Trump will govern as a centrist. With all its substantial faults, America has never been a fascist state– or a revolutionary state either.
Who would have thought the Holocaust would become a central issue in the first weeks of the Trump administration? This year the White House statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day changed radically; Jews mysteriously disappeared from the Holocaust. And yet, in the White House It appears that a Jewless Holocaust is being coupled with an Israel First foreign policy. The early days of the Trump Administration are full of surprises.
Marc Ellis writes, “Another Yom Kippur has arrived. That special time of reflection and confession is upon us. Yet the reflection and confessional pickings are slim. In the mainstream Jewish communities of Israel and America there has been little reflection. The confession we Jews should have made, the confession we Jews have to make, won’t be made today.”
As a military and political person, Shimon Peres did it all from the beginning of the state of Israel. Peres fought for the new born state of Israel, held many and varied political offices during the course of Israel’s history, including Prime Minister and President, played a key role in Israel’s development of nuclear weapons and encouraged and augmented Israel’s settlement project in Jerusalem and the West Bank. As important was Peres’s role in portraying Israel as a Jewish and democratic state around the world. From the beginning, Palestinians knew a different Israel and, with time, more and more Jews do, too. Though Peres will be widely celebrated in the upper echelons of American and European power in the coming days, Peres will be remembered for enabling a narrative of Jewish innocence and redemption that was, also, something much more sinister from the beginning.
Marc Ellis says that following the release of the Movement for Black Lives platform the Jewish establishments have taken out their chalkboard to lecture African Americans on their place in society and global discourse. The accusation, with a long tradition, is that African Americans should stick with Black issues – as defined by the Jewish establishment. Ellis doubts it will work this time. “The Movement for Black Lives has placed Jews on notice that we have arrived at the end of ethical Jewish history,” Ellis writes.
Marc Ellis reflects on the flawed witness of Elie Wiesel. Ellis says Wiesel was deeply corrupted by his use of the Holocaust he suffered so deeply from, but he was hardly alone: “Elie Wiesel was hardly alone in becoming so stuck in Holocaust suffering that he failed to realize or care about what Jewish power was and is doing to the Palestinian people. We, the Jewish people, averted our eyes. We, the Jewish people, became corrupted through our use of unjust power against others.”
The Reform Movement’s response to AIPAC’s invitation of Donald Trump a few days ago is a bellwether of how the Jewish establishment views Trump’s candidacy and perhaps, as importantly, how it views itself.Instead of trumpeting its close relationship with AIPAC as an American and Jewish badge of honor, the Reform Movement should have engaged in a process of critical self-reflection. Instead of condemning Trump, it should have paused and drawn the parallels between Trump, the Jewish establishment and Israel’s rhetoric and policies toward Palestinians.
Obama’s speech at the Israeli Embassy saying We are all Jews shows the trajectory of Holocaust thought is Israel, unmindful of the horrific suffering Israel is causing the Palestinian people. Such thought then censors dissent on the consequences of the use of the Holocaust as a blunt instrument against the Palestinian people.
On Sunday, Pope Francis traveled across town to visit Rome’s synagogue that stands within the old Jewish ghetto, but he missed an opportunity to move the Jewish-Catholic friendship to a new level of honesty. As the Pope correctly apologized for the Church’s role in the ghettoization of Jews, he remained silent about the ongoing ghettoization of Palestinians in Israel-Palestine.
The Methodist decision to withdraw their investments from five major Israeli banks for their enablement – and profiteering – from the occupation of Palestinians is telling. Not only do they call out Israel for its transgressions, they add it to a list of “high-risk” areas that “demonstrate a prolonged and systematic pattern of human rights abuses.” It is the nations of the world they place Israel among that’s most explosive.