An Irritated Analogy

Imagine, if you will, that you are a white American feminist. Imagine that someone points out that white American feminists have long failed to show sufficient concern or respect for American feminists of color. We have not understood or acted on behalf of their issues and needs, we have not educated ourselves, we have not listened, we have not created an inclusive movement, we have, indeed, allowed ourselves to think that ‘all the feminists are white, and all the blacks are men’.

If you are someone who values truth, and someone who values understanding her own privilege, you will agree that these things are true, and strive to address them.

Now, imagine if you will, that someone comes along and says that women of color are oppressed solely by white feminists. This person has no interest in any other factor creating oppression in the lives of women of color. They seem entirely unaware that any men have ever been involved systemically or significantly in the oppression of women of color. They certainly don’t believe that women of color were facing any oppression before feminism came along in the nineteenth century. They’ve read, in fact, that before feminism, American women of color lived in perfect harmony with their neighbors of all colors, and had no problems at all. Now that there’s feminism, of course, they face economic and educational inequality, problems of access to adequate health care, race and gender based discrimination, and many other difficulties, and this is all clearly the result of feminism.

 All progressive people, therefore, they assert should be fundamentally opposed to feminism, and see it as an entirely and uniquely destructive force in the world. Women of color, in particular, should never be fooled into thinking that they have any problems that were not directly inflicted on them by the white feminists, and if they start to think anyone else is causing them problems, they should just review all the terrible things white feminists have done to them.

 You might be tempted to write this person off as ludicrously uninformed, or you might suspect that this is someone who hates women, and hates feminism, and is trying to find a convenient reason why feminism is awful that you will have to agree with. You might, if you did a little digging, find that they have a whole arsenal of other reasons why they assert feminism is terrible, most of them just as spurious or historically inaccurate.

This is exactly the nonsense that spills out when people who hate Israel try to use the Mizrahim, the Ethiopian Jews, and other Jewish communities of color as a way to beat up on Israel and Zionism. These are people who have somehow managed to educate themselves about the discrimination these communities face in Israel, (or perhaps ‘educate’ is not the term, given the high ratio of lies that tend to creep in) but have somehow managed to not learn about, or not care about, any other oppression these Jews experience now or in the past at the hands of anyone except Israeli Ashkenazim. Just like that, generations of segregation, bigotry, murderous hate, and racist laws simply vanish. Ancient communities become blunt instruments to try to wield against other Jews.

 In other words, yes. The Mizrahim, the Ethiopians, the Russians (oh, we forgot about them, since the anti-Israel crowd likes to paint them villains), the Bokharans, all of them, have faced difficulties and often discrimination in Israel. We have internalized colonialism and racism as much as any other oppressed people, and we continue to struggle with them. But if you like to passionately assert that these problems indicate rot at Zionism’s heart—you’re ignorant.

 If you do not know both what the Farhud was, and how it fits into the broader history of collaboration with the Nazis by Middle Eastern governments, you do not have the right to enter this discussion. If you don’t know that there were camps in Tunisia as well as Poland, you do not have the right to enter this discussion. If you do not understand the intersections of colonialism and traditional anti-Semitism as they affected the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa, you do not have the right to enter this discussion. If you dismiss the fascist connections of pre-war Palestinian leadership, and think that discussions of anti-Semitism in Islamic societies are simply ‘Islamophobia’, to be scoffed and dismissed, you should stay well out of this discussion. If you do not understand the speed and the racist venom with which ancient Jewish communities were dismantled and exiled in the years following the establishment of Israel, you simply don’t know enough to even approach this discussion.

 Or you could go through life thinking that American women of color had no problems until Seneca Falls, and would have none today if we could only dismantle NOW. Sometimes willful ignorance can’t be overcome.

The Great Gilad Atzmon Paperchase

Respectfully submitted by the Makabit, notes on the events befalling the Bay Area Zionists on the evening of February 25, Oakland, California:

Gilad Atzmon can be described in a variety of ways. You could describe him, as his adoring fans do, as a 'prolific performer, composer, author and activist'. You could describe him as nearly everyone else does, as a unhinged hater whose writings drip with classical anti-Semitism and a poisonous hatred of Jews and Judaism. Or, you could describe him, as a lady of my acquaintance does, simply as 'someone who makes a living being a self-hating saxophonist'.

A brief primer on Gilad Atzmon for those of you who may have blissfully erased him from your memory banks since the last time he popped up. Atzmon is on record as saying:

“I’m not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue. I can see that it is a rational act.”

“American Jews do try and control the world by proxy” 

“There is no such thing as anti-Semitism”
 

“Why is it that the Jews who repeatedly demand  that the Christian world should apologize for its involvement in previous persecutions, have never thought that it is about time that they apologized for killing Jesus?"

“I wanted to be an ordinary human being, which is very unusual for a Jew.”

He is most recently the author of a book entitled The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics, described by Walter Russell Mead as "a genuinely anti-Semitic book by a deeply twisted anti-Semite — who happens also to be Jewish." The book, among other things, speculates about the truth of the blood libel, and points out in Hitler's defense that American Jews were persecuting him by boycotting German goods. Atzmon also adds, of the Shoah: I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws. 


I won't even get into what he says about Israel, a nation that had the misfortune to count Gilad Atzmon as a citizen until he renounced his connections to Israel, Judaism, and sanity. (He now lives in Britain, which deserves better.) So you get the idea: proudly self-loathing, comfortable with the tropes of Holocaust denial, and reviving the ugliest smears of classical anti-Semitism. 


This charming fellow is much beloved by people who hate Israel, and are pleased by the vicious image that Atzmon creates of Jews and Israelis. Which is why he is repeatedly invited to star at various 'fundraisers' for various anti-Israel activities. Most recently, this led to his being invited to Oakland, CA, on the evening of Saturday, February 25, for an evening of music and anti-Semitism, to raise funds for the Global March to Jerusalem. For reasons that will follow shortly, I do not believe that they can have possibly raised enough money to cover the cost of flying Mr. Atzmon out from England. In fact, one of the most consistent things about Atzmon's fundraising endeavors is that they never seem to raise much in the way of funds. But that is a consideration for another day.

Of course, if we was gonna be there, we were gonna be there. The Zionists and proud Jews of the Bay Area revved up. We took old signs out of storage, and painted new ones. There was no way Atzmon was going to speak anywhere in the Bay Area without us standing by and telling the world the truth about his vile shtick. We were a little nervous, after the peaceful organizers of this event contacted anarchists at Occupy Oakland for 'security', soliciting the response "Who do you want us to beat up?" But we went anyway. We were determined to speak truth to...whatever it is Gilad Atzmon is.

Things got complicated after that, though, because rather than face being called out for being a purveyor of hate speech, racism, and vile lies, Gilad Atzmon went on the run.

We arrived at the designated location, only to find that the only people stirring around the building were young and fashionable--not exactly the typical Atzmon fans. Several of the girls were wearing wigs teased into big Afros. It was, as we later learned, the Seventh Annual Say it Loud 70's Fashion Show.

We admired the young people's retro ensembles. But where was Atzmon? We found this notice taped to the inside of a nearby door.

As you'll note, they didn't leave an address or phone number, which is customary when a piece of theater has a change of venue, but then again, the point of the change of venue may simply have been to shake off pursuit. While a forlorn pair of Atzmon fans called several numbers, trying to find out where the event had gotten to, the Zionists surveyed the scene, and shrugged. The field was ours, and we were on the point of declaring victory and going out to dinner. We even took a few photographs.

Fortunately or unfortunately, we then found out where Atzmon was hiding. (It was cold and bleak and dark, and I was actually looking forward to dinner.) However, one of the organizers showed up to discreetly hand out flyers with the new address, and armed with one of these, we leaped back in our assorted conveyances and headed out to find Atzmon's new hide-out.

The new location was on a residential street, and as we rolled down it looking for street numbers, we came to the conclusion that the new location was probably someone's living room. But we were wrong. Oh, how wrong we were.

Atzmon's new venue turned out to be the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, and I confess that when I saw the sign, I actually shrieked a little, and our driver was so discombobulated that she accidentally parked in the cultural center's parking lot. This later turned out to be something of a problem, but we were, to put it mildly, startled.

I do not know how Gilad Atzmon managed to find shelter from the storm at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, seeing as he is neither a Muslim, nor particularly cultured, aside from his saxophone playing, which is apparently pretty decent. I can only assume that he was seriously mischaracterized to the poor soul in charge of scheduling, who therefore made the disturbing mistake of letting a man who thinks burning a synagogue is a 'rational act' into a building which serves as a mosque.

We all spilled out of our cars, and lined up along the fence in front of the ICC parking lot. We had signs, and a banner, and a flag, and we all made ourselves fairly comfortable. (It was cold, it was dark, and we were protesting a nasty bigot in front of a local Cultural Center, but other than that, we were comfortable.)

After that, things went fairly smoothly. An event organizer hovered outside, glaring at us, and denouncing our flyer as a pack of lies. A few young men, wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night, were produced from somewhere, and stood around, nominally protecting the entrance to the ICC. I believe they were intended to look menacing, but they seemed more intrigued by us than anything else.

Meanwhile, no actual ticket-holders seemed to be showing up. We gathered, from hurried conversations between the organizers, that things were being delayed, while everyone was apprised of the new location. That was OK. We waited. Meanwhile, people kept exiting the ICC, many of them with young children, apparently leaving some other event inside. I felt rather awkward as they walked past me. It seemed like mere politeness to scream a warning. "Your cultural center has Gilad Atzmon in it!" I mean, I would want to know. But I wasn't sure of the etiquette for this situation. I settled for smiling politely.

The organizer-in-chief threatened to call the police, so we tried to be helpful and called them ourselves. They showed up several minutes later, and chatted with our representative and that of the Atzmon fans, familiarizing themselves with the situation.

They also turned out to be useful because, as I may have mentioned, we had parked in the ICC's parking lot, and getting out was now starting to seem somewhat perilous. I'm trying to make this whole outing as lighthearted as possible, but the truth of the matter is that any fan of Gilad Atzmon's is pretty much automatically a pretty special kind of hater, and these people scare the heck out of me. Luckily, one of the police officers, apprised of the situation, agreed to escort our car and driver out of the parking lot.

After that, we stood around and held our signs and got very cold, while the Atzmon people engaged in their favorite pastime, filming Zionists. One of them attached to one of our activists and kept him talking for the entire hour and a half we were there, filming the whole thing. A young woman smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and wearing an "I Heart Gaza" t-shirt filmed the rest of us.

Oh, yes, the actual event? Well, fewer than twenty-five people attended in the end. A trickling handful arrived and were ushered into the parking lot as we stood there. There may have been more activists outside than suckers inside.

We were freezing outside, and in the dubious company of Gilad Atzmon's fans. We were still doing better than those inside, who were listening to Gilad Atzmon. Transcript of the hideous speech that transpired inside coming up in the next post.

This Is How You Do It

Ruben Navarette seems to be visiting Israel with a group sent by "America's Voices In Israel". I found out about this when I opened the Oakland Tribune to find an article of his about a recent High Court decision, "Israel's Wrong Turn On Citizenship".

Navarette believes that the Israeli court made a bad decision when they upheld a law preventing Palestinians from gaining Israeli citizenship through Israeli spouses. Depending on your feelings about this issue, you may want to write to Mr. Navarette and tell him he's right on, or totally wrongheaded and stupid. Personally, I'm a little torn on the issue, but I'm not linking and commenting on this article because of my take on Navarette's take on Israeli immigration law.

I'm linking it because it's a rather unusual piece of reporting. Unfortunately.

It's a criticism of an Israeli policy. That's all. It does not accuse Israelis broadside of racism or atrocities. It does not question Israel's right to exist. It does not question whether Israel can be considered a democracy. It does not carefully include any heart-tugging dubious anecdotes.

It reports on a specific Israeli policy, accurately, and then discusses, with some practicality, and realistic reference to reasons why such a policy exists, why he does not believe it is a good one. He acknowledges that he does not live in Israel, but that he believes that this was a poor call.

And he manages to describe the decision as 'troubling', without throwing in a wholesale dismissal of Israel's legitimacy among nations. Even that headline: "Israel's Wrong Turn ON CITIZENSHIP", not "Israel's Right Wing Takes Over Everything Even More".

You know how rare that is? I was almost puzzled when I finished reading it. It was as though something was missing. If you spend enough time reading about Israel in the papers, you get used to the myriad small buzzing stings of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that leave poison all over the most innocuous article topics if only Israel gets involved. I kept waiting. And waiting. And waiting. For the second shoe full of malice to drop. It didn't. I think Navarette is just...for real, not in the sarcastic, malevolent sense it's usually used...criticizing an Israeli policy.

That's not to say that this is a perfect piece. I think the connection he tries to make to U.S. immigration issues is clunky and forced, the situations too dissimilar to make a good parallel.  I think that it's inevitable that he would try to make a connection to U.S. immigration policy, both because it's familiar to his readers, and is a topic he frequently discusses, but I don't think it works.  I also think that some of the consequences he envisions are, similarly, not terribly relevent to the situation.

Nevertheless: for all the whiners who complain that if you 'criticize Israel's policies', you're immediately marked an anti-Semite, please take note of Mr. Navarette. I think he did a good job.

Arab and Islamic, By Law and Definition

Egypt has put up its Constitutional Declaration in English, and I am examining it. Articles 1 and 2 are as follows:

Article 1:
The Arab Republic of Egypt is a state with a democratic system, based on citizenship, and the Egyptian people are a part of the Arab nation working toward achieving its comprehensive unity.

Article 2:
Islam is the religion of the state, and the Arabic language is its official language. The principles of Islamic law are the chief source of legislation.

I am not going to speak for or against this formulation, it's about what you would expect. I am, however, seeing floating before my eyes any number of anti-Zionist types who have told me, with tears in their eyes, how backward, primitive, inherently racist, and inimical to peace it is for Israel to want to be identified as a Jewish state.

And I wonder what they will have to say about this precise double-whammy of self-identification by ethnicity and religion.

No, actually, I don't wonder. They'll scoot right along to show me the later articles promising freedom of religion, and not see their hypocrisy at all.

Harriet Sherwood and the Russians

Remember Harriet Sherwood? The one with the felafel issues? She's back, and over at CIF, they're commenting on a piece she wrote for the Guardian about how the Russians are ruining Israel.

CIF points out, correctly, that Sherwood and her readers would probably be infuriated (and rightly so, in my eyes) at a journalist who broadly slurred a group of immigrants to Britain as damaging the country. Indeed, I've spent some time online myself, since the London riots, dealing with people who blame the whole thing on the West Indians, or the Muslims, or...well, mostly one of those two.

Yet, Harriet Sherwood – the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, who, no doubt, fancies herself a multiculturalist who is free of such narrow-minded anti-immigrant bias – saw fit in her most recent post, “Israel’s former Soviet immigrants transform adopted country“, Aug. 17, to blame Israeli immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) for moving the country in a dangerous direction.

Sherwood’s piece blames “The million-plus citizens of the former Soviet Union who immigrated to Israel in the past 20 years” for causing a housing crisis, being resistant to integrating into Israeli society, and bringing with them Russian political values inconsistent with democracy, tolerance and compromise.

Now, just imagine if something similar was written about the injurious effects of immigration to the UK on traditional British culture, and substitute the word “Muslims” for “Russians” to get a sense of the supreme moral hypocrisy at play here.

Luckily, we get a rejoinder, from Anastasia Couzminski, one of those unintegrated Russians, who has this to say:

Hello CiF watch,

As a regular reader of your blog and one of those annoying Russians that “integrated little” in Israel, I couldn’t let this article pass. This is personal.

I am beyond furious at [Harriet Sherwood's] article!

[What she says about Russians] couldn’t be any farther from the truth.

As an immigrant who’s been living here most of my life, I consider myself to be 110% ISRAELI and not Russian or Kazakh (I was born in the republic of Kazakhstan).

My mother is Jewish but I have many friends whose mother are in fact non-Jewish but are similarly supremely dedicated to this country.

It is absolute rubbish that immigrants integrated little and live mostly in “Russian enclaves”.

Many such “unintegrated Russians” are married to “Sabras” (Israelis who were born in Israel), give their kids Israeli names and many even refuse to speak Russian anymore.

This LIE [regarding the] lack of integration is evident everywhere.

I, as with most of the “unintegrated Russians”, have served in the army and, in fact, many of these “unintegrated Russian” young men go to become fighters and officers in the army and fight and DIE side by side with Israel-born soldiers!

We study all together in schools and universities and despite there being “Russian” hang-out places, it is SIMPLY NOT TRUE that [non-Russian] Israelis are NOT wanted there. The FIB that Russians created a housing problem is [also simply not true]. Russians did not come to parasite on this country. They finished “Ulpan” (Hebrew classes for immigrants) and right away began searching for jobs. They can now be found in every single workplace including hospitals, courts, and the media (NOT ONLY Russian media).

The fact that Harriet Sherwood makes a point of singling out Russians is a total double standard. And the following quote by the Russian-hating Israeli journalist, whom [Sherwood] must have had to dig out from some very dark place, which claims “…alienation between Russian immigrants and native-born Israelis [exist because] there is not much social interaction” is also simply not true.

Most of my friends are Israelis, many of my friends are married to Israelis, we party, travel and do everything together! And the older generation is the same.

In short, [Sherwood] evidently didn’t have anything to report about and found, in the much maligned Russian community, a convenient target and scapegoat.

Sincerely,

Anastasia

Watching anti-Israel writers deal with the phenomenon of immigration to Israel from the FSU has been rather interesting. They see them as a single group, of course, and the information that not all of the Russians are Ashkenazi, or from Russia, often appears to baffle them. (Jews from Kazhakstan? Huh?) Mostly, though, they appreciate the Russians, even as they bash them, because the Russian olim reinforce what the anti-Israel crowd wants to see, in their own minds, that is. They see the Russians as 'white', and 'intolerant' because of their Soviet background. (Odd, from people who insisted, while it was still standing, that the USSR was a bastion of tolerance.) This saves them, once again, from having to examine the multicultural nature of Israeli society, or from examining other groups in the country too closely. The Mizrahim and Sephardim from Arab countries are a particular problem for the anti-Israel pundit, one they generally solve by publicly 'supporting' them as victims of Israeli racism, but not actually caring to know anything about their history, their existence as Israelis, or their political opinions.

A Letter To Jewish California

Read this, and respond:

Dear Jewish Community of California,

Bigotry against Jewish students has occurred on University of California campuses over many years and on many campuses. Jewish students have been subjected to: swastikas; acts of physical aggression; speakers, films and exhibits that use anti-Semitic imagery and discourse; speakers that praise and encourage support for terrorist organizations; the organized disruption of events sponsored by Jewish student groups; and most recently the promotion of student senate resolutions for divestment from Israel that seek to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish State.

Last May, more than 700 Jewish UC students signed a petition expressing outrage at anti-Jewish rhetoric and imagery on their campuses. They asserted that these incidents are as offensive and hurtful to Jewish students as a "Compton cookout" or a noose are to African American students. In addition, dozens of Jewish students from three different UC campuses, who responded to an on-line questionnaire, described feeling harassed and intimidated by the promotion of hatred against the Jewish State and of Jews. Almost all of the students felt that the administrators on their campuses did not treat Jewish concerns as sensitively as they did the concerns of other minorities such as African Americans and Latinos.

In June 2010, leaders of 12 Jewish organizations, including the Orthodox Union and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, wrote to UC President Mark Yudof, expressing their concerns about the hostile environment faced by Jewish students on UC campuses, and calling on him to address this serious problem immediately. President Yudof responded by asking Jewish leaders to have patience and faith in the newly-established Advisory Councils on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion. Over the last year, however, these Advisory Councils have failed to address, or even acknowledge, the problem of anti-Semitism on UC campuses. In fact, the aims and actions of the Advisory Councils since their inception, as revealed by documents released under a Freedom of Information request, show that Jewish students are not a focus at all.

In an effort to convey to President Yudof the deep concern that members of the California Jewish community feel for the well-being of Jewish students, and their distress that the harassment and intimidation of Jewish students have not been addressed by UC administrators in a substantive way, we have created the AMCHA Initiative. AMCHA is the Hebrew word meaning "Your People" and also connotes "grassroots," "the masses," and "ordinary people." It is our goal to bring together Jewish people from all over California so that they might speak in one voice, united in their concern for the safety of Jewish students on UC campuses.

Jewish students, like all students, should be guaranteed a campus environment that is safe and conducive to learning.

Please help protect Jewish students at the University of California by signing the Petition to UC President Mark Yudof protesting the intimidation and harassment of Jewish students on several UC campuses:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LettertoUCPresidentYudof

In order to reach as many Jewish Californians as possible, please circulate this letter widely.

For more information, contact Tammi Rossman-Benjamin: tbenjami@ucsc.edu.

Sincerely,

Leila Beckwith, Professor Emeritus, University of California at Los Angeles

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, Lecturer, University of California at Santa Cruz