Reading the comments on this post analyzing the structure of anti-semitism in Western dialogue makes me want to give up and hide.
I spent a lot of time in college immersed in dialogues about Israel and Palestine. I nevertheless consider myself extremely uninformed on the subject. Every time I learned a little, I felt it only exposed how much I didn’t know about the history and subtleties of the conflict.
At the college I went to my freshman year, a pro-Palestinian group led by a very charismatic woman from Lebanon put up posters sneering at the right of return, and suggesting that Jews should not be permitted to go to Israel. This school was located about 15 minutes away from the world trade center, and a large portion of the people on the campus had relatives and friends who were directly affected (if not killed) by the 9/11 attacks. On 9/11, the administration set up a meeting for the students to share their stress and grief, and the very charismatic woman from Lebanon stood up that evening and told the grieving collection of students that the U.S. was to blame for the attacks because of their policies in the middle east and support of Israel.
A friend of mine wanted to establish a counter group — which she did. The intent was, originally, to be a moderate group, neither pro-Palestine nor pro-Israel, expressing disdain for settlements and violence. After I left the school at the beginning of our sophomore year, the group became something else again – an extremist voice that could rightly be called anti-Palestine.
At the college I transferred to, I joined the staff of a Jewish newspaper which, again, had been described to me as attempting a moderate voice. I quickly found they weren’t moderate for me. The newspaper printed articles defending the existence of Israeli settlements, but refused to print any articles criticizing the existence of the Israeli state.
In my experience, discussion about Israel and Palestine is a license for people to act like jackasses.
So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the thread at Feministe is full of people acting like jackasses. I shouldn’t be surprised that people are saying anti-semitism is not a fit topic for discussion, or that people are randomly attacking David Shraub for talking fast and glibly (based on, as far as I can tell, absolutely no information whatsoever).
I get really, really sick of reading people attacking Jewish speakers for things that the attacker is just clearly uninformed about. Yes, anti-semitism means anti-Jewish. Attack etymology if you want, but for heaven’s sake, you come across as – yes – a jackass when you imply that someone using the word in its proper context is showing their racist colors. And, yup, it turns out that Jewish identity is fraught and complicated, and includes both ethnicity and religion. No kidding.
I want to be able to complain about the behavior of pro-Israel people in that thread, but frankly, they weren’t acting as jackassy — this time. Though someone did tell another person that she couldn’t really understand the emotionality of Israel because she’s not a Jew, and I don’t really find that argument persuasive. (I find that, on Alas, we tend to end up with more pro-Israel jackassery than pro-Palestinian jackassery. For instance, we had people on here defending Israel’s poisoning of Palestinian wells. What the fuck?)
Thank heavens for Holly, and for Julie (The Girl Detective), and for David Shraub, and for a few other people.
But really, what the hell?
Debate about Israel and Palestine is plugging into something really, really weird. We don’t seem to get this level of emotionality and jackassery on other foreign policy issues, even ones that involve equivalent levels of death and suffering.
Maybe part of it is anti-semitism, as I’m sure some Jewish people would suggest — certainly, a strange hostility toward Jews does sometime arise in progressive American conversation about Israel. In certain conversations, including a few that have taken place on Feministe, I feel that liberal Jews who oppose Israel’s current actions — like The Girl Detective — are treated with suspicion and berated for arrogance for reasons that seem as though they can only be related to our ethnic identification.
And the right of return is probably part of America’s emotional connection to the issue, too, since a lot of American Jews do feel a connection with Israel. And, of course, America as a nation has a strange level of investment in Israel — historically, and in terms of our providing weaponry to Israel for bizarre reasons that suit Christians who believe in the apocalypse. Certainly, these things give our national discourse plenty of reasons to be fraught with emotion — investment and entanglement, both positive and negative.
But is that all? It feels like there’s something else, something which sings a siren call to jackassery.
It makes me sad, and uncomfortable, and it makes me want to weep. It makes me feel like I can’t be part of a conversation on this issue unless I’m willing to endorse well-poisoning on one side, or to mention my Jewish identity only when I’m using it as part of an argument against Israel (“I am a Jew, but…”).
I don’t know about other Jews, but in my case, it often means I just shut down when I see conversation about Israel and Palestine. I am not wanted there. Either my voice is too progressive, or too Jewish. Such conversations will just make me sad and upset. So I pass.
I, too, have been trying to figure out the source of the jackassery.
Perhaps it’s that, on the left, those arguing against Israel often haven’t figured out how to reconcile their argument and their certainty with the fact that their own houses are planted on stolen land, often purchased with unearned privilege, in a country built on slave labor.
Good point, Miriam.
Sure, those living in settler colonial glass houses shouldnt throw stones, but my objection to the post is not that antisemitism in general, or on the left, is not worthy of discussion. My beef is with the analysis and the idea that analyzing antisemitism tells us something important about the crisis in Gaza.
Israel is bombing a ghetto, and killing people that can’t escape. Sitting in South Africa, its easy to see that while Afrikaaners were oppressed by the British, and that is part of the story of apartheid, that in no way justifies the system of apartheid.
The occupation and current assault on Palestinians is a political and moral crisis with claims on the conscience and opinions of people committed to the liberation of all, as I know Mandolin is.
I can certainly identify with what you’re saying. I’m Jewish & I’m politically progressive & the expectations of what my position ought to be, from those respective communities, are at opposite ends. And I am neither virulently anti nor fastidiously pro–as would be expected. I am dismayed. I am overwhelmed by the complexity. I feel like I’m in that old joke about the rabbi who says to one angry spouse “you’re right” and to the other angry spouse “you’re right” and when they both turn on him and call him an idiot, “you’re also right.” I get upset about the deaths and the injuries and the hunger and the illnesses. I read and I avoid reading about it. I also agree with how emotional this issue is. The writer’s list I’m on is rife with frothing at the mouth from people on both ends of the spectrum. I’ve asked for civility and I’ve expressed anger at the repetitive vituperative shouting onlist. There have been brief diversions to other topics & more civil discourse on this one only to, again, revert back to shouting and brow beating. If only we could just stand and look in each other’s eyes. If only we could just see the humanity there and more…the universal divinity.
When I read this, I thought, “Holy shit, that sounds exactly like what happened at the college I went to!” Then I remembered that you and I went to the same college.
Curiousgyrl, when Israel’s whole national identity is based on victimhood – and when it uses victimhood as justification for killing hundreds of unarmed civilians – I think analyzing anti-Semitism tells us something very important about the crisis in Gaza. What is it about the very idea that understanding one issue could help us understand the other that offends you? Because perhaps I’m misunderstanding you, but that seems to suggest that you disagree not with the points made in the analysis, but with the fact that anyone should be interested in that analysis in the first place (and I’m not even going to get into how I feel about that as a Jew). Talking about Gaza isn’t a zero-sum game. I don’t see how anyone is going to be harmed if this issue is one of many on the table.
Maybe I’m just dragging the whole fight over here…
I didn’t make it through all the comments on the Feministe post, but I did really like David’s post. It seemed to me that a lot of the objections to it were along the lines of curousgyrl – related to talking about it in the context of “explaining Gaza.”
I also did think that David kind of undersold and brushed aside the prevalence of people who use accusations of anti-Semitism to shut down criticism of Israel. I think it is a bigger problem than he gave it credit for, and I think that may have upset some readers. The jack-assery does, indeed, go both ways. However, one thing that I’ve gleaned from progressive blogs is to try not to let that kind of jack-assery totally de-rail a really interesting discussion thread. Keep communicating with those who are communicating in good faith, and brush off the jack-assery. Good moderating of course makes that easier.
Now, I don’t know David who wrote that post. I don’t know anything about him, and have read nothing he’s written other than that post. Maybe some of these criticisms make sense in the context of other things he’s written. However, in that particular post and in his reaction in the comments, he makes it clear that he is not attempted to “explain Gaza.” Perhaps Feministe should have rejected his series because what they were really looking for was a post to “explain Gaza.” But they decided to post it, and it is what it is.
I think that most Jews react to Israeli/Palestinian issues in a way that is influenced by their understanding of global anti-Semitism. As a Jew who is learning that I probably identify as pro-Zionist and anti-occupation, David’s post was a really really interesting and thoughtful unpacking of how global anti-Semitism factors into the pro-Zionist part of that inclination.
I don’t know exactly where his series will go, but I expect it to be very useful food for thought for progressive Jews who feel impulsively or instinctively that the existance of a Jewish state is important to them but that the oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel is wrong. Maybe Feministe is the wrong platform because it’s more of an intracommunity project, but I thought some of the criticisms of it were much more about why Feministe chose to run this at this time than about David’s actual ideas.
As I understand it, and I could be wrong because this is a very complex issue, the very existence of Israel and the initial need for it stemmed and continues to stem from anti-Semitism, in Europe and world over. That is not to say that the actions in Gaza are justifiable, but an understanding of anti-Semitism, past and present, can help with an analysis of the perspective that can justify to itself actions like the current Gaza situation.
Wow, that seems really garbled…
Oddly enough, I tend not to bring up my Jewish heritage in these discussions, but for completely different reasons. I don’t have a very strong connection with my heritage, and my family is very anti-occupation, despite, or maybe because, several of them have lived in Israel and have served in the IDF. However, I have lived in Jordan, and have a great deal of friends who are both Palestinian and Israeli. My emotional investment in this discussion comes from knowing people who live it, less than feeling some emotional connection to the land of Israel. I felt more at home in Jordan, and cannot feel comfortable with the idea of a land that is “just for me.” Exclusion makes me very uncomfortable. I cannot, in good conscience, feel at home in a place where the place’s very existence is dependent on treating other human beings little better than animals. (Note, I’m not comfortable with being a US citizen either)
okay, rambling over. tl, dr version: understanding perspectives can help yield a solution, understanding anti-Semitism can help in understanding perspectives.
I’ve had similar experiences to you, Mandolin, and my conclusions are similar. I’ve got to the point where I’m physically afraid to go near, much less join, any group claiming to be for justice for Palestinians, although this is a cause I believe in and feel that as a Jewish person I have a moral obligation to devote energy to. I haven’t yet found a supposedly moderate, bipartisan Jewish-run group that doesn’t turn out to be too blindly Zionist for me (like your example of endorsing well poisoning). I’m European, though, so the background dynamic is a bit different.
The thing is, I’m not at all surprised that it’s hard to have a reasonable conversation about the middle east situation. What does still surprise me is that it’s incredibly difficult to have a reasonable conversation about antisemitism. Feministe is particularly bad in that respect, but I’ve seen it over and over again. I think this happens with other -isms too; a post criticizing racism will receive many incredibly thoughtless and unhelpful comments, and a few (one is too many!) openly racist ones. It just boggles me a bit, that someone can talk about an antisemitic incident, and get responses like, there’s no such thing as antisemitism, you [antisemitic slurs] should just stop whining and manipulating the media to make everyone feel sorry for you while you steal all the money from the proletariat!
What do y’all think of J Street? I’m a big fan, and I have high hopes for them.
Barry told me the comments on David’s second post were more constructive, but I’m not seeing it. Bleah
(OK, it did get better after a while.)
I think jackassery is understandable in all peoples who have historically experienced genocide – terror very regularly leads there. In folks with such a history of i feel like i can make a bridge between that and their jackassery. Including my own.
But, I have always been confused about how other peoples got involved. In the Bay Area (where i live), i regularly encounter liberal/progressive activists of european descent who have incredibly strong and hateful opinions against Israel, or any jewish state. How did that happen, i often wonder.
My best guess about non-genocide induced jackassery on the anti-Israel tip is a combination of a few factors, in no particular order: 1) a real response to the imperialist nonsense that is actually going on in present time, 2) entrenched anti-jewish oppression that makes folks feel as if jewish folks are ripe for blaming and for targeting with hatred, and 3) a liberal/progressive tendency towards the simplicity of duality – good/bad. Really good/really bad. Etc.
As the only folks i encounter with pro-imperialist Israel leanings are USer jews, the genocide incuded jackassery seems to hold.
As for an alternative to the really good/really bad scenario, i like to read rabbi lerner of Tikkun.
What is “J-Street?” I’m so out of the loop. My job is demanding and I wish I had time to read blogs and learn more.
J Street is a progressive, Zionist, pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-peace lobbying group setting itself up as an alternative to AIPAC.
I’m new to this blog. I like this post. It sounds like my own experiences too.
I think part of the problem is that we here in America are not comfortable with ambiguity. We like to know who is right and who is wrong, to pick a side and cheer for a team. We identify as left or right and we have no confidence in the center or the middle because the boundaries have been so fluid in these past few years.
As a liberal, feminist, Jewish middle aged woman this conversion is difficult for me too because I do understand how small Israel is and how vulnerable it is; I’ve been there and seen it first hand.
But I also understand that what they are doing in Gaza and in the West Bank is also wrong. Of course Hamas is wrong too. How does one chose a side when both sides are so many ways of wrong?
So we lash out at each other, at them, at whoever is defending or rationalizing or justifying each degree of wrongness. With the exception of the neo-conish people who actually like the idea of blowing up people and places in order to achieve whatever goals they set, most of just hate the idea that differences might be intractable as we have never had to face anything like it here.
I find this all really depressing too, because I keep getting my hopes up when some more progressive, anti-occupation Jews who viscerally understand anti-semitism but still aren’t “on board” with what Israel has become show up. I really don’t feel like I should be speaking for you guys (who are at the center of the kind of debate that David has constructed) or for Palestinians (who are at the center of well, deadly bombing). I am just some well-meaning person who happens to be wandering by, who has Jewish friends and Palestinian friends and is like “oh my god what the hell.” But then all the aforementioned Jews start to feel nauseous and recuse themselves in horror, and I don’t know — try and represent? It feels very wrong too, mostly because I just keep blabbing and I don’t even know if what I’m saying is right or if I’m the one that should be saying it. I just know that there’s a lot being said, being defended, being propped up that feels very, very wrong.
Good post, Mandolin. I’ve run into self-described progressives who claim to believe that criticism of anti-Semitism is mostly just apologetics for Israeli aggression, even when what’s being criticized has aught to do with Israel. This is more than just a factual error. When these same people, for no better reason than that, choose to turn their backs on criticism of anti-Semitism, it’s fair to ask whether they are themselves prejudiced. It’s disheartening it should be necessary to say it, but no amount of outrage over Israeli actions in Gaza can justify this kind of thing. There are also people who seize on the horrors of the occupation as a way of grinding their own personal axes or dressing up or vindicating their own troubled attitudes toward Jews. This may be fine to some, but it does the Palestinians and the cause of a just peace no favors, and it shouldn’t be encouraged. (Otherwise, why not just sign up with someone like David Duke, who I’m sure has lots to say about Palestinian rights.)
Wow. All these issues are more complex (and emotional) than I thought. I wish I had the power to bring calmness to Israel and the Palestinians. Hmmm. There are 2 other divorce attorneys in my law firm besides myself (together we are a Jew, an Arab and a Catholic). Left to us, we’d of course recommend a DIVORCE! No forcing the parties to talk directly to each other or live together under one roof. All parties need to divorce each other now. Then the nonsensical attorneys (my law firm) divide up the assets in a fair and just manner and draw up the papers. After the divorce, as I’ve seen many times, the parties start to get along much better and so will the people in the middle east. I know. It’s not that simple and the senseless deaths of so many people is heart breaking. Just a 4am in the morning suggestion from this first time blogging participant. Anyway, thanks to whoever put up this blog. An enjoyable read indeed and a great break from my crazy work life! As for J Street, it sounds interesting! I hadn’t heard of this organization before but I plan to follow its progress and maybe get involved if I find the time. It’s very late. Peace to everyone. G’nite and bye!
I’ve had the same problem – I couldn’t face reading the comments on the post in question, and honestly haven’t read those above me here, because I just can’t handle any more of it right now. I’ve spent a lot of time in Israel, studying and with family, and become very close to many Israelis and Palestinians. It’s incredibly difficult to see seemingly decent people, intelligent people, people you had respected, suddenly come out with the most casual racism, hated, and xenophobia. I decided after my last trip, which was purely for a language immersion class, that I couldn’t and wouldn’t return until I could be actively working against it. And then this happened. I’m an atheist, but I’m also a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, a person who has been targeted for being Jewish, the daughter of a clergyperson and someone who is deeply and inextricably rooted in Judaism and Jewish culture. I’ve been lucky to know many thoughtful and conscientious Jews who are as sickened by the Israeli government’s actions, even before the Gaza invasion, as I am. It’s difficult to be a Jew in this position (and yes, I do consider myself a Jew despite my atheism – damn that ethnic and cultural component), knowing the Israel the founders intended, deeply feeling the fear of another Holocaust and sympathizing with the desire for a safe haven, at the same time as you know without a shadow of a doubt that the Israeli government is as wrong as it is possible to be and that you truly are far more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, given the real world that we live in.
I wrote about this exact topic for a school application essay – and I think it’s my favorite piece of writing I’ve done. If anyone is interested, here it is. Feel free to repost as long as you credit me, Rebecca Ross Russell.
The words “Do Not Push” have no meaning here. The little babushkas in the marketplace grab by the shoulders and move anyone in their way. Bus stops degenerate into mob scenes when the doors open, a soldier knocking a woman with the M16 on his shoulder, an elderly man using his cane to slash a path to the door. Nobody blinks at the thousands of women with strollers, most half hidden by wigs or headscarves. They are a part of the tableau, the six year olds carrying the newborns, the teenagers carrying the toddlers, obstructing the narrow alleys that wind between ancient stone buildings. They are blunt, and straightforward, and bracing, prickly as their cactus namesake. An entire people revels in the heady freedom of taking up space, speaking loudly, pushing and being pushed back without fear. And yet. The solidarity that carried them through a thousand years, the imposed and internalized otherness, the angry fire that survived concentration camps has no one to fight now. It swings wildly, the defensive spines grown poisonous, self defense morphed into blinkered xenophobia. The troublemakers are “put on a diet,” walled in, denied permits to build or schools to learn or space to grow. For those who have awakened in their beds to the sounds of bombs for centuries, for whom everything they can do has often not been enough, it seems alien not to fight with everything they have. Sixty years has yet to erase the scars on the collective psyche, like an abused child who grows up to be an abusive parent. So others grow up ghettoized, made other, poor and angry. Those who have learned too well from history are sometimes doomed to repeat it.
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Thank you for expressing this so wonderfully. I feel the same way about most discussions of the subject and now largely feel like there really is no place I know of where I can comfortably discuss the issue. Certainly not with my hawkish relatives–but not in many “progressive” settings, either.
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