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)
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* 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.”
See this.
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.
And your evidence that this is a fallacy is?
Many, if not most, world cultures view Jews as a monolithic, powerful, and malevolent force that needs to be contained.
Hmm. It’s as though the Jewish fear being “stoked” by the Israeli government has a rational basis.
I can’t really judge the validity of expending the settlement borders to create what is essentially a DMZ, without knowing whether or not the above quote was true (and if true, what the context was.)
In order to reach a conclusion that stays the same irrespective of the truth of the quote above, it seems necessary to start from an assumption that the settlements should not exist at all. Is this what you are basing your assumptions on?
Next,
Did everyone read the report? You should, because this summary sure as shit is not accurate in reality. It says nothing about being uneducated, but it certainly addresses violence.
The section on Islam starts on paragraph 124, which is on page 48.
The very first thing they do in that section is explain that
So the FIRST THING they say is that the report is limited by a desire not to offed anyone. They then diligently avoid–surprise!!–coming to a conclusion regarding Islamist antisemitism.
But if you read the report, it is ludicrous to think that they come to a particularly positive result. They note that many mainstream broadcasts are antisemitic, and that they:
These DVDs or similar content are, they note, widely available on the Net and on satellite. And of course, “Arabic translations of ‘Mein Kampf’ and ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ are freely available in Arabic bookshops on the Edgware Road and other places in London.”
It would take willful and intentional mischaracterization to read that report and say “according to the report I talked about earlier this week, anti-Semitic Muslims are in the minority.”
How are you reaching that conclusion?
Sailorman, argue what you want, but if you start flipping out again, I will ban you from my threads. I’m really sick of your tone.
As for how I’m reaching that conclusion, see page 30, paragraph 146. If you have a problem, take it up with them.
That paragraph, in its entirety:
146. We conclude that a minority of Islamist extremists in this country do incite hatred towards Jews. The undoubted prejudice and difficulties that British Muslims feel and their justified sense of increasing Islamophobia cannot be used to justify antisemitic words and violence.
That doesn’t come close to saying what you say it does. For one thing, it’s talking about the UK, not the world – your post seems to be talking about Muslims generally, not just the tiny fragment of Islam represented in the British Isles.
Secondly, that paragraph is addressing the level of hate-incitement among a particular group of extremists – not Muslims in general.
Thirdly, there is a world of difference between not actively inciting hate against a group, and not being anti- that group. A majority of the white people in Swamp Hollow, Mississippi, are not actively inciting hatred against black people, but that says nothing about whether the majority is anti-black, pro-black, or neutral. I can fairly say that most of the racist white people I’ve ever met are not actively inciting hatred against blacks, but they’re still racist as all shit.
Sailorman’s conclusion is correct. You have to be willfully and actively mischaracterizing the document to state your conclusion as you do.
SM’s conclusion, and your repeating of it, is a personal attack and not what I’d prefer to see on “Alas.”
It’s fine to argue that GD (or anyone else here) has mischaracterized a source document, but don’t go to “willfully,” which is about GD’s intentions and state of mind, and not at all about the topic of this thread.
I read the report too. I think you are not correct in your description. I find your post frustrating and a bit scary, and it is difficult for me; this undoubtedly comes out in my writing. My family is Jewish too, you know, and I do have a vested interest in this.
I will try to explain why without adopting a tone that you don’t like.
First of all, it seems–both from the clear language of the report and from the “between the lines” aspect of this type of report in general–that the U.K. is trying to avoid, almost desperately, offending its Muslim citizens.
This is a laudable goal. But it affects the conclusions you can draw from the report.
These things are usually biased anyway, towards “all citizens are apparently content;” not many governments release reports which condemn the relations between their citizens. I haven’t read anything in the U.S. that i can recall off the top of my head, but I bet that if someone wrote on the Chicago riots they would have characterized it as a “minor disagreement of certain issues which temporarily escalated.”
So when a report (usually biased towards ‘say nothing bad’ even without saying anything) actively states that it is trying to say nothing bad… well, I do not think it is fair or accurate to point to is as “proof” or an “example” of Nothing Bad Is Happening Here.
So in that respect, I think you are mischaracterizing it. It may not be intentional, but I think you’re wrong.
Next, I also think you are misreading it. The paragraph you cite is in a short, three-paragraph section, which reads:
You are reading that as if it says “we conclude that only a minority…..” In other words, you are suggesting that we can conclude that “except for an extremist minority, Muslims in the U.K. are not antisemitic” But that’s not what it says. It is also not a conclusion supported by the rest of the report.
So, in summary, I believe that your post
-suggests that the report is a neutral commentary on Islamic antisemitism, when all indications are to the contrary;
-states that the report comes to a conclusion on the percentage of U.K. Muslims who are antisemitic, when the report does not actually do so at all; and
-suggests that said nonconclusion is “only a minority,” which is a quote out of context entirely.
I apologize for calling it willful, if it was an accidental misreading. I am certainly more interested in discussing the substance of the report.
Okay. Reading this, I see that my wording in the post was unclear. I said that a minority of Arabs and Muslims are anti-Semitic; what I should have said – and what the report indicates – is that a minority of Arabs and Muslims engage in hate crimes against Jews in the manner described in the Haaretz article. That was sloppy of me, and I apologize. Anti-Semitism permeates Arab and Muslim cultures just as it does other cultures, but only a minority act on it.
Civil discussion! What a radical concept.
I appreciate the clarification. Thanks.