Jews of silence

[Classical_Liberal]

Jews of silence

By David Landau



Years ago, on the eve of Tisha B'Av, Israel TV
broadcast a fascinating talk show (on the one
channel that existed at the time). The guests were
asked to pretend they were one of the historical
characters who played a role in the tragic events
leading up to the destruction of the Second
Temple. They all threw themselves with verve into
the task of dramatizing the conflicts that divided
the Jewish commonwealth at that time.



The moderates warned of the
senselessness of the revolt
against the Roman Empire and
demanded that a compromise
solution be found before it
was too late. "The Jews of
the Diaspora will mobilize
and come to our aid!" cried
MK Geula Cohen, playing one
of the Zealot leaders. "But

they didn't come," Hannah Zemer, the talk show
host, observed dryly, bringing the role-playing
to a peremptory halt. "They didn't mobilize and
they didn't come ... "

With that sardonic comment, Hannah Zemer, a
prominent journalist and author, sought to
underscore the limits of Jewish solidarity and
identification with the Jewish state. The mass
abandonment of the State of Israel over the
last three years by Jewish visitors, side by
side with poignant displays of solidarity and
love for Israel, illustrates the complexity of
a split-screen existence in which half the
Jewish people live in the Jewish state and half
live elsewhere.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/360709.html

[salinen]

1. fellow jews

i've been thinking about how i feel when i hear or see the likes of a richard perle, david horowitz, michael medved, dennis preager, ariel sharon, et al. i hate these people with a special passion. they are no more than sick ideologes, and they use all the immoral tactics of the right wing and i expect more. i'm fully embarrassed by their behavior. why? these creeps are just creeps. but i feel i must apologize for their behavior more than the others. jewish guilt i suppose. any jews care to comment?

[Forkboy]

2. You certainly dont have to apologize for their attitudes

and actions.

[bluesoul]

3. Why would you need to apologize?

They do not represent your views as they do not the views of an entire religion/nation. There are extremes in every society, and some RW asshole sure as hell doesn't represent me and my views even though he/she may claim so by speaking for an entire nation or even religion.

[bemildred]

4. You have nothing to apologize for.

All cultures have their creeps.
We are responsible for our own behavior,

[salinen]

5. yeah thanks

it's also transparent that these jewpugs are a minority of jewish thinking. the rw plays this trick by displaying these clods as everyday garden variety jews, along with your walter williams types for the african american farce, so that the unknowing think that these guy represent us. and it pisses me off! alas, once i calm down i see the faces of russ feingold and charles shumer and feel proud again.

[Classical_Liberal]

6. I try to highlight the majority non right wingers

It is very frustrating, how the punditocracy and the think tank culture in this country has swung so far right.

[bemildred]

9. There ya go.

There is a long and illustrious list of Jewish names
in History, and most of them would have nothing to do
with these sparrowfarts.

[Mel]

7. no you don't

No way! What they do wrong is not a Jewish persons fault.

It's obvious you don't agree with their evil so shake that guilt you shouldn't feel like you have to carry that burden, not yours, no way, I'm yanking it away and stomping on it for you! :)

ps you broccoli head! ;)

[salinen]

8. thanks mel

a good slap across the face is what i needed. i will not discriminate anymore. i despise all right wingers equally.

[Darranar]

10. As a fellow Jew I say proudly that you aren't alone, salinen...

and there is no need for you or any other to apologize for the actions of what others within their religion did.

There are right-wingers and fools in every religion.

[Jackie97]

14. Salinen, I'm not a Jew, but.......

Some of my people also did some really barbaric stuff. I felt guilty as well. Then, one day I realized that I'm my own person with my own sins to worry about. Nobody should beat themselves up for what they can't help. I think that every group of people has evil ones in them.

[ThorsteinVeblen]

11. The time has come for Jews to be treated as humans

Not Devils. Not Angels.

Frail,full of faults, capable of wonders and blessed - like the rest of us.

The Jews who rule in this world are outnumbered by the Jews who don't.

The same as everyoe else.

Anti-Semitism is paranoid and irrational. Although some Jews hold brutal, evil power over us - Perle, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Murdoch, Abrams, Sharon - the same amount fight against evil -Soros, Chomsky, Einstein, Hoffman, Goldman, Wellstone. The VAST majority just want to live in peace and raise their families - just like Palestinians, just like Americans, just like Iraqis.

There is no monolithlic "Jewish" character. To say so is to be anti-semitic or to encourage anti-semitism. The mistakes of Israel do not define the Jews nor more than the mistakes of America or Germany or Iraq define their citizenry/ethnic majority.

Anything is possible. Freedom is the rule. Shalom.

Fuck Texas.

[bemildred]

12. That works for me.

:thumbsup:

[Darranar]

13. Agreed.

[KoKo]

21. Kick this! It's a great post!

:shrug: can't understand why it's headed to archives.

[Jackie97]

15. I don't think that I could have said it better myself.

[KoKo]

16. The Diaspora Jews are the ones I had always hoped would DO Something!

I have hoped and prayed that Jewish Groups of the Diaspora would speak up, would somehow manage to have an influence in what is going on in Israel and our current PNAC Group's ambitions about the Middle East. I felt there were more anti-Sharonist's than there seem to be. Just as I thought Gore would win in a landslide over Shrub. The Silent are there on both sides. America, Diaspora, Israel, it seems.

My thread was locked, but this article expresses some of what I was hoping my thread would get in to in a discussion somewhere along the way. I had to leave the thread for awhile, so couldn't answer some of the late questions, then it was locked as not "based on a recent event."(it was based on the Turkish bombings, and the attack on the French school, and what I'm afraid will be more targeting of Jewish synagogs and schools if Chimp or someone else doesn't do something about our policies which are failing with I/P.

Just leaving Sharon and Arafat (or whomever replaces him) to fight it out until the death while innocent people die is not a policy that the US should have but Shrub has stood by and watched the situation deteriorate. And, American Jews who don't support Sharon's "hard line" need to speak up....do something before we have a WWIII over the Middle East, which, IMHO, we don't have a chance of winning.

This article is what I have been hoping would happen since Sharon came into power and the I/P situation has gotten so desperate over there. The Diaspora Jews who are not Sharonists, trying to come together on their own and intervene. Would that help?

I ask honestly, because I believe I/P Forum is the place where people hash all this out. :shrug:
Edited: clarification....but it's late and this still may be jumbled.

[Darranar]

17. Speak up? How?

[Classical_Liberal]

18. Polls show over 50% of US jews would like to dismantle the settlements

However 63% think the settlements are Sharon's business and that America shouldn't intervene. I do think that somehow more effort needs to be made to get the majority to feel as strongly about ending the settlements and the minority Sharon supporters are about expanding them.

When I see the failure of the pro peace jewish groups to make a dent on the mind of Congressional Democrats I do have to wonder if this is not the reason.

[KoKo]

19. Many Jewish Groups outside Israel give money to support Israel, plus

with so many influencial Jews in World Politics even outside America, it would seem Sharon could be approached by a united group of these influencial Jews who do NOT support his hardline policies, and try to pressure him to find a better solution. Either threaten to withdraw monitary support or find another way to stop the violence.

I've read tourism is down, American Jews who had emigrated to Isreal were now coming back here (sorry, don't have the link, but it was linked here on DU recently from one of the newspapers), because the terrorism is ruining their businesses. How can Israel's economy survive these constant threats and instability without aid from US and from Jewish organizations who give aid to Israel?

Don't some feel that Sharon is as bad for Israel's image to the rest of the world as Shrub is to the US's? Or, doesn't it matter anymore, that bullies are replacing diplomats?

[Darranar]

20. Do you think those influential Jews are elected?

If I could snap my fingers and remove Foxman (the head of the ADL), do you think I wouldn't?

[KoKo]

22. I don't know....can you help me out with this.......??

Seriously......

[Darranar]

23. Let me see if I explain a little better...

You ask those Jews against the oppression of the Palestinians to fight against it and speak out.

What can I, being a left-wing pro-Palestinian Jew, do?

These influential Jewish leaders who you mention aren't elected by the general Jewish community. There's nothing I can do to dismantle AIPAC or change the ADL back to what it once was; an institution that combats bigotry and doesn't yell "anti-Zionism" or "anti-Israelism" or "anti-semitism" every other second in the face of harsh criticism of the GOI and its policies.

Maybe I'm just being cynical. But I'm at a loss for ideas, and I have been for quite a while now.

If I had my way, we'd be living in the Nation of Earth now, with universal health care, universal employment, universal food and water, universal education, universal human rights and civil liberties, a proportional World Parliament, and collective ownership of companies by the workers. But not everyone is a global socialist like me, so hope for such a thing in the foreseable future would be very disconnected from reality. I guess I'll have to wait for the revolution for that one.

Anyway, my point is that we are not all superpeople. I cannot snap my fingers and make things better; if I could, you may rest assured that I would have a long time ago.

If myself and four dozen clones of myself workeed tirelessly for Tikkun or Gush Shalom I have strong doubts that it would make much of a difference anyway. I ask you again, therefore, in conclusion: You want me to speak up. How?

[KoKo]

24. I understand...unless you are George Soros what can you do....I think all

we who aren't Big Tycoons with mega bucks tied into Carlyle and the rest of the Fat Cats boondoogles on how to Manipulate the World.....we do what we can. We voice here on DU our concerns and we follow links to keep ourselves informed and we give what little we can to "organizations" which share our views and we try to become the BIG VOICE to replace the OTHER BIG VOICE that's out there.

If you have some Bucks then one gives BIG $$$'s to the group that's TIED INTO THE "Voices that ARE HEARD TODAY....If you are like the rest of us, you keep doing what you can but write letters to the Jewish Organizations which might listen and support what you can with your VOICE which one day may replace the $$$'s.

What else can we do. But, if we who don't have the Power, $$$$$$$$'s, and Influence don't try to make a change from the bottom up.....who will?? The Big Bucks folks seem to have made a mess of things....now it's the "peoples turn." IMHO.....feeling as powerless as you....but being feisty..I won't let them "roll over me!"

[Darranar]

25. Change will likely come too late for the Palestinians...

If two million people spontaneously rally in DC tomorrow for a Palestinian state, an end to military aid to Israel, cutbacks in military spending, an end to the "make war on anyone who stands in the way of the interests of multinational corporations" doctrine of the Bush Administration, and an end to corporate imperialism, do you think it will make a difference?

The next presidential election will be in November 2004 (provided that there IS an election). The inauguration will be in January 2005. That's already a year and two months to wait for a more than cosmetic change in US foreign policy in I/P.

The likely matches will be Dean against Bush, Clark against Bush, or Kerry against Bush. Not one of those three has indicated that he will actually make serious efforts for a resolution to the I/P conflict. If it is one of those three and he beats Bush, I/P might get a little better, but not by much. If Bush wins in 2004... well, that's almost too scary to consider.

That means that there will be a likely wait of at least another five years before real change can occur. Like I said in my subbject line, that's likely too late for the Palestinians.

[KoKo]

26. This article by Landau, gave me some hope. It's what must happen, the

Jews must influence the other Jews to change. It may only come after they see that the Hard Sharonist policies are so morally wrong that the world stands up.....or the Palestinian sympathizers strike back.

That's why I thought this article was so worth a discussion. It points out the terrible consequences of not acting. They will have to act, or their reacting will drag the world into a Middle East World War.

I don't know if it's too late for the Palestinians. But, the losses are terrible there..on both sides and much probably depends on what goes on in Iraq in the next year, and the US election.

That's a long time for much damage to be done.....so your view, may be the correct one. I pray, and others of us do....that this isn't the case.

[edzontar]

27. To everyone above in this thread--THANK YOU...

Up to this point at least, this thread has been thoughful, positive, honest, and totally free of flame-baiting bigotry.

I am thankful to all of you for this unexpectedly positive experience--and on I/P, no less!!!