Passing on religious rituals was something I remember looking forward to before I became a mother. Little did I know that the Jewish High Holidays in 2019 would hardly resemble the holidays of my childhood.
Growing up in the 1980s and ‘90s, anyone could walk into my suburban New York synagogue for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. Sure, adults were supposed to have tickets, but there was no bouncer by the door. We had two local police officers who stood out on the street directing traffic for those two holidays, but that was explained by my synagogue’s location atop a hill; drivers climbing that hill couldn’t see the larger-than-usual stream of pedestrians from afar.
After 9/11, the synagogue I attended in D.C. added year-round security. Whenever I arrived from work for Friday evening services, I faced a security guard and a bag check.
The level of security at synagogues, Jewish schools, and Jewish community centers has only increased since then. Some of these buildings have video camera buzzer systems, security guards, or police officers. This is all to protect American Jews while we pray, socialize, and educate our children. In the wake of attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway, California, that trend is unlikely to reverse itself.
Since well before the Halle attack, the resounding call of Jewish leaders has been that the time for words against anti-Semitism has passed and that what is needed now in Germany is action.
The Halle synagogue used to have a visible police presence. But a year ago, rather than heed the warnings of Jewish community leaders who were witnessing the resurgence of German anti-Semitism, the authorities in Halle discontinued police protection. Max Privorozki, the head of the Jewish community in Halle, said he had asked in vain for police protection for Jewish holidays and complained about the complete lack of police patrols. Holger Stahlknecht, the state interior minister of Saxony-Anhalt, all but called him a liar and, despite what seemed like obvious failures, defended his police forces.
The German government provided no police protection, funding for security guards, or other means of physical defense for the Halle synagogue. According to the police chronology, the first police officers arrived eight minutes after they received the emergency call, which was four minutes after the terrorist had already left the synagogue.
In Halle the Jews were left to save themselves.
For this they relied on the synagogue’s security system, donated by the Jewish Agency for Israel, with funding from the Helmsley Charitable Trust. Those security cameras made it possible for the Jews inside to make quick informed decisions to shelter in place and barricade the doors. The frustrated terrorist, unable to open the door, wondered aloud, “maybe they will come outside.” Thanks to the security system, there was no chance of that. Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog was not exaggerating when he said, “That donation saved lives.”
A report on the Halle synagogue attack on the BBC Arabic website fails to mention antisemitism or Jews, stating simply that “some German news outlets say it happened near a synagogue but this cannot be confirmed.”
This was despite the fact that the motivations of the attacker and the target — a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar — were entirely clear and indeed could in fact easily be confirmed from the livestream video that the attacker himself posted online.
The article reports that two people were killed in a gunfire incident and that the assailant fired in the direction of a kebab shop, noting that he “also threw a bomb on a cemetery”, rather than explaining that the cemetery was in the synagogue compound, which was the gunman’s primary target.
The perpetrator has since confirmed that he was motivated by antisemitism and indeed had published an antisemitic manifesto prior to the attack. The incident comes at a time of growing antisemitism in Germany.
Campaign Against Antisemitism is disgusted that the BBC could run such a misleading story on a sensitive topic, but this is also not wholly surprising in view of the history of strained relations between the Corporation and the Jewish community.
It’s often be helpful to boil down debates over Israel, the Middle East and anti-Semitism to their logical core in order to best understand the actual arguments being made (or dodged).
For example, discussion of who gets to determine whether someone’s behavior is anti-Semitic is based on this general argument, widely accepted in most circles:
Premise 1: Minority groups are victims of discrimination and bigotry
Premise 2: Victims of discrimination and bigotry best understand when it is directed against them
Conclusion: Minority groups best understand when discrimination and bigotry is directed against them
Note that this is a valid argument, in that accepting the premises requires you to accept the conclusion (the definition of logical validity).
One of the useful results of distilling an argument (especially one written originally in more lengthy or complex prose) into a structured, valid argumentis that it requires you to write premises in a way that exposes their strengths and weaknesses. This is important because, to be any good, an argument must be both valid and sound with soundness defined as having premises that are either true or something a reasonable person would accept as highly likely to be true.
In the case of the valid two-premise argument above, the first premise is a statement of fact, and the second one also seems like something most people would agree isreasonable, so this argument is both valid and sound. But looks what happens if we add one more premise to the argument:
Premise 1: Minority groups are victims of discrimination and bigotry
Premise 2: Victims of discrimination and bigotry best understand when it is directed against them
Premise 3: Jews are a minority group
Conclusion: Jews best understand when bigotry and discrimination [i.e., anti-Semitism]is directed against them
This too is a valid argument and the new premise we just added is also a statement of fact, as strong or stronger than Premise 1 that appears in both versions of the argument.
Yet those who say that Jews use accusations of anti-Semitism as a smoke screen to cover up the crimes of the Jewish state must reject this three-premise argument in order to claim that Jews are not allowed to determine when anti-Semitism is and is not taking place.
One way to do this is to reject our new premise that says that Jews are a minority, which is the reasoning behind attempts to portray Jews as “white,” a status that would eliminate them from the category of “minority group.” As just noted, however, it is a fact that Jews ARE a minority and, as history shows, a minority that has been victimized by bigotry and discrimination, up to and including attempted genocide.
In light of this, moving Jews into the “white” column requires a separate argument that might run something like:
Premise 1: Many Jews, especially in America, enjoy wide success
Premise 2: Any group in which members enjoywide success is not a discriminated-against minority
Conclusion: Jews are not a discriminated-against minority
This argument is also valid, but notice that one could easily substitute other minority groups in premise one to justify eliminating them from the role of victims of bigotry. Reactionaries who claim every accusation of racism is a form of “race hustling,” for example, would justify their claim based on a version of this argument that swaps out Jews with another minority group. Yet it is doubtful anyone embracing this argument when applied to Jews would welcome a version that follows the same principle but applies it to other minorities.
This isolates the fact that Jews are being singled out as a special case (a form of argumentation called “special pleading”)best distilled into this final version of our (really their) argument:
Premise 1: Minority groups are victims of discrimination and bigotry
Premise 2: Victims of discrimination bigotry best understand when it is directed against them
Premise 3: Jews are a minority group
Premise 4: Jews, and only Jews, cannot be trusted when it comes to determining discrimination and bigotry directed against them
Conclusion: Minority groups, except for Jews, best understand when bigotry and discrimination is directed against them
Notice that in this special pleading, our new Premise 4, which is designed to eliminate Jews – and Jews alone – from the category of minorities allowed to determine when they are targets of bigotry, is itself a textbook example of anti-Jewish bigotry (i.e., anti-Semitism).
So one argument for claiming Jews, and Jews alone, cannot identify bigotry directed against them would leave every minority group defenseless, while the other requires actually embracing bigotry. Perhaps this is why those advocating this and other self-serving anti-Israel positions spend so much time shrieking, accusing and threatening since, in their heart of hearts, they know they have no argument.
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The official Palestinian Wafa news agency shows a "settler"building yet another illegal Jewish structure:
Of course, this is a sukkah, the temporary hut that Jews use during the current holiday.
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The Trump administration’s Middle East policies have been roundly attacked by the U.S. foreign policy establishment. There are various lines of criticism, including ones concerning its approaches to Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, but the administration’s gravest sin is generally held to be its support for Israel. By moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, blessing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and other gestures, the Trump team is said to have overturned half a century of settled U.S. policy, abandoned the Palestinians, and killed the two-state solution.
These are serious charges. But on close inspection, they turn out to say more about the hysteria of the prosecutors than the guilt of the defendant. Some of President Donald Trump’s policies are new, some are not, and it is too early to see much impact. So why all the hue and cry? Because the administration openly insists on playing power politics rather than trying to move the world beyond them. Trump’s real crime is challenging people’s illusions—and that is an unforgivable offense.
THE ROAD TO 242
Israel’s conflict with the Arabs has long functioned as a screen onto which outsiders project their own psychodramas. Actual Middle East politics, meanwhile, churns on relentlessly, following the same laws of political physics as politics everywhere else: the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
The United States entered the regional geopolitical game in earnest during World War II, drawn in by the strategic importance of the oil recently discovered under the Arabian Desert and elsewhere. With postwar power came regional responsibility, however, and Washington eventually had to decide how to deal with the messy residue of the British mandate for Palestine.
America's withdrawal from the Middle East validates the long-standing Israeli view that it must not rely on external guarantees, but rather do what's necessary to defend itself, by itself. This applies especially to the discussion over Israel's retention of the Jordan Valley.
Israel captured the valley and the rest of the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. UN Security Council Resolution 242 did not insist upon a full Israeli withdrawal to the old armistice lines. Britain's Ambassador to the UN at the time, Lord Caradon, who helped draft 242, commented on PBS: "We all knew - the boundaries of '67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers."
Immediately after the Six-Day War, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon, who in 1948 had served as the commander of the pre-state Palmach strike force, became the architect of a string of mostly agricultural settlements in the Jordan Valley and along the hills that dominate it. Today, nearly 30 Israeli communities are situated in this area. Allon's map became known as the Allon Plan.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are structured around mostly reserve units. To match the quantitative superiority of its neighbors, Israel has to mobilize its reserve forces, which requires up to 48 hours. The terrain Israel captured in the West Bank, particularly in the Jordan Valley, provided Israel with a formidable barrier for the first time that would allow the IDF to buy the precious time it needed to complete its reserve call-up. The lowest parts of the Jordan Valley and its mountain ridge form a virtual strategic wall 4,500 feet high.
Even after the Oslo Agreements were signed in 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reiterated a vision for a final peace settlement that kept the Jordan Valley under Israel: "The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the widest meaning of that term." What he had in mind was Israel continuing to control the high ground along the eastern slopes of the mountain ridge that descended down to the Jordan River.
The Jordan Valley is to the West Bank what the Philadelphi Route was to Gaza. This refers to the border zone between Gaza and Egyptian Sinai. After Israel's Gaza Disengagement in 2005, Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel shot up as Palestinian terror organizations smuggled enormous quantities of rockets through tunnels under the border into Gaza. Three wars resulted from this escalation in Palestinian rocket fire.
Israeli public opinion has clearly internalized the importance of the Jordan Valley for Israeli security. In the last decade, as many as 81% of Israeli voters agreed that in any peace arrangement Israel must preserve its sovereignty over the Jordan Valley.
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med), a youth-led independent organization that advocates for human rights across Europe and the Middle East, said it has collected names of about 60 Palestinians detained by the Saudi authorities in recent months
Euro-Med said it considers the "practices of the Saudi authorities a flagrant violation of the requirements of justice, which guarantees everyone the right to a fair trial, including knowing charges against and the right to defense and access to a lawyer... [and] affirms that the relevant authorities do not comply with the international legal rules that guarantee the simplest rights of litigation for any individual..."
The Saudi authorities have offered no explanation for the widespread campaign targeting Palestinians in the kingdom. It appears that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his officials in Ramallah fear that any criticism of this behavior would jeopardize the financial handouts and political support they receive from Saudi Arabia.... For Palestinian leaders, Saudi money and political backing far outweigh the fate of a few dozen Palestinians held without trial in an Arab country.
It is only Palestinians who are held by Israel for terrorist-related crimes who Abbas and his friends remember to mention in their endless litanies of complaints.
The Israeli-Arab newspaper Panet has a feature on how many Arab girls in Israel are getting jobs in malls, and what they think about it.
Most of the girls interviewed at a new mall in Hadera are very happy in their jobs. Only one mentioned any discrimination from customers who wanted a Jewish salesperson, the rest of them enjoyed the freedom of having a job, helping them become more independent young women.
Rian Bayadseh (above) from Baqa Al Gharbiya said, "I attended the opening ceremony of the new mall in Hadera. I presented my resume to several workplaces and I was invited to my current workplace. I want to open up to the world, develop my personality, rely on myself and achieve my financial independence. Yes, there are difficulties and challenges in my workplace, such as difficult working times, resilience and dealing with these situations, which qualify me for future experiences.It is very important for Arab women to gain financial independence, which increases their self-confidence and leaves them with an impact in society."
Sarah Masarweh from Kafr Qara told Panet, "The motives for working are more social but also material. The need for exposure to the world and knowledge, especially the Jewish community, the strengthening of my personality and the strengthening of my Hebrew. I face difficulties and challenges in my workplace, being an Arab. This in itself is very difficult, as is the difficulty of speaking the Hebrew language.
"I also have a hard time with customers who prefer Jewish salespeople to Arabs," said Masarweh. "But it isn't so bad. I believe in the customer's personal freedom to choose the seller.'
A young Arab man, Mamdouh Wedd, said: `` I arrived to my work place through the social network where I started working as a salesperson and now I am a manager at Rosy. This is a good experience that I learned about life, learned new and different things and strengthened my Hebrew. ”
One of the interviewees, a man named Momen Medlej, admitted that work helps make the girls more self-reliant, but didn't like that. "In my opinion, this is not an achievement or a positive development, as the girl or woman has become self-reliant and does not give men the opportunity to do their duties (as a man.)"
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But look at what JVP is claiming here. The ADL, a Jewish organization, is sending US police to Israel. The poor chiefs of police, heads of ICE and border police have no say in the matter - they are apparently under the spell of the ADL and are quite helpless to resist the Jewish mind control forcing them to send their people to Israel to learn how to become cold blooded killers of minorities.
Yes, this is antisemitism. Saying that hundreds of US law enforcement organizations are under nefarious Jewish control is every bit as antisemitic as saying that banks, the media and Hollywood are under nefarious Jewish control.
The JVP has proven itself to be antisemitic with a conspiracy theory that wouldn't be out of place in Czarist Russia or Nazi Germany.
If you are looking for an example of leftist antisemitism, this is it.
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UNESCO’s Executive Board has unanimously endorsed a draft resolution on the city of Jerusalem and its walls during its 207th session, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Sufian Qudah said on Wednesday.
Qudah underlined the importance of the decision, which was the result of Jordanian diplomatic efforts, in coordination with Palestine and UNESCO’s Arab and Muslim groups, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
The decision affirms all previous gains that have been stipulated in the Jerusalem file, he added.
Qudah highlighted that the resolution and its appendix stress all the components of Jordan’s stance on the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls, including Muslim and Christian holy sites, noting that it also reiterates rejection of all Israeli violations and unilateral measures at these locations.
The resolution calls on Israel to halt all illegal unilateral procedures and violations against Al Aqsa Mosque/Al Haram Al Sharif and in the Old City, Qudah said.
There is little new in the document - except for when it talks about Gaza:
7. The first week of May 2019, a serious eruption of hostilities took place in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel. In total 25 Palestinians were killed, including militants, four women and two children, in addition to 154 injured. The hostilities also caused a significant amount of destruction including damage to 41 housing units and 13 education facilities in Gaza1. On 6 May a cessation of hostilities was established, ending the escalation, after intense efforts by the United Nations and Egypt.
Why does UNESCO say "In total 25 Palestinians were killed"? Don't Israelis count?
No. Dead Israelis simply don't exist to UNESCO. Only Palestinians are victims, Israelis are purely aggressors.
UNESCO's anti-Israel bias has been obvious for years. But rarely has it been this egregious.
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Some local Palestinian leaders met with Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria on Wednesday to discuss issues they have in common and coexistence.
The meeting took place in the sukkah of Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council.
"The best way towards coexistence is in the dialogue between leaders who know the needs of both populations," Dagan said.
While a few of the Palestinians agreed to be photographed, most of the delegation refused to be identified out of fear for their lives of being attacked by the Palestinian Authority.
Which brings up the question: if Palestinians want peace so much, why do they threaten people who want to speak to Jews as normal human beings?
That is a question that J-Street, Jewish Voice for Peaee and IfNotNow will never answer.
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Beyond all acceptable norms
It is wrong to describe this as a textbook, and some of the distortions and omissions are beyond all logical understanding. Most of the damage is done in the early pages. Anti-Israel feeling works like a computer virus inserted into the base code. If you can shape the way the initial history is viewed, then you no longer need to worry how that person will see the defensive barrier or the blockade on Gaza. This is something anti-Israel activism has long understood, and whilst pro-Israelis spend most of their time justifying a clampdown on Hamas – anti-Israel activists are revising the timeline of the 1920s and 1930s. They know how this works.
There is no point listing every error. It would take a year to completely unpack a textbook such as this. The report chiefly deals with errors in the first chapter. I have just opened a random page and found additional errors in the description of the 1948 war. The book suggests the Israelis ‘broke the truce‘ after the first phase – which left it able to suggest that ‘once again, Israel broke the truce early‘ at the start of the third. Which would be fair if it were true. But Egypt launched a surprise attack on the 8th July, which renewed the hostilities and opened the second phase. (Morris, 1948 p273). Which once again begs the question – what is the source material for this book?
The manipulation of students
The book continues in similar fashion, Israel are always looking for the ‘excuse’ to fight. Students are manipulated through imagery, misleading maps and distorted statistics. The book’s exercises and suggested activities are all designed to reinforce the story the book is clearly trying to tell. During the Arab anti-British violence, the focus is on Arab victims and the unfair and harsh British attitude. When the Jewish people were violent, sympathies are switched. Suddenly the focus becomes the British victims. The book creates a hierarchy. Arabs>British>Jews. Through the provided exercises, the students are forced to swallow it. When the book wants to get its message across, it really is not shy about how it does it:
The distortion is all one way. As are the errors. This book fails the David Irving test. A book that is simply sloppy would make errors in both directions – this book NEVER does. The Irgun are openly and consistently described as terrorists. The PFLP are a ‘Guerrilla’ group and the Fedayeen could be classed as ‘freedom fighters’, depending on your ‘point of view’. The book does describe the violence of the Second Intifada but never uses the word terrorist to do so. Throughout the book, the word terrorist is (almost) exclusively reserved for Jewish actions.
Needing answers for a textbook such as this
To explain the massive influx of immigrants into Israel, the book describes how growing antisemitism in the Arab countries was ‘making it dangerous’ for Jews in Arab lands. The Mizrahi Jews ‘asked to leave’. The cause given was the 1948 conflict – not rising Arab nationalism. The book continually ignores all the pre-Zionist antisemitism – and any Arab motivation for violence other than opposition to Zionism – because it doesn’t fit the narrative. The destruction of Jewish civilisation in dozens of countries across the Middle East and North Africa is not mentioned.
We need to take stock of this. This type of damage is far larger than some meeting of ageing Marxists in a local scout hall – and much more insidious. How many times is this type of material entering our schools. How many children have sat through this course? In truth we need to work out how this book was ever considered acceptable. We really do need answers.
A controversy that began last summer, pitting community library-event planners in a New Jersey suburb and various Palestinian sympathizers against a Jewish community, is now moving into the legal arena.
The almost 20-year-old Central Jersey Jewish Public Affairs Committee (CJJPAC)—a pro-Israel advocacy organization headed by Dr. Marc Hanfling and Marc Kalton, in concert with Zachor Legal Institute, an anti-BDS legal think tank—is launching action against both the borough of Highland Park, NJ, and its library. The suit will center on the library’s planned book reading of P Is for Palestine, an alphabet book written for young children by Golbarg Bashi, a professor of Middle East Studies.
In its current form, the book is thought to be an adaptation of a Palestinian teacher manual, designed to indoctrinate children to vilify Jews and Israel, as well as advocate for the destruction of the Jewish state. It is widely considered to be antisemitic in nature, and includes the phrase “I Is for Intifada” (for the letter “I”; each letter of the alphabet matches a phrase with the respective letter), which, according to the book, means “to stand up for what is right.”
However, the word “intifada” means something else to Jews and to Israeli law. In Jerusalem district court documents (Shurat Hadin), the word was defined in 2018 as a premeditated terror and murder campaign, the second of which justified claims for damages to the Palestinian Authority from terror victims and their families.
The book event was initially set to take place in June, but was delayed due to a significant backlash from the Jewish community. After canceling a planned public meeting on the topic because of concerns regarding potential violence and an insufficient location to hold the event, library personnel, with borough leadership, announced a closed-door compromise, paving the way for the event to go on.
Contemporary antisemitism has the ability to graft itself onto a variety of causes and movements. But the social and information environment in the US and Europe is strongly conditioned by virtue-signaling among elites and increasingly among portions of the middle class. Antisemitism, in part through BDS-fueled antipathy toward Israel, is becoming a signal of middle class respectability. At the same time, though left-wing Western elites remain strongly anti-national, the working classes and other parts of the middle class are becoming renationalized. These and other class conflicts will shape antisemitism in the next decades.
Class has emerged as one of the most important features of global politics. Predictably, antisemitism and the boycott-Israel movement are enmeshed in class-based patterns of belief and behavior – but some of these patterns are new and counter-intuitive.
One unique feature of the BDS movement, consistent with antisemitic movements historically, is the ability to graft itself onto other contemporary concerns and movements. Three to four years ago in North America the equation was between the burgeoning Black Lives Matters movement and the Palestinian experience under the Israeli “occupation,” and moving from there to alleged connections between American and Israel “police” violence.
In the past year the migration crisis on the US southern border was the cause célèbre, with American “concentration camps” equated with the Palestinians’ “open air prison” of Gaza. Now, with the rise of “climate change” (rebranded from “global warming”) as the latest moral panic, the BDS movement has taken to equating portents of climate damage with the environmental “crisis” in Gaza.
It is tempting to dismiss such blatant hijacking as a variant of the much-parodied left-wing trope “world ends tomorrow; women, minorities hardest hit.” But the pattern indicates that the BDS movement sees an advantage to the strategy. The now well-documented association of ersatz grassroots organizations such as IfNotNow with incubators that train and fund-raise for a variety of far left causes demonstrates that at least some parts of the BDS movement are instruments for broad spectrum social mobilization. That these are aimed at Jews and Jewish interests demonstrates further that antisemitic agitation remains a useful revolutionary strategy. And as always, Jews are given the choice of either joining the revolution for “justice” or being condemned for their tribal adherence to retrograde parochial causes.
There is growing evidence that in Western social and information environments saturated with virtue-signaling, such strategies are having some success with members of the image-conscious, predominantly white middle class. Class attitudes are being set by a limited number of sources from the elite, interlocking media-education-NGO sector, which is to say coastal universities, celebrities, late night television hosts, “human rights” organizations, minority activists, and, increasingly, K-12 teachers. Perceptions of grievance, real and imagined, are the primary drivers in a victimhood arms race, where the reliably malleable notion of “social justice” has been weaponized against the foundations of the middle class itself. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Kate Millet (left) and Phyllis Chesler (right), 1972 (photo: courtesy Phyllis Chesler)
Phyllis Chesler is a puzzling figure. She’s
an academic and a feminist, so she can’t be on the right. She won’t "hate on" Jews or Israel, so she's can't be on the left.
That makes
Phyllis Chesler a problem. Which is a compliment. No one is thinking for Chesler; her thoughts are her own:
they’re original.
A leader of
the feminist movement, and embedded as she is in the thick of academia as Emerita
Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at City University of New York,
Professor Chesler is obstinate in her refusal to jump on the intersectional
bash-Israel bandwagon. And she fights
against antisemitism.
Now, when you
look at the sad state of today’s limited discourse, with seems confined to two very
loud competing narratives, Chesler’s originality is compelling, attention-getting. And this is what makes Phyllis Chesler interesting to read. She
is not preaching to the choir: how can she as a soloist?
We may not be
able to fit the best-selling author, retired psychotherapist, expert courtroom
witness, and founding member of the International Committee for Women of the
Wall into a slot. Not ours. Not theirs. But if you try to fit this distinctive peg
into your one-size-fits-all slot, Phyllis Chesler will be sure to correct you,
as she did this author, during the intimate question and answer session that
follows:
Varda Epstein: You were a leader in the Second Wave feminist movement
in the United States. In your memoir “APolitically Incorrect Feminist,” we can see you rubbed elbows with some of
the most important names in that movement. What do you think of Gloria
Steinem’s recent criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu in which she calls him a bully
for his application of Israel’s No Entry Law with regard to Congresswomen Ilhan
Omar and Rashida Tlaib? (See https://www.facebook.com/GloriaSteinem/posts/10156303734472854)
Phyllis Chesler: I didn’t just
“rub elbows.” I taught, I learned, I co-wrote articles and planned conferences
together with some of the best minds of my Second Wave feminist generation, the
pioneers, both known and unknown. Also, I have written about feminist
anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism at length in hundreds of articles and in some
books, for example: In “The
New Anti-Semitism” (2003); “The
Death of Feminism” (2005); and in “A
Politically Incorrect Feminist” (2018).
I am deeply saddened and
outraged by the leftward turn taken by so many feminists and feminist leaders,
the extent to which their concern with anti-black racism and transgenderism
trumps their concern with sexism. As I’ve written many times before, the
institutional feminist movements in the West have been Palestinianized and
many, but not all, are often more concerned with the occupation of a country
that does not exist than with the occupation of women’s bodies and minds
globally.
Phyllis Chesler on the cover of the New York Times Magazine with Kate Millett, Alix Kates Shulman, Ann Snitow, and Ellen Willis, 1990 (photo: courtesy Phyllis Chesler)
Varda Epstein: How are we to understand what seems to be a wave of
antisemitism in the women’s movement, for instance among the leaders of the
Women’s March?
Phyllis Chesler: The
anti-Israel propaganda kicked in minutes after Israel won its 1967 war of
self-defense. The well-funded cognitive war has borne its poisoned fruit.
Neither Israel nor pro-Israel Jewish organizations launched a Stuxnet-like
virus to combat this campaign. I know because I kept advising individual
feminists, Jewish feminist magazines, Jewish-American organizations, Israeli
diplomats and organizations—from the 1970s on, that this cognitive war was
essential. Today, three Islamist leaders have announced a new global channel to
focus on Muslim realities. We do not yet have an Al-Jazeera for Israel and the
Jews—one that would cover the world and simply not lie about Israel and the
Jews. The Israeli government and the IDF media have gotten somewhat better in terms
of getting out our side, (the truth) more quickly. We are still mainly playing
defense, not offense. Absent a miracle, we, too, will need massive funding and
about fifty years to catch up in terms of the demonization campaign against
Israel which continues the world’s long, long history of Jew hatred.
Debating anthropologist Margaret Mead on Feminism, 1977 (photo: courtesy Phyllis Chesler)
Varda Epstein: How does your work in the field of psychology inform
your politics?
Phyllis Chesler: It doesn’t. I
judge a political actor by what they do, not by what they say or by what the
media attributes to them. I cannot psycho-analyze a political candidate from
afar. I do have ethical standards that I bring to bear on the political
process. In general, it does not interest me; rather, it terrifies and repulses
me because so many politicians lie and are corrupt. There are too few statesmen
and women on the horizon today. The Big Lies exist on both sides of the aisle
and only if one is quite expert in a few specific areas can you begin to
suspect what the highly partisan media might be revealing.
Congressional Briefing on Custody Battles. From left to right: Chuck Schumer, Barbara Boxer (both congresspeople who later became senators), Phyllis Chesler, and Nancy Polikoff, 1986 (photo: courtesy Phyllis Chesler)
Varda Epstein: Would you still describe yourself as a liberal? How have
your colleagues responded to your latest positions on Israel and Islam?
Phyllis Chesler: I am not a
liberal. Never have been. I am a radical. I try to think deeply—go to the root
of any given subject. My colleagues have demonized and defamed me; refused to
publish or read me; no longer trust me on all those issues that I myself have
pioneered due to my position on Israel and on Islam. I have encountered very
painful Holocaust denial as well as lies about Israel among some
feminists—while other feminists refuse to take an informed or principled
position. They remain bystanders, just as many a good European, good German,
did, afraid of the Mean
Girls bullies among them. Evil succeeds when good women do nothing.
Phyllis Chesler calls this 1972 photo by Jill Krementz: "The female author as Heathcliff," 1972 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)
Varda Epstein: Are you a Zionist? What does Zionism mean to you? Should
every Jew live in Israel?
Phyllis Chesler: too many
questions wrapped into one. Of course, I am a Zionist. Zionism is the
liberation movement of the Jewish people and a return to our Biblical homeland.
I cannot decide for every Jew. I once wanted to live in Israel very much but
that proved impossible—and the reasons for it are meant for another article or
interview.
With Israeli flag at the Sea of Galilee, 1973 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)
Varda Epstein: I read your book, “An
American Bride in Kabul,” where you detailed how you married a fellow
student, a Muslim, and ended up Kabul, imprisoned in his family home. The whole
time I couldn’t stop thinking of what it must have meant to your family. They
were orthodox, he was a Muslim, you had clearly made a bad decision. Did you
think about them at all when you made your decision? Were you able to make
peace with them, after the fact?
Phyllis Chesler: In retrospect,
I believe it was bashert, dare I
suggest that it may even have perhaps been divinely orchestrated. I cannot
think of another or more humbling reason to explain that misguided adventure.
The lessons I learned, what I’ve made of that unusual experience, have
ultimately allowed me to understand that certain barbaric customs are
indigenous and not caused by imperial, western intervention; that jihadists are
not freedom fighters; that the largest practitioner of gender and religious
apartheid are Muslim cultures and/or leaders; that one of the things that is
NOT new about anti-Semitism in our time is the Islamic version of it. This is what
is rising against us on the streets of Europe, in the media, at the UN, and on
campuses in the West. Of course, the progressive intelligentsia and
old-fashioned anti-Semites have joined forces with the Islamic world, thus
creating yet one more perfect storm in terms of Jew-hatred.
I “left” my family in many
stages: when I joined Hashomer Ha’tzair
in 1948, very much against their will; when I was not Bat Mitzva’ed (girls in
Orthodox families did not have this ceremony in Borough Park in 1952–that’s
when I ate non-kosher food for the first time—and did not die). I continued
“leaving” them as I read more and more books, sang with bands in HS, and then
left for good when I refused to even apply to Brooklyn College and instead
attended Bard College on a full scholarship. I had no intention of remaining in
Kabul. My family never cut me off. My wily mother knew I’d be back. They
accepted me. And we continued on in our separate but eternally and genetically
joined ways.
Phyllis Chesler's Afghan passport. It is colored bright orange. (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)
Varda Epstein: You saw, up close and personal, the bad side of Islam.
What do you think of Islamic reform? Is it possible? Can it catch on? Is there
anyone in particular you think is on the right track in that regard?
Phyllis Chesler: I did not see
the “bad” side of Islam. I saw Islam in situ, in practice, pre-Taliban.
Illiterate, rural Muslims; privileged, educated Muslims, have, in general, been
taught to feel superior to infidels whom they are also taught to despise and
whom they ceaselessly try to convert. Islam has been spread over 14 centuries
via the sword, Buddhists used to populate Afghanistan—Islamic history is a
conquering history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and apartheid.
Of course, definitely, there
are Muslims who are dissidents, pro-Israel, feminists, or gay, who are both religious
and anti-religious; many Muslims are kind, charming, creative, agnostic, or
have converted to another religion. This is a capital crime. I know and have
worked with and learned from such Muslim individualists, many of whom are
heroic and have been persecuted by their families, mullahs, leaders—and by a
Western politically correct intelligentsia. Islam is not a race. It is a
political, military, and social ideology which, at this moment in world history
has either come into its medieval own or has been even further perverted by
totalitarian tyrants.
In which Phyllis Chesler is "beamed up into Teheran and translated into Persian," 2005 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)
Chesler with Ayaan Hirsi Ali at a conference on Honor Based Violence, NYC, 2008 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)
Varda Epstein: You went from fighting for abortion rights to writing
about antisemitism and the demonization of Israel. How do you square these
ideas? Where are you religiously on Jewish thought and practice?
Phyllis Chesler: And in between
these two subjects, I researched and lectured on violence against women (rape,
incest, domestic battery, pornography, and prostitution); wrote about becoming
a mother; studied and published works on divorce and custody battles, and the
nature of commercial surrogacy, woman’s inhumanity to woman. I spent a blessed
quarter-century of Torah study, published some Devrai Torah—and
then, inevitably, wrote about a subject with which I’ve been engaged since the
early 1970s—anti-Semitism. I “square” these subjects and all those that have
come since then, including my critique of Women’s Studies and my four studies
about honor-based violence, particularly honor killing, as the work of a very
inquiring and engaged Jewish mind, heart, and soul.
I attend an Orthodox shul right
around the corner. The community is modern, the women are mainly all
accomplished, professional career women, some of us attend Torah shiurim. I am
privileged to be among them. What more is there to say?
Keynote panel at the first-ever Speak-Out on Rape. Phyllis Chesler and Florence Rush, 1971 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)
Bringing a Torah to Jerusalem with fellow Women of the Wall. Left to right: Phyllis Chesler, Rivka Haut, Shulamit Magnus, JFK, 1989 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)
Chesler hosts Phillip Karsenty. She calls him "the Alfred Dreyfus of our time." 2007 (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)
Talking about Antisemitism at Lincoln Square Synagogue (courtesy of Phyllis Chesler)
Varda Epstein: You have achieved a great deal in your 78 years. What
goals do you have for the future? What work remains for you to do?
Phyllis Chesler: My work will
never be done, not in this life, nor in the next one. I have joy and purpose in
my work and thus, have been blessed.
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