More on the Obama Effect. Did you see the big obit for Mildred Loving, the black Virginia woman whose marriage to a white man in the 60s led to the landmark Supreme Court case knocking down laws against interracial marriage-- in 1967, six years after Obama's birth? We've made progress.
Here's another case of interracial marriage. Ofra Yeshua-Lyth is an Israeli journalist and author, the daughter of an Arab Jew and a European Jew. Such marriages were rare when she was born. She's written a book (now seeking a publisher in the U.S.) called A State of Mind: Why Israel Must Become Secular and Democratic, a memoir, published in Hebrew in Israel. Says Chomsky:
[It] reviews the painful course by which the chains of religious orthodoxy from which the early Zionists sought to escape have become hanging cords, as Israeli Jews accept life in a homemade trap constructed from the dedication to expansionism and religious-nationalist domination that shatters aspirations for democracy and enlightenment.
Nice. Chris Varley has also seen the book in English and writes:
Yeshu-Lyth’s father was of Yemenite descent, her mother European. She was born in Israel at a time when mixed marriages were rare, and is acutely aware of the difficulties that the Arab Jews have had integrating with the European Jewish community. Arab Jews were unscarred by the Holocaust, and, as the author states on p. 253 of this English translation:
"There was no external necessity for them to throw away their life in the old country and briskly start a new chapter in a new place, with no preparations and no real support. In their countries of origin, Arab Jews were a major element in the backbone of the local middle classes. They had no economic motivation to suddenly migrate to Zion and seek employment as laborers...
"Moroccan Jews do not exaggerate when they insist that they had no reason to leave their homeland except the religious-Zionist excitement raised by the Israeli Aliya delegates."
The author believes most of Israel ’s problems can be traced to the imposition of halakhah (Jewish religious law), interpreted and enforced by the Orthodox rabbinate. She wonders why Conservative and Reform Jews abroad continue to support a national project from which they are effectively excluded.
A large majority of Israelis may be secular, but there is nothing secular about the makeup of the nation.
Israel as a pluralistic democracy--now there's the Obama Effect for you! (P.S. Secular post-Zionist Israel is also one of Leon Hadar's themes...)
There is no such thing as an "Arab Jew". Ask any of the Jews you know who came from an Arab country if they consider themselves "Arab Jews". They would laugh in your face. Phil, you have all sorts of complexes about Jewish identity, but you have no right to go around fooling around with the identities of the rest of us.
Israel is not a theocracy.
It is primarily democratic. The influence of the religious parties extends only to social issues. Very irritating, and the subject of MUCH comment within Jewish circles. (You are in error to conclude that the questions like reform marriages not considered lawful, are not assertively addressed, and at all levels of Israeli polity.)
The power of the religious parties (each different) results from the parliamentary system which requires a majority to form a government. As no party in Israel commands a majority, and hasn't for 30 years, coalitions of strange bedfellows emerge.
There is a wide variety of religious conclusions in Knesset parties, from anti-Zionist, to a-Zionist, to reluctantly Zionist for the safety that the state affords, to expansionist Zionist considered AS religion.
Democratic is a different question.
Color blind affirmation of the rule of law would take a constitution and a Supreme Court in which its opinions are legally binding as precedent, which is not the case now.
The Israeli Supreme Court rules on cases, and even when it rules on issues of conflict with the primary principles, it is only binding to a case, not to a pattern.
To achieve social democracy would require a more progressive tax structure, improvements in social assets, social services, allocation of governmentally derived benefits.
Campaigns in Israel are short (two-months), not the 18 months of American. And therefore much less expensive and more informal, though getting more and more sophisticated.
Big news will occur when one of the Arab parties is invited into a coalition, needed to form a majority. Its never happened yet, although there have been Arab ministers in government from labor and meretz.
I know many Arab Jews (in the Jewish context) or Jewish Arabs (in the Arab context). Except for those thoroughly indoctrinated in Zionist ideology, they generally agree that unlike ethnic Ashkenazim, their parents or grandparents were or are ethnically Arab.
See link to eaazi.blogspot.com
.
The comments are relevant.
Anyway, religion was not so strong among let 19th century Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim, who were primarily secular socialists or communists.
Like most Eastern Europeans, the Yiddish population was extremely racist in a confessional voelkisch sense.
For the most part Yiddish Americans seemed to have transcended their racist heritage by the early sixties, but after the 1967 war Zionists worked hard to reverse the trend.
Because Yiddish Americans have more education, more income, and more free time, they can do a tremendous amount of damage and constitute the most dangerously racist segment of the American population.
Today, the vast majority Yiddish Americans and Israeli Zionists share a pervasively ethnic fundamentalist mentality of the sort described by Claudia Koonz in The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz extremely helpful in understanding Israeli society while visiting Israel made Koon'z analysis of German Nazism much more immediate to me.
From link to members.aol.com
Martin Buber passed through an extreme German nationalist blood-and-soil phase, and his version of Zionism included all sorts of blood-based ideas (even though he himself was married to a German convert), and racist ideology remains pervasive in Israeli society.
Guy Grossman a representative from Ometz leSarev (Courage to Refuse) – they are leftists that refuse to serve in the occupied territories – spoke at Harvard in April 2002. After his discussion about the injustice in the OT, I pointed out that I had heard his position over and over since Yehuda Lebovitz visited Harvard in 1977. After each visiting speaker left, within a year conditions were always worse. I suggested that the issue was probably not the occupation but the core nature of Zionism, and he told me as well as the whole audience that he believed in Israel as a racist Jewish state. (Hilda Silverman [How the State of Israel Has Compromised Jewish Identity, link to eaazi.blogspot.com
can confirm his statement.)
Here is his NPR interview from just before I talked with him: link to onpointradio.org
Jewish racism is not specific to Zionism. In 1872 the non-Zionist Russian Jewish academic Daniel Chwolson published a fairly racist defense of Jews from racist accusations in "Kharakteristika Semitskikh Narodov" (“Characteristics of the Semitic Nation”) in "Russki Vyestnik."
According to common wisdom Chwolson converted to Russian Orthodoxy in order to obtain an appointment at the University of St. Petersburg and then later at Dukhovnaya Akademiya. When asked whether he converted out of conviction, Chwolson is supposed to have said that he converted out of the conviction that it was better to be a professor at the University of St. Petersburg than to be a melamed (Jewish primary school teacher) in Ejszyszok. (Other versions of the joke identify other cities like Shklop.
Chwolson was important in the development of Russian Orientalism, which became an important input in Zionist ideology about Arabs and Muslims.
After sixy years, especially considering the last sixty years, don't you think it's time Israel gets some borders, and Constitution, and a real Supreme Court?
"The Israeli Supreme Court rules on cases, and even when it rules on issues of conflict with the primary principles, it is only binding to a case, not to a pattern."
This is the rule of law?
If so, then the Mafia sets good precedent.
The Loving case court found a new right of privacy in "the penumbra" of the US Constitution (as amended).
The "primary principles" of Israel are the problem.
I meant:
Anyway, religion was not so strong among *late* 19th century Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim, who were primarily secular socialists or communists.
"The "primary principles" of Israel are the problem. "
You should read them, rather than condemn ignorantly.
Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty is a Basic Law, intended to protect main human rights in the State of Israel. The view of most Supreme Court judges, is that the enactment of this law and of Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation began the Constitutional Revolution, due to the fact the Knesset gave these two laws super-legal status, giving the courts the authority to disqualify any law contradicting them. According to this claim (which is not supported by all) these laws marked a substantial change in the status of human rights in Israel.
The law was enacted on the final days of the 12th Knesset, March 17, 1992.
[edit] Rights protected by Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty
The rights protected by this law are detailed in several clauses:
Section 2: There shall be no violation of the life, body or dignity of any person as such.
Section 3: There shall be no violation of the property of a person.
Section 4: All persons are entitled to protection of their life, body and dignity.
Section 5: There shall be no deprivation or restriction of the liberty of a person by imprisonment, arrest, extradition or otherwise.
Section 6:
(a) All persons are free to leave Israel.
(b) Every Israeli national has the right of entry into Israel from abroad.
Section 7:
(a) All persons have the right to privacy and to intimacy.
(b) There shall be no entry into the private premises of a person who has not consented thereto.
(c) No search shall be conducted on the private premises of a person, nor in the body or personal effects.
(d) There shall be no violation of the confidentiality of conversation, or of the writings or records of a person.
However, several cardinal human rights are missing from this document, such as the Right for Equality, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Protest, and others. These rights were given to the residents of Israel by general principles which existed before this Basic Law. Although these rights were intentionally left out of the law, some jurists, like Aharon Barak, see these rights are directly derived from the "right to dignity". However, the Supreme Court's rulings in the matter are inconsistent.
BTW, I meant Yeshayahu Leibowitz and not Yehuda Leibowitz.
Note what a thorough propagandist Witty is in terms of giving material aid to terrorism.
I seem to have been wrong. He probably needs a sentence closer to that of Otto Dietrich.
The devil is in the definitions and in the enabling legislation.
De jure practically all Israeli rights are suspendable in a closed military zone while de facto all can be suspended.
Guess how easy it is to declare a locality a closed military zone.
Then why not enforce the Israeli law as written?
Section 7:
(a) All persons have the right to privacy and to intimacy.
There, Israel pays tribute to the US Constitution and its matrix, afforded by the total impact of it and its Amendments. Since Israel has no Constitution, what does this mean under the US Constitution, a model for so many nations these days: There are a number of rights that have been recognized over the years by the US Supreme Court that are also not expressly provided for in the text of the Constitution, such as the right to use contraceptives, the right to interracial marriage, and the right to travel and move between the states. Those calling for the Roe decision to be overturned conveniently leave out any mention of these other basic rights that exist because of the same “judicial activism” that the decry. Moreover, the “right to privacy” cited in the Roe decision was not invented in that decision, but was an extension of a long line of cases that held certain activities are so personal in nature that should not be subject to interference by the government. Those calling for the Roe decision to be overturned also conveniently ignore the importance of these precedents.
The notion of privacy as security from prying, from having one's personal behavior or business displayed in public for all to see and comment on, is the invention of the industrial age. In ancient times, and indeed up to the 18th century, privacy in the sense of solitude, isolation, of space for one's self, was unknown except for the rich or the nobility. Most people lived in small, bare housing, the entire family often sleeping together in one room. Indeed, as a legal concept, "privacy" originally referred to a form of defamation, the appropriation of one's name or picture without that individual's permission.
But as Western society grew wealthier, as a middle class grew with the means to afford larger houses where members of a family could have separate spaces of their own, the meaning of privacy also changed. Now it became a matter of individuality, of people assuming that what they did beyond the arena of public life was no one's business except their own. Neither the government, the media, nor in fact anyone else had any business knowing about their private life.
Privacy, in its modern meaning, is very much related to individuality, and is a right of the person, not of the group or the society. "Without privacy," the political scientist Rhoda Howard has written, "one cannot develop a sense of the human individual as an intrinsically valuable being, abstracted from his or her social role." The opposite is also true: Without a sense of individuality, there can be no perception of a need for privacy.
Privacy, like most rights, relates directly to democracy.
The problem here is what/who is of more value, the individual, or the (in or out)group?
This is a tough question and everybody draws their own line in the sand. Most have chosen the group for practical reasons. The nail that sticks up gets hammered.
"The problem here is what/who is of more value, the individual, or the (in or out)group? "
An extremely important feature of the rule of law applied equally without regard to race, creed, ethnicity, political orientation, sexual orientation.
How does America stand from that perspective?
A better question for us to answer and to commit to, than issues about Israel, that we are not citizens of.
More drivel from Phil:
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"Moroccan Jews do not exaggerate when they insist that they had no reason to leave their homeland except the religious-Zionist excitement raised by the Israeli Aliya delegates."
————————————
Phil, if you have any regard for the truth left, read George Orwell's article written in 1939 called "Marrakesh" (it is available on-line). He writes at length about the poverty, degradation and antisemitism directed at the Jews in Morocco (and remember Orwell was ANTI-ZIONIST).
"An extremely important feature of the rule of law applied equally without regard to race, creed, ethnicity, political orientation, sexual orientation.
How does America stand from that perspective?
A better question for us to answer and to commit to, than issues about Israel, that we are not citizens of."
Ah but, Mister Witty, all Jews are cititzens of Israel, witness the Israel law of return, which no other nation state has with the same substance. Israel is defined by itself in that way. That's excactly why you support it, no matter the regime in charge there. Any Jew born anywhere, say in Brooklyn, can ASAP go reap the full benefits of Israel, at the expense of Palestinians.
The American vision is the opposite. You rely on this very distinction.
Richard, obviously I agree it (individualism versus the group) is an on-going issue for Americans to address; I was suggesting in light of the special relationship with Israel, they are not really apart. What are average Americans and average Israelis paying for with their lives and treasure?
Part of the answer is reflected in world opinion.
What sort of sociological observer was Orwell?
Did he at least understand the local Arabic, Berber, and Judeo-Spanish dialects?
Did he compare Moroccan Jews with other Moroccans or with Europeans? Did he take into account the attempt of Moroccan Jews to act as native collaborators for the French and the hostility that such behavior might engender? Did he take into account the persistence of depression conditions in French dependencies?
It is also worthwhile to mention that Moroccan Jews had higher education levels than non-Jews and were the targets of Alliance humanitarian assistance.
I read Masa ba`rab by Romanelli when I was an undergraduate. It was not obvious that Moroccan Jews lived worse off than Moroccan Muslims in the 18th century, and by the 20th century they were on the whole quite better off.
The whining about exceptional Jewish suffering is simply not credible and is just another scam like the Refusenik Movement.
Professor David Pinto is a Dutch Jew of Moroccan origin. His family moved originally from Morocco to Israel but in 1963 he transferred from there to Holland.
He is presently professor in intercultural communication at the University of Amsterdam, President of the European branch of the World Federation of Moroccan Jews and of the Cooperative Alliance between Moroccan Jews and Moslims. According to the Dutch language journal "Maghreb Magazine" it was nothing to be amazed about that Moroccans have taken the iniative for this alliance because Morocco has "a 2000years old tradition of a peaceful living together of both groups".
The prominent Dutch newspaper "De Telegraaf" reported on 20th September 2005, on an interview it had with Pinto at the burial of a prominent Dutch Rabbi:
"Many Dutch youths of Moroccan origin do, according to Pinto, not realize that Morocco was for a long time a very pleasant country for Jews. The professor said: "In my time there were about 300,000 Jews in Morocco". Jews can (could) function in all parts of society. There was no discrimination whatsoever.
This was confirmed by Job Cohen, Mayor of Amsterdam, after a recent visit to Morocco. Cohen also pointed to the fact that one of the most important advisers of the Sultan, Mr.Andre Azoulay, is Jewish.
I have the most profound respect for Orwell (though not for Bar-Kochba) but one wonders how accurate his information on pre-war Morocco, gathered during a short visit, was. In fact the only information he provides on discrimination against Jews was that certain places had been allocated to them to live. For the rest he reports that they were engaged in all the trades the Arabs had. Their poverty was not different from the overall poverty there on which Orwell commented:
"When you walk through a town like this—two hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom at least twenty thousand own literally nothing except the rags they stand up in—when you see how the people live, and still more how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings. All colonial empires are in reality founded upon that fact."
Orwell was told by (French ?) locals that Jews had a prominent place in local finance and the banks, a fact that he could not rhyme with the poverty he had seen in the Jewish quarter and probaly dismissed as anti-Semitic prejudice.
"What are Americans paying for with their lives and treasure?"
Living Americans aren't paying much yet directly. We are incurring debt to pay for the stupid war, that our children will have to eventually pay.
Many have stated that one of the great crimes of the Iraq War is the failure of Bush to ask anyone to pay for it. No taxes have been levied. No consent of the populace, Congress, courts is required. It is legislated and funded, but it is FAR easier politically and horridly more negligent to borrow and spend than to tax and spend.
As Milton Friedman stated, habitual deficit spending is a form of taxation without representation. (My 17 year-old doesn't get to vote on it, but he will have to pay it.)
It is parallel to the way that the majority of the world's slaves become slaves, through indentured servitude with a large portion of of the world's slavery resulting from being required to pay their parents' debts.
Yes, Witty, it will be the special burden of our children.
But even now the ever-decreasing value of the dollar makes the bulk of Americans monetary policy victims. The trillions dollar war debt is not unrelated.
I find your "Living Americans aren't paying much yet directly" really annoying.
The class of citizens who compose our military cannon-fodder and their families are paying the actual direct price today. They are sent back, again, and again, like the "ragmen" who fought the Battle Of The Bulge. Tell that to our soldiers dead, wounded, maimed, suicides, those wandering with war-inflicted traumatic neurosis–tell them and their families and/or those they left behind, tell those living Americans they "aren't paying much yet directly."
I guess you missed my point.
No, Witty, I got it completely.
Send out the young goys, make their parents pay for their very
chance of survival, while you reap the benefits.
re: the children of Arab Jews and European Jews – perhaps such unions are/were rare, but why do I know so many Israelis from exactly this combination? My Islam & Arabic professor at Oberlin was son of a Czech father and Iraqi Jewish mother, born in Palestine 1930. (google Joseph Eliash). My close friend the artist and spiritual seeker in Santa Fe is the daughter of an Iraqi Jew who walked from Baghdad to join a kibbutz during the British mandate; married a European Jewess and became a diplomat and member of the Israeli elite, fathered an IDF general as well as my friend… and there are other acquaintances I know of, whose parents were of a similar mix.
Some Jews from Arab countries call themselves Arab Jews (see Ella Shohat, at NYU). Some don't. Bar Kotchba may want to stick his fingers in his ears and scream La la la la but he can't wipe out this interesting identity any more than Golda Meir could wipe out the Palestinians by claiming they don't exist. I suspect the term Arab Jew threatens him because it raises the possibility of uniting two identities he would like to believe must always be separate and at war.
Leila-
How many Jews from Arab countries call themselves "Arab Jews"? 1%? 2%? Sure, I know Sami Michael in Israel (of Iraqi origin) talks with nostalgia about the "good old days" when he and fellow non-Jewish Communists would sit around the coffee houses of Baghdad and plan world revolution. But who the heck does he represent? Most Iraqi Jews in Israel think he is an extremist.
You "progressives" are the ones with your fingers in your ears, thinking that you speak for the majority.