- They're spreading poison about American Jews.
-
- Many of the people spreading this poison are Jews themselves,
a relatively small group that wants to convince everybody (or at least
everybody in power) that the great bulk of us think the way they do, which
we don't. Some non-Jews, like Pat Buchanan and other less-rabid but no
less invidious bigots, but find it a good way to stereotype us: Jews all
think alike, dontcha know. It's weird and freaky when militant right-wing
Jews can hook up with old-fashioned anti-Semites to stereotype the rest
of us, but these are weird and freaky times.
- The basic tenets of the present poison seem to be these:
-
- * American Jews support Israel's policies whatever they
are;
-
- * American Jews believe the settlements in the Occupied
territories are a God-given right;
-
- * American Jews believe Ariel Sharon has peace on his
mind but can't get there only because evil Palestinians keep blowing themselves
up and forcing him to respond by blowing up or driving tanks through their
families' houses and orchards;
-
- * American Jews think all issues of world peace must
be subsumed to Israel's security, as defined by the Israeli government;
-
- * American Jews favor current U.S. unilateralism and
have contempt for the United Nations because it is full of mean little
countries that don't like Israel.
-
- And most important of all: any American Jew who rejects
the aforementioned is a "self-hating Jew."
-
- SELF-HATING JEWS
-
- Could any goy have thought that one up? "You disagree
with my politics, therefore you are a self-hating Jew. The problem, the
ethical issues, the guilt are all yours." Freud would have danced
all over it.
-
- You respond, "No, man, you're WRONG about all of
it. Let's go over the facts."
-
- They listen, politely, or not, and at the end they say,"See?
I told you, you're a self-hating Jew."
-
- True-believers of whatever stripe find ratification wherever
they look. In the court where the conclusion is foregone, all facts serve
only to convict.
-
- I first heard the phrase "self-hating Jew"
in Greenwich Village in the 1980s when a group from the Jewish Defense
League, Meyer Kahane's militant organization, stood in the street yelling
it at William Kunstler's house. I looked out the window, saw the bared
teeth and raised fists and thought that they looked and comported themselves
very much like Hitler Jugend, missing only the armbands.
-
- Kunstler's comment on them was, "Pay them no mind.
They don't know what they're talking about. That's the silliest thing to
call me. I don't hate myself. Everybody knows I love myself."
-
- I went out of the house and before I'd even stepped from
the doorway to the top of the steps they were yelling "Self-hating
Jew! Self-hating Jew!" at me. I yelled back, "But you don't even
know if I'm Jewish." They didn't care. They kept yelling "Self-hating
Jew" until I reached the police barricade at Christopher Street, whereupon
they started yelling at the house again.
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- LUNATIC STUFF
-
- I'm not making this lunatic stuff up and neither am I
waxing rhetorical.
-
- All reliable studies and surveys show that the great
majority of American Jews, whatever the level of their support for Israel
itself, oppose unilateralism, think the United Nations an important forum,
favor a Palestinian state, are opposed to the settlements in the Occupied
Territories, oppose Sharon's militancy, are sickened and appalled by the
images of Israeli tanks destroying homes, villages and vineyards, and are
desperate for the killing and dying on both sides to stop now. Not after
every potentially suicidal Palestinian is wiped out. Not after the world
is made perfect. Now.
-
- The neocon and radical right, though a numerical minority,
have politicians running scared. One example of that is New York Senator
Charles Schumer, who recently told students at an upstate Catholic military
school that he was now in favor of pre-emptive wars. "Pollster John
Zogby said Schumer's tough posture is a political move to appeal to pro-war
upstate voters and elements of the Jewish community in New York City,"
wrote Buffalo News Washington bureau chief Doug Turner. Zogby "said
polls show a majority of Jewish voters nationally and in New York State
oppose war with Iraq. 'But the loudest voices in the Jewish community,
the hard-line conservatives who favor the war, are politically the strongest,'
Zogby said. 'I think he's bidding for the Likud vote,' Zogby joked, referring
to the party of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon."
-
- Given the evidence of those surveys, why do Schumer and
otherwise sensible members of Congress act as if these bullies of the right
represented even a large minority of us? Maybe for the same reason they
continue to base U.S. Caribbean policy on the hysterical voices of the
small Cuban exile community in Miami. Remember how Al Gore (D.), Dan Burton
(R) and so many of the rest fell over one another trying to be politically
correct and make political capital in the Elian Gonzalez soap opera three
years ago? They're terrified of groups of middle-class people who scream
at them and they think such screamers are more likely to vote and write
checks than people who speak softly or rationally.
-
- More and more I hear that those militaristic Jews in
and advising the Bush administration--such as Paul Wolfowitz inside the
White House and William Kristol on the outside--prove where Jews are at,
politically. Nonsense. That only proves what political stripe of Jews are
in favor in the Bush White House.
-
- Wolfowitz and Kristol are Americans who are Jewish and
who are part of the American Conservative Right. Why single them out as
Jews and then blame the rest of us Jews for them? Most of us don't like
or agree with those ideologues either. Blaming the rest of us for them
is like blaming the Methodists for Dick Cheney or Baptists for John Ashcroft.
It's not the religion that made those people what they are. Wolfowitz,
Kristol, Cheney and Ashcroft would be the way they are if they were Zoroastrians.
-
- JEWS LIKE US
-
- In spring 2001, I started working on a book the working
title of which is "Jews like us." I thought it might be useful
to give some of the Jews who don't scream a chance to say what they think
about being Jewish in America now. I stopped working on the book when everything
got cranked up after 9/11, but I've started doing interviews again. I have
basically one question I ask everybody: "You say you're Jewish. What
do you mean by that?"
-
- The responses are astonishing in their variety. I'm continually
amazed at the huge range of stories, opinion, and analysis. The only generalization
I can make about it is this: hardly any of it comes close to the militant
neocon line. Sure, there are some groups in which the ideology is locked
down tight and some individuals for whom Sharon's version of Israel's security
needs transcends all reason and decency. But that's the minority. Painting
us all with the Wolfowitz-Kristol brush, saying, in effect, that our considered
political and ethnical opinions are worthless, is just today's trendy way
to be anti-semitic, no matter who is doing it.
-
- There is an ever-growing number of organizations of American
Jews trying to get the word out that the press and politicians should look
beyond the noisy minority. (Links to the web sites of Jews for Peace in
Palestine and Israel, Not in My Name, Jews Against the Occupation and Brit
Tzedik v'Shalom are listed below.) Thus far, they seem to have made little
impact. Their activities get almost no coverage in the press and few members
of Congress consider them the same kind of threat as the militant right
or the neocons.
-
- Perhaps they've been too polite. Perhaps they will have
to start making the same kind of noise that has so frightened Chuck Schumer
and so many other powerful people in Washington. Perhaps they will have
to remind those politicians that they also vote and write checks, and that
of all the things you can accuse us Jews of there is at least one that
is true: we remember.
-
-
-
- Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel
- http://www.jppi.org/
-
- Not in My Name
- http://www.nimn.org/
-
- Jews Against the Occupation
- http://www.jewsagainsttheoccupation.org/
-
- Brit Tzedik v'Shalom: Jewish Alliance for Justice and
Peace
- http://www.btvshalom.org/
-
- Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel
P. Capen Professor of American Culture at University of Buffalo. He edits
Buffalo Report.
-
- Note: even more links to various Jewish peace groups
are available in the Middle East section of the Web Links on this site
- http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson04182003.html
-
- Comment
-
- From Simon Jones
4-25-3
-
- Glad to hear a defiant Jewish voice. You must admit,
the high profile media and govt Jews are drowning you out, unfortunately.
And you didn't mention the most important word - Zionist. Why? Isn't it
time to attack the Zionist agenda? As long as you don't, you're going to
be lumped in with them and their ethnic cleansing. They are the root cause
of anti-semitism today IMHO.
-
- It's the same as anti-americanism - more and more, Americans
are seen are a legitmate target of discrimination unless they are anti-imperialist.
-
- Take the Iraqis' reception of the International Peace
Team vs the US troops in Baghdad. For them, you're either part of the problem
or the solution. In Bushie's words: you're with us or against us (except
in reverse!). Which means that it's more important than ever not to be
afraid to use the 'Z' word and the 'i' word in our discourse. Time to take
the gloves off.
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