Anti-Semitism, July 2016
Well, yesterday was a day, wasn't it?
First Trump tweeted his impressively anti-Semitic anti-Hillary ad: a star of David calling her "corrupt" on a background of dollars. Here it is. After criticism, he pasted a circle over the star...poorly. CNN's newest employee has called objections to this ad "political correctness run amok."
As an aside, I always wonder what the right wing imagines the appropriate response to something like this to be, or, on the other hand, what form racism has to take for them to find it unacceptable and worthy of outcry. I've been alive long enough to know that they didn't have a problem with apartheid South Africa, so I suspect it's a pretty high bar.
Then Elie Wiesel died, a Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate. And a group I've admired for a little while, Media Diversified, a British-based group that advocates for PoC in journalism and other media (they've done amazing work publicizing UN Peacekeeper abuse of girls and women in African countries, for instance), found it in their heart to make only one comment, a retweet. This one.
So that's it. A lifetime of human rights advocacy, the endurance and survival of horrific suffering, literary work and memoir that helps ensure memory of truth, and none of that matters, because it's all erased by his Zionism. No acknowledgment of his speaking up against apartheid in South Africa, the Dirty War in Argentina, the genocides in Darfur and Yugoslavia, and on and on. Because it's so monstrous that a man who survived the Holocaust but lost his parents and little sister would prioritize supporting a nation-state that claims to offer safe haven to Jews that it eclipses every other single thing he has done or said. Is that what Jews get when it comes to solidarity?
Media Diversified could have played this any number of ways. They could have said nothing. That's always an option. They could have decided, hey, given his life, Wiesel is worth the effort of a string of four or five tweets and honored his achievements and work, put his inability to advocate for Palestinians in context of his life, suggest that offers us insight into what motivates Zionists in general, and that we take this is a lesson that no matter how great we may be, we all have weaknesses, blind spots, failures of empathy and acuity that can hurt others. But they didn't. They just retweeted a snarky comment implying that none of his other work matters.
Which is funny, because on the day Ali died, I don't recall them making a tweet castigating him for supporting Reagan, and suggesting that reactionary move undermines all his other revolutionary actions and words.
Given this lack of solidarity and Trump's tweet, and the anti-Semitic venom it's unleashed, I'm feeling a bit pissy about anyone criticizing Jews for being Zionists, for that matter (I do not consider myself a Zionist). Because if these assholes come to power, and they turn to anti-Semitic violence, and I have to take my son and run, is there some other country that's going to take us in? If not, think twice before dismissing Jewish Zionism, or suggesting that I should prioritize political righteousness over that.
My mother once said that if her family hadn't emigrated, and by some fluke she'd been born in Eastern Europe, she wouldn't have been a Zionist, advocating for a separatist Jewish state. She would have been a Bundist, advocating for revolution and change right where she was. And, she pointed out, odds are she would have been killed by the Nazis. Political righteousness is cold comfort when it comes to that sort of thing.
Israel does terrible, terrible things to Palestinians, and I am disgusted by that. But guess what country I live in? I live in the US, and its record--and current behavior toward--the native peoples of North America are hardly more admirable. Add to that the state-sponsored murder of black people, the lead-poisoned water in Flint...I'm not sure Israel really stands out for depravity.
So when a left-leaning group uses Israel as an excuse to devalue a Jewish man's worth, I'll remember that lack of solidarity. And yeah, I consider it anti-Semitism. Not because Israel and Zionism are above criticism or even attack. But because for that to be the only thing that matters is holding Jews to an inhuman standard, and to do so ignores the very real history of persecution Jews have faced.
First Trump tweeted his impressively anti-Semitic anti-Hillary ad: a star of David calling her "corrupt" on a background of dollars. Here it is. After criticism, he pasted a circle over the star...poorly. CNN's newest employee has called objections to this ad "political correctness run amok."
As an aside, I always wonder what the right wing imagines the appropriate response to something like this to be, or, on the other hand, what form racism has to take for them to find it unacceptable and worthy of outcry. I've been alive long enough to know that they didn't have a problem with apartheid South Africa, so I suspect it's a pretty high bar.
Then Elie Wiesel died, a Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate. And a group I've admired for a little while, Media Diversified, a British-based group that advocates for PoC in journalism and other media (they've done amazing work publicizing UN Peacekeeper abuse of girls and women in African countries, for instance), found it in their heart to make only one comment, a retweet. This one.
So that's it. A lifetime of human rights advocacy, the endurance and survival of horrific suffering, literary work and memoir that helps ensure memory of truth, and none of that matters, because it's all erased by his Zionism. No acknowledgment of his speaking up against apartheid in South Africa, the Dirty War in Argentina, the genocides in Darfur and Yugoslavia, and on and on. Because it's so monstrous that a man who survived the Holocaust but lost his parents and little sister would prioritize supporting a nation-state that claims to offer safe haven to Jews that it eclipses every other single thing he has done or said. Is that what Jews get when it comes to solidarity?
Media Diversified could have played this any number of ways. They could have said nothing. That's always an option. They could have decided, hey, given his life, Wiesel is worth the effort of a string of four or five tweets and honored his achievements and work, put his inability to advocate for Palestinians in context of his life, suggest that offers us insight into what motivates Zionists in general, and that we take this is a lesson that no matter how great we may be, we all have weaknesses, blind spots, failures of empathy and acuity that can hurt others. But they didn't. They just retweeted a snarky comment implying that none of his other work matters.
Which is funny, because on the day Ali died, I don't recall them making a tweet castigating him for supporting Reagan, and suggesting that reactionary move undermines all his other revolutionary actions and words.
Given this lack of solidarity and Trump's tweet, and the anti-Semitic venom it's unleashed, I'm feeling a bit pissy about anyone criticizing Jews for being Zionists, for that matter (I do not consider myself a Zionist). Because if these assholes come to power, and they turn to anti-Semitic violence, and I have to take my son and run, is there some other country that's going to take us in? If not, think twice before dismissing Jewish Zionism, or suggesting that I should prioritize political righteousness over that.
My mother once said that if her family hadn't emigrated, and by some fluke she'd been born in Eastern Europe, she wouldn't have been a Zionist, advocating for a separatist Jewish state. She would have been a Bundist, advocating for revolution and change right where she was. And, she pointed out, odds are she would have been killed by the Nazis. Political righteousness is cold comfort when it comes to that sort of thing.
Israel does terrible, terrible things to Palestinians, and I am disgusted by that. But guess what country I live in? I live in the US, and its record--and current behavior toward--the native peoples of North America are hardly more admirable. Add to that the state-sponsored murder of black people, the lead-poisoned water in Flint...I'm not sure Israel really stands out for depravity.
So when a left-leaning group uses Israel as an excuse to devalue a Jewish man's worth, I'll remember that lack of solidarity. And yeah, I consider it anti-Semitism. Not because Israel and Zionism are above criticism or even attack. But because for that to be the only thing that matters is holding Jews to an inhuman standard, and to do so ignores the very real history of persecution Jews have faced.