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I sat on these two stories for days because I wondered if there was any point to posting them. If you announce that the sky is blue, what’s the point of announcing that it’s still blue two weeks later? What was the point of announcing it the first time?

But, as I’ve seen on other social justice sites, sometimes you need to have the same discussions over and over and over again. So:

Rights group: W. Bank settlers grab more Palestinian land

Jewish settlers in the West Bank have taken posession (sic) of tens of thousands of acres of land, some of it privately owned by Palestinians, an Israeli human rights group said on Thursday.

A report issued by B’Tselem, a human rights organization said some settlements had appropriated land up to two and a half times greater than their own designated area either by fencing it off or by intimidation.

Asked about the B’Tselem report, the Israel Defense Forces said it had established security zones around settlements after they had been attacked repeatedly by Palestinians and dozens of Israeli civilians had been killed.

“The use of these zones has been approved a number of times by the Supreme Court. Any building in these zones is illegal,” the IDF said.

Government officials were initially not available to comment on the report but a spokesman for the settlers said the land annexation was an authorized security measure.

“It must be clear to B’Tselem that if their demands are heeded, it will be easier to murder Jews,” Yesha Council spokesman Yishai Hollander said.

Palestinians say settlement building denies them land they want for a contiguous state and a U.S.-backed peace “road map” calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity in the West Bank.

In a summary of the 58-page report, B’Tselem said two main means were used to secure land.

“Settlers, and sometimes members of Israel’s security forces violently attack and harass Palestinians who venture near settlements, erecting fences and other physical and electronic devices around the land, blocking Palestinian access.”

Those of you who feel swayed by Hollander’s assertion that treating Palestinians like humans will make it “easier to murder Jews” should read Naomi Klein’s excellent essay “Sharon’s Best Weapon.” Here’s a sample:

For Ariel Sharon, it is the fear of anti-Semitism, both real and imagined, that is the weapon. Sharon likes to say that he stands up to terrorists to show he is not afraid. In fact, his policies are driven by fear. His great talent is that he fully understands the depths of Jewish fear of another Holocaust. He knows how to draw parallels between Jewish anxieties about anti-Semitism and American fears of terrorism. And he is an expert at harnessing all of it for his political ends.

The primary, and familiar, fear that Sharon draws on, the one that allows him to claim all aggressive actions as defensive ones, is the fear that Israel’s neighbors want to drive the Jews into the sea. The secondary fear Sharon manipulates is the fear among Jews in the Diaspora that they will eventually be driven to seek safe haven in Israel. This fear leads millions of Jews around the world, many of them sickened by Israeli aggression, to shut up and send their checks, a down payment on future sanctuary.

The equation is simple: The more fearful Jews are, the more powerful Sharon is…. For Sharon, Jewish fear is a guarantee that his power will go unchecked, granting him the impunity needed to do the unthinkable: send troops into the Palestinian Authority’s education ministry to steal and destroy records; bury children alive in their homes; block ambulances from getting to the dying.

And before any wise guys pop up to remind me that Sharon has been in a coma for the past two years, Olmert’s government - and perhaps Livni’s, if she’s elected - functions/will function in the exact same way. The Israeli government terrifies its own citizens, and the rest of world Jewry, by rubbing an either/or fallacy in our faces: either we take over Palestine, or the Palestinians kill us. Choose now, kids!

And they’re helped along by incidents like this:

Muslim Immigrants Attack Three Jewish Teens in Paris

Three Jewish teens were attacked by a group of Muslim African immigrants in Paris on Saturday evening, a French police spokeswoman said Sunday.

The Jewish teens, ages 17 and 18, who have been identified as Dan Nebet, Kevin Bitan and David Boaziz, are leaders of the Bnei Akiva youth group in Paris’ 19th District.

Thiery Nebet, Dan’s father, told Haaretz over the phone that according to what his son had said, as they were walking down the street, “Four or five Arabs of African origin started to throw walnuts at Kevin. When he went up to them to ask them why they did it, they surrounded him and knocked him down. Kevin and David moved in and very quickly more Arabs joined in and started to beat the three with their fists and with chains.”

…

According to the chairman of the Jewish Students Union in France, Raphael Haddad, barrages of stones were thrown at the three teens during the attack. Haddad also said the incident occured on Petit Street in the 19th District, not far from where a 17-yea-ar-old Jewish youth was attacked and seriously injured by immigrants on June 21.

(Note: the article isn’t clear on this, but it suggests that the youths were wearing kippahs at the time, thus identifying themselves as Jews.)

A lot of white readers may be tempted to interpret this as yet another example of those poor backwards uneducated violent Muslims. Don’t. First off, according to the report I talked about earlier this week, a minority of Muslims commit anti-Semitc hate crimes*. Secondly, this isn’t a Muslim or Arab problem. Many, if not most, world cultures view Jews as a monolithic, powerful, and malevolent force that needs to be contained. The fact that some groups express their hate through vandalism, others through legislation, and others through violence is irrelevant. As many of you know, anti-Semitism doesn’t function by keeping Jews constantly subjugated; rather, it works by calling attention to Jews in positions of power, whether they’re medieval tax collectors or the modern state of Israel, and encourages oppressed peoples to train their anger on any Jews at all, anywhere, instead of the Gentiles actually running the show. (Notice how no one ever suggests that the US is influencing Israel, rather than the other way around?) This is why Jews were blamed for the Iraq war, September 11th, and even WWII. This is why we’re blamed for poverty and racism in America.** This is why French Jewish teenagers are attacked by North Africans because Israelis are stealing Palestinians’ land. Periods of safety and prosperity are followed by periods of violence. The myth of the all-powerful Jew permeates everyone’s consciousness, whether they know it or not.

And it sickens me that the Israeli government exploits this fact. But we shouldn’t have to pass loyalty tests to avoid being blamed for it. We shouldn’t have to downplay our pride in our heritage in order to be trusted. And we certainly shouldn’t have to prove that we’re good Jews, or exceptions to the rule, in order to live our lives.

(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot)

________________
* Edited for clarity.
** See Emily Nepon’s review of “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” in Make/shift 2, and S. L. Wisenberg’s essay “At the Rose of Sharon Spiritual Church.”

The U.K.’s All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism just released a report on anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom. (Via Haaretz.) A few highlights:

- Anti-Semitic incidents (violence, vandalism, etc.) increased roughly five-fold between 1984 and 2004 (7).

- According to the report, “…criticism of Zionism is not in itself antisemitic. However, in some quarters an antisemitic discourse has developed that is in effect antisemitic because it views Zionism itself as a global force of unlimited power and malevolence throughout history. This definition of Zionism bears no relation to the understanding that most Jews have of the concept; that is, a movement of Jewish national liberation, born in the late nineteenth century, with a geographical focus limited to Israel…. The EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism, quoted in full on page 6, identifies some of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel: Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, for example by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour… Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation… Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (for example claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis… Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis… Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel. The EUMC Definition goes on to state that criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic” (17-18).

- Extremist groups commonly use “Zionist” as a codeword for “Jew,” and many others repeat this rhetoric, often unaware of what they’re actually saying (18). (Note that when the discussion doesn’t center on Israel, other common code words include “New York liberal,” “Hollywood liberal,” and “New Yorker.”)

- Comparisons of Israel to the Nazis are used to suggest that “the world and the Jews are now ‘even’” and “cancel out the world’s empathy for Jewish suffering” (19). In other words, the comparisons attempt to paint Jews as villains who deserve what we got. (I still maintain that many Nazi comparisons are just lazy - after all, people get called Nazis all the time - but there’s a steady stream of Israeli=Nazi propaganda coming from extremist groups.)

- The idea that Jews are secretly controlling the world still has numerous incarnations, from theories that AIPAC caused the Iraq war to the idea that Jews planned 9/11 (20) to the rumors that Tony Blair has been influenced by a “Jewish cabal” (see the Haaretz article).

- Jews are frequently suspected of dual loyalty, and are tolerated only as long as we conform completely to the culture around us (whether that culture is white, progressive, conservative, middle-class, etc.) (20). Jews are often told (usually implicitly, I’ve found) that we can’t have any positive or complicated feelings toward Israel if we want to be allies (35); if we don’t hate Israel 100%, then we’re obviously racist right-wingers parading as progressives.

- Although far-right extremist groups still engage in anti-Semitic behavior and rhetoric, there’s evidence that anti-Semitism is now more common in the left wing. Legitimate criticism of Israel often crosses the line into anti-Semitism (32); however, because Leftists see themselves as immune from prejudice, it’s hard to convince people that they’ve said or done something anti-Semitic (33). (I myself hear nonstop complaints about the vast armies of Jews who use frivolous charges of anti-Semitism to shut down discussion. But, seeing as they never seem to make an appearance, I suspect that they’re a much tinier minority than people think. Yes, there are often arguments and even fights over whether something is anti-Semitic or not. But the same is true of any forum for discussing racism and discrimination.)

- Anti-Semitic incidents have been increasing on college campuses: “…a brick was thrown through the window of a Jewish student residence and a poster bearing the words “Slaughter the Jews” was pasted on its front door. A knife was stuck in the door of another Jewish student’s residence. A series of similar motions were proposed across the country, six of which were passed, comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and calling for a boycott of Israeli goods” (40). (Note: I don’t consider comparisons to apartheid inherently anti-Semitic. But a boycott of Israeli goods and professors, along with a severing of ties with Israeli institutions, is a prime example of the double standard described above, and holds everyone with ties to Israel collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.)

There’s a lot more information in the report, along with a ton of examples of various anti-Semitic incidents and rhetoric. It’s long, but worth the read.

(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot)

Hello, out-there and bigoted religious views at Sarah Palin’s church:

…Palin’s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus.

Palin’s pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church’s website.

“He’s a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,” Kroon said.

Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.

“The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality,” he said.
Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.

“Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It’s very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can’t miss it.”

Assholery — you can’t miss it.

Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, has a number of problems in her background. The guy she fired for not firing her ex-brother in law. The fact that she’s been governor of her state for less time than Kid Johnny Mac has been running for president. But the most serious problem for her — and for John McCain — is that she was a staunch supporter of Pat Buchanan’s 2000 presidential campaign.

This was not Buchanan’s 1992 insurgent campaign against then-President George H.W. Bush, nor his bloodying 1996 campaign against then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan. No, this was Buchanan’s run as the National Socialist Worker’s Party Reform Party candidate, a fourth-party bid that, had history bounced a different way, could have cost Bush the election in 2000. Would that it had.

This is not a trifling problem. Buchanan ran in 2000 on a platform of ugly nativism, isolationism, and social conservatism. As Think Progress notes, Buchanan has come out against free trade, has stated outright that there is a culture war going on in the country, and has a…well, let’s just say it’s a complicated relationship with Judaism. And by complicated, I mean he’s a raving anti-Semitic Holocaust denier, a man who in 1990 said of Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor:

If U.S. Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken. When Cardinal O’Connor of New York seeks to soothe the always irate Elie Wiesel by reassuring him “there are many Catholics who are anti-Semitic”…he speaks for himself. Be not afraid, Your Eminence; just step aside, there are bishops and priests ready to assume the role of defender of the faith.

A man who in 1977 said of Adolf Hitler:

[A]n individual of great courage…Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.

Buchanan is a raving bigot, a homophobe, a sexist, a racist…pretty much everything Pat Buchanan’s for, I’m against, and vice versa, with the exception of the Iraq War — and even there, Buchanan opposes the war because he opposes all foreign entanglements of any kind.

And it is this man, this bigot, that Sarah Palin chose over George W. Bush in 2000, a man Palin chose to abandon her party for, because Bush was insufficiently conservative.

And so to Sarah Palin and John McCain, I have a simple question: why? Why did you support Pat Buchanan in 2000, despite his long history of bigotry and Antisemitism? Why did you support him, even though his positions were considered radical even by the Republican Party? Is Pat Buchanan who you are, Gov. Palin? And if not…well, why should we believe you?

Image description: a girl between 8 and 10 years old holds a rose and an Israeli flag. She’s wearing a backpack and looking at the camera without smiling. A boy is visible behind her. Photo credit: Brian Hendler.

This picture was featured on last week’s photo roundup on JTA. The girl is a Georgian refugee whose family has chosen to immigrate to Israel to escape the fighting. The image certainly says a lot about the girl’s current state, but I think it says a lot about Israel, too.

A couple of disclaimers:

1. Obviously I’m not a mind-reader, so don’t interpret this as my attempt to pick this particular girl’s brain. My reading of the photo is on a purely symbolic level.

2. As a Diaspora Jew, I know that I don’t have insider knowledge of life in contemporary Israel (although many native-born Israelis seem to feel they have insider knowledge of life in the contemporary Diaspora).

What’s interesting about the photo is that the girl has apparently been given a flower and an Israeli flag upon her arrival at Ben Gurion. Only the top of the flag is visible, but I recognize it as the same type I was given at the Birthright Mega-Event a few years ago. For those of you not familiar with what goes on during a Birthright trip, the Mega-Event is the culmination of a tour around the country for Jews ages 18-26. The evening is crammed with the gaudiest spectacles you can imagine - laser shows, dance troupes, pop stars, visiting heads of state, a post-show rave - and little plastic Israeli flags are made available to the thousands of audience members. The official purpose of the flags, I suppose, is to give Birthrighters a memento of their trip. The real purpose becomes clear, though, whenever Israel is mentioned during the show. The stands appear to quiver as everyone cheers and waves their flag. Anyone not waving one can’t help but feel almost seditious.

The symbolism of a national flag can’t be underestimated. It’s what you hold up to support your government’s actions, to demonstrate solidarity with the other inhabitants of your country (the ones that look and sound like you, at least), to show support for your country when it’s challenged or threatened by another country, or to display your love of the ideals of your country. You wave it at national celebrations or in times of collective crisis. You lower it when in mourning for someone who supported it. You use it to contrast your country with others, to show what you are by highlighting what you’re not.

The flag doesn’t have to be about that, of course, as I’ve discussed before. But those are the most commonly accepted connotations. It’s a symbol of pride in and loyalty to a particular nation - and a way of establishing a very clear-cut identity.

So this new Israeli has just arrived from a war-torn region. She’s lost her home, most of her belongings, and quite possibly close friends and family members. She looks tired and distracted. She’s holding the flag she’s been given, but she’s not smiling.

What are a Jew’s motives for moving to Israel? What are Israel’s motives for encouraging refugees to immigrate?

The easiest answers are the cynical ones. Why not move to Israel when your home has been destroyed? Why not exploit a humanitarian crisis to recruit more citizens, when part of your government’s strategy is to entrench itself in someone else’s territory through illegal settlements and state-sanctioned violence? When your national identity is based, in part, on being a safe haven for a persecuted people - which ties a little too nicely into justifying the persecution of the people who put down roots during the 2,000 years you were gone?

And there’s truth in those answers. But there’s truth in the stickier answers, too. A few Georgians were quoted as saying that they’d already been considering moving to Israel; the war was just the catalyst. It’s a joke to claim that anti-Semitism abruptly vanished in the latter half of the 20th century. Recently I was helping a student brainstorm essay ideas, and she mentioned her youth group’s trip to Poland - where, upon spotting the boys’ yarmulkes, people felt free to shout “Heil Hitler” at them. The Lithuanian government regularly engages in various anti-Semitic activities, and the Jewish school in Paris where I picked up my charges as an au pair had to be protected by a fifteen-foot-high wall and police officers. Jews are routinely harassed, attacked, and killed - not for opposing Palestinian rights (in fact, many are attacked while participating at progressive rallies), but for having the gall to be Jewish. To say that Jews have no reason to want a country of our own - not to criticize the location of that country or the ethnic cleansing that has been occurring since its inception, but to claim that we were fine as we were - is a pretty profound act of hatred.

But maybe anti-Semitism didn’t play a role in those refugees’ deliberations. Georgia isn’t known for having a particularly high level of anti-Jewish sentiment. Even without hostility, though, there’s power in wanting to be around other people like you.

And despite (because of) the corruption, hawkishness, and racism riddling their government, Israelis do sincerely believe that it’s better to be a Jew in Israel than a Jew in the Diaspora. According to that logic, one’s arrival in Israel is a cause for celebration, even if the circumstances are tragic.

Which brings us back to the photo. I’m struck most by the contrast between the object and the face - the joyful, congratulatory gesture of a flag coupled with the fear and uncertainty of a refugee; the simplicity of nationalism at odds with the complexity of survival. Is the flag a distraction? An insult? Maybe she was smiling a moment before. As always, the issue of Palestine looms around the edges. Why does this child deserve a haven and a home more than a Palestinian does? Why can’t they both have it? To say that it has to be one or the other is unacceptable.

I don’t know how to accomplish this - not in this all-or-nothing climate. It saddens me that to acknowledge the humanity of both Jews and Arabs is, on either end of the political spectrum, an act of radicalism.

To the girl - if you or your family is reading this, I hope I didn’t use your image unfairly. I wish you the best of luck in your new home.

(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot)

I strongly urge you to read this piece by the terrific Shmarya Rosenberg of the blog FailedMessiah. Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are doing terrible things to women—beating them for sitting in the “wrong section” of officially section-less buses, breaking into their homes and beating them for suspicion of seeing married men—and getting away scot-free because the religious and political establishments do not want to touch these issues with a long stick.

This hyper-segregation has now spilled over into Israel’s system of public transport. The ultra-Orthodox are demanding – and getting – separate seating on public buses. And, even though compliance with this segregation is supposed to be voluntary, increasingly the ultra-Orthodox choose to act as if it were mandatory, and as if they have the legal right to use coercion and brute force to achieve it. …

But most often, violence works. Rabbis are not willing to confront it, and so they tailor their public rulings to placate thugs. They remain silent as women are beaten and harassed, sometimes condemning in private what they fear to confront publicly.

These “modesty patrols” are not sent by the Taliban in Afghanistan. They’re sent by lawless, vigilante ultra-Orthodox Jews who know that they can get their way and enforce their own perverted variant of “Torah-true” law through intimidation and violence.

And, of course, it’s not just women—it’s also the homosexuals (and worse!):

When the target is homosexuals, however, ultra-Orthodox rabbis have been in the forefront of inciting violence. Israel’s chief rabbis called homosexuals “the lowest of people” during the violence-filled run-up to Jerusalem’s 2006 Gay Pride parade, and leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis signed a notice calling gays an “evil mob seeking to defile the holy city of Jerusalem.”

Yeshiva heads sent their students to the streets to riot. They burned the contents of the large city-owned plastic trash dumpsters – and they burned the dumpsters themselves. The fumes and smoke sent scores of ultra-Orthodox elderly and children to hospitals with breathing and cardiac trouble. Even so, the riots and the dumpster-burning continued night after night. Weak and defenseless victims of the acrid smoke became collateral damage in a holy war fought by unruly mobs to defend the “purity” of Jerusalem. It was as if these victims were viewed by the mobs as sacrifices offered to appease the angry, vengeful, ultra-Orthodox God – the God of “modesty patrols” and segregated buses; a God of ultra-Orthodox invention, not of history.

Again, let me point out that this is not Afghanistan under the Taliban: this is Israel under a theoretically democratic governemnt. The myths that non-Israeli modern Jews are being fed about Israel—that it’s an enlightened society where all Jews live in harmony, where ancient and modern ways of life are blended seamlessly, where secular coexists with religious—are just that: myths. These rabbis, especially those at the top of the religious establishment, should be ashamed of themselves. What they represent, as Shmarya so eloquently points out, is not toleration but fundamentalism, not love for their fellow human beings but disgusting gynophobia and homophobia.

The fast day of Tisha B’Av is coming up on Sunday, in commemoration of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Talmud teaches that the Temple was destroyed because of sin’at hinam, baseless hatred. People who engage in the kind of hatred running amok among the Israeli ultra-Orthodox would argue that their hatred is not baseless, since they target people violating “Torah law” and “Torah-true Judaism”. Yet it’s really these people who carry this baseless hatred within their hearts: hatred of women, homosexuals, and anyone else who doesn’t wear the same kind of black hat that they do—simply on the basis of their perversion of Jewish law and Jewish values and morals.

This is anti-Semitism, pure and simple—except this time the anti-Semites are ourselves.

The Jewish Defense League (JDL) called for a boycott of Will Smith’s new movie, and for movie studies to blacklist Smith, because Smith said:

Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, “let me do the most evil thing I can do today.” I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was “good.”

The JDL’s webpage (and, I suspect, press release) carries the ridiculous headline “Will Smith Thinks Hitler Was Basically Good.”

After Smith released a statement clarifying that he thinks Hitler is evil, the JDL retracted their call for a boycott and Smith’s blacklisting, but maintained that “we stand by our original assessment that his original comments were offensive.” They haven’t revised their headline as of this moment.

Of course, Smith’s argument isn’t novel; it’s the sort of philosophy that gets chatted about among friends and family, and in Sunday school, frequently. (This was true even of my childhood Sunday school — which was Jewish). Contrary to the JDL’s reading, by using “Hitler” as his example Smith implicitly acknowledged Hitler’s ultimate evilness (the philosophical conundrum Smith discussed only makes sense when the example is a figure everyone recognizes as vile).

As Marc Lamont Hill writes:

In his quote, Smith accurately pointed out that people rarely view themselves as the living embodiment of evil. Instead, all of us are shaped by ideologies, traditions, and regimes of knowledge that shape who we are and how we view the world. As such, Hitler likely didn’t see himself as evil, but as an agent of what he viewed as positive social change. This doesn’t justify the massacre of Jews, it merely explains how individual identities and practices are constituted by coherent (though often deeply problematic) worldviews.

While I’m sensitive to Antisemitism — I supported the JDL’s boycott of Mel Gibson– this is going too far. Every time someone does more than call Hitler the devil incarnate, they aren’t supporting the Holocaust. Every time someone challenges the Zionist occupation of Palestine, they aren’t antisemitic. This type of thin skinned and reactionary media grandstanding on the part of the JDL does a radical disservice to the legitimate work against antisemitism that is being done around the globe.

Two quick thoughts:

1) Smith has publicly supported Barak Obama’s candidacy (and the JDL called for Obama to repudiate Smith); I doubt that a right-wing celebrity who had said the same thing would have gotten an angry response by the JDL. But a chance to combine liberal-bashing with publicity-grubbing isn’t something the JDL is likely to pass up.

2) The JDL’s inane attacks on innocent statements trivialize actual antisemitism.