Gaza demo and religion - some thoughts.

[Belushi]

Great posts Froggy, I have more to say on this but I think I'll save it for facebook as you know I dont discuss religon on here

 

[the button]

That flag is not my flag and that country is not my country and I object to being told by people as a diaspora Jew that is a Jew's duty to make Aliyah (or to go to Israel) as I have been told by people, they are actually trying to make people believe that the Torah says this, and teaching that it does as a biblical teaching, when it doesn't, as part of a political agenda that is nothing to do with religion. Even during biblical times, many Jews did not live in Israel, Judaism was a prosetylising religion and they weren't encouraging people necessarily to go and move there.

Tell them that Moses never went to Israel, so you don't see why you should.

 

[frogwoman]

They're not all like that, and many rabbis are memberrs of Jews for Justice for Palestinians. It's just that an awful lot of them are and while they avoid mentioning Israel very much in the services so as not to cause divisions, the prayer books and so on often reflect that stance (although to its credit the one that came out about a year ago is a lot more balanced), and they still see nothing wrong in sending people mailouts to look on various zionist websites whenever the latest atrocities happen or organising events where the Israeli ambassador is or jointly with the zionist federation and so on.



A talk by the Israeli ambassador was actually one of the things that started to turn me off Zionism. I thought he was a fucking cunt.

 

[revol68]

Top Tip frogwoman: there is no god.

 

[Knotted]

I've always wondered why zionists always sound the same...

Sorry, I'm asking all the questions I'd like to ask about Jews but never dared...

For me it's a default assumption that someone's opinions are their own rather than a product of some sort of organised PR effort. This is all very depressing.

 

[frogwoman]

There's a talk im going to in a few weeks called "the coming civil war over Israel in the Jewish community".

 

[Knotted]

Where's that?

Btw, did you watch the Finkelstein video?

 

[Belushi]

There's a talk im going to in a few weeks called "the coming civil war over Israel in the Jewish community".

I've read a few articles like that recently. There was a long one in the New York Review of Books last week.

 

[frogwoman]

I've always wondered why zionists always sound the same...

Sorry, I'm asking all the questions I'd like to ask about Jews but never dared...

For me it's a default assumption that someone's opinions are their own rather than a product of some sort of organised PR effort. This is all very depressing.

I think it's a bit of both and I think for a lot of people they think that something is deeply wrong but it's too painful to look at in any depth. I don't think their opinions are a product of a PR effort but I think that the way that many synagogues and Jewish organisations behave reinforces that kind of view.

 

[danny la rouge]

Where's that?

Btw, did you watch the Finkelstein video?

Which one?

 

[frogwoman]

Listening to it now but it's about an hour long...not sure I can listen to it all.

 

[Knotted]

Which one?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2587693067472444036#

 

[frogwoman]

Where's that?

Btw, did you watch the Finkelstein video?

It's in London - I'll PM you if you want.

 

[Knotted]

It's in London - I'll PM you if you want.

Cheers.

 

[Luther Blissett]

There's a talk im going to in a few weeks called "the coming civil war over Israel in the Jewish community".

There's a talk - this next monday - at SOAS - Rachel Shabi:Not the Enemy - Israel's Jews from Arab Lands
Location: Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS, London
Time: Monday, 14 June 2010 18:00
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128306363857034

 

[kyser_soze]

I don't think their opinions are a product of a PR effort but I think that the way that many synagogues and Jewish organisations behave reinforces that kind of view.

To all intents and purposes, that is PR.

 

[danny la rouge]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2587693067472444036#

Thanks. I think I've seen that. But I'll watch it again.

 

[frogwoman]

I've just been listening to finkelstein's account of Jewish students at brandeis walking out when Dershowitz opened his mouth and giving jimmy carter 4 standing ovations.

 

[dylans]

Thanks for the reply. I'm fascinated.

Your words are very strong - to the extent that I would feel uncomfortable repeating them. I've never thought Jews were that alienated.

Her words are strong and powerful. I think Frogwoman is just the best

 

[frogwoman]

Tell them that Moses never went to Israel, so you don't see why you should.

Exactly. Yet there are people being told up and down the country that doing this is the fulfillment of the Torah. Not in my synagogue btw, but in a lot of the orthodox ones.

 

[ymu]

That was an interesting read, Froggie. Thanks for that.

I've posted this elsewhere, but it sits well in this thread: Ilan Pappe in esterday's Sunday Herald "What Drives Israel?".

That was the article that sprang to my mind when I read the OP.

If you try to engage Israeli Zionists in discussion you often get "it's not the same - you can't understand". That's it - discussion over. The land was empty/barren, Arabs are savages who want to kill us, and that's all there is to it. Jewish pro-Palestinian activists who were brought up as Zionists often express this immense sense of betrayal.

Couple more articles which touch a little on these themes.

Around us young men are prowling with guns, houses are exploding, lives are being shattered. And we are in an intimate world of women. Hanin brushes my hair, ties it back in a band to control its wildness. We try to talk about our lives. We can write down our ages on paper. I am fifty, Hanin is twenty-three. Jessica and Melissa are twenty-two: all of them older than most of the soldiers. Samar is seventeen, the children are eight and ten and the baby is four. I show them pictures of my family, my garden, my step-grandaughter. I think they understand that my husband has four daughters but I have none of my own, and that I am his third wife. I'm not sure they understand that those wives are sequential, not concurrentbut maybe they do.

The women of this camp are educated, sophisticated--many we have met throughout the day are professionals, teachers, nurses, students when the Occupation allows them to go to school. "Are you Christian?" Hanin finally asks us at the end of the night. Melissa, Jessica and I look at each other. All of us are Jewish, and we're not sure what the reaction will be if we admit it. Jessica speaks for us. "Jewish," she says. The women don't understand the word. We try several variations, but finally are forced to the blunt and dreaded "Yahoud." "Yahoud!" Hanin says. She gives a little surprised laugh, looks at the other women. "Beautiful!" And that is all.

Her welcome to us is undiminished. She shows me the shower, dresses me in her own flowered nightgown and robe, and puts me to bed in the empty side of the double bed she shares with her husband, who has been arrested by the Yahoud. Mats are brought out for the others. Two of the children sleep with us. Ahmed, the little four year old boy, snuggles next to me. He sleeps fiercely, kicking and thrashing in his dreams, and each time an explosion comes, hurls himself into my arms. I can't sleep at all. How have I come here, at an age when I should be home making plum jam and doll clothes for grandchildren, to be cradling a little Palestinian boy whose sleep is already shattered by gunshots and shells? I am thinking about the summer I spent in Israel when I was fifteen, learning Hebrew, working on a kibbutz, touring every memorial to the Holocaust and every site of a battle in what we called the War of Independence. I am thinking of one day when we were brought to the Israel/Lebanon border. The Israeli side was green, the other side barren and brown. "You see what we have made of this land," we were told. "And that...that's what they've done in two thousand years. Nothing."

I am old enough now to question the world of assumptions behind that statement, to recognize one of the prime justifications the colonizers have always used against the colonized. "They weren't doing anything with the land: they weren't using it." They are not, somehow, as deserving as we are, as fully human. They are animals, they hate us. All of that is shattered by the sound of by Hanin's laugh, called into question by a small boy squirming and twisting in his sleep. I lie there in awe at the trust that has been given me, one of the people of the enemy, put to bed to sleep with the children. It seems to me, at that moment, that there are indeed powers greater than the guns I can hear all around me: the power of Hanin's trust, the power that creates sanctuary, the great surging compassionate power that overcomes prejudice and hate.

The boy who kissed the soldier

Sometimes a person "buys his world in one moment," as the ancient Hebrew saying goes. This was done by the Minister of Justice, Yosef ("Tommy") Lapid, when he uttered the words: "This old woman reminds me of my grandmother!"

This old woman, an inhabitant of the Rafah refugee camp whose house was demolished by the Israeli army, was immortalized by the camera while rummaging through the ruins of her home in a desperate search for her medicines. Two days later, journalists found her at the same place, still looking for her medicines under the debris.

Tommy's grandmother perished in the Holocaust. He himself was born in a Hungarian region in the north of Yugoslavia and survived the Holocaust in the Budapest ghetto. When he mentioned "my grandmother", it was quite clear that he meant a victim of the Holocaust.

The phrase kicked up a storm. It may well have been the straw that broke the camel's back and induced the government to call a halt to the ongoing atrocity in Rafah.

...

The influence of the Holocaust on the character of the survivors, their children and children's children, is a complex phenomenon. Once, a high-school principal gave me the compositions written by his pupils, boys and girls, after a visit to Auschwitz. The reactions divided into two groups.

Most of the pupils wrote something like: "After seeing what the Nazis did to the Jews, my conclusion is that the defense of Israel and the Jewish people is the highest commandment, and for this end, everything is permitted."
A minority of the pupils wrote something like: "After seeing what the Nazis did to the Jews, my conclusion is that the Jewish State must be more humane than any other and set an example of how to behave towards minorities, so that this can never happen again."

It seems that in the heart of Tommy Lapid both these reactions exist side by side. In ordinary times, the first reaction manifests itself in his behavior. But it must be said in his favor that, in a moment of truth, a moment of profound agitation, the second reaction got the upper hand.
"Tommy's grandmother" became a symbol this week. Let's hope that it becomes a signpost.

Tommys Granny

 

[frogwoman]

I do feel a massive sense of betrayal yeah. I think that is definitely part of it.