ACRI: Israeli Racism at Record Highs

The Association of Citizen Rights in Israel published its annual report, in which it claims that Israeli racism is at an all-time high. You can read about in Haaretz here. The report is available in Hebrew here; I couldn't find an English translation of it yet.

The report focuses on various discriminated sectors in the Israeli population, but leading them all, is, of course, the Israeli Palestinians. The report "notes a 26-percent rise in the number of racist incidents against Arabs and twice as many Jews reporting a feeling of hate towards Arabs."

Among Jewish respondents, 55 percent support the idea that the state should encourage Arab emigration from Israel and 78 percent oppose the inclusion of Arab political parties in the government. According to a Haifa University study, 74 percent of Jewish youths in Israel think that Arabs are "unclean."

Actually, I checked that last statistic, because I wanted to see what Hebrew word for "unclean" was used. The Haifa study is from 2004 and covered 1600 high school students in Israel. 69% of the Jewish students think that Arabs are not smart, 75% that they are not educated, 75% that they are not cultured, and 74% that they are not clean (nekiyim). 75% of the students think that they are violent.

According to the ACRI report, studies of Israel media show that Arab citizens are portrayed negatively, as threats, and in a stereotypical fashion.

Apologists for Israel will cite as mitigating factors the ongoing conflict, security concerns, the second intifada and the rocket attacks on Sderot, etc., etc, thus displaying their own racist tendencies to lump together all Arabs (citizens, terrorists, Hamasniks, etc.) in the same category.

The truth is that much of this racism is independent of the security situation, but follows inevitably and inexorably from how most Jews in Israel conceive of the Jewish state. I would like to make this point clear. Not all varieties of Zionism are racist, some are not racist at all; some are blatantly racist, and some are implicitly racist. The political Zionism enshrined in the State of Israel founding dogmas is at best implicitly racist, at worse explicitly and unabashedly racist.

By "racism" here I mean bigotry against a certain ethnic group/people, though not necessarily on purely racial ground.

If you define Israel as a state of the Jewish people, you have excluded non-Jews from the nation belonging to the state, be they "citizens" or not. So it doesn't take a leap of logic to contemplate excluding non-Jewish political parties from the parliament of the Jewish state, especially if they are not willing to mind their place but wish to assert their rights. Liberal talk of a "demographic threat," where the threat is from the citizens of the state, is likewise racist. It is thus not surprising that most of the country suppots the idea that the state should encourage Arab emigration from Israel. I am not saying that this is necessary; if the Arabs knew their place and kept to it, allowing their rights to be trampled upon, then the Israeli Jews would have no difficulty. Israeli racism is not eliminative racism; it allows Palestinians to live and to flourish provided that they know their place and don't get too uppity.

Of course, many Israelis I know really don't mind being called racist, since they see nothing wrong with being racist with respect to Arabs. To ACRI's poll, they will reply, "Big deal." Still, I am told that in Israel and elsewhere there are still Jewish liberals who are troubled by these surveys.

Perhaps they will say that increased racism, like massive violations of human rights, is the troubling, but necessary price to pay for a Jewish ethnic state.

No, Rivkele, The Jews Weren't Driven into Exile by the Romans

"In A.D. 70, and again in 135, the Roman Empire brutally put down Jewish revolts in Judea, destroying Jerusalem, killing hundreds of thousands of Jews and sending hundreds of thousands more into slavery and exile."

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, May 5, 2006

"Well, now: We were expelled from the land and taken into captivity in the year 70 of the Common Era."

Leonard Fein, The Jewish Daily Forward, May 11, 2007–07–23

"After Bar Kochba…Jewish emigration, a more or less permanent feature of ancient Palestinian demography, now assumed alarming proportions."

Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York/Philadelphia, 1952), vol. 2, pp. 122-3.

Despite their ideological differences, what unites columnists like Charles Krauthammer and Leonard Fein, and what distinguishes them from Salo Baron,the greatest historian of the Jews in the twentieth century, is inter alia their acceptance of the myth that the Jews were forcibly expelled from the Land of Israel, and taken into captivity by the Romans. To this day, most lay people, Jews and non-Jews, accept the myth of the exile, whereas no historian, Jew or non-Jew, takes it seriously.

This post will look at the disconnect between popular and scholarly belief and try to examine the origin of the myth several centuries after the event occurred. I will follow pretty closely the first part of a comprehensive article on the subject by Hebrew University professor, Yisrael Yuval, which is available here . Because this article is under copyright, I can’t quote more than a few passages, and so I will just be paraphrasing him. But I urge you to read the article, especially his copious footnotes.

The myth was not invented by the Zionists, although it was greatly used by them, in part, to justify the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland. For the tacit assumption of the Zionists was that if the Jews had left the land willingly, if they had merely “emigrated” because they found opportunities beckoning in the Diaspora, then they would have betrayed their allegiance to the land, and their return would have been less justified. That is one of the reasons why Zionists argued for years that the Palestinians left Palestine of their own free will – if they were forcibly expelled, then somehow their claim to the land would be stronger. Of course, the putative expulsion by the Romans was not the only claim of the Jewish people to the land – many peoples have been exiled from their lands, and the Zionists were not claiming that all of them had a right to return -- but it dovetailed nicely with the historical view of the wandering Jew that finds no rest outside of his native place from which he was expelled.

The first point to make is that well before the revolt against Rome in 66-70 c.e., there were Jewish communities outside Palestine, most notably in Babylonia and in Egypt, but elsewhere as well. References to the dispersal of the Jewish people throughout the civilized world are found in the book of Esther, Josephus, and Philo. There is no indication that these communities were small, satellite communities.

Second, there is no contemporary evidence – i.e., 1st and 2nd centuries c.e. – that anything like an exile took place. The Romans put down two Jewish revolts in 66-70 c.e. and in 132-135 c.e. According to Josephus, the rebels were killed, and many of the Jews died of hunger. Some prisoners were sent to Rome, and others were sold in Libya. But nowhere does Josephus speak of Jews being taken into exile. As we shall see below, there is much evidence to the contrary. There was always Jewish emigration from the Land of Israel, as the quote above from Baron indicates.

The first mention of the exile of the Jews occurs in remarks attributed to the third century Palestinian rabbi, R. Yohanan that are found in the Babylonian Talmud, a work that received its final recension several centuries later (c. 500 c.e.): “Our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt, and we ourselves exiled from our land” (Gittin, 56a). The editor/s of the Talmud referred this statement to the Roman exile. Similar statements can be found elsewhere in the Babylonian Talmud attributing to rabbis living in the Land of Israel the view that the Romans were responsible for the destruction of the House, the burning of the temple, and the exile from the land. But if one examines other Babylonian sources, and most sources from the Land of Israel, the statements most likely refer to the First Temple, and the exile by the Babylonians. There is, after all, something odd in having rabbis living in the Land of Israel bemoaning an exile from the Land of Israel. Yuval summarizes the sources as follows:

“In other words, it seems that the triple expression—destruction of the House, burning of the Temple, exile from the land—originally (in the sources from the Land of Israel) referred to the First Temple and were applied to the Second Temple only in Babylonia.10 In the Tannaitic and early Amoraic sources, Rome is accused only of destroying the Temple, not of exiling the people from their land.11 A broad historical and national outlook, one that viewed the “Exile of Edom” (Rome being identified with the biblical Edom) as a political result of forced expulsion, did not survive from this period. Nor would such a view have been appropriate to the political reality and the conditions of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, which were certainly very well known to the members of that generation.”

In fact, Chaim Milikowsky, professor and past chairman of the Talmud department at Bar Ilan university, has argued that in 2nd and 3rd century tannaitic sources, the Hebrew term rendered as “exile” has the meaning of political subjugation rather than physically being driven from the land (cited in Yuval, p. 19, n.1) This, by the way, dovetails nicely with the Zionist historiography that emphasizes the loss of political independence, rather the physical removal of the Jews from the Land of Israel. For Zionists were somewhat at a loss to explain how Jewish rabbis could create the Mishnah and subsequently the Talmud of the Land of Israel if there was a mass exile.

This much of Yuval’s essay is uncontroversial and based on widely-accepted historiography. What follows is speculative and fits well the general trend of Yuval’s work, which is to see much greater Christian influence on the formation of rabbinic Judaism than has hitherto been recognized. Yuval points out that in early Christian sources, following the failed Bar Kokhba rebellion, there is an attempt to interpret the removal of the Jews from Jerusalem as punishment for the sin of rejecting Christ, and the depletion of the Jewish population of Jerusalem in light of the Biblical prophecies of exile. The Jewish reaction, on his reading, was to emphasize that Jews were still very much in the Land of Israel – which contemporary Jews, for the first time, interpreted to include not merely the Northern Kingdom of Israel, but the entire land. Only later, during Talmudic times, was the Exile from the Land incorporated in Jewish collective memory.

What implications does the exposure of the myth of the Roman Exile have for Zionism, the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, etc., etc. None, in my opinion. It is less important that the Jews were actually carried off into Exile than that they thought they were. The rabbis, and even earlier Jewish scholars, tended to conflate the Babylonian exile with the later loss of independence among the Romans. As a formative moment in Jewish religious consciousness, the destruction of the first temple and the exile was vastly more significant than the destruction of the second temple; some, like Bible scholar Adele Berlin, have argued that parts of the Bible, and maybe even the Torah, were edited in light of the trauma of the Babylonian exile. What this means is that in Jewish (and Christian) consciousness destruction, exile, and return, became significant categories in light of which history was read. If there is any argument for a right to return, it is not based, in the case of the Jews, on being driven out of the land against their will. It is more because of the Land of Israel playing such an important role in the consciousness of many (though not all) Jews. This is a more modest claim than is generally heard; it certainly does not in itself justify Jewish hegemony over Palestine. But it does put on the table the very real connection (imagined or not) between the Jewish people and Palestine. That, to me, is what is reasonable about Zionism.

In the words of J.K. Rowling, just because it is in your head doesn’t mean that it is not real.

Shabbat Nahamu -- Comfort, comfort my people

The motto of this blog is "Not just another Israel-bashing blog" -- but something more.

That "something more" is my Magnesian Zionism, and my love for Am Yisrael, the People of Israel, and, for ha-Am ha-Yisraeli, the Israeli people. For as much as I dislike, even detest, the ideologies and immoralities that swarm around me, I cannot bring myself to dislike my people. And when my gut takes over (like after reading Nahum Barnea's brilliant piece on the Gush Katif evacuees in today's Yediot Aharonot -- yet not available on the web, I think), and I want to demonize the settlers as fantastically spoiled, amazingly chutzpadik leeches, I pull myself short and say, Calm down, they are tinokot she-nishbu, captive children, of a fundamentalist ideology and parisitical mentality that has been the undoing of them. They, like drug addicts, don't need condemnation; they need treatment, patience, and love. And before I throw stones, I should look at the mirror -- have I done enough to fight the settlement movement from Gush Katif to Efrat?

No, a little bit more ahavat Yisrael and ahavat medinat Yisrael (love of the Jewish people, and the State of Israel) is in order and that's what I want to rant about, today.

Has Israel been built with the blood, sweat, and property of millions of innocent Palestinians? Yes it has. And it must make amends and offer restitution. But it has also been built with the blood, sweat, and energies of millions of Jews, inside and outside. And while there are many deep and structural problems with the state that was founded in 1948, there are many worse post-World Was II states than Israel, many more states that perpetuated the same crimes and worse than Israel, and yet are in much worse shape today.

Yes, things are the absolute pits here. But we can be thankful of the little things.

For example, I love Jerusalem -- whatever is left of it after its overbuilding and its ghetto-like, apartheid wall.

I love the quiet neighborhoods, the bustling areas, the amount and quality of kosher food I can eat...

Where but in Jerusalem can you go to a kosher restaurant that doesn't look irredeemably Jewish? Where you look around and the people don't all look like they followed you out of the early minyan (prayer service) at shul?

What other Jewish community in the world gives your daughters at least two shuls in which women read from the Torah AND there is a mehitzah (partition).

What other Jewish community in the world has Jews and Arabs working together to protest injustice and humanity?

What other Jewish community in the world has a DVD rental store like the Third Ear, where you can get alternative indie movies that show you the true face of the Occupation, as well as the complete sets of Simpsons and Seinfeld?

All this is in Israel, and in Jerusalem, the Holy City.

Gershom Gorenberg, the journalist, told me a story that I love to repeat. He was once speaking about Israel before Jews in America, and they were giving him a rough time for his criticisms of Israel. He finally broke down and said, "You know what -- you Jews are the best argument for making aliyah (immigrating) to Israel that I can think of. When I criticize Israel in Israel, nobody bats an eyelash...but when I do it outside of Israel, I am called a self-hating Jew and a traitor."

We Jewish people are in a spiritual malaise. Traumatized by the holocaust, supportive of a state that is still, after sixty years, foundationally racist, and yet has achieved so much....if I didn't believe in the indestructability of the Jewish people -- that the seed of Abraham will never wither away -- I would despair.

But we will prevail. With the help of people of good faith everywhere, and, desperately, with the assistance of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, we shall overcome the malaise. Justice will be served. We will learn from them and from our mistakes. It will take decades, but it will come. I am 53 years old. I compare my generation with that of the younger generation -- things are changing.

One day there will be no more secrets and lies. Books like Dershowitz's Case for Israel and Bard's Myths and Facts will have been banished to their proper place -- dusty bins in second-hand book stores in Boro Park No more refugee camps. No more rusting keys. There will be justice, justice, and peace.

Ma'a salaama

Shabbat Shalom

Jerry

What Hebron Needs is Jews

When will the government evict the people who are masquerading as Jews in Hebron?

According to the reasoning of the Rambam (Maimonides), many of the Hebron settlers are not halakhically Jewish; well, to be precise, one has to suspect their lineage. I say that with respect to the ones who act immorally and cruelly towards their Palestinian neighbors. For whoever acts cruelly, his Jewish lineage is suspect. (Mishneh Torah, Matanot Evyonim 10:2)

When people ask me, "Why shouldn't Jews be allowed to live in Hebron?" my answer is bevakasha, let Jews live in Hebron. But not the pseudo-Jews living there now. And only when it is a Palestinian city in a Palestinian state.

Shabbat Shalom, y'all

Jerry

There are no kosher settlements

You know, back in my (political) Zionist youth, I put down two thousand bucks to join a non-profit organization called, "Reishit Geulah". By doing that I was helping support the creation of a new town on the West Bank, right outside of Jerusalem, called "Efrat".

The year must have been 1978 or something. I remember going to hear Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, then rabbi of the Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York City, make the sales pitch for a model Torah community. At one point, after showing plans for the villas, apartments, shul, etc., a skeptical woman raised her hand and said,

"But Rabbi -- isn't Efrat over the Green Line?"

To which Rabbi Riskin replied

"Efrat is in the consensus -- nobody wants to give it back. It's part of the Etzion bloc. And anyway, we will have good relations with our Arab neighbors."

About a month later, I withdrew from Reishit Geulah and got my two thousand dollars back. They were very prompt about the refund.

The town of Efrat -- arguably the most immoral settlement that Israel has ever constructed on the West Bank (but it's a close race) -- will be the subject of a separate post.

Here I just want to see how Efrat maintains its neighborly relations. Please watch the following video (you have to navigate to the site)

http://mishtara.org/blog/?p=214#more-214

You see in the video a group of Palestinians and Jews protesting the fact that route of the Separation Fence now entails a new path for Efrat's sewage. And the cheapest path is through a grove of apricot trees -- well, what were once apricot trees, until they were cut down. This will destroy the livelihood of the Palestinians who have worked there for generations. No amount of compensation will make up for destroying their livelihood and their way of life. Note the reasonableness of the Palestinian, and the patent unfairness of the setup.

Important! Keep watching the video. You will then see the destruction of the apricot trees to make way for the sewage of Efrat, to the soundtrack of Ana be-khoah.

Now take a few minutes to look at yourself at the mirror and ask yourself, in what way was I responsible for the destruction of the livelihood of an entire village?

Now you will say that this happens all the time in any society. Doesn't the government have the right of eminent domain, which allows it to expropriate land for the common good? The answer is yes, it does, provided certain conditions are fulfilled: a) the government has the consent of the governed and is not an occupying force; b) the public good is not the only the good of the occupier or its own population; c) proper compensation is given.

All three of these conditions were fulfilled in the evacuation of the Gush Katif. Not one of them is fulfilled in the current case.

This is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of injustices that you will never read about in the press. Since you won't read about it, you will think that it does not exist.

Remember, when an Israeli's rights are violated, he can appeal to the Israeli police, the Israeli courts, and to one of the most powerful armies in the world, the Israel Defence Force.

But when a Palestinian's rights are violated, to whom can he appeal? To the same Israeli police, the same Israeli courts, and the same Israel Defence Force -- none of which bodies represents him or his interests.