This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Obama at the United Nations. As expected, minimal content. No meetings with world leaders either. Obama is in campaign mode. My Cape phone is inundated with Romney messages. Not one message from the Obama side.
Obama condemned the recent anti-Islam video while emphasizing the importance of protecting free speech. President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt responded: “We expect from others, as they expect from us, that they respect our cultural specifics and religious references, and not seek to impose concepts or cultures that are unacceptable to us. Insults against the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, are not acceptable. We will not allow anyone to do this by word or by deed.”
Everything has a context. Jews have championed free speech. Now we guard speech about Jews in the West and around the world. With regard to speech about the Holocaust and Israel, the policing is over the top.
What non-Jews say about Jews, the Holocaust and Israel is often conflated. Sometimes it should be. Other times it shouldn’t. Disentangling the historically entangled is a challenge few take on.
Jews monitor other Jews. In America, Jews speak freely. Nonetheless, there are penalties applied when powerful forces in the Jewish community define speech as anti-Semitic. For its part, the Federal government is mostly neutral, though “hate speech” about Jews is increasingly vetted by state and local governments.
American politicians long ago surrendered their right to speak critically about Israel. The free speech battleground is found in universities, the California university system being first among many. Everyone who is been under siege on the Israel (un)free speech front knows that most censorship starts in-house. Most of the battle is fought in the faculty committee room over who is hired and promoted and what events are deemed appropriate for campus venues.
The best way to censor speech is to make certain kinds of speech unthinkable. When individuals and institutions censor themselves, the big guns don’t have to be brought out to finish the job. The point of power is to threaten with big guns rather than use them. Use them too often and there may be a rebellion.
Self-censorship is where most censorship about Israel occurs. .Any Jew of Conscience knows the free speech score on Israel. So from the Jewish establishment’s perch it’s hard to deny Morsi’s point. In fact if we transpose his comments we see how the mainstream Jewish community fills in the blanks: “Jews expect from others, as they expect from us, that they respect our Jewish cultural specifics and religious references, and not seek to impose concepts or cultures that are unacceptable to us. Insults against Judaism, the Holocaust and Israel are not acceptable. We will not allow anyone to do this by word or by deed.”
There’s clearly something wrong on both the Islamic and Jewish sides of free speech/against denigration equation. Morsi’s statement is so vague that it begs the question. On the Islamic side, the problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood believes that Mohammed is the final prophet. On the Jewish side, the problem is that the Jewish Brotherhood believes that the Holocaust and Israel are untouchable. When you have hands-off finality free speech is hard to tolerate. So, too, is direct speech without vagaries or circumlocutions.
That’s when the cartoons come out. More about that in a moment.
It’s hard to define an insult. Usually the definition of insult depends on where you stand and what you believe. What cultural specifics and religious references do we need to respect? Who defines which are acceptable and which are not?
Insults, cultural specifics and religious references – they’re a can of worms whose constellation is defined by power.
Jews of Conscience are constantly involved in private and public discussions where criticism of Israel and the Jewish establishment is welcomed by the very same people or organization who won’t countenance critical thought within their own community, religion or nation. Insults, cultural specifics and religious references carry mixed messages. What’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander.
When duality is at the heart of the conversation. We encounter what I think of as “critique schizophrenia.” Though everyone seems to be together in a critical conversation, Jews of Conscience are standing in one place, others are standing somewhere else.
If you haven’t experienced critique schizophrenia, you haven’t been around the Israel/Palestine block. I am grateful to have gone around enough blocks to find compatriots from all sides that speak the truth to their own community’s power. I can assure you it wasn’t always like this.
It still isn’t. Jews of Conscience reside in a peculiar world they think is theirs and isn’t. For Jews of Conscience speech is in and out of turn.
Jews of Conscience speak to their own drummer. Prophetic drumming is loud. Jews of Conscience only hear their own voice.
Jews of Conscience, when others marvel at your truth-telling, are they doing the same truth-telling? Or are they looking in on a world they might emulate if they lived in a different world? The nastiest setups come from those who love your truth-telling because it tells them the worst case scenario about Jews. This is what they want to hear. It confirms something twisted inside of them.
Jews of Conscience who haven’t experienced this nasty setup multiple times are newbies on the Israel/Palestine block. If you’re a veteran and don’t admit it’s happened to you, you’re in denial. You don’t want to recognize the aloneness of the Jewish prophetic.
Or perhaps you can’t afford to recognize that aloneness. Psychologically, it’s costly. And in our post-modern universal times we’re all in the same revolutionary boat aren’t we?
Now there’s Netanyahu at the United Nations showing cartoonish pictures of bombs and drawing red lines signaling Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He’s an enforcer of the parameters thinkable Jewish thought. With each United Nations’ performance you have to wonder about his own ability to think.
Netanyahu is speaking to the Jewish and non-Jewish world of circled wagons. Has he mistaken that world for the world?
Netanyahu, the other side of the world that Jews of Conscience live in.
Morsi may not be much on civil liberties but he beat Netanyahu hands down on Palestine. His first challenge, though, is to prove that Egypt has ceased to be an enabler of the oppression of Palestinians. Words won’t do it alone. His second challenge is let free speech flow. Religion is helped by being pushed back to the wall. Then it has to think.
Leave it to the New Yorker. They’re sponsoring a Netanyahu carton bomb caption contest. Robert Mankoff suggests: “And, what’s worse, if Wile E. Coyote ever gets hold of this, the Roadrunner is toast.” Then his prompt: “Now the ball—and the bomb—are in your court.” On twitter: hashtag #BibiBombCaption.
The guardians of the sacred always end as cartoon-like figures. They turn the sacred into cartoons, too.
Once the sacred and their guardians are reduced to cartoons, the prophets feast. Even on twitter.
RE: ” The nastiest setups come from those who love your truth-telling because it tells them the worst case scenario about Jews. This is what they want to hear. It confirms something twisted inside of them.”
Bibi’s speech to America conveyed this model not so long ago, when he said both that America and Israel are one, and also that Israel stands as an insurance policy for all Jews against the non-jewish jew-haters who appear in every human generation, and will forever more, just waiting for the opportunity to do Shoah II, as do Israel’s political leaders who always defend Israel’s conduct by conflating the “Jewish state” of Israel with Jews the world over. In the same speech Bibi pointed to the biblical story of Esther. This web site discussed the implications of that story, as does Atzmon’s The Wandering Who?
Jews of conscience, same as non-Jews of conscience, ultimately have but one choice, which is to always side with the oppressed, never with the oppressor, even (make that especially) when the oppressors, as in occupied Palestine, happens to be Jewish. Especially, because otherwise, paraphrasing the words of Martin Niemoller, first they came for the Israel first Jews, and I did not speak out for I wasn’t one of them, then they came for the rest of the Jewish Zionists and I didn’t speak out for I wasn’t one of them, next they came for the indifferent Jew and I didn’t speak out for I wasn’t one of them, and finally the came for the Jews of conscience but there was no one left to speak for me*.
*assuming, that is, most non-Jews, as in Nazi Germany, were intimidated into silence, but to what avail, considering that eventually a fascist entity feeds on all its subjects?
Esther, King David… Netanyahu complains about mediaeval Islam and presents values from early Iron Age.
I thought that the most rational way to resolve differences between Israel and Iran would be a “summit meeting” between the respective spiritual leaders. Iran has a clear Supreme Leader, and Israel would need to pick one of several, say, Obadia Yosef. After exchanging initial pleasantries, “Salaam, sons of pigs and monkeys”, “Shalom, donkeys and other beast of burden”, it would be formalized in the form of a treaty that the final resolution of differences will be postponed until the first Messiah will emerge, be it Hidden Imam or Mosshiah.
“On the Jewish side, the problem is that the Jewish Brotherhood believes that the Holocaust and Israel are untouchable”
I am not aware of Jews in the United States questioning the free speech rights of those who deny the Holocaust or criticize Israel. I am aware of many Jews using their free speech rights to criticize them.
Having received his Ph.D. from a Jesuit university, I wonder what significance Marc Ellis gives to Netanyahu’s use of a drawing of a Christmas tree ornament.