Scott Roth
For a while now I’ve been a Mondoweiss reader and occasional contributor. Now I’m excited and honored to be coming on as publisher and want to tell readers something about myself and why I’m engaged on the Israel/Palestine question.
I grew up on the north shore of Long Island, in a predominantly Jewish community. Like many Jewish American families, my family cared about Israel. I first visited the country as a toddler with my parents and my grandparents (my parents have not been back since) and after my third visit at age 15, I knew that what I now call Israel/Palestine would play a prominent role in my life. I had always been fascinated by geography, politics and languages, and that tiny country seemed to be the epicenter of so many issues involving those subjects that it was intoxicating. Add to that that I am Jewish and because of that fortunate twist of fate, Israel was mine too, I was hooked.
My views began to change in my late teens. On my annual trips over I began to feel less and less comfortable. The notion that the place belonged to me solely because of what my religion happened to be didn’t sit quite well. In Israel I saw Palestinians and came to understand that this land had once been theirs. How was it that all this was supposed to belong to me? The separation began to seem not a good thing but a bad thing. I tried to reconcile my uneasiness with my allegiance to Israel, but many new questions arose. I tried to forget them – only I couldn’t. Some of these trips were followed by family get-togethers where a cousin of mine would challenge me on my still right-wing Zionist views. I found I had no morally or intellectually acceptable answers. College soon followed and I came to the unexpected and inevitable realizations that much of what my community had taught me about Israel was falsehood, or worse, indoctrination, and my former Zionism had been predicated on this dishonesty.
I’m 36 years old now, and Israel is agonizing to me. I think about it every day. I see people under Israeli rule living in ways that should outrage any human conscience. Moreover, I see violations of the rules and norms established in the later 1940’s to prevent criminal behavior that can result from ethnic nationalism. I see European and global communities that more and more will not accept Israel as entitled to ignore the law or to cause injustice and suffering. I see the obstacle to peace and justice is located here in the U.S. and in the Jewish community. Too many Jews have turned to the surrogate of Zionism and lost sight of Judaism. If they knew more accurately about what Zionism did and is doing, and if they thought more carefully about their religious tradition, they could turn Israel towards justice, and that change ultimately will be our only guarantor of peace.
People can’t think clearly and come to fair conclusions if they don’t have accurate information. That is why I was drawn to this site. Mondoweiss fills the void that the mainstream media has created by abdicating its role on the issue of Israel/Palestine. By reporting on facts on the ground, Mondoweiss is adding to the store of information that informs peoples’ opinions on this issue and it is helping to move the conversation to a more fair and even place.
I feel that by being critical of the State of Israel I am being true to the humanistic values of my religion — things like social justice and true appreciation for rigorous intellectual debate. At a time when mainstream American politics and the mainstream media are obscenely silent about the conflict, this site, Mondoweiss, makes it possible to be true to those values and to attack the odious, morally repugnant effects that result from the practical application of Zionist principles.
I look forward to working on this site and I hope you will hold me and Mondoweiss to the highest moral and journalistic standards.
Scott, Welcome. If you have ideas about how to engage the ( non-USA) nations themselves — or their people — to join the struggle for Palestinian national and human rights, let us all know. Because, for all our occasional very slight steps forward, the USA seems determined and destined to remain a “rogue nation”.
It’s almost as if Israel is imprisoning USA by using nuclear blackmail, and the targets of the threatened explosions — or some of them — are right here in the USA, perhaps NYC, where I live. At this stage, the USA’s slavish refusal to demand or to permit others to demand that Israel comply with international law iws hard to explain on any other basis.
Hello Scott
Welcome and looking for ward to reading your inspiring articles.
whenever ive felt like giving up, like nobody hears or listens or cares, i read up here on Mondoweiss n i gain the strength to let my tiny voice be heard also, Keep it up guys, u rock, i have won many an arguement with words taken directly from Mondoweiss :)
Scott,
Then make your motto that of Francis Bacon (circa 1600): Truth is the daughter of Time, not Authority.
McCann-Erickson is a worldwide advertiser. It’s in 120 countries. I don’t have the 60 page document in front of me, so I’m doing this from memory. I’ll paraphrase and I won’t be number-accurate. I got the doc from McCann-Erickson Beijing.
The old guys running McCann-Erickson needed to know, really know, what made the Millennial generation tick. This generation in the US alone will be 100,000,000 of voting age by 2016. We’re only 2% of the world’s land mass. Think of the population around the world.
McCann-Erickson spent two years on every continent surveying, polling, and interviewing Millennials. It was the most massive undertaking in their company’s history. After all, this is money for them, and for their clients into the future. These old guys knew that Millennials were born with digital devices glued to their fingers, but so what? They needed to know what influenced them, what made them listen in an information barrage, what caused them to choose one brand over another, who would they follow, and who would they punish and banish. They canvassed several hundred thousand worldwide, they polled tens of thousands, and they interviewed a subset of that extensively.
The answer was consistent on every continent–and genuinely shocked McCann-Erickson– from Latin America to Asia to Russia and Europe: they want the truth; its their only armor against information overload, and they will punish you for lying if they discover it by letting their friends know instantly that you are not to be trusted and that you should be banished from consideration. Number One around the world, every continent, every culture, every class, is tell the truth, and they don’t give a shit whose boat it rocks. (Now go look at McCann.com’s homepage.) For them, truth doesn’t have a continent, a class, a religion, or an age group. But it has a consequence.
Scott,
Good luck in your efforts to reclaim Judaism and Jewish humanism from Zionism — your description of the core issues at stake was right on the mark.
Hello, Scott Roth!
Thanks for your brief political biography.
By the way, did you ever thank your cousin for challenging your earlier views?
Just curious.
We all look forward to your contribution to the struggle for peace and justice!