Tag Archives: judaism

Anti-Judaism and racism in Egypt’s chaos

 On one side, there are the caricatures of Mubarak with a Star of David on his forehead….and red fangs protruding from his mouth. One such picture was held by a man in a Getty Images photo that was uncontextually-placed in an article by english.aljazeera.net (by mistake, I assume).

On the other side, there are the verbal and physical assaults on foreign and domestic journalists (including Al Jazeera) by pro-Mubarak counter-protesters, many of whom shout "yehudi!" ("Jew!") at them after being told by Egyptian state television rumors about "Israeli spies" infiltrating the foreign media and taking advantage of the chaos.

If anything, the above incidents within the last few days are exemplary of the casual, provincial anti-Jewish bigotry being exhibited by many of the everyday Egyptians who protest both for and against the current, long-ruling government. It runs deep, and has been punctuated by decades, if not centuries, of both official and non-official solicitations to the scapegoating of the specter of evil, baby-killing, bloodthirsty Zionist monsters.

Furthermore, such public manifestations of bigotry lend credibility to those outside of Egypt who fear the influence of the proscribed Muslim Brotherhood party in the anti-Mubarak movement, but also hold the Mubarak government in a muted ill-regard for decades of authoritarian misrule. 

The last two weeks in Egypt, if not the last month in much of North Africa and Western Asia, have offered remote viewers outside of the regions a game-changing view into the desires and lives of the residents who have lived under similar regimes. However, in the midst of the chants for greater democracy, better governance and brighter economic prospects, it would be a grave mistake to ignore the existing religious and ethnic bigotries which run deep and hard in Egyptian society, bigotries which may or may not manifest in a post-Mubarak Egypt, or a post-kleptocratic North Africa and Western Asia.

Comments such as those offered by one anti-Mubarak protester to Agence France Presse – "The Israeli people are like the Egyptian people, we want peace and freedom" – or another who shouted into a camera in Tahrir Square for YouTube – "We will not be silenced! whether you are a Muslim, whether you’re a Christian, whether you’re an atheist, you will demand your goddamn rights!" – might yet offer the hope of cooler heads prevailing in the aftermath of these protests in regards to Egyptian-Israeli relations and the future of interfaith and intermoral relations in Egypt proper.
 
But these statements, these sentiments, can only go so far in showing the Egyptian people’s long-term collective capability in restraining or suppressing the casual bigotries which have been used in multiple generations in order to repress and suppress the quality of life and mind of themselves and their neighbors.

On Arutz Sheva and pre-Christian religion in the blogosphere

 In Firefox, underneath the "Religion" folder, I have the Arutz Sheva/Israel National News live bookmark.

Why do I read it, even though I don’t like that they used to link prominently to JONAH, a Jewish version of NARTH, and that the writing and lexical style of non-editorial news items on the site is closer to your average conservative "blog(osphere)" (with ample amounts of xenophobia)?

Because, first of all, I want to get the raw opinion of religious Israelis on how they perceive both the outside world and their own country, which is often not the same as such opinion which comes from even conservative American Jews, and definitely not the same as conservative pro-Israel Christian Americans. Of course they view their government through exceptionally-critical lenses (even the current Netanyahu coalition cabinet), but they also extol the land in which they live and the orthodox religion which they practice as the best for their people and the land (or at least they don’t extol their religion as being the one true faith of the entire world), probably with far more celebratory output than what they may give their government. It seems that, in the ongoing, slowgoing "reconquest" in the West Bank (that is, to say, that they’re trying to reconquer a cultural homeland through settlement and open religious observance), the writers and editors are seeking for a non- or pre-expulsion Judaism which is anti-cosmopolitan, increasingly rustic and proximatively ignorant of the world outside; such attempts to seek and live a pre-Christian life and community are interesting spectacles to watch.

Second of all, through reading Arutz Sheva alongside newsposts aggregated by HinduCurrents and pagan blogs such as The Wild Hunt and Pagan + Politics, I want to get a glimpse of how the practitioners of non-proselytizing, non-racial, sometimes land-centric religions (Eclectic Neopaganism, Hinduism, Judaism, Humanism, etc.) view their religions and relate to their respective governments and neighboring worships. 

Nationalist negation of the diaspora and theodicy: where they intersect

When the audio transcript of John Hagee’s theodical justification of the Holocaust (and, by extension, Christian anti-Semitism) as a means of accomplishing Christian eschatological ends through mass Jewish aliyah surfaced online in 2008, various political sectors observing the then-ongoing presidential election leveled intense scrutiny against Hagee and the Republican presidential aspirant who had courted Hagee’s support in the election; not least among those reacting sectors were the demographically-dwindling Jewish members of the Holocaust survivor community, who took particular exception to Hagee’s open and explicit co-opting of both an ideologically-driven tragedy that wreaked so much havoc upon them and the repatriative ideology of Israeli Jewish nationalism – both of which emphatically exclaim that the adherents to the Jewish religion, including the dead victims and living survivors of the Holocaust, do not belong anywhere else in the world but Israel – as a positive step toward the eventual end and destruction of the world (according to the Christian worldview).

Within Judaism, theodical explanations for the Holocaust have been offered – and just as fiercely rejected and demeaned among Jewish survivors of the Holocaust – by Haredi (Orthodox) rabbis and rabbinical authorities, including former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel Ovadia Yosef (repeatedly) and the late Rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch sect, Menachem Schneerson. 

But an interesting aspect of John Hagee’s intersection of Jewish aliyah with the Holocaust (as a forceful push), Israel (as a destination to be pushed toward), anti-Semitism (as an ideological justification), Negation of the diaspora (as a process) and Christian eschatological timing (as the end and answer to all of the above) is that he only added a further layer to the belief that the Jews are only a collective object to be pushed around at the whim of their neighbors, most of whom want to push them entirely away from themselves and reject the view that these people are citizens of their own countries (or, in the case of Iran and the USSR, keep them within their own states in order to eventually drive the Jewish religion or sense of ancestral/cultural homeland out of their adherent citizens and turn them into compliant, assimilated citizens). Another, more crazed dimension to this meme is the long list of ethnic enclaves to which various powers sought to pull or push the Jews as a people, the majority of which placed the Jews in the most-isolated (or least-populable) outposts of various continents.

This meme of constricting an entire people into one place in the world was also visited at one point by both U.S. philanthropists and (repeatedly) Afro-American ethnonationalists upon the Afro-American minority of the U.S. in the view that Afro-Americans cannot ever belong in this society, and that the colorism, racism, ethnic segregation and slavery foisted upon them was the end result of existing in a majority-European-populated country, and that the only country in which they could feel safe and defend themselves and their interests would be in a country that was ruled and majority-populated by their "kind", reasonably removed from the land of their should-be-former oppressors, and build alliances with foreign powers which work to their own best interests. Of course, Liberia didn’t attract the majority of the African-American population, and neither did Sierra Leone attract the majority of former British Empire slaves and maroons, but both countries became templates for the sometimes-mutual ideological movement for repatriation, which presented the two agents – the repatriater and the receiver – view the same people within endemic views which complimented each other: the repatriating country saw the ethnicity as trash, and the receiving country saw the ethnicity as treasure. 

This trash-treasure view is embraced in some countries in Europe by far-right nationalists, who often participated in discussions which demonized the Jews as "parasitic" "trash" which could only gain respect if they were as far away from their own white, European Christian selves as possible (hence the oft-used expression by far-rightists in Europe "go back to Israel", which is probably less used than "to the ovens" or "Hitler should’ve finished the job"). The BNP in the UK (and, perhaps, the NASOFI group in Germany) is one of the more notable "converts" to this ideology, particularly as it pragmatically-partners with the pro-Israel right (seeing that Israel plays a useful role in decimating the presence of Jews in Europe and earns its macho stripes in "kicking barbarian ass") against Muslim fundamentalists in an about face from their previous stance against the presence of Jews in the UK. 

To the theodical and eschatological views typical of Hagee, however, perhaps the Jews are seen less within the "trash-to-treasure" spectrum and more along a "wandering, rebellious ram to docile, sacrificial lamb" spectrum. For Hagee, it matters less that the Jews get out of his country and stop being "parasitic" "pests" and more that they stop being so gosh-darn rebellious and proceed to fully populate Israel and the West Bank in order to set the stage for Christian eschatology already (even if it means that there are few rebellious Jews left in North America in his view, or the less, the merrier!).

What do Israelis get out of repatriation (whether it is justified by anti-Semitic or "philo-"Semitic reasons)? They regain their homeland in full, get back the Temple Mount, smooth out the wrinkles caused by the initial Roman kickout of their ancestors nearly 2000 years prior (or get those other tribes’s lost descendants back as genetic citizens, if possible), let the Arab-Israeli dispute settle down somewhat, hope that the European Union can nip the pervasive anti-Judaism meme that caused incidents like the Holocaust in the root, hope that both Christianity and Islam both deservedly grind themselves and each other into dusty minority stubs over their very structures of propagation and expansion, and so on. (Sorry, no Holocaust Part 2: Christian Apocalypse – ed.).

But perhaps there will be an end to the usage of the Jewish people as an object to be carried around. Maybe the Jewish nationalism in Israel will be less propelled (or resisted) in its persistence and will morph into something else (like most nationalisms do after the threat of eminent danger has passed), even as the religion continues among its practitioners and leaders without as much molestation, or becomes subject to another cataclysmic schism within the group. 

EDIT 1/1/2011: Let me also emphasize that one component of this belief – that the Jews are a monolithic people who are destined to be placed in some part of the world at the end of time – also intersects with the study of any nation-state’s own intersection with its own diaspora. Diasporas can be used as couriers and beneficiaries of the homeland state’s own relationship with another state, or they can be rejected by their homeland state’s government due to an antagonistic foreign policy against political exiles. 

 
Thus, if diasporas are seen as "useable" or "disposable" by the home country’s ruling government when they are not resident inside the home country, then such a perception should be judged by observers of human rights as a barometer in terms of that home country’s civil and human rights record, holing just as much validity in terms of observation as the treatment of that same country’s current residents and citizens, immigrants, expatriates, etc. 

More on editing the Jefferson Bible: de-geographization

I edited a copy of Jefferson’s Bible to remove the words "Jews" (replaced with "the people"), "Israel" and "Judaea" (replaced both with "the land"), and "Jerusalem" (replaced with "Great City"). I’m still thinking about replacing other notable cities in Israel with non-descript synonyms.

The reason for that is my recent idea that Christianity’s doctrinal obsessions over Judaism, Israel and Jerusalem are manifested both in anti-Judaic/anti-Semitic and Christian Zionist/apocalyptic extremes, both of which de-humanize the Jews into tools for Christian eschatological machinations; the same treatment is afforded regularly to Israel and its cities, especially Jerusalem. 

In fact, what helped me come to this conclusion is a documentary on Jerusalem syndrome which I watched a long while back. The syndrome, which has been documented by psychologists as happening primarily among both adherents to, and former subscribers to, Christianity in its more established forms and denominations, is an affliction which manifests itself in a number of ways ranging from tripping out (as in coming to the idea that you are a reincarnation of King David) to falling out (as in running around in the street, claiming that you are a prophet for "God’s imminent coming", or trying to blow up the al-Aqsa Mosque in order to hasten the aforementioned eschatological event). 

Perhaps, by removing all explicit references to landforms and extant human settlements in Israel and nearby areas, Jefferson’s Bible can be further removed from the precipice of absent-minded bigotry and inanity which has been occupied by various translations and versions of the New Testament for over a thousand and a half years or more. 

My edit of Jefferson’s Bible is designed, in my opinion, to resemble the Book of Job – sans the supernatural content – in its non-localization; basically, the less that people know of the whereabouts of the land of Uz, the better chance that Christians won’t desire a Crusade to gain it back for Christendom. The same approach should be used for explaining Jesus’ concepts on ethics – that he was simply a guy who lived in such-and-such place who demanded a reform of the ethical system of his culture and pissed off the cultural leaders enough that he was accused of apostasy and was executed. No depiction as a prophet, no virgin birth, no miracles, no blaming a specific extant people and religion for the problems in society, no mentioning of a specific target people. Just the facts and no more.

Furthermore, if neither the Jews nor any part of Israel are mentioned in the New Testament, then perhaps it will finally exempt Judaism’s subscribers and associates from those special "tender mercies" and "caring love" which Christians and ex-Christians, for millenia, have desired to shower upon the Jews in particular (and, with just as much fervor, LGBT people). The Jews won’t be that group of people upon which so much is blamed (issues in Southwest Asia, blood libel, world domination, being too smart – for which I had fallen a few years ago and have yet to shake off – and so on).

It doesn’t mean that I will convert to a customized Christianity or identity as a Christian; too many hangups from years past, so I can never fathom returning to it. I COULD convert to Reform Judaism or anything left of that (the more conservative Judaic denominations tend to wax more authoritarian and chaotic against their members and competing sects), but I fancy the more ancient (semi-)polytheistic – or even (semi-)polyDEistic – folk belief systems, at least more for their ability to not rule out other fellow deities with as much fervor as Abrahamic monotheism.

Of course, if I were to identify with a religion now, I’d say Buddhism mixed with a fondness for Pagan and Neopagan traditions.

But if I’ve only made one contribution to the world for which I can have no regrets, it is to help de-supernaturalize and somewhat de-bigotize the scriptural basis of a religion which holds sway over a sixth of the world’s population. 

Religion, descent and the one-drop rule

This morning, I thought about how religion uses patrilineal or matrilineal descent as a means of indicating whether one has been born into the religion of his or her most immediate ancestor(s), and how, in the case of Judaism and Islam, such stipulations have been contorted by both adherents, non-adherents and detractors from a simple Abrahamic membership inheritance issue into an ethnoracial issue in those societies which observe an Abrahamic religion on a majority basis.

Continue reading Religion, descent and the one-drop rule

Thoughts

  • I’m wondering if there’s a name for a multi-winner election system that only requires that candidates competing in a single district pass a particular percentage threshold of votes to get a seat in the legislature. Of course, this is a core feature of proportional representation forms – usually of the party-list or STV type – but the perception of PR systems is mostly divided over whether to vote for parties or for individuals, as either approach has disadvantages depending upon whether you more respect individual accountability or group accountability to the electoral district’s constituents.
  • Also, I wonder why I see so many mentions of the term "useful Jew" (both by past anti-Semitic regimes and currently by Israeli nationalists) within the context of being a "token" Jew who is used by Judeophobic individuals or groupings in order to give their Judeophobic advocacies some veneer of credibility, but I don’t see as many mentions of the term "useful Zionist" in regards to a Israeli Jewish nationalist who is being bankrolledsupported by American evangelicals so as to bring about an Armageddon beyond which Judaism and the Jewish state, according to Christian eschatology, is not supposed to survive. Of course, the only people who are using the latter term are Judeophobes and Zionophobes to refer to non-Jewish supporters of the Jewish state, or to harp about Zionist "tricknology".

What I realized within the last hour

Foreword: This is a post that will probably be taken very seriously and out-of-context. Please consider that I’m not an anti-semite, nor anti-Israel, nor Judeophobic. I consider this either a psychological issue – or maybe a psychological disorder – or a religious issue. Comments – even trolling comments – are open, as I think that such an obvious and pathetic call for unnecessary attention deserves callous anonymous responses.

This is simply an explanation on a stupid and irrational reaction that has occurred constantly to me for an extended period of time, which I hope to end either now or soon. Please take it as such.
And here we go with a rant…