May Contain Antisemitic Nuts!

[eumelia]

I think Antisemitism is an issue that should not be taken lightly. I feel very strongly about the fact that the history of my people is that of persecution, internment, exile and extermination.
Growing up in a home in which Jewish identity is very connected to Zionism has made it very difficult for me to unpack the baggage of post-Holocaust trauma and the privilege of being a Jewish person, born and raised in Israel.
I have no choice but to be a Zionist¹, it's what brought my family here and it's what keeps them here and I wouldn't be who I am if it weren't for it.

Israel is an idea and an ideal and like most things which are idea and ideals they do not live up to the hype.
I've been over the hype for a while now and I'm not shy about busting people's happy shiny bubbles about the disaster that is Israeli policy both inside and outside it's ill-defined borders.

The Goldstone Report, the UN fact finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, a South-African Jewish man with a history of being good at what he does, has faced a barrage of undisguised Antisemitism for writing down, black on white, that Israel (and Hamas, as people conveniently forget) committed war crimes.

The mere fact that this accusation was brought about is enough for the reactionary monstrosity that is Israeli foreign propaganda known as Hasbara - literally meaning "explanation".

When I see stories like this: Finance Minister [Yuval Steinitz]: UN backing of Goldstone report is "anti-Semitic" it drives me 'round the fucking bend.
Because in the same paper you will see a story like this: Hungarian MP: Jews want to take over the world; and I have to wonder, have us Israeli Jews in fact forgotten what Antisemitism actually is and conflate with Zionism which is a National Ideology comparable to any other in it's myth building and telling of itself?

Last week I read an article called The Tropes of "Jewish Antisemitism", in which the author - Antony Lerman - expands on this method of silencing dissent, the idea of self-hating Jews, oddly enough, rears it's ugly head almost exclusively when discussing Israel.

Now it's quite obvious that calling someone a self-hating Jew in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict is intended as a demeaning political insult, a way of delegitimising the views of Jews with whom you violently disagree. But one of the reasons why the charge is so ubiquitous and is impervious to evidence and argument that proves it to be bogus is that it's not just used as an epithet. To some scholars and serious commentators, Jewish self-hatred is a proven psychopathological condition, an academically respectable category, and exponents of it can be found throughout history. Their testimony helps to underpin the accusation.
[...]
[T]he way all of the key historical figures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries who are used to prove the existence of Jewish self-hatred – Weininger, Sigmund Freud, Karl Kraus, Heinrich Heine – related to their Jewishness has been shown to be far too complex to allow the self-hating Jew label to be anything other than a crude mis-characterisation. Moreover, the perceived antisemitism in their writings was mirrored in the writings of Zionists, especially the founder of political Zionism Theodor Herzl. He painted the weak ghetto Jew, in his 1897 essay "Mauschel", as "a distortion of the human character, unspeakably mean and repellent", interested only in "mean profit". Far from being the antithesis of Jewish self-hatred, it is arguable that Zionism was actually a display of it.

The Jewish self-hatred accusation assumes that there is a correct manner and degree to which people should express their Jewish identities in public; and that there is a particular set of core values and institutions which one should favour. Neither of these assumptions is justifiable on the basis of Jewish teachings or Jewish history. The accusation also assumes that Jewishness "is or should be a primary identity", and therefore to reject it or criticise it is somehow unnatural and wrong.

The whole article is very good and I think you should all go read it.

Yep, the notion of Jewish self-hatred comes from Jews ourselves.
The indoctrination of this Jewish essence (which is indeed part of Jewish religious cosmology) is part of our history and part of our culture as the "Chosen People" - an idea I'm so very uncomfortable with, because it is a notion that is so easily turned around and used against us and it inculcates this notion that because we are chosen we have to suffer.
Also, it's a supernatural notion on the essence of what makes a person a human being and as someone whose humanity can be doubted by various factors of my identity and body, I don't think that's a good concept.

Israel is a divisive issue, because - as stated - it is an idea and an ideal and as such, people can easily remove themselves from "the facts on the ground" and discuss it's existence as this abstract democratic utopia in the making, all the while ignoring the large minority in Israel because they are not Jewish:

The cry of a persecuted minority
By Ali Haider

Yesterday [October 1st], Israel's Arab public marked the ninth anniversary of the "events of October 2000" [Link added by eumelia]. At that time, Arab citizens protested the state's policies with respect to Palestinians in the occupied territories - as well as the ongoing discrimination they themselves face - and when police opened fire on the crowd, 12 demonstrators and one resident of Gaza were killed.

No indictments were ever filed against any of the policemen involved, and all the cases were closed by the attorney general. Worse still, none of the recommendations of the official commission of inquiry, headed by then-Supreme Court justice Theodor Or, concerning ways to close the gaps between Jews and Arabs in many different realms in Israel, were ever implemented by the government.

Let's not forget the silencing of what is considered dissident voices because they do not sing the tune of National Unity:

A new report from Adalah [link added by eumelia] shows how the courts and police attempted to stamp out opposition to Operation Cast Lead. "This is a time of war, and every incident harms the people's morale."

This was not a sentence in a right-wing journal, but rather a statement by an Israel Police representative during Operation Cast Lead seeking to persuade the Tel Aviv District Court to block anti-war protesters from the city.

Around the same time, in a Haifa Magistrate's Court hearing on extending the remand of minors, Judge Moshe Gilad stated: "Anyone who enables remarks denouncing the state and backing its enemies, even as they rain missiles upon its citizens, must obey its laws, and certainly is prohibited from attacking police who come to impose order. It is similar to a person spitting in the well from which he drinks."

Here are some of the pearls in Adalah's new report: "Prohibited protest - how the law enforcement authorities limit the freedom of expression of opponents of the Gaza military attack."

The times I went to the anti-War protests and demos I was nearly assaulted by police and by regular counter-protesters who thought it was okay to grab me by the Kaffiyah around my neck and yell "traitor" at me.
C'est la vie.

Those are "the facts on the ground" and it's so easily ignored by the ideologues, both within and without, easily seen by op-eds such as these:
Sure, J Street is pro-peace - but is it pro-Israel?. As though this were a debate about the nature of Jewish identity of Israel - a small debate that you can read here: Should Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state? by Roi Ben-Yehuad and Aziz Abu-Sarah.

I'm wondering if it sounds as though I'm accusing Jews of being Antisemitic against themselves. I suppose I do. However, the point I'm trying to make is that Israel is a political entity, just like the Palestinians are a political entity and the Occupation is a political issue.
God has no place in the debate, but religion too is a political tool, especially in the hands of those who really believe.

For Jews to accuse other Jews of fuelling Antisemitism because of their political views regarding Israel is historical narrow-mindedness and obliviousness in the extreme.
Having been designated by more than a few as a "Self-Hating Jew" and asked repeatedly why "I hate Israel?" I can only request that people refrain from hurling Antisemitic garbage at me.
Surprisingly this makes people get all defensive and completely derails the conversation into people defending themselves as Jews and how can they be Antisemitic.

Just goes to show, eh?

This is long, but also important and I'm wondering if I should cross post this in some other blog or anti-oppression website.

Footnotes
(1)Ideologically speaking, I'm not a Zionist. At all. But I have to acknowledge the fact that Zionism has privileged me and my family and I wouldn't be who I am without that ideological push and existence.
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