Today I got an email from a Jewish friend saying No, no, no, (Amy Winehouse style) Obama should not have let a Jew speak for him on Gaza-- David Axelrod making the evasive Gaza statement of Sunday. Didn't know what to think about it. Boy, he's harder on Jews than I am? Then I just read this from the great Sara Roy, in the Christian Science Monitor:
And what will happen to Jews as a people whether we live in
Israel or not?
Why have we been unable to accept the fundamental humanity of Palestinians and
include them within our moral boundaries? Rather, we reject any human
connection with the people we are oppressing. Ultimately, our goal is to
tribalize pain, narrowing the scope of human suffering to ourselves alone.
Our rejection of "the other" will undo us. We must incorporate Palestinians and other Arab peoples into the Jewish understanding of history, because they are a part of that history. We must question our own narrative and the one we have given others, rather than continue to cherish beliefs and sentiments that betray the Jewish ethical tradition.
Jewish intellectuals oppose racism, repression, and injustice almost everywhere in the world and yet it is still unacceptable – indeed, for some, it's an act of heresy – to oppose it when Israel is the oppressor. This double standard must end.
Our rejection of "the other" will undo us. We must incorporate Palestinians and other Arab peoples into the Jewish understanding of history, because they are a part of that history. We must question our own narrative and the one we have given others, rather than continue to cherish beliefs and sentiments that betray the Jewish ethical tradition.
Jewish intellectuals oppose racism, repression, and injustice almost everywhere in the world and yet it is still unacceptable – indeed, for some, it's an act of heresy – to oppose it when Israel is the oppressor. This double standard must end.
And I thought Iraq would do it. Or Bernie Madoff. Nope: Gaza is the true crisis of the American Jewish soul. That moment I've always been preaching about, Are you now or have you ever been a Zionist, is about to happen. And anti-Zionism will soon be fashionable. Yippee!
If the Jewish narratives of Babylonian and Egyptian exile sound universal themes, as is often claimed, then surely they apply to Palestinians as well.
Indeed, Sura 59 of the Koran is titled 'Exile.' How much it draws on the pre-existing Judaic tradition is hard to say, since it lacks any temporal or geographic details.
But one does suspect that like the Jewish exile, the Palestinian exile from their own land will one day end. This need not be the 'undoing of the Jews.' But Zionism is striving mightily to make it so.
What if we add up Iraq, Madoff, Wall St, and Gaza?
What is that sum in respect to the Jewish soul?
Re the Americans, same question to those sheeple.
The slaughter in Gaza is not the repudiation of any Jewish ethical tradition, as Roy worries – it is the real-life expression of it.
This massacre reflects the logic of modern Jewish ethnocentrism and racial supremacy. It’s as Jewish as matzo ball soup.
To paraphrase Roy's closing:
This is “who we [they!] are and what, in the end, we [they have] become” . . .
.
"Ultimately, our goal is to tribalize pain, narrowing the scope of human suffering to ourselves alone."
I don't know. I believe Richard Witty's son went all the way over there just to try to ease Palestinian suffering.
How's he doing, Rich? You haven't told us much of his experiences. It must be quite exciting for him now, what with all the explosions and the smell of death in the air.
"If the Jewish narratives of Babylonian and Egyptian exile sound universal themes, as is often claimed, then surely they apply to Palestinians as well…"
ah, but they don't 'sound universal themes'. They sound like meretricious bullshit, at least in their current forms, because that is what they are.
Phil what happens in 24 months, when the next equivalent to Lebanon 2006/Gaza 08/09 occurs?
When there is no shift, and Obama is toeing the line?
What happens then?