Antisemitism: evaluating events in context

To go back to the beginning: antisemitism, animus against Jewish people for the religion they profess and the community they belong to, is absolutely wrong, as wrong as any other bigotry. Trying to excuse antisemitic actions or expression by claiming to oppose the policies of the current policies of Israel offends twice. Using Israeli policies as an excuse to target Jewish people make them scapegoats for policies they did not choose and often do not support. Antisemitic acts and expressions by those claiming to advocate a just peace in Israel/Palestine cast doubt on the sincerity of peace efforts while obscuring the hard reality: more Christians than Jews support the bad political and theological ideas behind efforts to subjugate, expel, or destroy the Palestinian people. 

None of this makes it any less important to report incidents fully and honestly.

Free riders

The Atlantic's Yair Rosenberg describes a sketch on Israeli television: Israeli Defence Force representatives knock on the door of the wrong apartment. They expect to find a family of one of their soldiers, and to tell them, with deep regret, of the death or grave wounding of their relative. Instead, a Haredi Jewish man answers the door, and before they can speak, he tells them he will never, under any circumstances,enlist in the army. His work of prayer and study matters far too much: for him, for his community, and ultimately for the Jewish community and the State of Israel.

The sketch touched a nerve: the war in Gaza, with its mounting casualties and economic disruption has touched most Jewish Israelis, with a notable exception: the Haredim, or the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community enjoys an exemption from military service. The religious parties in the ruling political coalition fiercely guard this exemption, but the in the parts of Israeli society that bear the financial and human costs of the war, resentment of the Haredim as free riders could bring down Prime Minister Netanyahu's government.

I have a mental image of representatives of the Jewish community knocking on a door, and a different person, representative of a very different free-riding community opening the door: US. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. 

All or nothing: a convenient paralysis

Therapists characterize all or nothing thinking, the ability to see only polar opposites, as a cognitive distortion.  Politicians, governments, and advertisers all rely, to greater or lesser degrees, on convincing people to make decisions that work against their own interests, so they find cognitive distortions very useful. Far too often, those of us who work for peace and justice accept these distortions without analyzing them, and when we do, we limit our effectiveness.

Governments have worked hard to promote all or nothing thinking in relation to peace work.. The idea of peace as an all or nothing proposition, with no possibility of any position between absolute passivity and unlimited, lawless violence has proved useful as a political strategy and as an administrative technique for authorities in charge of military conscription. To the extent advocates of peace and justice work have accepted this proposition, it has proved disastrous for us, and more important, it has done real harm to the people we work and advocate for.

Conspiracy minded

Iran isn't actually powering missiles with money

George Orwell characterized the English "Rule of the Saints" under Oliver Cromwell as "a military dictatorship enlivened by witchcraft trials". Those words appear to describe Iran pretty well today. A dictatorship, and particularly a military dictatorship, needs an enemy, and the current regime in Iran had identified Israel as an enemy well before the Ayatollahs came to power. Iran's declarations of solidarity with the Palestinian people and support for Hamas in the current conflict continues a policy they have pursued for over forty years. It seems obvious the leadership in Iran strongly approves of  the current opposition to Israeli policy in the West, and it makes sense expect them to support organizing in opposition to Israel in any way they can.

Poetry and government

 

"The silent wheels roll through the quiet green," happens to be the first line of a sonnet, a poem written in a highly specific form. The word form here matters: a form, by definition, has a formal definition, one which a poem, or anything else with a formal definition, must fit. A Shakespearean sonnet must consist of exactly fourteen lines, divided into three stanzas and a final rhyming couplet. In the stanzas, each alternate line must rhyme: first with third and second with fourth. A line in a sonnet must consist of exactly ten syllables, or beats, with alternate strong and weak stresses, and each pair of beats must begin with the weaker beat. Like the drumming of Indigenous North Americas, this poetry mimics the beat of a human heart.

Many other formal definitions exist: computer languages have extremely specific formal definitions, many of which make the definition of a sonnet look very loose and informal. In each case, a formal definition acts as a scaffold. It does not define what people who employ the form may express, but it does define, and thus restrict, the means of expression. Above all, the scaffold, by itself, has nothing to say about the quality of the expression. The literary record contains a long list of very bad sonnets: trite, sentimental, poorly expressed, but none the less fitting the formal definition of the sonnet. Conversely, the world contains many magnificent poems that do not fit the definition of a sonnet.

There are no...

...settler colonialist children. There are no capitalist children. There are no wealthy children, for all children come into the world with nothing, and depend on others for their needs.

Every child deserves the support and love of the community. Every child deserves protection in conflict, relief in disaster, care in sickness, education, and connection with a family to love and care for them.

Reciprocity

A basic principle for resolving conflicts and discussing moral issues is reciprocity. Turn the question around. Would it be OK if the positions if the people (or communities) were reversed? What if I did that to you?

I have written here about the obligation of people and communities protesting for Palestine and advocating for a ceasefire to avoid raising fears, by actions or statements, of antisemitism among Canada's Jewish community. I stand by that urging. That obligation applies reciprocally: the Muslim communities in Canada also have traumatic histories of colonialism, dispossession, and exile. Their concerns deserve sensitivity as well, particularly in this time of horrific violence.