This is part five of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Word on the Congolese street is that our intrepid French decolonizer, Victoria Fontan, who I will write about in the near future, attended a Pentecostal church service there. Being an intensely secular daughter of French republican tradition, she was shocked by some of what she saw and heard as Jesus Christ was extolled for more than two hours. If you’re not into something like that, church can feel like eternity itself. Then it got interesting. Israel entered the picture as the featured guest of all things good surrounded by all things evil which no doubt translated into Palestinians.
As I’ve often thought, in the end there will only be two supporters of Israel around the world, the Jewish establishment and evangelical Christians. When you think how evangelical Christians celebrate Israel, the (un)reality should strike fear into every living Jew and Palestinian. Along with a boat load of others, including those Americans who watched the Republican primary debates this spring. The debates were an “I love Israel more than you” competition. And by the way, nuke Iran. So (un)real
Can’t remember whether she saw an Israeli flag in the church as is often the case. But lo and behold, on my walk today to pick up some errant food items I noticed the American flag proudly being flown in front of a home. Then I noticed with another flag right beside it – the Israeli flag. I took a picture as I have of the rabbi’s home – the mezuzah on the beach. Perhaps a book cover to be, both pictures side by side.
Kairos, the right or opportune moment. If South Africa is not us but only the image we see reflected back in the mirror, as in – we are on the verge of becoming, or have become, everything we loathed about our oppressors – then as Jews who are we? If kairos is Greek and Kairos documents abound, migrating now to Palestine and recently to America as Christian responses to the heresy their co-religionists propogate, what time is Jewish time? What, Jewishly-speaking is the right or opportune moment?
First, let’s step back for a moment. It isn’t clear to me at all that bad behavior on the part of Christians is aberrational or heretical. Not by a long shot. The civil war among Christians moves to the very heart of the way Christians have practiced their faith historically. So much of that history has been violent toward Jews but that is only part of Christianity’s amazingly violent history. In fact, a majority of Christians around the world were conquered by Christianity or, as I often think of it, they were “conquered by the Gospels.” If violence has been with Christianity since its founding, it is a stretch to call it heretical. When does heresy become the norm? When we label actions heretical is it a call to reform a faith community or the need to create something radically new?
Perhaps this isn’t the time to think Christian in negative terms. Let the present-day good stuff roll. It’s easy for Jews to get off cheap shots at Christian history. Easy target! The hard truth is that parts of Christianity have a taken global turn for the better and are content to leave the Ken Starr’s of our world to draw their million dollar plus salaries. Christians interested in global justice are fighting the right-wingers tooth and nail. Even if part of their fight is to prove to themselves and others that Christianity took a wrong turn eons ago, what the hell, let’s root them on. Besides, there is a lesson here for Jews, since we are taking the exact same wrong turn that Christians took more than fifteen hundred years ago. This may be part of our newly acquired empire fate. Fifteen hundred years from now we may be arguing whether being Jewish isn’t violence, injustice and atrocity – only.
This argument is already brewing. Wherever I travel the reception of Jewishness is difficult at best. Admittedly, I often travel off the global Jewish track. Most Jews today hardly wander beyond America’s shores. Europe is far as most will go. Even in Europe it’s tough sledding. If you really want a Jewish workout try Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa or almost anywhere else on the globe. Few want to hear about “Jewish.” Fewer still about the Holocaust. Israel is considered a pariah. In relation to Israel, the most frequent word I hear applied is genocide. The reference is to Palestinians not the Holocaust.
But what do they know, I hear the doyens of the Jewish establishment (safely tucked away in New York and Los Angeles) speak in unison. Of “Jewish” they know little, I respond. However, what they do know is not far off. It isn’t fantasy or made up. I can and sometimes do advise my interlocutors of the nuances that might make some difference in their thinking. However, I don’t try to turn them around. I listen to the line they’ve drawn in the sand. That line is freedom for Palestinians. I share that line.
Besides genocide, the word routinely applied to Israel is “colonialism.” By association colonialism is also applied to “Jewish.” As in, Israel is, Jews are. Reality and myth become one. Disentangling the two without losing the main thread is almost impossible. Is it worth the time and effort?
Especially when the jetlag kicks in, I wonder. Yet when I speak the truth as a Jew, the audience’s built-up anger often gives way to a hope that the Jewish community is divided and that the struggle within the Jewish community is real. Then I wonder if such a hope is real, if my own expression of what I see and want doesn’t function as a panacea that serves as a cover to protect Jews and Israel. That’s the modus operandi of Progressive Jews. I can’t abide stupid things said about Jews. I want to avoid using a fake honesty to cover our injustice.
Parenthetically, I don’t delude myself into thinking that Jews of Conscience transcend other parts of the Jewish world. I experience Empire and Progressive Jewish sensibilities within me. I want to be empowered. I want to cover over the realities of what we are doing. I want to be honest. I also want another way. The only way forward is through a brutal honesty. This is how I claim my Jewishness. But it is certainly not because I am above or have transcended the Jewish condition. Claiming my Jewishness is a choice. It also carries a cost.
The Jewish establishment has more or less given up on the world outside of America. Years ago the newly minted countries emerging from the colonized world were lost to Israel, then more and more of Europe. Now Israel – with America by its side – stands alone in the world. Exempting, of course, Germany, Israel’s great friend, who proudly provides nuclear submarines for Israel’s navy.
What a great friend Israel has in Germany. Israel is being armed to the teeth by the country that provided industrial mass death for Jews without losing any sleep over it. Until it was over. I wonder if Germany – and America – is preparing Israel for another round of fatedness, this time through an “unbreakable” friendship.
So kairos, that Greek moment, translated into Jewish. Or is it the other way around? Regardless, we know it well. Kairos translated into Jewish is the prophetic, the indigenous of the people Israel.
“…Fifteen hundred years from now we may be arguing whether being Jewish isn’t violence, injustice and atrocity – only…”
This is a point. I consider myself pretty broadly educated — but I really couldn’t tell you with any precision what ‘Jewishness’ consists of. I wonder if many Jews could.
I can, however, tell you in great detail what Israel is and does. So ‘Judaism’ is becoming the sum of Israel’s crimes. That’s not really the best survival strategy I’ve ever heard of.
There really is an irony here. Hitler — the arch-fiend — used to endlessly go on about a massive Jewish conspiracy to do down everyone else in general and the Germans in particular. This conspiracy consisted of more or less cloaked control of political parties, financial machinery, the press, labor movements, and so on.
It was transparently absurd then. But in their efforts to protect and exalt Israel, many Jews and their sympathizers are actually lending a veneer of plausibility to the charge now. One can see the naked kow-towing of politicians to the interests of a tiny state that continually fights with its neighbors and carries on one of the nastier campaigns of racist oppression going. One can see the press either openly propagandizing in behalf of it, or at least cowed into silence. One can read of all the corporations willingly doing business with Israel.
If Hitler were around now, he’d be having a field day. Israel and its supporters seem to be bent on clothing his fantasy with reality.
If Hitler were around now, he’d be having a field day. Israel and its supporters seem to be bent on clothing his fantasy with reality.”…Colin
Well that is what the zionist have done to an amazing degree in numerous US gov sectors.
That is what is so bizaare. They have actually brought the old Jewish canard to reality in the US in some respects and yet they think no one will say the Emperor has no clothes as long they yell anti semitism.
“but I really couldn’t tell you with any precision what ‘Jewishness’ consists of.”
Well, keep studying and learning, and without doubt, you’ll find out someday. And don’t forget to give a cold withering look to anybody stupid enough to suggest that maybe “Jewishness” is, in terms of your life, as dumb and irrelevant a concept as “manliness” or “womanliness”. Such a person (it may seem hard to credit, but they exist, darn it) might even say that the concept is destructive, both to you and the Jews.
But you keep educating yourself Colin, and someday you will know exactly what Jewishness is. There’s just no way to keep it from somebody as smart as you.
My ambitions don’t run that high Colin. I’m still hoping somebody would tell me what “diddy-wah-diddy” means. And if they say “If you have to ask, you’ll never know” I’ll give them such a hit….
“Most Jews today hardly wander beyond America’s shores. Europe is far as most will go. Even in Europe it’s tough sledding. If you really want a Jewish workout try Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa or almost anywhere else on the globe. Few want to hear about “Jewish.” Fewer still about the Holocaust. Israel is considered a pariah. In relation to Israel, the most frequent word I hear applied is genocide. The reference is to Palestinians not the Holocaust.”
Based on what? I know plenty of Jews who have been to Australia, for sure. I’ve been to South Africa. Most South Africans do not talk about Israel. They talk about getting livable housing. You wrongly suggest that the average South African cares. They do not. As far as South African leaders, the Board of Deputies in South Africa has plenty of the friends in the ANC, most of whom also really do not care much about Israel. Most of the criticism of Israel comes from the hard-left. To the extent that the ANC cares, it’s mostly out of an historical relationship with the PLO that dates from Apartheid days. But most ANC leaders care about South Africa, not Israel.
As far as Pakistan; are you surprised that people in Pakistan don’t like Israelis? Are you critical of all of a society that hates Israelis so much they turn a tennis star who dared to play with an Israeli into a pariah? And Malaysia, where the President once talked about how Jews rule the world by proxy? Who cares what Pakistan’s opinion of Israel is? Why on Earth should we give a shit?
“Parenthetically, I don’t delude myself into thinking that Jews of Conscience transcend other parts of the Jewish world.”
Maybe what you need to do is drop the self-righteous bullshit. So-called “Jews of Conscience” are not “good” and so-called “Jews of Empire” (whatever that means) are not bad. Drop the ultra-leftist elitist nonsense. You’re not better than I am because you subscribe to leftist politics. Indeed, by talking like this, you only further marginalize yourself. You don’t sound like a very humble person; perhaps this is why in your writing you suggest that people who think like you are good and those who do not are bad. Michael Lerner suffers from the same disease.
“I want to be honest.”
But you aren’t. When you suggest that Israel is committing genocide, that’s not honest. That’s just an attempt to apply an inflammatory word with Nazi connotations to a situation that does not approach genocide. It’s a way to simplify a situation that is more complex than you are willing to admit. It’s not honesty. It’s extremist politics, no different than describing all Palestinians as terrorists.
“The Jewish establishment has more or less given up on the world outside of America. ”
How so? There are Jewish communities all over the world. They happen not to be as big as the communities in the US and Israel. I wonder why that is. No one is giving up on these communities. The reality is that there are around 14 million Jews, and more than 12 million of them are in two places.
“What a great friend Israel has in Germany. ”
Yes, Germany is a good friend. Unlike the rest of Europe, which achieved wealth and homogeneity through mercantilism, murder, and discrimination, Germany recognizes that given its history, it has no right to deny Jews the right to self-determination or criticize its record, which is much better than Europe’s in terms of how many people died to establish the country.
“Who cares what Pakistan’s opinion of Israel is? Why on Earth should we…?”
Because they have 173 million people?
So-called “Jews of Conscience” are not “good”
Well, prophetic is good, and the prophets were on the fringes of society telling the society to change and be good and follow principles of rightness, which seem to me to reflect a fundamental universal morality. So it seems good if people are continuing in that tradition today, following their conscience and speaking out for rightness.
“it has no right to deny Jews the right to self-determination or criticize its record, which is much better than Europe’s in terms of how many people died to establish the country.”
So tell me Hophmi, how is your self determination compromised by living in the US?
How many people have to die or suffer before Israel “catches up” and you will criticize the actions of the Israeli government?
How many
I see you are still plugging the line of “the right of Jews to self-determination”, in spite of being shown, repeatedly, that this concept is nonsense.
Sticking to that line tends to vitiate the impact of any other points you try to make.
hophmi also ignored (as he always does) that, since Nuremberg Trials and their counterparts in Japan, there’s an international consensus, that is, an established norm, which denies “self-determination” of a people at the expense of any other people. Not to mention, he has totally forgotten the discussions on this blog fairly recently that delved into the current international working definition of “genocide.”
Germany recognizes that given its history, it has no right to deny Jews the right to self-determination or criticize its record,
That’s the problem. You think no one has the right to criticize Israel’s record. But we do, especially since Israel is dragging the US into the abyss with it.
You want us not to criticize Israel. I’ll be happy not to, as soon as Israel quits taking our money and demanding we fight Iran for her.
A rude awakening will come one day in Germany. Like the US, it has not learned that two wrongs don’t make a right. Further, those Germans alive during Hitler’s reign are now mostly dead; the few still alive are retired. How long will each successive generation of Germans allow Germany to be once again on the side of a great wrong done onto an entire people?
“How long will each successive generation of Germans allow Germany to be once again on the side of a great wrong done onto an entire people?
I agree. How long will Germany continue to do business with Iran?
hophmi, Germany has been backing the US sanctions against Iran: link to panarmenian.net
Further, Germany’s support for the EU sanctions against Iran, supporting the US agenda, has been absolutely crucial: link to europeaninstitute.org
OTOH, some German firms have continued doing business with Iran as to dual use products: link to jpost.com
Let us match up that ambiguous situation with just how much reparations and military equipment Germany has given Israel for free over many decades, without a thought as to what Israel does to the natives of the former Palestine Mandate land. Israeli firms, of course, never once ever have sold their reverse-engineered free US military and security equipment to finance Jews fleeing the USSR and never once have sold or traded any war or security products to any enemy of the USA.
“I agree. How long will Germany continue to do business with Iran?”
How times change. Why, it seems like only yesterday that Hophmi was trying to excuse Israel by comparing Israel’s sins to the sins of Western countries. Oh well.
Look, let’s just cut to the chase: Israel hasn’t built mass death camps
where they gas people and burn their bones to ash. And until they do, you all better shut up!
It’s becoming easier and easier to refute hasbara talking points: simply take the hasbara argument and switch the ‘we s’ and ‘they s’ — If a hasbarist says Jews were “denied the right to self-determination,” bet your bottom shekel the historical facts are that Jews GAINED “self-determination” at the expense of Arabs who were “denied the right to self-determination”
Gosh durned if the historic facts and writings of a coupla prominent Israel firsters don’t bear that out.
The foundational historic events took place at Versailles, when Wilson betrayed his 14 Points promise of self-determination to states of former Ottoman Empire, that is, Arab states including Palestine, in favor of validation of the Balfour Declaration.
In “The Transfer Agreement,” Edwin Black writes:
In “A Place Among the Nations,” Benjamin Netanyahu wrote:
Notice that Bibi failed to mention self-determination for Arabs; and that Jews, who despite Bibi’s ascription to them of the status of a “nation,” were not only not a nation but were not formal, identifiable participants in the conflict, yet Jews had massive representation at Versailles while Germany did not, and the results of a vast canvass of Arab desires — the the King-Crane Commission — was ignored by Wilson and other participants at Versailles.
Moreover, as David ben Gurion’s 5 October 1937 letter to his son Omer states, the “new World Order” established at Versailles was just a “coincidental” howsoever essential first step in the zionist dream.
ben Gurion wrote:
The other day flyod linked to the Institute for Curriculum Services website, a “National Resource Center for Accurate Jewish Content in Schools.” [No doubt they will scour Nurit Peled- Elhanan's research on the deficiencies in Israeli schools and demand that Israel redress them.] nb. Thanks, flyod.
This workshop caught my eye:
I wonder if it was constructed in an effort to 1. blame the British for the turmoil in the region; and 2. redirect public awareness of the events that created Israel AWAY from the ACTUAL denial of self-determination for Arabs, and to generate yet more pity for ‘denial of self-determination for Jews’ .
I also wondered how much more US taxpayer money & institutions are being exploited to teach American children yet another distorted version of Israel’s history. But that’s another topic —
“You’re not better than I am because you subscribe to leftist politics.”
No, of course not! He’s better than you because he doesn’t advocate for or try to excuse an atrocious and illegal regime, and he’s much better than you because he doesn’t seek to trap another generation of Jews in the toils of its corrupt ideology. That’s all. But it’s enough.
But funny, I never remember Mr. Ellis stating he was better than you. Must be awful to be stuck at a website which exacerbates your innate feelings of inferiority.
Gosh, Hophmi, if I didn’t think you were such a jerk of the first water, I might even feel sorry for you.
“Being an intensely secular daughter of French republican tradition, she was shocked by some of what she saw and heard as Jesus Christ was extolled for more than two hours”.
I am confused. What is surprising for her? It’s a Pentacostal church.
You ask: If South Africa is not us but only the image we see reflected back in the mirror, as in – we are on the verge of becoming, or have become, everything we loathed about our oppressors – then as Jews who are we?
It’s like the end of the book Animal farm where the leading animals can’t distinguish themselves from the farmers.
Yes, W.Jones, some folks really need to read Animal Farm, not just Maus.
You ask:
“Kairos, the right or opportune moment… If kairos is Greek and Kairos documents abound, migrating now to Palestine and recently to America as Christian responses to the heresy their co-religionists propogate, what time is Jewish time? What, Jewishly-speaking is the right or opportune moment?”
Kairos also means “moment of truth”. It is a moment of truth, so to speak, for people to speak up about the mistreatment of the native people’s in the Holy Land. Obviously, this “moment of truth” isn’t limited to Christians, but to all kinds of powerful global religious and social groups.”
I disagree when you write: “It isn’t clear to me at all that bad behavior on the part of Christians is aberrational or heretical. Not by a long shot.”
One of the main foundations of Christianity is the moralistic Sermon on the Mount. Another is the teaching to follow righteousness and do good. So such strong “bad behaviour” or bad Christian ideas (eg. those that reject the basis of Christianity) are obviously heretical or a “missing the mark” (aberration) as to Christianity.
“One of the main foundations of Christianity is the moralistic Sermon on the Mount. Another is the teaching to follow righteousness and do good.”
Oh W.Jones, you know how it is. People want variety, people want excitement. Sure, that dull, moralistic Sermon on the Mount used to have ‘em rolling in the aisles, but that was then, this is now, baby. It’s all about Revelations and Romans, these days, and if you need advice on women, Paul is the guy you want to talk to.
Nobody these days wants to hear from a roving hippie who looks a lot like Charles Manson, even if it is sad about the cross and all.
@mooser,
LOL.
Although I don’t remember Revelations or Romans instructing to actually do harmful things, you are making a good point. Sometimes people focus on some parts of the Bible, or their own interpretations of it, and use them to justify bad acts.
If you really want a Jewish workout try Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa or almost anywhere else on the globe.
Australia? Australian Jews do very well. And our press and politicians suck up to Israel in nearly as disgusting a way as the Americans do.
Few want to hear about “Jewish.”
Why would they?
Fewer still about the Holocaust.
Since we’ve had an unending stream of films, TV shows, books, stories, and articles about it thrust down our throats during the last four or five decades, we are fed up with hearing about it.
The Holocaust is required in public K-12 schools across the USA, and this has long been so. There are literally hundreds of tax-funded Holocaust museums too, despite the fact the Holocaust did not happen in the USA, but in Europe. Further, there is a federal agency solely devoted to monitoring every claim of “anti-semitism,” both in USA and around the world. States have to balance their budgets and although our welfare safety net has been taking big budget cuts, our state governments continue to fund Holocaust museums and Holocaust education. For example, here in Florida, in Pinellas country alone, $250,000 is budgeted for 2012-2013 for school & instructional enhancements and economic development of the Florida Holocaust Museum. Yet the same sum has been vetoed by our state governor respecting our community mental health receiving facility; he also vetoed $150, 000 allocated to our substance abuse program. Our governor has further vetoed $2 M for our center for digital learning and education. Our federal congress is busy trying to cut every “entitlement” except one: Direct aid to Israel has jumped from the usual $3B annually, to $4 B, with more aid coming in the works.
There is actually a Holocaust centre in Tokyo!
RE: “on my walk today to pick up some errant food items I noticed the American flag proudly being flown in front of a home. Then I noticed with another flag right beside it – the Israeli flag.” ~ Marc Ellis
MY COMMENT: During Maggie the Thatcher’s “Falklands War” in the early ’80s, a “silk stocking”* attorney “down here” flew the Union Jack in front of his house.
Some of us had a really, really good laugh over it.
* “silk stocking” attorney = an über priggish prick
I actually Sparta is a closer analogy for what Israel has become than SA. Highly militarized state annexes neighboring land, exploits subject population, citizens of neighboring “superpower” (Athens) don’t realize until very late in the game how the helots are being treated. Cross Sparta with apartheid era SA and thrown in the Lobby and you have something approximating modern day Israel.
Christianity has certainly been guilty of plenty of violence since it became allied with state power with the conversion of Constantine. However, I cannot think of any Christian violence before then, in the first three centuries of Christianity. I would have thought that at that time Christianity was exceptionally nonviolent. Am I forgetting or ignoring something?
Yeah, cause all those people with the pagan Gods and fertility rites knew, oh maybe they wouldn’t admit it, but they knew they were wrong. And they just couldn’t wait to jettison their indigenous faiths and accept a misogynistic, anti-sex, ten percent-tithing Christianity. Why they practically begged them: ‘Please, free us from these orgiastic rites, they’re awful!’
On the other hand, although I’m not a mayven didn’t I read recently that for the first while Jews were the main converts to Christianity, it was almost a sect of Judaism. So maybe violence wasn’t necessary.
@Mooser
I know your sarcasming but I think lysias’ point is correct. Christians were on the receiving end of the violence under Nero and Diocletian, and probably some others…of course in time that all changed.