Fiat Lux

A distressing article in today's SF Chronicle: more on the growing anti-semetism in Europe. Given that I have close members of my family currently living in Austria and Italy, reading these sorts of articles is deeply upsetting. I don't want to see my family become targets because they're not just Americans but also Jews.

I also don't want to sound like the worrywart who sees danger around every corner while comfortably ensconced in her safe zone. I drive over the Golden Gate Bridge 5 or 6 times a week; that's about as "risky" as my behavior gets.

But getting back to anti-Semetism, there's a longstanding debate as to whether cricitism of Israel is in and of itself anti-Semetic. I for one definitely believe that such is not the case. Some of the most vocal critics of Israeli policies are, after all, Jews. However, I also think that people who hate Jews can and do find a socially acceptable outlet for their bigotry in the criticism of Israel.

The hard part is trying to tell the difference between legitimate criticism of Israel and criticism of Israel based on anti-Semetism. William F Buckeley Jr took a whole book to come to the conclusion that Pat Buchanan was anti-Semetic.

Here's Norman Podhoretz on the subject: "In our own day Israel has become the touchstone of attitudes towards the Jewish people, and anti-Zionism has become the main and most relevant form of anti-Semetism".

Sounds about right to me.

This article in the NY Times is an interesting slice of Israeli life.

"When I had my list of stickers, I realized it's like a capsule of Israeliness, all the brutality and aggression and the need to get out of this situation,'' said [song author David] Grossman, who is best known for magical-realistic novels like ''See Under: Love'' and volumes of left-of-center political essays, including last year's ''Death as a Way of Life.''

''The more the dead end of the situation grows, the more frustrated people become with their inability to influence it,'' he continued, in a telephone interview. "Few people on the left or the right are satisfied. And the more they are frustrated, the more they are extremists, the more bumper stickers they have on the car. Sometimes you stop behind a car that looks like a shouting demonstration.''

Gadi Taub, one of Israel's leading cultural critics and public intellectuals, put Mr. Grossman's experience into a larger context. ''Israel is such a small place that taking a political position is like declaring the very core of your identity,'' he said. ''For many years it was unthinkable for Israelis that if you're a Likud voter you could marry someone from Labor. It would be a battle over every dinner and every breakfast. So your car, too, will declare your identity. You don't think you can even make friends across bumper stickers."

iTunes doesn't have the song, unfortunately, but I found it in less than 5 minutes on an MP3 file trading network. Hat Tip: Amygdalagf for the link.

UPDATE 3/3/07: I am thoroughly tired of people coming to this page via Google searches on the phrase "evil jews" or variations thereof. If you're coming here because you think this page gives you some reason to support your hatred of Jews, you've come to the wrong place. Kindly piss off and go back under the hate-filled rock you crawled out from.

ORIGINAL POST

Heard on Scarborough Country:

WILLIAM DONAHUE, PRESIDENT, CATHOLIC LEAGUE: We've already won.

Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it. That's why they hate this movie [Gibson's The Passion]. It's about Jesus Christ, and it's about truth. It's about the messiah.

Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common. But you know what? The culture war has been ongoing for a long time. Their side has lost.

You have got secular Jews. You have got embittered ex-Catholics, including a lot of ex-Catholic priests who hate the Catholic Church, wacko Protestants in the same group, and these people are in the margins.

Anti-Semetism in prime time. No other way to describe it.

Althought I have strong feeling on the subject of Israel, I rarely blog about it. This is in part because I think it's easy for me to have an opinion while sitting safely here in America, but the people who are actually living through it probably don't appreciate the armchair quarterbacking. Also, because my position is hard to explain and tends to satisfy nobody. Some don't like it that I have little good to say about the Palestinian leadership and the practices of Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, et al. Others believe whatever Israel does is right without qualification.

So all in all, I tend to let the subject be. There's plenty of other things to blog about. However, today I ran across an entry in the Bull Moose Blog that I liked. It's short and worth a read.

I'd go into a long list of reasons why this article is completely full of sh*t, but I have a paper to write today. However, I can't resist this one appalling tidbit:

Were Jews true to their mission, they would stand alongside Christians who work to bring the Torah's values to the world

In other words, not helping the people who think you're doomed to hell because you don't believe in the divinity of Jesus is somehow against the mission of Judaism.

I call it self-preservation, thank you very much.

No More Mister Nice Guy decided it was more fun to slag off on Ann Coulter for being a dumb lying shill than to call attention to that fact that there's a disconcering trend behind Coulter's lies.

She's a liar. That's not news. Shouldn't it ring some alarm bells that over the past three years, two different Arab TV networks have broadcast a dramatized version of an antisemitic book that is widely recognized as a forgery?

This is interesting:

Jewish settler Avi Farhan, determined not to give up his home overlooking the sea when Israel quits the occupied Gaza Strip, is looking into becoming a Palestinian.

"I have met with Palestinians. I am willing to be a test case for peace and take up Palestinian citizenship," Farhan told Reuters. "It will hurt me to give up my Israeli citizenship, but I want to remain here."

[snip]

Farhan, a Libyan-born Jew who left Tripoli for Israel at the age of three in the wake of the 1948 war at Israel's creation, said seven families were willing to stay in the mostly secular Gaza settlement of Elei Sinai after Israeli troops leave.

Farhan, 59, helped establish Elei Sinai after being forced to leave the Sinai settlement of Yamit in 1982. Like the West Bank and Gaza, Israel captured Sinai in the 1967 war, but returned it to Egypt under a peace deal.

"I fled from Tripoli, endured the displacement camps in Israel, and then I was kicked out of Yamit. Today I won't be a refugee again. I have no strength," said Farhan, a restaurant owner. "The Israeli government says it is concerned for my security if I stay here. I will worry about my own safety."

Maybe there's more going on than meets the eye in this story, but at least someone's thinking outside the box here. Kudos to him.

My husband is of the opinion that everyone in the Middle East is nuts, and that the hot climate helps make them that way. I disagree with him on that point, but once in a while I come across something that makes me wonder whether he's not right after all:

A week ago, 20 men gathered in darkness around a grave in northern Israel to carry out the cabalist ritual pulsa denura, which in Aramaic means "lash of fire." The object of the curse was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who refuses to cancel his plan to evacuate 25 Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory.

According to participants, Sharon will be struck down by the Angels of Destruction in less than a month, or else the 20 men themselves will die.

The ritual might have drawn little attention at a quieter moment in a country that has long been a showcase for extreme beliefs. But as the evacuations approach, Israeli society is transfixed by every detail of what Sharon calls disengagement, and images of the chanting men have been played repeatedly on Israeli television.

Sober assessments also appeared in Israeli newspapers Wednesday noting that a pulsa denura was invoked nearly a decade ago against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin not long before he was killed by a Jewish extremist opposed to his support of the 1993 Oslo accords.

Simon Wiesenthal, who waged an untiring campaign to track down Nazi war criminals and keep alive the memory of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, died on Tuesday at the age of 96. Full obit here.

Zecher tzaddik livracha.
(The memory of the righteous is a blessing)

.

Shir l'Shalom still makes me cry.

Here's some Chanukah fun for all. (Thanks for sending me the link, Shari!)

The menorah is polished, the candles are out, and the table is prepped for wax drips. All we need now is sundown!

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a dominant figure for decades in shaping the Middle East, was fighting for his life on Thursday after suffering a massive brain hemorrhage.

As I write this, whether Sharon even survives or not is still up in the air. If he does survive, the odds that he will again be active in politics are slim indeed.

A friend of mine pointed out this afternoon that whether Sharon's illness is bad news or not depends on whether you think that continuity of government in Israel is a good thing. I'm not so sure about that.

Regardless of what you think of Sharon or his government, political instability is not what Israel needs. A sudden transition of power with elections upcoming and with both Likud and Labor in transition thanks to Sharon's recent forming of Kadima, make for a very, very confusing time Israel this spring.

I'd be lying if I said I were not deeply concerned by the results of the Palestinian elections. Hamas' charter, after all, does not even recognize Israel's right to exist.

However, I remind myself that Sharon was viewed as a similarly unlikely partner for peace when he became Prime Minister, and those dim expectations of him turned out to be not so dim after all. So perhaps there's still hope.

So famous Holocaust denier David Irving has been sentenced to three years in jail in Austria for violating this law:

whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.

Given the recent debate over free speech issues regarding the Danish cartoons, a lot of people are probably going to say that Irving should not be jailed for what he did. I'm not so sure.

I don't see this so much as a free speech issue as an issue about lying. I don't think it is unreasonable to say that in countries such as Austria, if you're going to talk about the historical record of WW2, you have an obligation to do so accurately. Irving is entitled to whatever opinions he wants, but he's not entitled to his own set of facts, and I think it's acceptable to call him on that difference.

We send people to jail for perjury, after all. Why is this so different?

As a Jew, this kind of thing starts to make me wonder if I'm really welcome in certain parts of America after all. I thought we'd resolved this issue in the US Constitution, but apparently not. Silly me:

Missouri legislators in Jefferson City considered a bill that would name Christianity the state's official "majority" religion.

House Concurrent Resolution 13 is pending in the state legislature.

[snip]

The resolution would recognize "a Christian god," and it would not protect minority religions, but "protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs.

The resolution also recognizes that, "a greater power exists," and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls, "justified recognition."

What's next, legalized discrimination on the basis of what religion you are?

Orcinus has a post up today about the frightening levels that Holocaust deniers go to try to harass and intimidate people who stand up to them.

Fire bombings, death threats, and more. And all this in America.

On a related note, a Hong Kong based banker I know recently reported that he:

Was in the Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) Airport earlier today, and was in the bookstore looking for something to read on the plane when a I stumble across The International Jew by Henry Ford packaged with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Lovely. Those books, or books very much like them, are sold in not a few Muslim-focused bookstores, but I'm a little taken aback that they're so mainstream as to make it into the airport bookshop.

Liteblogging on Wednesdays this semester, but I did want to point out that Steve Clemons has a good wrapup of yesterday's Israeli elections. Check it out while I slog through work & class on Yet Another Rainy Day.

The Palestinian elections didn't leave me feeling very good, but I'm more hopeful today.

Sundown tonight marks the ending of another Passover. And every year since I've been living on my own, the ending of Passover has meant that one or two semi-eaten boxes of kosher l'pesach matzah start to gather dust on a kitchen counter. I usually think to myself, "well, I'll eat them as a snack," but every year, sometime during the summer I admit to myself that there's no way in hell I am going to eat these now-stale objects that are taking up valuable counter space, and toss them out.

And then, of course, I'd feel guilty.

Last year, I had a small revelation. I could toss those leftover matzos into my Cuisinart and turn them into matzoh meal -- a breadcrumb substitute that Scott cooks with on a regular basis. No guilt, no waste. I have no idea why it took me so many years to figure this out, but better late than never.

So now I have a new end of Passover ritual: the pulverizing of the matzoh.

Yay me!

This makes me very sad.

One person was killed and five others were wounded, three critically, in a shooting at the Jewish Federation in downtown Seattle, Washington, police said.

Police have detained a suspect who is a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent.

And yet, I've been debating internally if I should even post it, because some troll might come along and tell me thay they "deserved it" because of what's going on in Israel.

To which I say, screw that.

Oh, and one thing more: I support Israel.

That does not mean I like or approve of everything that the Israeli government does, any more than being an American means that I like or approve of everything that this government does.

The way I see it, though, I can't sit here in the relative safety of California and tell people who are sleeping every night in bomb shelters because of the rockets being dropped on their heads how they should be thinking, feeling, or reacting to being attacked. It's not my ass that is on the line.

So because of that, when push comes to shove, Israel gets the benefit of the doubt from me. You can call that "dual loyalty" if you want to. Maybe it's even true.

Frankly, I don't care.

My wish for you all is a happy, healthy, and sweet New Year!

Lighting the candles on the last night is always a little bittersweet.

By way of new blogroll member Skippy, this bit of scary news from just up the road in San Francisco tonight:

Elie Wiesel, the renowned Holocaust author and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was attacked and dragged out of a San Francisco hotel elevator last week, possibly by a Holocaust denier who claims to have stalked Wiesel for weeks, police said.

Wiesel, 78, was at the Argent Hotel Feb. 1 for a conference on "Facing Violence: Justice, Religion and Conflict Resolution" when he was confronted in an elevator by a man insisting that he wanted to interview the author, according to San Francisco Police Department Sgt. Neville Gittens.

Wiesel said he would do so in the hotel lobby, but the man insisted on going to Wiesel's room. The man then stopped the elevator at the sixth floor and tried to force Wiesel into a room there.

"That's when the victim started yelling," Gittens said.

Wiesel escaped unharmed, made his way down to the lobby and called police.

I'm relieved that Wiesel is safe, and disgusted that someone should try to use physical force on him. It's bad enough that there are people who refuse to believe the Shoah happened. It's even worse that these revolting examples of personhood are so wrapped up in their hate and lies that they think they can use physical force on the living reminders of the truth.

UPDATE 2/18/07:
A suspect has been arrested in this case:

Montgomery Township police arrested Eric Hunt, 22, of Sussex County, N.J., at 1:30 p.m. EST Saturday. He faces charges that include attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and the commission of a hate crime, according to San Francisco police.

He was being held without bail in the Somerset County Jail in New Jersey, awaiting extradition to San Francisco.

This is kind of cool: Three former big leaguers are going to help start-up a pro baseball league in Israel.

Former pitcher Ken Holtzman, outfielder Art Shamsky and baseball's first designated hitter Ron Blomberg will manage three of the league's six teams during the inaugural 45-game schedule that begins on June 24.

The brainchild of Boston businessman Larry Baras, the league boasts former [Expos and Red Sox] general manager Dan Duquette as its director of baseball operations, and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer as commissioner.

Organizers said they believed Israel was ripe for another professional sport besides soccer and basketball.

[snip]

While the majority of players drawn to the venture are of Jewish lineage, the league has no restrictions. About 15 Israelis have made the league, a number that is expected to grow as the country is more exposed to the sport.

"We're going to build up the infrastructure of the sport, so we can perpetuate the growth of baseball," said Duquette, who said the league has already applied to compete in the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

Had a rough day. Scott took a spill off his bike en route to work, so we spent a few hours in Kaiser Hell getting him checked out. All's well now, but it was a long and draining day.

So, as I was cleaning out my overloaded e-mail in-box tonight, I found this jewel that Jason sent to me a few days ago.

Too funny!

Could someone explain to me how a Catholic follower of Kabbalah would have the unmitigated gall to declare herself an "ambassador for Judaism" when on a trip to Israel?

By way of the Huffington Post:

Madonna toasted the Jewish new year with Israeli President Shimon Peres and declared herself an "ambassador for Judaism," local newspapers reported Sunday.

The singer, who is not Jewish, arrived in Israel Wednesday on the eve of Jewish new year to attend a conference on Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism.

Madonna met Peres at his official Jerusalem residence on Saturday evening and the two exchanged gifts, with Madonna receiving a lavishly bound copy of the Old Testament.

Oh, of course, it's a superstar diva with entitlement issues. Carry on, then.