More links to worthwhile analyses and commentaries I’ve read of late.
Mouin Rabbani, senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut and co-editor of Jadaliyya—and who previously worked for the ICG in the Palestinian territories—, has a piece in the LRB (July 18th) on “Israel mow[ing] the lawn.” For those not in the know, the expression “mowing the lawn” in the Israel-Palestine context refers to Israel militarily intervening in Gaza every two or three years to degrade the military capacity that Hamas had built up since the previous intervention. Whacking the mole, as it were, except with the mole popping up in the same place.
Probably the most sophisticated exposition of the Palestinian position in the latest flare-up by a representative of the Palestinian Authority that one is likely to hear is PA ambassador to the EU Leila Shahid’s July 10th interview on France 24 (here, en français).
And here’s one of the more powerful TV reportages I’ve seen from Gaza, “‘Why did they destroy a hospital’?,” from Great Britain’s Channel 4 News (July 18th).
On why Hamas has adopted the strategy that it has in this war, Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of the East Jerusalem think tank Passia, explained it well in an interview in Libération (July 10th), “«Pour le Hamas, il n’y a pas d’autre option que la fuite en avant».”
À propos, here’s a quote by University of California-Irvine historian and MENA specialist Mark LeVine—who is engagé, très gauchiste, and 100% pro-Pal—that he posted on July 11th on one of his FB comments threads
… I’ve been [to Gaza] many times. I’ve spoken with many activists over 15 years, and Hamas members too. I’ve been told by senior Hamas members as far back as the late 90s that “we are addicted to violence. We know it doesn’t work but we don’t know how to stop using it.”…
On Hamas rebuilding since the 2012 flare-up, journalist and columnist Shlomi Eldar explains in Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse (July 23rd) that “Hamas [has become] the first Palestinian army,” i.e. that it has built itself in a short period of time into the most formidable Palestinian army—not ragtag Fedayeen—that Israel has ever had to contend with. Eldar’s conclusion: Hamas is sufficiently dangerous for Israel that it needs to be smashed no matter what, even if ISIS-style jihadists take its place—and who would not pose a greater threat to Israel in any case.
The very smart GWU political science prof and MENA specialist Nathan J. Brown has an op-ed in WaPo (July 18th) on the “Five myths about Hamas.”
Jeroen Gunning, Executive Director of the Durham Global Security Institute, has an analysis on the BBC News website (July 18th) asking—and then trying to answer—”What drove Hamas to take on Israel?”
I found the analysis by Avi Issacharoff (July 19th), The Times of Israel’s Middle East analyst, “Euphoric Hamas needs to hear that Israel will oust it from Gaza if necessary,” to be quite interesting. Even 100% pro-Pal FB friends agreed on this score (on the analysis’s interest, if not its conclusions).
Also in TOI is an analysis (July 17th) by its political correspondent Haviv Rettig Gur, “The tragic self-delusion behind the Hamas war.” The lede: In the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, weakness is power, and power—well, it’s complicated.
Yes, complicated indeed. More next time.
I’ve been browsing through your links — thx! and got to Mark LeVine and wow:
“Israel and Isis/boko haram are two sides of the same coin.”
Kind of an insult to decent “gauchistism”?
My curiosity about him now not substantive about ME — uh, I get his drift — but on “personality.”
Someone ought to write a book about this fascinating, unique personality type: Weiss, Blumenthal, Butler, Greenwald, probably many more, and now, new to me, is LeVine. Does _any_ ethnic group anywhere have so many per 1000 population? Absolutely stunning to see people so devoted to and convinced of Jewish ethical superiority. The bile is so bitter as to hinder rather than aid digestion of ideas, at least about Israel. As fascinating as disturbing.
I saw Mark LV’s implicit equation of Israel and ISIS/Boko Haram. Anything I would say about it I’d say to him personally.
As for the book idea you mention, I would imagine it’s already been written, no?…
“…it’s already been written”?
You are joshing me and I am overlooking some extremely obvious title. When you mention it, I’ll do a “Duh.”
But seriously no, I can’t think of any work which deals with the phenomenon. “Self-hating Jews” come up in almost every heated conversation among Jews and about Israel. But as to even a semi-rational book explicating their own texts, well I have never seen it. Attacks on them, sure. But nothing dispassionate, something more of a study in personality type, which gets to their over-the-top moralizing. You simply don’t see anything close to such self-criticism (putting it mildly) in _any_ nation or ethnic group and certainly not in the Arab/Muslim world. I think it must have something to do with Oedipus? their desire to kill Israel?
Then again I am hardly an expert and it will take someone learned — an Auerbach? — to figure it out; and also someone willing to read the junk they put out.
Thank you for all these interesting links. Plenty of stuff to digest.
Regarding the last comment from DMS, I’d say that much : imho talmudic judaïsm is about questionning. If you stop questioning you loose the essence of what being jewish is all about. True, this doesn’t happen with Islam or Christianity. Jews have to question and debate over everything, including of course what is a Jew, am I a Jew, etc. That’s what dialogue and tolerance are about. There are no such things as self hating jews, there are jews who keep questionning judaïsm and their identity and others who can’t stand that questionning, those are dogmatic “integrists” and since they are unable to question themselves and their beliefs, well they become intolerant motherfuckers and they loose their jewish marbles which makes them very angry and even more intolerant..
This thread is interesting for the consideration of Jews, “self-hating” and otherwise. One thing I think people should consider is that Jews are unusual in their insistence that they can define someone’s religion for them. In other words, they don’t want people to be able to renounce whatever “genetic” connection they may have to the Jewish religion. This is in contrast to Christians and Muslims. If a Christian pronounces that he is not Christian, no one thinks anything of it. After all, it is simply a choice that each person can/should be able to make. But Jews claim that anyone whose mother was Jewish is a Jew. The offspring of a Jewish mother who says that he is not a Jew is called a self-hating Jew. And then along comes the Massilian approach, which is that the son or daughter of a Jewish woman who rejects this imposed religious status should be considered the epitome of Jewishness because he is questioning.
In either case, it’s all tautological nonsense. I speak from personal experience on this particular issue (though I’d agree with anyone who says that anecdotal evidence is far from proof). My grandfather fled Russia at the turn of the 20th century, escaping the oppression of Jews. He was an atheist who married a woman who was also an atheist (but also the offspring of a Jewish woman). His daughter (my mother) is an atheist. She raised her children as atheists. And yet, I have on many occasions been called a self-hating Jew, And so have my children. This in spite of the fact that none of these people have practiced any form of Judaism in more than a century.
Dojero: Thanks for your comment. As I have not a single grandparent, or even great-great grandparent, who has a drop of Jewish blood, I’ll let Massilian, DMS, and eventually others respond to you here…
@Dojero. Forget the blood thing.That’s nonsense n°1. My point is that the people who call anybody a “self hating jew” are morons and dogmatists and lock themselves in their pride to be integrists and reject the others…My understanding is that being a jew is pretty much a socratic ethic thing : I know nothing and I question the rest, and from there on I try to be a descent person. If I believe I know, I become intolerant….
@Massilian. I’m happy to be wrong in thinking you would assign religious affiliation on the basis of bloodlines, but I don’t understand your assertion that being a Jew is a “Socratic ethnic thing”. While I’m not entirely sure what such a thing is, it’s hard for me to imagine that it has anything more to do with Judaism than it does with any religion. Judaism is a religion. It has a very complete set of books that define it. A Jew is a person who ascribes to the religion of Judaism. It is defined first and foremost as a belief in single God and the expectation that someday a Messiah will come.
@dojero.
Oh boy ! I didn’t expect to start such a big conversation about religion on Arun’s doorstep.
Sorry Arun, thanks for your hospitality.
Dojero, you wrote your grandpa was an atheist, your parents were atheists, you were raised as atheist and you did raise your children as atheists as well. So none of you are Jews, you all are atheists.
And yet you have been and your kids have been called “self hating jews”.
And at the same time you write “a Jew is a person who ascribes to the religion of Judaïsm”. We have a contradiction here.
I was told by my father who came back from Auschwitz and who was an atheist when he was sent there, that he had learnt from experience that contrary to his original belief it is enough to be considered a Jew by other people to become a Jew. (Sartre got that too).
He told me that being a Jew is not a religious thing, Jews are not a “people”, not an ethnic thing either. The Jewish identity is a much more complex thing with several facets.
In his personnal eyes it was a matter of choice of ethics, memory, behaviour and culture. I understood and liked that. Therefore I am a complete atheist but I am also a Jew by individual choice when I feel like it.
I never deny being a Jew when asked the often ambiguous question “uh, where do you come from ?” . I am always ready to stand out as a Jew if that bothers anyone. See ?
I appreciate the idea of accepting doubt and questionning (The Talmud contribution). Accepting and cultivating the doubt and the questionning is in fact a paradox for a monotheist religion. You are told the hard way to believe that there is only one God, yours, always remember you are “elected” and that He is always right. That is the contradiction at the core of judaïsm.
I kept the doubt and the questionning, I kept the memory of Auschwitz, I know where I come from, but I threw away all the religious stuff.
Of course I am considered a self-hating jew by most Jews. They don’t like me because I don’t feel I am “elected” and one of them, I don’t feel that I am some kind of kin to Woody Allen, Einstein, Freud, Marx or Jesus, I don’t count the jewish Nobel prize winners either, I don’t put jewish humor above all other forms of humor, they hate because I have no love or even sympathy for Israel, and even more when I tell them that “self-hating Jew” appears to me as a very simplistic cheap psychoanalytic concept, keep working…
The more I learn, the more I understand that what keeps being presented in the western world as “judeo-christian roots” or identity is a hoax. Our true philosophical roots are Greek and the “judeo-christian” stuff is a heavy monotheist creamy religious topping on a much healthier organic and dietetic Greek cake.
I hope I cleared things a bit.
Roger, over and out.
As Massilian says, this could easily get out of hand, so I, too, will walk away with a final comment. For Massilian: your personal connection to Auschwitz makes it difficult to discuss the questions raised here. Your father was defined as a Jew because the Nazis used genetic heritage to define the religious group. He taught you that being defined by others as a Jew means that you are a Jew, or at least that it is a significant factor in the way you define yourself. For me, that’s wrongheaded (I mean no disrespect to you or your father). Each of us must define ourselves. You may, of course, define yourself as Jewish for a whole host of reasons that I don’t think have any business being part of the definition. But definitions are circuitous tautologies. If you say you’re a Jew because of your sense of being a part of a group, then the definition of Jewish is made by the statement.
I would point out, though, that by these loose standards, there’s no reason that the Pope cannot call himself Jewish. After all, he shares many of Massilian’s values and he surely wants to be a part of all sorts of groups.
My preference, therefore, would be for language to be held to a higher standard. Judaism has a long history as a religion. The distortion of that word to include an amorphous mixture of people with no common belief structure, theism, point of view, or much of anything else dilutes it to the point of being meaningless. By the standards posited here, we are all Jews.Or none of us are. Because it has no real meaning to use the word.
I am not addressing any of the comments directly but only clarify: Jewishness is not only religion.
I’d wager that none of the people I’ve mentioned (Weiss, Blumenthal, Butler, Greenwald, LeVine — and I should have added Chomsky & Finkelstein) are “religious” or attend temple services (except to give a talk about Israel or because invited to a family event.) Yes they will self-identify in some fashion as “Jewish.”
It’s fairly simple to understand:
Jewishness is also, or alternatively, a matter of ethnic/national identity.
There are Jews who have NOT been to temple for many decades but consider themselves Jewish and/or Zionist. (And others also perceive them that way as well. Certainly neo-Nazis do.)
Think of it like the Irish. It’s hard not to think of the Irish without the Roman Catholic Church; if you are Irish you must be Catholic. But not completely so. There are irreligious or even anti-clerical Irish who never go to church and still identify as very Irish.