The Israeli Government is not the Jewish People

By the time I was born, the Second World War was over and Israel was already a fact. I have been an Anti-Zionist since the seventies when Jews like me were all termed “self-hating.” I do not confuse supporting the struggles of the Palestinian people with prejudice against Jews which is erroneously termed Anti-Semitism, since all people of Middle-Eastern descent are Semites. 

I thoroughly and totally condemn the brutality of the Israeli regime. I despise the whole premise of a religious versus a secular state and I do not think that a person expressing Anti-Israel sentiment necessarily implies will towards Jewish people. Yes, I fervently wish my relatives in Europe had taken Germany instead of Palestine, that the railroad tracks to Auschwitz had been bombed, that the ships taking Jewish refugees to the USA had not been turned away. But those things happened and, just as we are now dealing with the ramifications of slavery, the legacy of the brutal oppression of Jews has left the world with an out-of control “Jewish homeland.”

That having been said, I would like to address something else. The blog entry I wanted to publish this week was about the ancient synagogue and adjoining Jewish Museum in Rhodes, Greece. I am delaying that entry and writing this one because I don’t believe anything about Jewish history would be well-received right now and I find that fact, in and of itself, to be a misguided, biased reaction.

As a Jew, I would like to be proud of my ancestors the way that Italian, Irish, Black, Native American and all other minorities are of theirs. I should be able to post historical articles about my relatives without fearing misinterpretation or worse. Jews are not responsible for each other’s behavior anymore than other members of minority groups are. And the actions of the Israeli government don’t represent the will of the Israeli people just as the actions of the US government, don’t represent our will. But getting carried away with thoughtless generalizations of an entire group of people is destructive and counter-productive.

Here is an example of the problem. A longtime, leftist comrade recently, and I believe inadvertently, posted an article about the violence against the people of Gaza that came directly from a right-wing, Neo-Nazi, propaganda website. This is not okay! Read what you post before you hit that button! Here are some things to watch out for so you don’t repeat this mistake: references to the Talmud or publications like “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The use of Yiddish words like “goyim,” concepts like, “Jewish blood,” the substitution of the word, Jews for the word, Israelis and frankly, just plain, nasty, stereotyping.

It is absolutely imperative that we be as critical of Israel as we are of other imperialist, warmongering countries. But, just as drones and smart-bombs turn out to be not all that targeted or smart, we must be mindful of the way we categorize people and precisely how we utilize our words. The keyboard is mightier than the sword! The end result, peace, is vitally important, but so is what we do on that journey to get there. If we are sloppy and compromise our ethics to reach this goal, we will have effectively thrown out the baby with the bathwater!

They Should Have Given Us Bavaria!

Holocaust Remembrance Day has just passed and May 14^th will be the 66^th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel and all that I am able to say about this is how much it saddens me to be a Jew in this world.

When thinking of my grandparents, I could begin with the Russian Czar and the Cossacks. There is nothing left now of the huge Jewish community that flourished there, the Pale of Settlement, the shtetls where rural poverty was a fact of life along with a tribal culture where folks took care of each other. These villages were, for the most part, dirt poor and isolated. They had a daily life that now can only be glimpsed in a few rare photographs and paintings. Shtetl residents were ghettoized from the regional Russian and Polish populations by religion and culture but, most of all, by language.

In Western as well as Eastern Europe, Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazi-Jewish people is now dead. In the colonialist state of Israel, the founders and survivors chose to resurrect Hebrew, a long-extinct biblical language whose correct pronunciation and inflection was totally unknown. They improvised and now Hebrew is a living tongue.

When it comes to Europe, the fact is that Hitler did what he set out to do. The results were just not immediate. European, Jewish culture has been obliterated. Not only do American secular and religious Jews no longer have a homeland, we are a dying breed. Folks like me in the USA are dinosaurs. In a couple of generations, like so many Native tribes, we will cease to exist. Specifically, people with two Jewish parents, raised in Jewish neighborhoods, not necessarily by choice but by covenant, will not have a square in our multi-ethnic, American tapestry.

I believe that this is a great loss, for Jews specifically, as well as for Americans in general.

Yes, the religion will continue to flourish as Jews intermarry and assimilate. Some rebellious couples will take up Judaism as a faith but, those who are ethnically identified/identifiable by descent, by cultural style, inflection, humor, introspection and a wide range of neuroses will go the way of so many other endangered species.

And now there is Israel, the most distressing component of the equation. The whole “land without a people for a people without a land,” is so obscene. The forced displacement and collective punishment of the Palestinian people by imperialist expansion, the bulldozing of homes, the checkpoints, the walls…I could go on and on but in this forum I know I don’t have to. I know you know.

It seems so unfair that a people so brutalized by history would now have to be victimized even further by those fighting oppression. But the atrocities of Israel are real. How childish it seems to state that I wish the whole thing never happened, and by that I mean the WHOLE thing starting with the persecution of Jews in all countries of the world.

But given that horrendous genocide transpired, they should have, at least, given us Bavaria!

Did you know that many of the laws used against the Palestinians involved in revolt against the occupiers bear an astounding resemblance to the Nuremberg Laws? To me, that says it all. The child whose parents beat him grows up to beat his own child. There is no excuse for it, but it happens all the time. And it breaks my heart.