Total number of comments: 5 (since 2009-08-06 20:57:07)
Lizzy Ratner
Lizzy Ratner is a journalist in New York City. She is a co-editor with Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
Sean,
I think you're assuming that I'm defending -- or even supporting -- Obama and his crew. I'm not. In fact, unlike Phil, I will not be voting for Obama, and I will not be voting for him because of all the reasons you listed, as well as his failure and betrayals on a large number of domestic social justice issues. So to clarify: all I am doing is asking progressive Ron Paul supporters to keep it real, to temper their love with recognition of some of the glaring flaws in parts of his agenda.
It's a fair point about my failure to criticize Phil for saying he will ultimately vote for Obama. Thank you for that, since you are absolutely right: Obama voters should be criticized loudly and vigorously. The man has been a horror show on almost all the issues I care about, has sold out worse than I could ever have dreamed, has buckets of blood on his hands. I certainly will not be voting for him. Though it confines me to obscurity, I will most likely be voting for the newly-formed Justice Party (assuming it holds up on further research). Yes, we do have other parties in this country besides the Republican and Democratic ones. So my argument is not that people like Phil should excoriate Ron Paul and love Obama. Absolutely not. You will never hear me praising Obama. My argument is that we, as progressives, can and should hope for more than a candidate who will build freedom for some on the backs of others. I believe it is hugely destructive for progressives to give up on some of our core beliefs. Yes, I'm a purist, which will probably make me an obscurist, but I still hold out hope for a movement and an ethos and a candidate that can reconcile economic, social, and international justice into a single a vision.
Phil, it's one thing to march alongside the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow a dictator, it's another thing to empower the Brotherhood -- or even put them into actual power.
Moreover, Ron Paul's offenses go way beyond the racist newsletters. They include (but are hardly limited to) an extremist privatization credo that would shred this country's already-compromised safety-net, from Medicaid and Medicare, to Food Stamps, Public Assistance, and Social Security; a hatred of any form of labor protection (from OSHA-based protections to sexual harassment and racial discrimination protections, because he doesn't believe harassment and discrimination exist and, hey, can't workers just change jobs?); a close-the-borders and kick-out-the-illegals nativism; a deep disdain for the separation of church and state; a love affair with ICBMs and other nucs; opposition to the Civil Rights Act and the "forced integration" that came with it; an anti-scientific, anti-environmentalism that would give unchecked power to oil companies (oil companies!), refineries, and other polluters and pillagers; a deep-seated anti-choice ethos (he has called ending abortion the "most important issue" out there); and a radical free-market corporatism that would give new meaning to the words "economic imperialism." And, mind you, corporate/economic imperialism causes EXTREME misery for literally billions of people around the world and, given the resource fights that are behind most wars, won't exactly lead to more peace.
So while Paul's foreign policy program is undeniably thrilling, and I'm all for marching alongside it (though not behind it), I would ask -- no, beg -- that you at least temper your man-crush with a dose of honesty and skepticism about the rest of his positions.
Dear Mark,
Lizzy here. Just wanted to say thank you for the thoughtful post, particularly the extended quotes from Eva Hoffman, with whom I was sadly not familiar but whose study, "Contested Memories," I will clearly be reading. That said, the sensitive, ego-driven part of me feels the need to correct what I think is a subtle misunderstanding (unless I misunderstood what you were trying to say, which, given the limitations of my murky brain, are always possible).
You cite my reference to "any other oppressed and dispossessed" as an example of the flawed belief by some liberal Jews that their role is to "lead" the "wretched of the earth." In fact, nowhere in my construction of the sentence do I suggest the idea of Jews leading anyone (perhaps this is something you wanted to see there?). Instead, the verb I used was "joined," implying, quite intentionally, the idea of solidarity -- a solidarity that, if Jews had recognized it at the time, might not have led to the belief that Jews are uniquely persecuted and therefore deserve their own unique land. More to the point, you'll notice that the whole fantasy is located in the past -- more specifically, the immediate, post-Holocaust past -- when I think it was, in fact, fair to describe Jews as members of the "oppressed and dispossessed" of the world. Finally, while you wouldn't actually know this, I did actually draft (and then dump) a version of the piece in which the "elaborate fantasy" I dreamed up was set in the future-present (problematic in other ways, obviously) and in which I made a clear distinction between Jews and the world's *currently* oppressed and dispossessed.
So why does this matter to me? Well, as I said, the protective, ego-driven part of me bridles at the idea of my words being misunderstood. But more to the point, while I think there is some validity to the stereotype of the older generation Jewish lefty who sees HIMSELF as leading the charge (though I would also argue that this comes more from a sense of white male American entitlement than anything particularly Jewish), I think there's also an increasing amount of recognition by younger Jewish progressives that we are not oppressed or dispossessed, that we have been fortunate enough to escape that fate, and that our role in contemporary political movements, if any, should be one of support, back-up, following the lead of the grassroots. Finally, while I'm all for self-reflection and criticism, my greater concern these days is that far too many Jews have adapted to the comforts of modern American life and, in the process, have begun to ignore the challenge we all (Jews, non-Jews, everyone) face -- the challenge, that is, to make the world a better place.
Dear Irek,
This is a very belated thank you for your immensely heartfelt and thoughtful letter in response to my article, “In the Beloved Old Country, a Jew has Visions of her Homeland.” I was honored by the care you took in responding, moved by your call for healing between Jews and Poles, and tickled by that wonderful phrase you used – “the Jewish half of the Polish soul, or is it the Polish half of the Jewish soul?” – since it resonated so eloquently with some of my own observations from my visit. In fact, I remember the jaw-dropping sense of recognition I felt every time the lovely man who guided us through Bialystok opened his mouth or gestured with his hands or told a joke. It was so familiar. The inflections, the cadences, the argumentative desire to really hash an idea out. I found myself marveling, “So that’s where we got it!” And then: “Or maybe he got it from us!” And then: “Maybe we got it from each other!”
This man who guided us through Bialystok – his name is Jerzy –has dedicated the last 25 years of his life to unearthing the Jewish history of Poland for Jewish visitors whose roots have been buried for more than 60 years. Before he began this work, he said, he had known nothing of the country’s Jewish history, had not even known that Jews had really existed in Poland before the war or had been murdered en masse by the Nazis. The history had been suppressed during the post-war/Communist years. But once he began unearthing details of this strange past, he dedicated himself to resurrecting the story of the country’s missing past – became so dedicated, in fact, that even after several decades and countless visits to Treblinka, he still got choked up with rage and sorrow when describing the horrors of that death factory.
Jerzy’s commitment moved us all deeply, as did his stories about Poland’s utter and mass destruction during the war, the Polish refusal to accept Nazi occupation (unlike all other countries, as you pointed out), and the horrible fate that the country and its people suffered as a result. He complicated, deepened, and in some cases, corrected our understanding of events, and we were all profoundly grateful for that.
I bring this up as a way of saying that, to the extent that I seemed to be equating the Nazis with the Poles, I am deeply sorry. In fact, I do recognize the heroism of the righteous women like your grandmother, Wladzia, who hid Jews at the ultimate risk to themselves; she clearly possessed a courage and humanity that I can only aspire to in the most fumbling way, a moral strength that I would like to think I would display in similar circumstances but fear I might not. And I recognize as well the horrors suffered by Poles at the hands of the Nazis and, of course, the bravery people displayed in resisting a brutal occupier. I should have acknowledged this, done it justice.
That being said, no history is pure, and there is a more complicated, less happy storyline that runs beneath Polish-Jewish relations that I was trying – albeit very clumsily – to get at. This is the story of increasing, state- and church-sanctioned anti-Semitism during the interwar years; of attacks and terror campaigns like the one in Bialystok in 1919 that ultimately helped convince my family to leave the country; of ongoing anti-Jewish sentiment and sympathies for ideas like expulsion by various segments of society (and one or two parties in the government-in-exile) during the Holocaust; and, of course, of the anti-Jewish sentiment and pogroms, like the bloody one at Kielce, that finally convinced many of the remaining Jews to flee the country after the Holocaust.
In mentioning all of this, I am not trying to point fingers or malign a whole country, but simply to point out the source of some of the ongoing pain and mistrust felt by Jews I know. Moreover, and sadly, some of these feelings haven’t been entirely eased by our visits. Even as we met lovely people like Jerzy, we were profoundly distressed by the swastikas we saw spray-painted on buildings in Bialystok as well as the Jewish stars dangling from hangmen’s nooses – in one case, on the building next to the hotel we were staying in, in another case near the entrance to my grandfather’s old street, and in still another, on Jewish tombstones in the main Jewish cemetery. A decade earlier, a visit by my mother was overshadowed by nasty, anti-Jewish comments directed at her and some of her traveling companions.
Again, I am not trying condemn a whole population or even suggest that these sentiments are in any way universal, widespread, or, for that matter, unique to Poland. But they muddy the picture for us.
In your letter to me, you very effectively pushed me to deepen my understanding, embrace the complex and kaleidoscopic nature of the past. I am very grateful to you for that. And so, just as you asked me to recognize the complexity of the Polish-Jewish experience, I would ask you to do the same.
Of course, at the end of the day, we’re both fortunate enough to have been born long after most of these horrendous events. And, I suspect we’re both ultimately a lot more interested in the present than the past, the possibilities for the future than the crippling confines of what was. So, should you find yourself in New York (i.e., the New Country) one of these days, please know that you have a standing invitation to join me for some Old Country-style latkes and pierogi. We can break bread and raise a glass to our amazingly interwoven roots.
Warmly,
Lizzy