Abe Foxman Looks Back at Changing — and Declining — Face of Anti-Semitism, Emily Hauser on BDS

2014/02/21 Leave a comment

Abe Foxman of the ADL reminds of the commonalities between antisemitism and other forms of prejudice and intolerance:

“There’s a lot of extremism in this country,” Foxman said. “We still have prejudice – against Hispanics, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, Mormons, Asians. The battle for a civil, respectful, tolerant society continues. We haven’t won that battle. We have not found an antidote, a vaccine. Until we find that vaccine, it’s going to be with us.”

Abe Foxman Looks Back at Changing — and Declining — Face of Anti-Semitism – Forward.com.

Emily Hauser notes the ironic synergy between the Israel PM Netanyahu,  some of the leaders of major Jewish organizations and the BDS campaign:

American Jews like Hoenlein and Israeli politicians like Netanyahu want to scare you, me, and the whole world off from even considering the possibility that the Israeli government is as human as any other and thus as worthy of examination as any other, because they want the occupation and settlement project to continue.

They are in fact served by BDS, because not unlike Hoenlein and Netanyahu, et al, the BDS movement blurs the lines between the democratic state of Israel that exists legally and legitimately within its recognized international borders and the military dictatorship that is the occupation; Hoenlein and Netanyahu (et al) are further served by BDS because every single day that we Jews get all wound up about BDS is another day in which the Israeli government can deepen its hold on Palestinian land.

BDS Is Not Anti-Semitism

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Global Anti-Semitism and the Erosion of Shame | Abraham H. Foxman

2014/02/14 Leave a comment

Abe Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, on antisemitism, taking a broad interpretation. His point on the erosion of shame is valid, but is not limited to antisemitism as it widespread in the political, corporate, entertainment and other worlds. On Israel, he, like many commentators, do not distinguish between criticism of Israel per se and Israeli policies and practices in the occupied territories :

Anti-Semitism has characteristics like other forms of bigotry in terms of stereotyping, alienation from the other, and discrimination.

But what makes it different, and which goes a long way to explain anomalous things about anti-Semitism — how long it has lasted, how it pops up in different places, the concept of anti-Semitism without Jews, the contradictory accusations against Jews, etc. — is the core of the anti-Semitic idea: that Jews are not what they seem to be. The real Jew, according to the anti-Semite, is a hidden conspiratorialist, all-powerful and evil….

But other factors play a role and are increasingly worrisome. There is the erosion of shame about anti-Semitism as the Holocaust becomes more remote in time and as survivors pass away. The too-easy analogizing of every bad thing that happens today to the Holocaust, which the Anti-Defamation League condemns whenever it surfaces, is just one manifestation of the loss of impact on attitudes that the Holocaust formerly had.

Pictures of Auschwitz after the war did not lead to the disappearance of anti-Semitism. They did, however, constrain manifestations of Jew hatred. That loss of embarrassment over time reduces those constraints.

Additionally, the ongoing critique of the state of Israel is a powerful corrosive factor. Not every criticism of Israel is illegitimate, and surely not anti-Semitic. But when condemnations of the Jewish state are so clearly biased, when Israel is singled out for punitive treatment, even when some of those engaging in these activities may not be motivated by anti-Semitism, it opens up the Pandora’s Box of Jew hatred and makes it much more acceptable. We see this in the boycott and delegitimization movements against Israel, which lead to anti-Jewish activities, like isolating Jewish students on campus.

Global Anti-Semitism and the Erosion of Shame | Abraham H. Foxman.

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Can Virtual “Racism” Evoke Empathy? | There’s an App for That

2014/02/10 Leave a comment

Interesting concept, poor execution.

The app creators seemingly hope to reach people who discriminate against others, and to encourage these users to change their ways — after virtually experiencing “racism.” This limits their target audience to conscientious racists. And if there are such self-aware racists, are they really so oblivious to what needs to change?

Perhaps this app could better achieve its goals if it chose a name that didn’t perpetrate misconceptions and stereotypes, and if it marketed itself as a resource for multicultural education programs, practical diversity trainings or even sensitivity workshops.

Imagine if the app were renamed to reflect reality: Being Different Is Normal — But It Ain’t Easy.

Can Virtual “Racism” Evoke Empathy? | Re/code.

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John Ivison: Ottawa will lose top human rights crusader when Liberal MP who fought for Mandela retires

2014/02/07 Leave a comment

Nice tribute to Irwin Cotler by John Ivison:

Yet Mr. Cotler has emerged intact and unspoiled by his 15 years in the House of Commons.

In the Tim Hortons in Mount Royal, he confided his motivation – the fundamental teaching handed down by his father, who used to tell him in Hebrew: “Justice, justice shall you pursue. This is the equal of all the other commandments combined.”

His father would surely be proud of the use to which his teaching has been put.

John Ivison: Ottawa will lose top human rights crusader when Liberal MP who fought for Mandela retires | National Post.

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Understanding Anti-Semitism « The Dish

2014/02/06 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Steven Beller on antisemitism, and the need to view antisemitism in the overall context of hate, intolerance and fear of the other, not just as a Jewish issue:

The first sees antisemitism from the perspective of Jewish nationalism (Zionism), for which the answer to antisemitism is Israel, as the political expression of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination. From this perspective attacks on Israel are against the national rights of the Jewish people and hence are antisemitic because anti-Zionist. This linking of antisemitism with anti-Zionism, conceptualized most recently in the theory of “the new antisemitism”, has garnered strong support in the world’s Jewish communities, and is also written into the European Union’s working definition of antisemitism. If we approach antisemitism as a Jewish problem alone, this has a certain sense. It makes little if any sense from the perspective of the second strategy, which sees antisemitism as the ultimate expression of the exclusionary logic of nationalism.

The Zionist perspective actually undermines the most powerful arguments of antisemitism’s main antidote: liberal pluralism. In this view, as Jean-Paul Sartre famously suggested, antisemitism is not a problem for Jews but rather for non-Jews, indeed for all of us. It is representative of a universal moral evil: the exclusion, fear and, ultimately, destruction of the other in society simply because of difference. “Never again” becomes a promise not about preventing Jewish genocide, but any genocide. It is the refusal or inability to accept and embrace difference within a society that is the root of the problem. The solution is to throw over the apparently modern, but actually primitive “either/or” logic of nationalism, and replace it with the more complex, but more supple, inclusionary “both/and” logic that underpins liberal pluralism, the ability “to agree to disagree”, to comprehend, and embrace difference.

Understanding Anti-Semitism « The Dish.

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Opposing the campaign to exclude Israelis from the global academic community | Engage

2014/01/31 Leave a comment

An interesting piece by David Hirsh (see Engage | The anti-racist campaign against antisemitism) , with a left-wing perspective, on how to oppose the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign against Israel, and linking this to other forms of hate and racism. A reminder that there us a plurality of approaches against antisemitism:

  • “The conflict on our campuses seems to be between wavers of the Israeli flag and wavers of the Palestinian flag.  We refuse to pick up one or the other flag and to hope for its victory; better to embrace a politics of reconciliation
  • We need to have a conversation about what solidarity is….
  • Academic freedom and democratic norms
  • Consistency
  • Antisemitism.
  • Understanding, analyzing, making arguments, educating….”

The Israeli and Jewish right tends increasingly to embody a politics and a way of thinking which has little in common with our own.  What they say about the roots of the Israel/Palestine conflict, about how to get peace, about how to relate to the boycott, about how to relate to the Palestinian national movement, about how to relate to the Islamists is highly problematic.  Their paradigm and their way of thinking is not likely to be influential amongst academics.

But the Israeli and Jewish right are sometimes quite good at sniffing out antisemitism.  When they are angry and militant against antisemitism – that is when they’re right, it isn’t an indicator that they must have got it wrong.

Just as liberty, freedom, the rule of law, democracy, lesbian and gay rights, womens rights and human rights are values which should not be abandoned by the left, as though they were right wing issues, so the issue of antisemitism should not be abandoned to the right either.

The left cannot be influential amongst Jews if it teaches people to recognise concern for antisemitism and opposition to boycotts of Israel as right wing issues.

The problem with the approach of the right isn’t that their militancy against antisemitism is misplaced – the problem is that they’re not consistent, they’re not antiracist, they’re not for a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine – indeed the problem with the right is similar, in these respects to the problem with the boycotters and the people who think that anti-imperialism is the only important left wing value.

We need a movement and a network to give people good arguments, to build a cosmopolitan anti-nationalist sensibility, to propose genuine solidarity in place of the hollow boycott-version.

Opposing the campaign to exclude Israelis from the global academic community | Engage.

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Canada led campaign to save exhibition on Jewish history in Middle East after Arab coalition quashed it | National Post

2014/01/27 1 Comment

Interesting story about the UNESCO exhibit on Jewish history in the Mid-East, caught up in the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Historical narratives are powerful, and both sides want to ensure that the historical narratives reinforces their political position. Denial of the Jewish presence and history in the Mid-East has antisemitic overtones, just as denial of the Palestinian narrative has anti-Arab overtones. And while Canada played a role in reversing the UNESCO decision:

Ultimately, however, it was likely the United States who had the better clout in having the exhibition reinstated. On Jan. 17, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power disavowed any assertion that the Paris show would compromise John Kerry’s peacemaking efforts.

“UNESCO’s decision is wrong and should be reversed,” she said in a statement cited by Reuters. “The United States has engaged at senior levels to urge UNESCO to allow this exhibit to proceed as soon as possible.”

Four days later, the cultural agency reversed its decision, writing in a statement that “the exhibition has not been cancelled but postponed.”

“People, Book, Land” is now set for a June 11 opening.

Canada led campaign to save exhibition on Jewish history in Middle East after Arab coalition quashed it | National Post.

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Universal lessons of the Holocaust | Irwin Cotler

2014/01/25 Leave a comment

Irwin Cotler on the universal lessons of the Holocaust:

The first lesson is the importance of zachor, of remembrance. For as we remember the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah – defamed, demonized and dehumanized, as prologue or justification for genocide – we have to understand that the mass murder of six million Jews, and millions of non-Jews, is not a matter of abstract statistics.

For unto each person there is a name, an identity; each person is a universe. As our sages tell us, “Whoever saves a single life, it is as if he or she has saved an entire universe.”

The second enduring lesson of the Holocaust is that the genocide of European Jewry succeeded not only because of the industry of death and the technology of terror, but because of the state-sanctioned ideology of hate. This teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, this is where it all begins…

The third lesson is that these Holocaust crimes resulted not only from state-sanctioned incitement to hatred and genocide, but from crimes of indifference, from conspiracies of silence – from the international community as bystander….

The fourth enduring lesson of the Holocaust is that it was made possible not only because of the “bureaucratization of genocide,” as Robert Lifton put it, but because of the trahison des clercs – the complicity of the elites – including physicians, church leaders, judges, lawyers, engineers, architects and educators….

The fifth lesson concerns the vulnerability of the powerless and the powerlessness of the vulnerable – as found expression in the triad of Nazi racial hygiene: the Sterilization Laws, the Nuremberg Race Laws, and the Euthanasia Program – all of which targeted those “whose lives were not worth living.”…

Sixth is the tribute that must be paid to the rescuers, the righteous among the nations, of whom Raoul Wallenberg is metaphor and message. Wallenberg, a Swedish non-Jew, saved more Jews in four months in Hungary in 1944 than any single government or organization.

Universal lessons of the Holocaust | JPost | Israel News.

And a link to Canadian Holocaust activities:

Recognizing International Holocaust Remembrance Day

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Jonathan Kay: Even some Zionists should find the Tories’ Israel zeal to be disturbingly manic | National Post

2014/01/23 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary by Jonathan Kay of the National Post on the messaging of PM Harper and the Conservative government. Ironically, it is possible that such unqualified support may, over time, undermine support for the Government’s activities and initiatives against antisemitism, given the relative silence of the important linkages with other forms of discrimination that impact on a wide range of communities in Canada:

Perhaps the best adjective I can use to describe the Conservatives’ zeal for Israel — and, indeed for all things Jewish — is manic. In interpersonal terms, it reminds me of a couple that professes their status as soul mates — loudly, and very repeatedly — as they bask in the bloom of first love (as opposed to the occasional bickering that characterizes the long, solid marriage between Israel and the United States). In my email inbox, I have lost count of the number of messages from Jason Kenney advertising his government’s support of Israel, its steadfast opposition to anti-Semitism, and its diligent observance of some anniversary or memorial day honouring a figure connected to Judaism. Many times, whole days pass in which this is the only type of message I get from his office. In each individual case, the spirit is admirable. But the overall effect comes across as a sort of monomania.

This fixation is beginning to express itself in somewhat reckless gestures. One of the members of Harper’s official delegation in Israel, for instance, is a Rabbi who has offered public support to Pamela Geller, an anti-Islamic conspiracy theorist. When taken to task for the Rabbi’s inclusion, the PMO shot back with the lazy, apparently baseless, and possibly libelous charge that the Muslim group raising the objections has “ties” to Hamas. This is the not the way a serious government responds to the legitimate concerns of its citizens.

The Harper government is to be lauded for the overall tendency of its foreign policy — which is to offer full-throated support for democratic nations that share our values. But where the Jewish state is concerned, our support is crossing the line into a sort of emotional mania. And it has never been on fuller display than this week, during the Prime Minister’s trip to Israel.

Jonathan Kay: Even some Zionists should find the Tories’ Israel zeal to be disturbingly manic | National Post.

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Freedom of speech debate sparked by draft law to ban use of ‘Nazi’ in Israel | World news | theguardian.com

2014/01/21 Leave a comment

Interesting debate on freedom of speech and the proposed ban of “Nazi” in Israel. The US was often criticized in a variety of Holocaust and antisemitism fora for its invoking of the First Amendment as an explanation for not having hate speech laws unlike many countries in Europe and Canada. Always a fine line between freedom of speech and anti-hate speech, although generally better this be handled by social norms and discussion what is acceptable and what is not.

Freedom of speech debate sparked by draft law to ban use of ‘Nazi’ in Israel | World news | theguardian.com.

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