Tuesday, October 06, 2009

The South African Jewish Community in the post-Goldstone era

This email came to me from a reader who is a South African-born freelance Israeli journalist currently working in South Africa.

I thought you might be interested in my thoughts on how things are going in the South African Jewish community. I’m including some pics with my email and if you want, feel free to blog on it.

Two weeks ago I was in Durban for my first freelance job covering a government technology conference which focused on providing electronic services to citizens.

In addition to technology directors, I met with municipality heads and government ministers – and was surprised to learn how far behind the curve SA is, especially when compared to Israel.

The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics

by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains one of the most visible political issues on campuses around the nation. A rising level of concern about the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory (now in its fifth decade), as well as the precarious position of Israel's beleaguered Palestinian minority, have been countered by increasingly strident, even furious, attempts to silence or stifle criticism of Israeli policy on American college campuses.

http://www.chomsky.info/whatsnew.htm

(July 19, 2006):

The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails

That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land alloted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.

by ADAM HOROWITZ & PHILIP WEISS

This article appeared in the November 2, 2009 edition of The Nation.

October 14, 2009

This year has seen a dramatic shift in American Jews' attitudes toward Israel. In January many liberal Jews were shocked by the Gaza war, in which Israel used overwhelming force against a mostly defenseless civilian population unable to flee. Then came the rise to power of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose explicitly anti-Arab platform was at odds with an American Jewish electorate that had just voted 4 to 1 for a minority president. Throw in angry Israelis writing about the "rot in the Diaspora," and it's little wonder young American Jews feel increasingly indifferent about a country that has been at the center of Jewish identity for four decades.

Jessica Montell, the head of the largest Israeli human rights NGO (see here for an assessment of their work on the Goldstone topic), gives an excellent example of the Jewish tendency towards public self-criticism.  Imagine what Palestinian figure might write their version of this call to "soul-searching."

Sep 30, 2009 20:46 | Updated Oct 1, 2009 10:05

In this seminal piece published by the American Jewish Committee, Alvin Rosenfeld asked the fundamental question: "n what ways might Jews themselves, especially so-called “progressive” Jews, be contributing to the intellectual and political climate that helps to foster such hostility [i.e. the New Antisemitism], especially in its anti-Zionist forms?"  The piece created an uproar with critics of Israel claiming Rosenfeld was trying to muzzle legitimate criticism, and others pointing out the contradiction between such a claim (which ignored the distinction Rosenfeld made between legitimate and excessive criticism) and the effective purpose, to shut down criticism of the critics.

“Progressive” Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism

“German fascism came and went. Soviet Communism came and went. Anti-Semitism came and stayed.”1  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, offered these discerning words in response to a speech by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which the president of Iran denounced Israel as “a disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the map.” A few days after this incendiary declaration, the Iranian leader followed up with more of the same, dismissing the Nazi Holocaust as a “myth” or “fairy tale.”2  Shocked by such unabashed outpouring of anti-Jewish venom and by numerous parallels to it, Rabbi Sacks confessed that the reemergence of anti- Semitism “is one of the most frightening phenomena in [my] lifetime – because it’s happened after sixty years of Holocaust education, anti-racist legislation, and interfaith dialogue.”

The NYT ran a piece by Patricia Cohen which presented Rosenfeld as a right-winger attacking liberal criticism of Israel.  Landes, at Augean Stables, took the opportunity to both fisk the article and discuss the broader problem of Jewish self-criticism.

From Augean Stables

February 1, 2007

Jewish Hypercritics of Israel Criticized: How Dare You?

The NYT has a discussion of a controversy within the Jewish community about when criticism of Israel not only oversteps the bounds of decency, but rather feeds the current wave of anti-semitism that began in late 2000 and continues to gain momentum. Before discussing the article, which I think misframes the issues in critical ways, I want to make some remarks about what I think is at stake here (using the terminology developed at Second Draft and Augean Stables).

The American Jewish Committee, a liberal, mainstream organization which has been as dedicated to defending the rights of others, as it has been of Jews for the last century, and, until quite recently, reflected the Politically-Correct Paradigm PCP1 position (pro-Oslo, pro-dialogue, pro-negotiations), has published an essay that criticizes Jews who, embracing the Post-Colonial Paradigm PCP2 criticize Israel so harshly and categorically that in some cases they have called for the dismantling of the state. In so doing, Rosenfeld argues, they actually feed the anti-Semitic delirium that, since 2000, has grown stronger by the year.

The primary issue at stake in this debate concerns the nature of criticism, more precisely, since we’re talking about Jew criticizing Israel, “self-criticism.” This is one of the most difficult issues to deal with right now for a number of reasons:

Read more at the blog.