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Total number of comments: 22 (since 2012-12-10 08:10:29)

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  • After all-night debate, Berkeley student senate calls on university to divest from 3 companies profiting from occupation
  • Bloomberg backs Brooklyn College over BDS event as another official withdraws funding threat
  • Hagel described Palestinians as 'chained' and 'caged,' but 'NYT' can't touch the issue
    • Byzantium January 31, 2013 at 2:23 am with 1 replies

      As a white South African who lived through the transition from Apartheid to democracy, let me offer this perspective:

      When all the arguments for maintaining Apartheid had failed, and all the usual attempts at justification had been dismantled, the final, desperate rationalisation for keeping it in place was the one made here by Mr. Konrad; namely, that it would spell death and destruction for the whites.

      Oh yes, we heard all the stories: how the day after the first democratic election bands of feral blacks would roam the streets slaughtering any white person they could find, how the new government would turn us out of our houses and how we would all be reduced to indentured servitude or worse.

      Guess what? It was all crap.

      When we went to the polls on that historic day in 1994, white and black lined up in the cues together, laughing and joking. There was no retaliation, no vengeance wrought. The day after life continued as usual...and it continues still.

      Most people just want to live peaceful, regular lives, assured in the knowledge that they and their children have a fair shot in a just dispensation.

      Fears of retaliation are largely the result of a guilty conscience, paired with a projection of one's own hatred onto the other.

      Physician, heal thyself.

  • Wiesenthal Center calls leading German journalist 'anti-Semite' for criticizing Israel, then refuses to debate him
    • Byzantium January 9, 2013 at 2:54 am

      In response to Mooser: Judaism certainly does not drive Zionism, since Zionism was created primarily by non-religious Jews. Nor does Judaism constitute a "plot to take back Palestine", since the Orthodox view for almost 2000 years has been that exile from Palestine was a divine punishment which could only be ended by divine will manifested via the coming of the messiah. This is why most so-called "Torah-true" Jews (really "Talmud-true") today do not support the State of Israel in its current configuration. That said, and as I have noted in an earlier post, the fact that Orthodox Judaism was constructed around the idea of preserving Israelite temple worship in symbolic form for the express purpose of one day re-actualising it in a rebuilt temple in a re-established Kingdom of David clearly allowed for an eventual philosophical merging of this brand of Judaism with Zionism, as has indeed occurred (and not just philosophical - I have even encountered the notion, among Reform Jews no less, that the State of Israel IS the messiah...try to wrap your head around that!). More scandalous is the non-Orthodox groups jumping on the Zionist bandwagon, this after explicitly rejecting any so-called "return to Zion" as a religious principle. In their case I would agree that there is generally not much of a link between their religion (such as it is) and their Israelophilia. Or perhaps in their case it is better to say that Zionism has become their Judaism (much as Amercian nationalism for many US evangelicals seems to have become their Christianity).

  • Hagel looms -- will AIPAC dare to take him on?
    • Byzantium January 7, 2013 at 2:52 am with 4 replies

      But I do blame the Jews, or at least the Jewish establishment, for the propagation of Zionism both in the US and abroad. The fact is that most Jews grow up within communities where Israel's "right to exist" and the whitewash of the Palestinian plight are articles of faith, transmitted to children as a matter of course through every social, cultural and educational mechanism available. And contrary to your assertions, these communities are not stocked with "billionaire neoconservatives", but largely with Obama-voting liberals. Indeed, one of the primary causes for Israelophilia in the US even among non-Jews is Zionism's positive portrayal in movies and on TV, the studios largely owned and operated by far-left Jews for whom there is no distinction between their Jewishness and their support for Israel. The fact is that Zionism has infected the Jewish world like a cancer, and until we stop trying to make excuses by trumpeting "don't blame the Jews" at every opportunity, but instead take responsibility for our "illness", we will only perpetuate the status quo.

  • Jews for Palestinian right of return
    • Byzantium January 7, 2013 at 3:19 am

      Excellent post. I recall that, during the negotiations leading up to the 1994 elections in South Africa, attempts were made to assure the retention of white privilege even in a majority-ruled country, but in the end all such fantasies had to be abandoned in order for true democracy to be installed. This wholesale abandonment of their power by whites proved particularly important on a psychological level, since it served as a tacit admission of collective guilt for the crimes of Apartheid, an act of contrition that allowed for the healing to follow. In the Israeli case however, I fear that they are too far lost to their own arrogance ever to accept such a necessary humbling.

    • Byzantium January 7, 2013 at 3:09 am

      You mean "Israeli Jewish", don't you? Most non-Israeli Jews live in countries where they enjoy full citizenship and voting rights, i.e. "self-determination". Stop trying to drag the rest of us into your little imperialist project.

    • Byzantium January 7, 2013 at 3:03 am with 1 replies

      There can be no doubt that most countries that exist today do so only because at some point in the past one group of people violently took a piece of land from another. However, the purpose of human evolution must be constant progression towards what is better; hence, once we know better, it is incumbent upon us to do better. The fact that a country like the US was built on the death and destitution of who-knows-how-many Indians (to take one example) can no longer be used to excuse a similar policy followed by another, younger country. Now we know better, so now we must do better.

  • Exchange on anti-Sephardi racism on the left
    • Byzantium January 9, 2013 at 3:31 am

      Mooser said:

      "Shmuel, I hope you don’t think that I wrote that crap, do you? I did not, and I reject it entirely. I do not tell other people whether their religion is valid or not."

      I, on the other hand, did write that crap (thanks for that), and stand by it. As I say in another post somewhere, the purpose of religion is to facilitate communion between the human and the divine. Since I do not consider animal sacrifice as a viable method of doing this, I do not consider ancient Israelite temple worship as religion in the proper sense of the word (proto-religion perhaps). And since rabbinic Judaism was created purely for the preservation of such practice (as well as Israelite law) in representative form, it follows that I do not consider it as a religion in the full sense of the term either. The upside of this is that Judaism has shown itself capable of evolution, adapting to a changing world and becoming better. We no longer yearn to slit animal throats or stone gays to death - what this means in terms of becoming a proper religion (i.e. achieving harmony with the divine) I'll leave to the more pious among us, but in terms of its social operation, we are clearly much better off.

    • Byzantium January 9, 2013 at 3:19 am

      In response to Shmuel and his assertion regarding the Jewish sages and their knowledge of religion and spirituality, of course he is right - intellectuals will always be drawn to more profound considerations, and it is clear that many Jews have allowed themselves to explore notions of spirituality over the years and centuries. However, from a doctrinal point of view, the purpose of religion is to facilitate the communion between the human and the divine (to "reconnect" as the Latin root would have it), whereas the primary purpose of rabbinic Judaism was merely the preservation of Israelite law for the the ultimate purpose of re-establishing it as the legislative framework of a newly-established Kingdom of David following the advent of the messiah. It was not meant to operate any kind of "spiritual elevation" in its practitioners - any such content inserted into rabbinic Judaism would not have been reflective of its main purpose.

    • Byzantium January 7, 2013 at 4:21 am

      I find myself in broad agreement with Sean. Without going too deeply into the history, from a Biblical perspective there really is no such thing as "Judaism", merely a tribal nationalism based on its own creation myth with a territorial constitution held together by a theocentric mythology. Once the land around which all of this was based was lost, the concrete elements of this nationalism were transformed into symbolic form and strung together as what would eventually become Orthodox Judaism. Yet the only purpose of this ideology was to preserve the practical nationalism in allegorical form so that it could once more be retransformed into practice upon the reclamation of the lost land. Thus Orthodox Judaism was still not a religion in the proper sense of the word, since it lacked any spiritual content or objective. It was only with the universalism of the Reform movement that Judaism assumed a proper religious character, as a result jettisoning all ambitions for a re-actualisation of the original nationalism via a return to Zion or a practical re-implementation of the original laws governing the tribal territory. Unfortunately it was at this point that Zionism entered the scene, and the Reform movement re-introduced a "return to the land" as one of its official doctrines, hence once again robbing Judaism of its religious function. It is only by re-embracing its founding universalism (as expressed in the Pittsburgh declaration of 1885) that Judaism can reassert itself once more as a proper religion. In terms of Sean's query therefore, I would say that Judaism can be untangled from Zionism, and rather easily, since the original Reform blueprint exists, and only needs to be embraced once more. Orthodox Judaism is inherently Zionist; even if some streams believe that the current State of Israel is not a legitimate manifestation of their religious doctrine, they still hold fast to the idea of a Jewish kingdom in the Promised Land...and would in fact be far more vicious in creating such a state than most Zionists if ever they felt that the time for this had come.

  • Hasbara fail: the ambassadors mutiny
    • Byzantium January 4, 2013 at 3:04 am

      Actually, how Israel's destruction would help the Palestinians is quite clear to me. But of course, all this talk of "destruction" is disingenuous, suggesting that those of us opposed to Zionism seek some sort of genocide against the Israelis. In reality, one-staters like me simply seek the creation of a single, mutli-ethnic, multi-party democracy along the South African lines. And while it is true that this will result in the disappearance of Israel as the ethno-supremacist state it currently is, this "destruction" would in reality be little more than a socio-political re-classification, involving no actual destruction of anything. In the same way, apartheid South Africa was also "destroyed", yet we're all much better off for it. Using language to create an impression of your opponents' motives you know to be false is dishonest.

  • The Establishment fights back (Hagel gets nod from Volcker, Hills, Wolfensohn, Crocker)
    • Byzantium January 3, 2013 at 2:19 am

      I can't help but wonder if this show of support for Hagel isn't a subterranean way for career politicians to manifest their opposition to the Israel lobby in a way that wouldn't hurt them professionally. I suspect more than one of them are fed up with having to kow-tow before Israel in order to assure election or advancement, and in consequence must be grateful for the opportunity to take a contrary position without risking the usual accusations of anti-Semitism etc.

  • The coming divorce: US Reform Jewish orgs ignore memo from Jerusalem re Palestinian statehood
  • Bin Laden execution has claimed more innocent victims
    • Byzantium December 21, 2012 at 7:37 am with 1 replies

      Thanks for this. When I saw this story on another site I too immediately thought that it was simply a case of Islamic fundamentalist tribal superstition at work, on par with honour killings and FGM. Who'd have thought all this background came into play? Makes one wonder what real history might lurk behind so many of the other "straightforward" headlines we read every day...

  • Liberal Zionists and neocons battle over Chuck Hagel
    • Byzantium December 20, 2012 at 4:59 am

      "...plays golf..."

      This is now a prerequisite for being a good ol' boy? When did this happen?

    • Byzantium December 20, 2012 at 4:55 am

      And don't forget the Democratic Party convention blithely suppressing what was clearly a majority delegate vote to leave mention of Jerusalem out of the party's platform. A real Stalinist moment, that was.

      I take issue with the term "many Jews" though. I don't know how things stand in the US, but my experience has been that Jewish anti-Zionism is very rare.

    • Byzantium December 20, 2012 at 4:49 am

      I think you mean that you love your idea of Israel. If you really loved the actual Israel itself, shouldn't you have moved there already?

  • Gun lobby in the headlights (Israel lobby in the brush)
    • Byzantium December 20, 2012 at 5:08 am

      Restricting gun ownership is one side of the equation, but I believe much of the psychology behind these shootings is created by the entertainment media (movies, tv, video games, graphic novels) glorifying violence and portraying it as the way real men (and real Americans) solve their problems. Yet all focus now is on the gun lobby and almost none on the entertainment industry which, incidentally, is equally responsible for creating such a powerful pro-Zionist tendency in the American public.

  • Exile and the Prophetic: An Israeli plots her escape from Israel
    • Byzantium December 18, 2012 at 3:55 am

      This captures well the mindset of both the Israeli and Jewish left. While they seek improvement in the lives of Palestinians, good liberals that they are, they will under no circumstances abandon their belief in the necessity of a Jewish state existing as such. As a result, the idea of a single, multi-ethnic, multi-party democracy for Jews and Palestinians is still heresy to them, hence their desperate clinging to the fantasy of a "two state solution" despite all evidence to the contrary. As long as they remain incapable of relinquishing their deeply-held belief in Jewish superiority, and thus exclusivity, they will remain part of the problem rather than the solution.

  • Israeli army releases video of Dec. 12 killing of Palestinian youth at Hebron checkpoint
    • Byzantium December 18, 2012 at 3:24 am

      Strange. I thought Israeli soldiers were all trained in Krav Maga. Between that and the Israeli numerical superiority, they should have been able to subdue the kid easily, without gunfire. Also, if he had a gun the whole time, why engage them in hand-to-hand combat at all?

  • In 'Dissent' debate, Walzer hints that leftists who focus on Israel are anti-Semitic
    • Byzantium December 18, 2012 at 4:26 am

      Er...as a native South African still living here, I'm happy to say that my country does, in fact, still exist.

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