‘Encountering Jews Who Are Progressive about All Issues but Palestine Is an Awful and Uncomfortable Situation for Non-Jewish People’ –Anne Silver

"Encountering Jews who are progressive about all issues but Palestine is an awful and uncomfortable situation for non Jewish people"

Wonderful statement.

Yeah, I'll add something. What an annoying —-[censored by webmaster]! Get a job, make a difference in your community and stop worrying about people on the other side of the world who would like nothing so much as to behead you.
Sometimes, Phil, it seems you don't recognize Mrs Jellyby when you see her!

Thanks Anne. And I appreciate the info on prisoner rights. I recommend everyone check out the link and its related PDF.

(You seem to have touched a nerve with the resident apologists here, which is always a good thing.)

Wow, a ditz marries a communist and she's still upset about the Rosenbergs. ( who got exactly what was coming to them). Really scraping the bottom of the barrel here aren't we Phil.

thank you, ann. my road has paralleled yours in many ways, both in my deep personal involvement, and intellectual sympathy with jews. and my later disillusionment as well, it taking a long and twisting road. people ask me why i am so interested in i/p and our aipac politics, as if i would have some personal motive, as if it is suspect.
it is not personal, unless being angered by hypocrisy, and having free expression of what i think reasonable views stifled, is a personal issue.
and ana sanchez, lebanon was radicalizing for me also. and i had the same experience with friends both jewish and non. no one seemed to be willing to confront what was occurring.
when i was in israel with a group of both jews and gentiles, the jews clumped together whispering , and would stop talking when i approached. i didn't get it at first . in fact , it has taken me years to get it.
now i am aware of the reality that i cannot talk openly to jews about our politics in the us or about israel. and so much of our politics is about this issue! i have tried to fight the lack of dialogue because i believe it's dangerous. i have struck out, zero success, even with my oldest friends.
it's hard to believe, considering my starting point , that i have come to accept we are separate peoples, and that is the way they want it. it is a bitter statement, i keep looking at it, trying to change it, and i can't.

Yes, objective history is important. It cements present acts, omissions, and righteous opinion.

Jews were not slaves in Ancient Egypt. After initial confrontation, they at first were allies, but then downgraded by the Egyptian government to what many other
less powerful tribes were, that is, hired hands for great Egyptian
public works projects, complete with the same pay and medical benefits.

Despite the imbalance of power, the Jews decided they did not want to work with their hands. They were always very class-consc ious. So they developed a plan. They would attack an Egyptian
town, take it over, kill everyone, and there get their supplies to
hat out of Egyptian jurisdiction.

This they did. Naturally, the Egyptian regime ran after them, these
terrorists. Conscripted Egyptians nearly caught them at the sea, but

the Jews caught some luck and crossed over but when the swampy area increased in its cycle the Egyptians got caught in
in the muddle.

Thereafter, the Jews lived off the lands they encountered. When they were armed to the teeth and self-trained to the max, they
decided to attack relatively weak Jericho and lay it waste, to instill fear in the
hearts of the region they wanted to take over. They killed everyone there, and fear spread among the non-Jews, the Canaanites (also Semites)
This was the way of the Jews.

As per Jewish and Israeli researchers exclusively–on the History Channel. Dig it up.

SOG: "Wow, a ditz marries a communist and she's still upset about the Rosenbergs. (who got exactly what was coming to them)."

Indeed they did. And contemporary American foreign loyalists in the Rosenberg vein have merely switched out their Communist ideology for Zionism. They never were loyal Americans, and never will be. They're far too exclusive for that.

"it's hard to believe, considering my starting point , that i have come to accept we are separate peoples, and that is the way they want it. it is a bitter statement, i keep looking at it, trying to change it, and i can't."

I think this statement is a key to understanding anti-semitism, at least in Eastern Europe, and relative lack of anti-semitism, for centuries, in Middle East. The degree of integration is the pivotal element. Societies are sensitive to apartheid, and consider the rejection of their values, communal welfare, traditions, customs and culture as an insult and react to insult with anger.

Nothing excuses the reaction that endangers lives of innocents, of course, but one needs to understand the psyche of community one is living in, because ignoring it has shown to be reliably, and repeatedly, lethal.

I dread the thought of the backlash against Jewish people.

Read the Palestinian prison report. Looks like the US got the Gitmo methods and procedures from Israel.

Thank you Phil and thank you Anne. It is a good day to be in Phil's neighborhood.

I met a nice old South African Jewish lady. We were swapping phone numbers and at the front of her address book, I saw a Palestinian flag.

I thought, how many Serbs, no matter how tolerant would have a Croat or Bosnian flag on their address book.

For that matter, how many Tutsi have blogs objecting what their compatriots are doing in Goma right now, as Phil does.

It is strange. There certainly seems to be in Judaism an extremely xenophobic strain, a strain that says "Fuck the Goyim,we're G-d's chosen people" but there is another strain, which I admire deeply, which is profoundly universal, which sent those two kids who got murdered by the Klan in Philadelphia, Mississippi back in the 60s and inspires Phil's blog today.

I guess every ethnic group has xenophobic and universalist tendancies. Jews seem to have both to an extreme. Anybody have any idea why?

Phil, this is a wonderful and important thing we will all encounter and deal with and Mrs Silver garbles it with this phoney Jewish perpetual discomfort. It is not best to say it makes us "uncomfortable." "Uncomfortable" is the fake thing Jews throw out to pretend to have morality, like that UN ambassador who claimed that the Lebanon bombings made Jewish bomber pilots uncomfortable, in contradistinction from the evil Hizbullah rocket men, who would not don Woody Allen's glasses and affect awkwardness. You see, it's okay they're flattening civilian targets they know have nothing to do with Hizbullah, because it makes them feel somewhat guilty or something. We were able to leave notions of Jewish normality and equality thanks to seeing this fake progressive mask. It'd be better to say that it is downright suspicious that so many Jews of so many different stripes revert to an atavistic nationalism from another century on this one issue, that it is a significant dealbreaker. Our master the diaphanous Xymphora goes so far as to say that this remarkable party unity gives the lie to Jewish ideological and intellectual diversity: can they really be so different if they are all pressing for the same thing? The goal of post-Zionism and true progressives in this century is to separate the truly average Jew, who never had anything to do with Leviev or Jabotinsky or whatever but nevertheless self-endangeringly identifies with them, and the very few but very wealthy, powerful, pushy and evil Jews who give the rest a bad name. We are stone-sure that the real story of historical Jew-hatred consists of this evil nucleus doing evil, getting caught, throwing the innocent minority under the bus and escaping to start a new Arenda somewhere else. We therefore have the awkward task of pursuing an anti-nationalist pan-cultural solidarity against an old-fashioned genuine nationalist solidarity.

"Societies are sensitive to apartheid, and consider the rejection of their values, communal welfare, traditions, customs and culture as an insult and react to insult with anger."

I agree. And when you consider that it was well into the 20th century before the majority of European Jews woulde allow themselves to break bread with their gentile neighbors, it adds a new perspective to to the phenomenon of "antisemitism." Particularly in the context of poor agrarian communities, where survival can depend on group solidarity when the wolf is at the door.

Dostoyevsky wrote how in even prison the Jews refused to eat at the same table with the non-Jewish inmates. And of course, technically the halachic prohibition still stands today.

My guess is that most Jews, progressive or not, do not care as to whether anti-Israelis are comfortable or not. It's not the job of Jewish people to tailor their views to make you feel comfortable.

The horrors of Israel's brutal cruelties to the Palestinians are logically of special interest to conscientious non-Jewish Americans because, yes because, the US is a major facilitator, if not out-and-out accomplice, to Palestinian suffering. Any American, Jewish or non-Jewish, who is indifferent to Israel's criminal enterprise, is deserving of only harsh contempt. And those who contribute, in any way, to Israel's genocidal project deserve the same social regard as the rapist, murderer or child sex abuser. They have minds that accept this one horror as a norm.
I, too, am content to avoid discretionary social contact with Jews who are not known to me to be kindred spirits of Philip Weiss and the hundreds of other Jews who have the moral vision and fortitude to openly denounce what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for 40+ years now. It is too stressful to socialize with proponents of savage crime and pretend that you regard them as normal people. Better just stay away from them or in obligatory company keep them at arm's length…. as I do all persons who embrace the criminal and inhumane.

Thanks, Anne. I write this out of gratitude, because I'm sad that the "[ab]normal" critics who regularly attack Phil have turned on you as well. I'm touched by your history, beliefs, and family, and want to confide my own pain over my own ridiculously slow education about these questions.
I'm also not Jewish but am a wondering skeptic—-spawn of a "mixed marriage” between an “Irish” Catholic [three generations “exiled” because Catholics were banned from Trinity College] and an Episcopalian. I also came to concern about injustice for Palestinians through a 1960s childhood, reaching out from a very unhappy family to identify with greater struggles against suffering. I first read and felt guilt about the American prejudice against Jewish people that allowed Hitler to work his Final Solution, that then spread out to sorrow over the enslavement of African people, the genocide of Native peoples, theft from Mexican people, from Chinese people's labor, and the tyranny of all sorts of stereotypes, including gender and sexuality, wanting to work and study for the liberation of all women and men.
I love hearing about your daughter because I also went to Stanford–in the 1970s–(and have read about SCAI and wished I’d the vision to take up the Palestinian cause then). I worked against apartheid in South Africa by helping with demonstrations for divestment, but I didn't know till 25 years later that Israel had supported the government of South Africa. I sympathized with my friends and helped them boycott Standard Oil, because it was "against Israel." I was confused by the bigots, like the acquaintance who, when I introduced her to my darling best friend David, exclaimed, "Ha! You're the first ‘David’ I've met at Stanford who's not Jewish.” You guessed it: David, of the blond hair and green eyes, was Jewish. We all stuttered, and the woman melted away. I don’t think I ever saw her again.
I got that, but I didn’t understand till 20 years later why every single friend/boyfriend who hailed from Hollywood or Beverly Hills introduced themselves as being from “West LA.” I thought they didn’t want people to know they were rich and stupidly never understood about the Jewish part.
So when I discovered the plight of the Palestinians in ‘82 by reading "The Nation" and "Harper’s", I was so callow that I didn’t understand for several years that I was typed by others as “anti-Semitic.” The discovery was horrifying. I’ve been trying to find a logical way to change the debate ever since. (I didn’t mind when people like Dick Cheney, Margaret Thatcher, or my In-Laws, called us all “Communists” for supporting the ANC, or for trying to stop US aid to the Salvadoran death Squads and Nicaraguan Contras). But being labeled an anti-Semite hurt. It still hurts, but nothing is as bad as having absolutely no effect for good. And yet that impotence is neglible compared to the suffering the people of Palestine endure with courage.
A turning point for me, like for you, Anne, came after September 11, 2001, talking to two very dear friends (with whom I’d been through a lot in situations where we couldn’t talk about the world outside). I said something about US support for the Israeli Likud policies against Palestinians, and my precious friends exchanged a look I’d seen before with others but ignorantly never identified till then. The Look announced, “Oh, no, she’s one of them—-a bigot.” My friends told me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. So have many people since.
I lie awake trying to figure out the perfect description and facts that will persuade the “fair, moderate” host and listeners to our local NPR call-in show, that we who want to stop ethnic cleansing in Palestine are not anti-Semites, even that Palestinians are Semites, too. (One host likened the Hamas rocket attacks on Sderot to the German Blitz of London and I, feebly, stopped contributing our pittance to the station.) Jones Radio Network’s Stephanie Miller and Ed Schultz, as well as Air America’s various current hosts, don’t seem interested either.
What hurts most of all is beginning to notice who’s Jewish and to be paranoid about the liberation of Palestine as a vexed issue, rather than one of obvious decency. I sound like Stephen Colbert’s satire of intolerance, wanting to cry, “I don’t see race.” But I liked being unaware of who was Jewish, who Gentile, just as I resist typing people—including our kids [Why not help them live all human possibilities?]–by sex. Till I started reading Phil’s columns, I was brainlessly oblivious to the fact that people like Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Haim Saban, Scooter Libby, are Jewish. I just couldn’t figure out their unjust bias. I was ridiculously blind, I guess. And I had to sigh ruefully when I saw Phil’s reflection on your last name, for lots of reasons, including a boy I almost married decades ago.
So I love your description of yourself, Anne:
“Encountering Jews who are progressive about all issues but Palestine is an awful and uncomfortable situation for non Jewish people, and I am a shy and introverted goofball, not quick on my feet or clear-talking, but I no longer allow myself to ever not make my position clear.”
Your acceptance of the costs of your activism, the loss of friendship, along with your yearning to be as effective in the world as your perceptions deserve, inspires me just when I’ve been grappling with my own uselessness.
What is most uplifting about your goal is that you feel able to make your beliefs “clear.” I fear I blunder on, doing as much harm as good, alienating not only “Israel-firsters,” but friends who also care that, “Palestine is…the issue of our time.” As both you and Phil’s essay about Anna Baltzer tell us, we who aren’t Jewish have as much responsibility to work for change, to stop the murder of and theft from Palestinians, as Jewish people do.
So, thanks, Anne,–even if I’ve written this too late for you ever to see it–for the “sight” of your lilting courage.

Here's that Halper article, in CounterPunch.

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not merely a localized one between two squabbling tribes. It lies at the epicenter of global instability."

So Anne identifies with the "underdog". In other words, the strong are always wrong and the weak are always right. Thus, I conclude she supported Nazi Germany in World War II because they were the "weak", they didn't stand a chance against the combined might of the US, British Empire and USSR.

So her late husband was an "ex-Communist". Did this mean he was "uncomfortable" with his hero Stalin's liquidation of millions?

Anyway, since you like anecdotal Jews who turn against Israel, I also know Jews, two former Communists as a matter of fact, who today are "right-wing Orhtodox/religious and pro-Settler". In fact there is a whole community of former 1960's hippies who are now also "right-wing Orthdox/religious and pro-Settler". So there!

Well said, Anne.

I also am in wonderment at the use of the term "progressive Zionist."

Thank you wonderful Ann.

These are somber days for humanity. Retrospectively, people wondered how many Germans knew of the Camps, of the Final Solution? But it is really not about the availability of the information, it is about our inner disability. The eyes do not go blind, it is the hearts that do.

Israel/Palestine is NOT parallel to the "final solution".

It is no secret that La Raza despises Linda Chavez-Gersten! No woman, other than perhaps Gloria Matta Tuchman, generates so much disgust in our community than this extraordinary malinchista. Like the brutish Jewish female Kapos at Auschwitz who received special favors for sleeping with their Nazi masters, Mrs. Chavez-Gersten will now be unleashed to squash any legitimate calls for better working conditions for our hard working Latino labor force.

This pattern of appointing and empowering malinchistas within our community by those who rule through the two party dictatorship is becoming all too common. With very few exceptions, all of the women of Mexican descent who have been promoted to national prominence have married either Jews if they are Democrats or Anglos if they are Republicans. Linda Chavez is no exception. She is married to Christopher Gersten and prides herself of having an "non-Hispanic" mother and a "Spanish" father who was allegedly a World War II hero from New Mexico. If she is Mrs. Linda Gersten why is she still using her maiden name of Linda Chavez (or Shayviz as she pronounced it during her Senate campaign in Maryland)? Who is she trying to fool? It is no wonder that a group of Chicano students ran her off campus during a commencement ceremony in 1991 at the University of Northern Colorado.

It is interesting to note that "malinchismo" is more predominate in our Mexican-American community than in the Black or other minority communities in the United States. It is true that Blacks have their "Uncle Toms" like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and their "House Niggers" like UC Regent Ward Connerly but most of these are of the male gender. I am hard put to think of a Black "vendida" of prominence in modern American public life but I can presently count at least five female "brown anglos" today who have been empowered politically and who are doing great damage to our community. Perhaps "malinchismo" is our own unique curse? Whatever happened to the "Adelitas" and the "Valentinas" of yester-year who fought side by side with our "soldados?"

As La Raza, we can expect nothing but betrayal from Linda Chavez-Gersten! Her entire history in public life has been one of treason against the ethnic group she professes to belong. She was chosen by powerful bigots to head a group called US English that pushed to dismantle Spanish/English bilingual programs in public education and to eliminate bilingual ballots and voting instructions. She was vehemently anti-affirmative action while a Ronald Reagan appointee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and has opposed civil rights for ethnic and racial minorities at every turn during her career.

As Labor Secretary she will move steadfastly to relegate Latinos as working slaves for corporate America and the large agricultural and industrial conglomerates and at the same time she will work to maintain the economic privileges of whites. Make no mistake about it, that is why Bush appointed her. That way Bush can say … It is one of yours doing it to you and don't come to me!

After all, what can we expect from a "coconut" that says that Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are her heroes and, to quote her in verbatim, that; "George Washington is my hero. The fact that my father's family was off in New Mexico and their allegiance was, at that time, to Spain, not to England and they didn't fight in the Revolutionary War, should not in any way diminish the fact that George Washington is my forefather."

What are we to do with women such as Linda Chavez-Gersten and many others of her kind that betray La Raza for favors from the enemy? While many of our male political leaders such as Ramsey Muniz of La Raza Unida Party and countless Latino youths languish in the prison dungeons of America, the two-party dictatorship is empowering what amounts to a Latino Judenrat. This is a dilema that we must resolve soon before we loose entire new generations of our youth to a life behind bars, to the streets or a life of bleak existance in the poorly paid labor force.

According to Frances Cress Welsing, White Supremacy is practiced by those people who classify themselves as "white" to ensure the genetic survival of "white" people. Her theory is predicated on the work of Neely Fuller (1969), who states that "White Supremacy" is a global system of domination against people of color. This system attacks people of color, particularly people of African descent, in the nine major areas of people's activity which are:
economics
education
entertainment
labor
law
politics
religion
sex
war

Colored and person of color (or people of color in the plural sense) are terms that were commonly used to describe people who do not have white skin or a Caucasian appearance. … Jews can fall into either group.

Cress Welsing states that White Supremacy is practiced by the global "white" minority on both conscious and unconscious levels to ensure their genetic survival by any means necessary. Cress Welsing believes that it is imperative that people of color, especially people of African descent, understand how the system of White Supremacy works in order to dismantle it and bring true justice to planet Earth.A concept in evolution linking survival of the fittest to natural selection. …
Welsing has been criticized for allegedly promoting an overtly racist ideology; in The Isis Papers she postulates that white people are the genetically defective descendants of Albino mutants who had been forcibly expelled from Africa[4] This box: Racism has many definitions, the most common and widely accepted is that members of one race are intrinsically superior or inferior to members of other races. … Political Ideologies Part of the Politics series Politics Portal This box: An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. … Albinism is a genetic condition resulting in a lack of pigmentation in the eyes, skin and hair. … A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. …

She has been criticized for claims such as that black male homosexuality is consciously imposed on the Black man by the white man for the purpose of destroying the Black family, that black homosexuality is a sign of weakness and that homosexual patterns of behavior are simply expressions of black male self-submission to other males in the area of sex, as well as in other areas such as economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, and war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUV_RmNIuE4

"When will Ana Sanchez begin to take responsibility for the Mexican drug trade in my state?'

IT IS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT ISRAELI ORGANIZED CRIME IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DISTRIBUTION OF APPROXIMATELY 70% OF THE ECSTASY CONSUMED IN THE U.S.

All that was needed for Holocaust to unfold was indifference of Eastern Europeans to those on the other side of social and political apartheid, especially when this apartheid was self imposed by Jews.

Eva, could you explain, what you mean by the last clause above?

Basically a good analogy. You are not suggesting that the Holocaust was a self imposed "apartheit" are you? Are you suggesting that the Holocaust is a result of Jewish "apartheit" a consequence of their being, living apart, not assimilating?

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Thanks Anna Silver, I like your story.