planning to extend its authority in the occupied territories. Whatever its transit merits, which critics say are negligible, the cable car curates a specifically Jewish narrative of Jerusalem, furthering Israeli claims over Arab parts of the city.
What is this architecture and urban planning that Israel wields? An illustrative photo below the paragraph shows a walled section of Israel’s security barrier as an example. The barrier is not about extending Israeli authority but preventing acts of Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.
And what exactly is a “specifically Jewish narrative of Jerusalem,” a city that has been central to Judaism and the Jewish people for thousands of years?
Later, Kimmelman also states:
Cable car passengers will be funneled through a Jewish version of the city’s history.
As if Israel is somehow imposing on or ‘Judaizing’ the city.
Indeed, according to Kimmelman:
the cable cars will swoop down from a Jewish neighborhood in the western part of Jerusalem to Mount Zion.
This is an interesting use of language given that cable cars usually descend fairly slowly. Instead, we have them “swooping down” almost like a predatory bird, which might well be a subliminal image for Kimmelman who sees Israel preying on the holy city.
Related reading: Deal With It: Jerusalem is Israel’s Capital
It’s also worth pointing out that while Kimmelman sees Israel promoting a “Jewish version of the city’s history,” Israel is the one authority that has consistently and effectively protected all holy sites in Jerusalem for all religions. Indeed there is nothing preventing tourists from visiting the many Christian or Muslim historical sites. The only party that denies a Jewish historical connection to the city is the Palestinians.
Speaking of the NYT was reading Deborah Lipstadt’s review of a new book on it and my lord the stuff the Times pulls and still calls itself a newspaper pic.twitter.com/sHrNEyDFQs
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) September 15, 2019
Micha Mitch Danzig, Attorney, former IDF, Middle East analyst |
The reality is that the entire notion of Ashkenazi Jews as “White people” is very new (from a historical perspective) and it is also completely detached from any historical context, including in America, where, as recently as the early 1960s there were still quotas on Jewish enrollment in some Ivy League schools. Ironically, since the origin of the European pseudoscientific racial classifications (dividing humanity as White, Black, and Yellow races); Jews in Europe (both Ashkenazi and Sephardi alike) were regularly persecuted on the basis of being “non-white.”
The cable-car project is an example, illustrating how Israel wields architecture and urban planning to extend its authority in the occupied territories. Whatever its transit merits, which critics say are negligible, the cable car curates a specifically Jewish narrative of Jerusalem, furthering Israeli claims over Arab parts of the city.It is a cable car meant for tourists. Silwan is not exactly a tourist spot. This criticism is not about the cable car but about the fact that Arabs claim that Silwan, known earlier as Shiloach, is an exclusively Arab area.
...Cable car passengers will be funneled through a Jewish version of the city’s history. After disembarking at the City of David, they can tour the archaeological site, then proceed underground to the Western Wall via Herodian passageways walked by Jewish pilgrims during the era of the Second Temple and now partly excavated beneath the homes of Palestinian families in Silwan.
Notwithstanding that several Arab homes may be demolished to make room for it, in effect the cable car pretends Arab Silwan isn’t there. Tourists will fly over and tunnel under Silwan’s Palestinian residents without actually having to encounter them.
I was the head of the preservation committee in #Jerusalem and most of the buildings we were preserving were Arab ones because we understand the value of history, what the @nytimes is doing is completely denying #Jewish history— פלר חסן נחום Fleur Hassan-Nahoum (@FleurHassanN) September 14, 2019
The plan can bring to mind Israel’s so-called bypass roads, built to safely speed Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank to Jerusalem without passing through Palestinian towns.The alternative is to endanger the Jews who want to reach their homes, who could easily be caught in Arab roadblocks and lynched. Apparently, that is preferable to the reporter.
Even the cladding of East Jerusalem’s settlements in Jerusalem stone, the architectural uniform traditionally worn by buildings in Jewish West Jerusalem, helps spread the image of a single Jewish city.Guess who created the law that all buildings in Jerusalem be built with Jerusalem stone? The British, as can be seen in this 1995 article in the very same New York Times that glorified the city's use of Jerusalem stone:
Heaven intrudes upon Jerusalem in another way, too, in the recurring question of how much the whole city should itself resemble a perfect kingdom, or simply be allowed to look like other places. The British, who governed Jerusalem from 1917 to 1947, made a powerful gesture toward a higher Jerusalem when they decreed that all buildings had to be faced with Jerusalem stone, a local form of limestone with an exceptionally warm, golden hue. .... This rule may be the most important single act of city planning ever in Jerusalem. The stone is an extraordinary material, rich and textured and almost magical in the glow of dawn and dusk in the city's heavy light, and it brings even the most mediocre architecture into a sense of wholeness with the city.The newer NYT article praises the British for doing the very thing it falsely berates the Israelis for doing:
Modern Jerusalem was spared Disneyfication, first by the highborn culture of British colonialism, with its awe for the city’s antique past, and next by Jordanian paralysis, which froze the Old City as if in amber.Well, not exactly. The Jordanians destroyed a number of major synagogues that used to be part of the Jerusalem skyline and now are being rebuilt by those terrible Israelis who, the Times implies, have no regard for history by "Disneyfying" Jerusalem.
Matthew James Amiot, from his Facebook page |
Minnesota police made an arrest Friday in connection with a fire that destroyed Adas Israel Synagogue in Duluth earlier this week.
Matthew James Amiot, 36, was booked on a first-degree arson charge Friday and is in custody at the St. Louis County Jail. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday.
The Star Tribune reported that no one else was arrested on Friday and that the suspect had nearly a dozen misdemeanor convictions for trespassing, burglary and theft.
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!