J-D

First, about Stuart Chase and The Tyranny of Words. He's dead now, so there's no way of finding out his opinions about modern issues. I mentioned specifically that the book I quoted from was written in 1937, and this should be borne in mind. I really recommend the whole book, even though I am critical of it in some respects.

For what it's worth, I think Stuart Chase's response to Islamophobia would have been exactly the same as his response to anti-Semitism. More to the point, I will say these things myself. Islamophobia is never even partially the fault of what Muslims as a group do, because Muslims as a group don't do anything. And anti-Arab racism is never even partially the fault of what Arabs as a group do, because Arabs as a group don't do anything. I repudiate all forms of racism (which I have previously defined as 'hostility towards, discrimination against, or persecution of people because of their actual or imputed racial identity or characteristics') partly because no group to which racial identity might be imputed ever acts together as an entity in a way which might conceivably justify such a response (apart from the other problems with the attitude).

In answer to some of your other examples, let me repeat part of what I said before: and (Note, incidentally, that these too are things which apply to other groups as well as Jews. For example, as you mentioned the destruction of the World Trade Towers, that's an event that may have made some people receptive to anti-Arab racist attitudes, although, as I also said before, the leap from one to the other is not rational.) Specific instances you mention (and others you have hinted at without specifying) may well fall into one or both of these categories.

However, one of the morals reinforced for me by The Tyranny of Words is: beware of loose generalisations! Statistics and probabilities should be given the weight they deserve, neither more nor less. If, for some reason, I had to guess the voting preference of a small business proprietor, with no more information than the fact that he was a small business proprietor, then on the basis of the statistics I would guess at 'Liberal'. But if I actually said to that small business proprietor, with no more information than that, 'Why do all you small business proprietors vote Liberal?', and got the answer, 'Actually, I happen to be the Secretary of the local Labor branch', I would look like a fool, and rightly so. For the same reason, I would encourage anybody to avoid saying things that sound like 'Why do the Jews do this?' and 'How dare the Jews do that?' When you mention the specific concrete example of the behaviour of a particular crowd at a particular rally in response to a particular comment, I agree with you! Nor I am just suddenly making this up as a debating point. If you look in the 'Political Discussions' forum, you will see that somebody posted a news story about a group of Gaza settlers comparing the Israeli government's plan to withdraw them with the Holocaust, I posted in reply. And what did I say about this behaviour? I said it was indefensible. But I would feel differently if somebody made a loosely generalised post about the way 'the Jews' 'play the Holocaust card'. Some people would denounce somebody who posted that as an anti-Semite. I wouldn't. But I would say: (1) it would be better if you gave more specific details of what you're talking about; (2) talking in that loosely generalised way will have the effect of giving encouragement to anti-Semites, and should be avoided for that reason.

Similarly with the Jewish Scriptures. It's not just one book (in origin), it's a compilation of enormously diverse works. I can't think of anything obnoxious in Song of Songs, for example. There are passages in other books apparently advocating hatred, intolerance, and violence, just as there are passages in some books of the Christian Scriptures apparently doing the same. Personally, I see no reason to judge them by different standards. But the general impression given by your posts is that you're reacting against a perception that it's 'not allowed' to criticise the Jewish Scriptures, or anything associated with the Jews, in the same way that it's 'allowed' to criticise other ethnic groups or religions, or things associated with them. Who is supposed to be doing this 'allowing'? You should be aware that there are anti-Semites in the world who do propagate the idea of a literal Jewish conspiracy for world domination. The way you express yourself would tend to encourage those people. Please don't. If you have something specific on your mind, talk about that. I have myself cited the story of the extermination of Amalek (and it is a story: we can't be sure exactly how much of it is true) in conversation with religious Jews as an objectionable one. You mention the same thing, I think 'good point'. Much better than loose generalisations about the need to criticise the Tanakh, or about an alleged taboo on doing so.

'Lord Rothschild's money turned WW1 against Germany in 1916?' What is the basis for this assertion? It sounds massively implausible to me. It also sounds like exactly the sort of thing that anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists say. That doesn't automatically make it false, nor does it automatically make everybody who repeats it an anti-Semite, but it does make it prudent to check on it very carefully. Similarly about the assertion that '80 percent of the NKVD were Jews'. What's the evidence? I would be careful about taking Solzhenitsyn's view on such a point, given his own religio-political views: again, this is not something that makes him automatically wrong, but something that gives reason for caution.

You say the Soviet Union was founded by a Jew, then led by another Jew, on the basis of a governmental system invented by a Jew. Who are you talking about? Lenin was not a Jew, and neither was Stalin. (You are right about Marx, although strictly speaking he did not invent the idea of a governmental system run by a vanguard party. But that's probably not an important point.)

Hardship in Germany in the 1920s was not exacerbated, as you suggest, by the threat of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was not a threat to Germany in the 1920s. At one point, the two countries, both feeling like pariahs in the international community, responded by fostering diplomatic links. Look up the treaty of Rapallo.

Finally, Jewish people as a group have no intrinsic qualities that make them morally either superior or inferior, on average or in the aggregate, to any other group of people. So, in general, I would expect them to exhibit indifference to the suffering of others to about the same extent as non-Jewish people, neither more nor less. If you want to get down to specific cases, of course, there are specific historial experiences with definite effects. I would guess (and it's no more than that) that Jews were statistically over-represented in the NKVD (though I can't credit 80 percent), and that would be a historical curiosity meriting historical explanation. Just like the statistical over-representation of Jews in the civil rights movement. Neither justifies loosely generalised conclusions about 'the Jews' as a group. As for contemporary Jewish attitudes to Arabs, I would say that the statistical pattern is about what I would expect, given the relevant historical factors. Which is exactly what I would say about the statistical pattern of contemporary Arab attitudes to Jews.

Soul Invictus

To get an idea of how much money that Israel apparently needs, here is a source.

Seems like a lot of damn money is going to Israel.

Anita

I don't persecute xians, I used to BE one, although I was born Jewish. I left xianity when I discovered through Biblical research, that Jesus could not possibly have been the Jewish messiah. Case closed for me.

My problem as a JEW is the xians who persecute Jews and/or try to convert us. Just leave us alone and we can live in peace with you, how hard is that?

If xians would only leave us alone, we'd have no beef with them. Sometimes I think they go after us so we WILL react and then they can claim that Jesus' words are fulfilled with the persecution, yada yada yada.

biomed0101

What do the abbreviations ADL etc. stand for?

Anita

ADL is the ANti-Defemation League of Bnai Brith. It is a mostly Jewish org that fights prejudice against anyone., not only Jews.

http://www.adl.org

sharon45

Christians are 'commanded' to spread the 'good news'. One great reason why christianity and islam are so huge in numbers is because they both aggressively seek out converts.

While Jewish tradition is to turn away the one seeking conversion three times to show that person's seriousness and to uphold the idea that one does not have to be Jewish to be among the righteous.

biomed0101

Isn't B'nai Brith a Jewish freemason's order?

Epinoia

Hey, JD, I myself was the OP on the Gaza Holocaust post. Glad you liked it.

Most people know stereotypes aren't 100 percent; when individuals meet other individuals, they tend to give them a chance. But many people (I would guess most) do have stereotypes about their own or some other group. For God's sake, Jesse Jackson acknowledged that when he's walking down a sidewalk and sees a group of young black men he doesn't know walking his way, he tenses up more than he would if they were young white women he's never met. Most likely, he senses more danger from young black men than young white women are. Think Jesse's a racist? Why not call him a nigger, too? Skip the dictionary quotations, because fact is they're both pejorative slurs--the difference being that the first ranks right up there with "anti-Semite" as a favorite among the politically correct.

Speaking of, Jesse some years ago uttered the word "Hymietown" when describing Jewish merchants along 125th Street. Oh, the fury that erupted over that one! Jesse apologized multiple, multiple times but it took Jews and others several years to quit flinging the "anti-Semite" slur at him. It's now going on 20 years and a few still do. Saying "all Jews" above would be clearly erroneous. Saying "some" would make some people feel better than saying "most," but there's no way of knowing that it's "some" or "most" any more than knowing if most who did are reform or chazal or what. At this point, an argument would be "why say Jews at all then?" Well, first because obviously they were the ones who were most pissed! The term "anti-Semitism" is a political kiss of death because of Jews, and now it's not OK to say when they've said it? At this point, all the eggshell-tiptoeing gets really troubling. It's almost like some people (better? or deceptively vague?) insist on keeping the focus all at this level rather than possibly thinking about themes in a situation that might involve their own insensitivity (and hurry to explain it away rather than take any blame).

Namely, Jesse had been talking to blacks in Harlem who felt disempowered and disrespected by Jewish merchants pushing neighborhood improvement that would benefit them but maybe not those who had to live there after the shops closed, as opposed to going home to Park Slope or Riverdale. This is what Jesse was addressing. YES, it was wrong that he said the BAD WORD. But potential disenfranchisment of a population from its neighborhood matters more than some people getting their feelings hurt by one word that Jesse Jackson said. Yet guess what got all the attention? The coverage? The slavish interviews in the NYT about how haaaaaaaard it is to do business when you feel peeeersseeecuuuted?

Here we have, again, a situation where the heavyweight orgs and individuals and a buttload of people are on one side and few if any saying "Whoa! Is it possible these merchants might be making our people look bad?" or "Whoa, could these merchants actually be exploiting these people?" on the other and no one, apparently, thinking about who'd end up looking way worse in the long run in whoever's eyes. And that's too bad, because you never know when whoever can help you, even if they're black.

So you know, I never, ever rely on a "white separatist" site for information like this and I never link to them, either. What I have said and will not take back is that I've found interesting stuff on them which when checked out turned out to be true, like that Human Rights Watch report on prison rape, for instance. The Rothschild claim? Pretty sure that was in a pro-Israel site. I've run out of history so it's gone now. Damn. I can hunt around for it again if you want.

Karl Marx invented communism. Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) led the Bolshevik Revolution. After that came Vladimir Lenin, who's grandfather was Jewish. I believe that counts as a Jew under Israel's RofR but am not completely sure about this.

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With Solzhenitsyn: What are his own religio-political views? Was there a hoopla about this when he won the Nobel or did I just miss it? Frankly, I've never heard the issue come up before he did "200 Years Ago Together," and dammit, what is up with a Nobel winner's book not being released in the U.S. after four years? I'd much rather verify this myself than rely on the media for it, or much anything else for that matter.

Definitely by the time Hitler entered the scene (30s not 20s so you could be right on 20s), Germany was pretty sure Russia was no friend. So was the U.S., b/c otherwise they wouldn't have done Yalta with Russia in 41. As for Rapallo, couldja tell me what it says in a sentence or two?

This is EXACTLY what I've been saying! All along! Which (and I think you're not going to like this part) is why I'm against the "special relationship" with Israel and the morals-based funding that goes with it. It's why I don't want a penny of my taxes going to museums or "public education" that's 95 percent about Jews, Jews, Jews, because it's a slap, slap, slap in the faces of the 45 percent of "miscellaneous others" that died in that Holocaust, to say nothing of the others that have gone on since then. I read what you said, J-D, but let's be honest here: You know and I know that there's not going to be millions and millions of dollars and free land on the Washington Mall for the U.S. to commemorate the Gypsies. Or anyone else. Like it or not there's only a certain amount of public money available for that. We can go on and on about how hard the logistics would be to accomodate anyone but Jews but no one's even going to attempt it as long as keeping things exclusively about Jews is what most Jews appear to want. For everyone else, tough. To them I would say: Well...OK. But if it looks like Jews don't care about everyone else, don't be mad when everyone else doesn't care about the Jews' Holocaust. It goes both ways. And if they're telling people that their people really do believe "he who saves one life saves the world entire," they really should stop. It's increasingly clear what most Jews believe. Not all. But you're right, JD, very few. Like everyone else.

I am NOT ARGUING that it's justified! Or fair! Or right!! GEEZ! What I AM saying that lots of people, including Jews, DO generalize based on their own life experience. IME, they do it even if they won't tell you. Again: I am NOT ARGUING that it's justified! Or fair! Or right!! I'm saying that it is what it is, and that there are two ways to deal with it: (1) those that make it worse but do stick it to the bad goy and (2) those that make things better but don't.

Preaching the evils of "loosely generalised stereotypes" isn't on the list for a reason. If it would get even 1 out of 10, or 1 out of 1,000 among them to say, "huh, I never thought of it before like that! Thank you!," I'd say go for it. But that's a real, real small possibility. The number of Americans who haven't heard it all before at some workplace diversity seminar and/or through the Ad Council and/or on some field trip as a kid to some Holocaust Museum and/or through their kid who's just gone on such a field trip could maybe all fit in your downstairs bathroom, and I'm assuming your bathroom is small and the subjects are fat. Save them, everyone everywhere has heard it over and over and over again. They've gotten all they're gonna get just from that approach. Saying it again is just going to piss them off and reinforce stereotypes.

So before considering which other strategy to use, consider the main objective: Is it all about 1) sticking it to the bad guy? Or (2) actually changing their mind?

The shout them down or shut them up strategy does have the feeling of stickin' it to 'em, sort of. Trouble is, it can stick to you, too. On top of that will almost certainly end with the other party having much more vitriol and seeming "proof" of his stereotype than before, and it doesn't look good to everyone watching, either. All this hostility someone one day will have to deal with, but maybe it won't be you. That's the best (1) can do in 2005: Makes you see things that aren't there when they are.

That's why I said that to best fight a stereotype, don't be that stereotype. If you engage, almost always there's some tiny truth in what the person's pissed about. Acknowledge it. Say you're sorry, period, maybe even publicly, leave it at that. OK! OK! So most of what he's saying is B.S. So you personally had nothin' to do with why he's pissed. So you're sorry at most only that he feels the way he does, which is completely unjustified and wrong and all that. So you're all right. Want him to really get that message? Don't even say it. Don't live up to the stereotype. That's (2). See what happens, to both of you.

Here's an example of what I mean: There's this lawyer who defended some white power group. The proceedings were publicized. Anyway, as he tells it he was then threatened by a Jewish group. One day his 8-year-old picks up the phone and gets a fistful of F words delivered. This really sets dad off. If he didn't buy the stereotype of a world Jewish conspiracy before, he's now dedicated to it a couple years later.

I don't know about who yelled shit at his kid, but I would bet that the Jewish group he says contacted him did and harsh words were said.The specific guy he's blaming for this actually killed himself later and I think the other group leader is in jail. This particular group has had its own dealings with law enforcement and my guess is that a good number of Jews don't like them either. If a few of those good people had written that guy--or much better yet, their local paper--and said something like "as a Jew, I would never ever endorse tactics like cussing out an 8-year-old girl," would it have made a difference? I think so, considering that he even says that the reason he himself is an avowed anti-Semitic (his words) now is because even as he's made these incidents public, "fellow Jews say nothing about it." Instead, as he puts it: "Every time I talk about zionists, or jews, or Israel, I come under an incredible assault on my web site and my email servers, some from Lebanon, where Israel maintains internet servers, and even more from American jews. False claims to my ISPs, in an attempt to get me shut up. Viruses...you wouldn't believe how many. And hate speech! You haven't seen hate speech until you have seen what righteously indignant jews can deliver."

Think that makes the guy stop? Put it this way: Spraying ants with Kool-Aid does not make your problem go away and in the long-term makes it worse. Way worse.

Now on one hand there's this angry guy getting more and more fired up in delivering and likely inspiring far more anti-Jewish vitriol than he might've had the letters gotten written or if the fringe group hadn't hassled him in the first place for basically doing what lawyers are supposed to do. And OTOH, as it is now those who claim they're fighting for less anti-Semitism in the world have that much more to deal with. This just screams lose=lose all around. Profanely speaking, at this point someone needs to resist their dick-like impulses to take the pussy way out, namely making the opponent's life suck as much as possible or mewling for Big Daddy Government to come in and do the same. There's one man in the one corner and however many Jews in the other. And if someone doesn't have some balls to do different in this situation, it's going to get worse. Even if there weren't more of 'em who potentially had balls, my faith probably still would be with the Jews. But I don't know.

J-D

Epinoia, do you think it was wise of Jesse Jackson to use the expression 'Hymietown'? I don't mean was it fair, or was it right: I mean, was it wise? (Of course there were reasons why he did it: there are always reasons why people do things, and it's often worth finding out what they are. But they're not always good reasons.)

Can you see, if somebody complains about what 'Jewish merchants' are doing in Harlem, that it might be wise to check, before responding, on just how many of those merchants really are Jewish? Once again, I don't mean right, or fair, I mean wise--or prudent, if you prefer.

It's not the source of your alleged information about Lord Rothschild and World War One that makes me suspicious, it's the content. World War One was too big for any one private fortune to turn it around.

A Jewish grandfather does not make you Jewish for the purposes of the Law of Return, but more importantly, there's no evidence that Lenin regarded himself as Jewish or was so regarded by his associates or even his enemies, except possibly for some of those who were racist Jew-haters. And although Stalin attempted to distort the historical record to disguise Trotsky's prominence in the revolution, Trotsky himself, as well as all the other participants and observers, regarded Lenin above Trotsky as the leader of the revolution. Under Hitler's rule in the 1930s, the Soviet Union was regarded as an enemy of Germany, but the Soviet threat to Germany existed only in Hitler's paranoid delusions.

If you think the USA should reassess the basis for its foreign aid policies, you'll get no argument from me. What do you think should be the basis on which the USA allocates aid?

I happen to think that 'beware loose generalisations' is good advice. I'm not in a position to proffer it to the world in general. But I am in a position to proffer it to you, and to anybody else who's attending to this. So I will.

I don't know anything about the lawyer you mentioned whose eight-year-old child was abused on the phone. Do you think it would help if I said to him how offensive I find that and how much I regret it? Feel free to pass that on. I'm happy to say the same direct, if the occasion should arise. But do you know how many people know about the incident? Is it possible that some of them did write to their local paper about it and the paper didn't print the letter? I don't know anything about this case, so I'm not making any particular assertions. I'm just following the rule about being careful of jumping to hasty conclusions.

Epinoia

Anita, refresh my memory: What are the criteria again? I've heard them before but it's been a while.

Which xtians have been trying to persecute you specifically or Jews in general versus leaving you alone? You speak in present tense, so this would be referring to xtian-on-jew persecutions happening recently if not now. What's going on now?

As far as people trying to convert you, are you talking about the Jews for Jesus crowd? I hesitate to call them "Christians" here as many messianic Jews consider themselves Jews. In fact there's even a group, the Netzerim, over in the territories that insists it's completely orthodox, got the blessings of the rabbi and all that.

Or is it's more the plain'ol Christian evangelical? With Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and the other Xtian Zionists heralded in Israel and feted by AIPAC last year, well, hearing the "good news" over and over and over again is one price Israelis and potential Israelis can expect to pay for all the $ and support they send Israel's way. There are others. Right now, fundies are the johns. They've brought the money and candy and have cooed nice things so they can all lay down with someone who'll give 'em all a true GFE experience, and they're not going to be led on for too long. Don't want to service this crowd? Quit taking their presents. No matter what they say, there's no "free gift." Especially not from them.

See, servicing fundies for any amount of money just seems like the most degrading way to get it. Frankly, if it were me I'd be so beyond insulted at this point and going public to yell about it. Because as it is, there's a overwhelming impression that Israel and the Jews who support it think that for fundies, it's worth it ultimately to suck up, kiss ass, and so forth... you know, things tricks pay for.