tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post3592449082808878793..comments2024-03-18T22:21:33.261-07:00Comments on The Debate Link: Anti-Semitism as Structural and the Iran Deal DebateDavid Schraubhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04946653376744012423noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-31483598015998542402016-01-01T10:03:20.605-08:002016-01-01T10:03:20.605-08:00Returning to this post after several months[1], I ...Returning to this post after several months[1], I notice that both the awful Lee Smith piece and the somewhat less awful Jonathan Greenblatt article both assume that "the people who brought us the Iraq War" is intended--or at least could easily be read as--a reference the idea that the US jumped into Iraq at the behest of Israel, which seems to me to be a tortured and unnatural reading. "The people who brought us the Iraq War" seems to much more obviously refer to the people who really brought us the Iraq War, by which I mean the hawks in the Bush White House, and who were (and still are) vocal opponents of the Iran Deal. Conflating GOP hacks who've been advocating for war with Iran for ages with advocates for Israel is a serious error, and in other contexts[2] itself smacks of anti-semitism. It's just that it really seems that Greenblatt and Smith were the ones doing this, to a much greater extent than the Administration or its partisans.<br /><br />[1] Congrats on appearing in the Jon Swift Memorial <br /><br />[2] Like Mearscheimer and Walt's execrable "Israel Lobby" article from some years back.Pillsyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01269452554612705292noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-57653724034998508352015-12-29T10:38:05.461-08:002015-12-29T10:38:05.461-08:00Many years ago, a distinguished African-American l...Many years ago, a distinguished African-American law professor delivered a lecture at my college on racism. The lecture did not, however, mention or touch upon the question of affirmative action. Yet the very first question challenged him on precisely that subject. He was incensed. "Why," he asked "does this always happen? Why am I always asked about affirmative action when talking about racism, even when affirmative action was not actually contained in the substance of my talk?"<br /><br />This comment seems oddly similar. It is phrased as your "take on all this," but this post is not about Israel's policies or Israel's existence as a Jewish state. Indeed, the word "Israel" doesn't appear in it. It is about tropes of anti-Semitism in domestic American debates about American foreign policy. Your "take on all this" is a complete non-sequitur -- it is not even in conversation (let alone in agreement or opposition) with the arguments of the post. Yet it seems that any time someone wants to talk about anti-Semitism, someone else wants to divert the discussion to a wide-ranging, foundational inquiry about Israel (and then, frequently, will have the gall to complain that people can't tell the difference between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism).<br /><br />In any event, while there is an important universalist element to the Jewish tradition, I would not argue that Judaism has ever taken the fundamentalist approach to it that you ascribe that completely denies political space for particularism: where Howard University and Jim Crow Ole Miss are one and the same, where the Congressional Black Caucus is dismissed as akin to a Congressional White Caucus, where the NAACP is seen as structurally identical to a NAAWP. Rabbi Hillel got the tension right in his maxim, for while it is correct that if "I am only for myself, who am I," it is also surely right to say "if I am not for myself, who will be for me?" Both of these instincts -- towards a universalism that defends the rights of all, and towards a particularism that acknowledges the rights of cultural groups to autonomous spaces where they can grow and flourish -- are deeply embedded in Jewish history and tradition.David Schraubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04946653376744012423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-17519368424467620432015-12-28T19:31:59.161-08:002015-12-28T19:31:59.161-08:00Just saw this after being directed to the Jon Swif...Just saw this after being directed to the Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2015.<br /><br />My take on all this is based on the Seder. <br /><br />Toward the end of the ritual, there is a section that tells us what is expected of Jews: First, we should think of ourselves as having personally come out of slavery, meaning we should identify with the oppressed. Second, we are told that no one is free until everyone is free--this does not mean just Jews, but all people. Finally, Jews are told we have an obligation to work for that universal freedom.<br /><br />By these criteria, Jews must stand against the current government of Israel. Indeed, we must stand against a so-called Jewish state because an ethnocentric/theocratic state is, by definition, both undemocratic and unJewish.Bill Michtomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16974095082614091559noreply@blogger.com