The Forward ran a nice piece by Rebecca Dube, talking to Eddie Antar, of the store Crazy Eddie's, about the crime ring lately unearther in the Syrian Jewish community. Sayeth Antar:
“You have to understand something — the way this community survived when they got expelled from Spain in 1492 was to maintain insularity,” Antar explained. “The same insularity also protects a subculture of crime that goes on…. People use religion as a shield; they use it as a wall of false integrity to enable crime to exist.”
This is a mythology, and a kind of vanity too. Can you imagine being motivated today by events of 500 years ago, to which you may not be entirely sure of your own connection? I am not discounting those events, only saying that they function at a mythological level. Far more important to talk about the Syrian Jewish experience in Syria. These mythologies are too easily accepted in the Jewish community. Note the use of Judea and Samaria, biblical names, to justify the colonization of Palestine.
Far more persuasive than Crazy Eddie's mythology is Michael Walzer's interpretation of Jewish history:
"We sustained a national existence for 2000 years without territory, sovereignty, and without coercive power… That is an extraordinary political achievement… one that has not been studied enough, or appreciated enough."
Then he said, "It may be that the talents honed by exile don’t fit the circumstances of statehood." Jews were trained in the circumstances of "kehal," or their own legal/religious community. "We governed only ourselves, as best we could… Sometimes [we were] semi-autonomous… responsible only for ourselves. In the state of Israel, we have accepted responsibility for other people. That is something we have never had in all the years of exile, and we have not done terribly well."
Walzer is talking about a living religious myth that actually serves to define a community, of sorts. Assimilation and Israel are transforming that community.
“Assimilation and Israel are transforming that community.”
That has always been the case, and it has always passed. Those that sought to assimilate did so, and dissolved.
Those that didn’t desire to assimilate, or to revive tradition, remained.
Not so. You totally ignore the elephant in the room–a nuclear armed and grossly ethnocentric
state funded, armed, and supported in the UN by the only superpower in the world, and located at the mouth of oil, the fuel for modern world civilization. Jeez, Witty
has that always been the case?
You’re right Philip, they function about as well as a Jewish right of return after a couple of thousand years as you say. Has there ever been a tim that religion was not used as a cloak for atrocities?
Oh, and RW, if the non-assimilation means what is taking place in Israel than count me out.
You have to understand that RW views assimilation as a “silent holocaust.” So much for his version of “the American Dream.” Assimilation is for gentiles, white ones especially here in the USA.
Even if your assessment of Richard’s view is accurate, there is nothing at all wrong with it. Americans should be free to live and love as they damn well please, as long as they don’t infringe on anyone else’s rights.
The problem is not the degree of Jewish assimilation, however one wants to define that nebulous term. It is that the American Jewish political establishment, i.e. the Lobby, does infringe on everyone else’s rights by continuously breaking the law, subverting justice, and essentially using threats and bribery to ensure that American foreign and domestic policy, wherever it is relevant to Israel, is formulated and executed to serve the interests of Israel (as the Lobby’s radical pro-colonization leadership defines it) at America’s expense.
Guaranteeing Israeli defensive security within the 1967 borders is one thing. Dragging the rest of us into involuntary support of foreign ethnic cleansing and colonization that pose a high and unnecessary security risk to the United States is quite another, and must be vigorously and adamantly opposed until either moderates take control of the Lobby, or it is broken. If it cannot be changed from within, it will eventually be broken, even if it takes 5o years. Such an eventuality, despite the best efforts of everyone of good will, will result in some degree of social and political upheaval damaging to Jews, particularly among so called ‘opinion makers’.
An ugly reality of post-Bush-neocon America is that Jews are not fully trusted in positions of power in the security community. Obviously this is unhealthy and must be fixed, and at its root, not though quixotic attempts at PR that will only exacerbate the problem.
How much worse will it be if the Lobby remains in the control of radical bitter-enders who don’t give a damn about blowback onto American Jews who disagree with them? Eventually there won’t be enough partisans in the Dept. of Justice, e.g. Paul McNulty **, to derail the FBI from publicly and incontrovertibly exposing the Lobby to a critical majority of the American people, and more importantly, in making its money radioactive enough to break its carrot and stick lock on Congress.
** Filing sheds light on FBI probe, Ron Kampeas, JTA, and colonist in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
excerpt: The U.S. Attorney in eastern Virginia at the time, Paul McNulty, “would like to end it with minimal damage to AIPAC,” the document quotes Lewin as telling Lowell. “He is fighting with the FBI to limit the investigation to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman and to avoid expanding it.
“Eventually there won’t be enough partisans in the Dept. of Justice, e.g. Paul McNulty **, to derail the FBI from publicly and incontrovertibly exposing the Lobby to a critical majority of the American people, and more importantly, in making its money radioactive enough to break its carrot and stick lock on Congress.”
Colin Murray August 31, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Filing sheds light on FBI probe
By Ron Kampeas · March 27, 2007
“WASHINGTON (JTA) – The FBI was considering expanding its investigation into AIPAC and classified information leaks in early 2005 when the pro-Israel lobbying powerhouse fired two staffers already under scrutiny, according to court documents.In a memorandum filed last Sept. 22 and unsealed last week, defense lawyers for Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, claimed for the first time that the FBI had considered expanding its criminal investigation.AIPAC’s March 2005 firing of Rosen and Weissman, and its decision several months later to stop paying their legal fees, headed off the expanded investigation, according to the sworn defense filing. The filing stems from a defense effort to force AIPAC to resume paying legal fees.
In late 2006, the Justice Department fired (or asked for the resignation of) eight U.S. attorneys all previously appointed by President George W. Bush. Earlier in 2006, a provision included in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act allowed these positions to be filled by the administration without U.S. Senate approval.”
Internal Probe Slams Bush Justice official for illegal hiring
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — A former acting Justice Department civil rights chief illegally favored conservative job applicants as “real Americans,” kept liberal lawyers off key cases and lied in Senate testimony to conceal his misconduct, internal investigators say in a report made public Tuesday
[...]
The 70-page report, the last to be publicly released on four joint internal investigations stemming from the 2007 scandal over politicization of the Justice Department, was completed in July but had been kept secret pending the outcome of the criminal inquiry.
Edit: 2nd paragraph of 9.1.09 4:457 comment not part of JTA story
Bush administration U.S. attorney firings controversy
link to opencongress.org
“In late 2006, the Justice Department fired (or asked for the resignation of) eight U.S. attorneys all previously appointed by President George W. Bush. Earlier in 2006, a provision included in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act allowed these positions to be filled by the administration without U.S. Senate approval. In early 2007, hearings were held on the matter in both the House and Senate Judiciary committees on the firings. Several of the fired attorneys testified that they had been contacted by members of Congress or executive officials about pending cases shortly before their termination. Such contact by members of Congress is a violation of both House and Senate rules. ”