Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Sidney Bloch returns to South Africa with his teenage son, full of personal guilt for not having done more to resist the racist apartheid regime. He emigrated immediately after completing his medical studies in Cape Town and lived with a guilty feeling of not having done more to resist apartheid and help even his few fellow coloured students in his year.
I saw the film at its world premiere at ACMI and want to cmpliment everyone involved for it.The film is beautifully shot and well edited. I also wanted to comment afterwards when the discussion and question time was organised but I did not get the chance to do so.
Having participated in one of the first international conventions in Johannesburg after Nelson Mandela was freed, but before the ANC was elected in 1991, I commented to one of our hosts at the time that I could not live in such an affluent environment while being surrounded by such massive poverty,- black or white! Her response was: "who are you to talk -is Australia better towards your natives? Are your Aborigines well off in the Centre while you live in comfort in the coastal cities? You live in a democracy. You can do something about it. We lived until recently under a virtual dictatorship,- you will see that we will change. Will you?"
I think that this film is a personal account of one man's conscience at work. I don't believe it can be extrapolated to a general educational viewpoint about being a 'bystander' versus an activist, which is its intention! All systems which are antidemocratic, be it communism, nazism, racism/apartheid, even theocracies, involve rule by force to make the population submit. The individual needs far more courage to desist and resist than we who live in democracies.
We need to protect each others' individual and minorities' human rights,- because we can do so without fear of reprisals,- at least in theory!So what excuse do we as Australians have for the terrible conditions still existing today in the aboriginal communities up North? The film Samson & Delilah portrays it most vividly (& was shown on SBS also tonight).
South Africans can look after themselves now,- I don't think the film really explores the connection to Australia at all and may not be the educational tool which it was intended to be.
As for comparing Sth. African apartheid with any other country,- as some would with Israel, which is so far removed from the truth as to be pure antisemitic and Arab propaganda,- it is only akin to the American segregation of a past era. Nor can it be compared with the Nazi Holocaust of us Jews,- the deliberate program of obliteration of a whole people!
I shall be returning for the next International Council of Jewish Women's Convention in Cape Town, next May, 2010. I am looking forward to see the changes which were portrayed in the film, but as one of the individuals in the film categorically stated,- racism is in all of us! Personally I don't see it as only racism,- I see it as humans tending to 'like the alike'!There is what may be called "snobbishness", e.g. in the level of personal wealth,or there is the "intellectual snobbishness" in the educational field,- every group will have the "in crowd" and those who will be outside it. Dr. Bloch rejected the Afrikaaners outright as being racists & pro-Nazis, until he met his old coleague who accused the Jewish groups at the University of "sticking to themselves",- a common accusation made towards us Jews!
The reality is that we all tend to "stick together" and label others in groups! It is human nature and nurture,- plus experiences!We tend to treat others the way they treat us,- or we avoid those whom we don't understand. Violence begets violence,- at present, violence throughout the world, be it criminal due to 3rd-world poverty,or anti-democratic or terrorist due to religious fanaticism,or sectarian rivalries, etc. this I am afraid is the greatest threat to democracy and the 'rule of law' in our Western world, (including Israel of course, as it is part of the Western democratic system). This is when governments enact more and more draconian laws which impinge on all our personal freedoms,- until we may wake up one day and find ourselves under a totalitarian regime! Then it may be too late to cry 'help'!
We Jews are usually the first to sense the dangers.
N.B. Dr.Bloch fled to Israel first.
There he met his wife to be, an Australian, so he ended up here!
(MM)
Showing posts with label Racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Racism. Show all posts
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Lessons to be learned from Holocaust/Shoa
We are living in a post holocaust period. Yet the threats to the Jews living in the land of Israel are now coming from a fanatical and tyrannical Iran. Yet no one seems overly concerned. We Jews seem to be living in our wonderland, the political leaders can not seem to get together to make a stand against Ahmadinejad and the Iranian nuclear program. The Israeli parliament can't agree on any method of ending the increasing terror on its border and seems each day coming closer to giving the (Arabs) their own government with out seeing any concessions from them.
Are we falling into the trap that the Jews in Europe did some sixty-seventy years earlier?
Why do we not learn from history the horrors that crazy dictators like Ahmadinejad can bring?
http://www.jewishmag.com/135mag/warsaw_ghetto_uprising/warsaw_ghetto_uprising.htm
If we could say that there was a bright spot in the gloomy and somber history of the holocaust, perhaps we could point to the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto.
If in all the dark and disgusting annals of recent history, when Jews were led to murder like sheep let to slaughter, when Jews were tortured for fun, it was the revolt in the Warsaw ghetto.
This alone stands out as a monument to the Jewish ability to resist the Nazi onslaught. Yet I believe that it is precisely in the story of the uprising that the deeper cause of the holocaust can be seen.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the causes of the Holocaust
By N. Shuldig –
July 2009
Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933. His plans were obvious from his speeches and his book, Mein Kampf, first published in, yet we find that the Jews did not seem to be particularly worried or anxious at that time. As Hitler became stronger and bolder and began instituting his laws against the Jews, and allowing atrocities to take place against the Jews, most German Jews felt that this would pass. After all, was not Germany an enlightened country; wasn't Germany one of the first countries to give Jews equal rights; didn't Jews serve in the German Parliament, the Bundestag, and distinguish themselves in the first World War? Jews enjoyed equal rights in Germany from the mid 1800's and participated fully in the nation's affairs.
Yet with all of this goodness bestowed upon them from the previous German governments, 1933 saw the beginning of the oppression of the Jews in Germany. Jewish stores and offices were officially boycotted; Jews were refused work and fired; Jewish children were not welcome in public schools. As the years progressed, the oppression increased. In 1938 Kristallnacht increased the persecution and began a series of wanton killing and confiscation of Jewish properties. It was not until 1941 that Auschwitz was chosen to be the first extermination camp.
(The rest of the article is on the link above)
ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS REQUIRED.
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/AUSSIEHEGMA/WALKFORHARMONY?feat=email#
You are invited to view photo album: WALK FOR HARMONY
Are we falling into the trap that the Jews in Europe did some sixty-seventy years earlier?
Why do we not learn from history the horrors that crazy dictators like Ahmadinejad can bring?
http://www.jewishmag.com/135mag/warsaw_ghetto_uprising/warsaw_ghetto_uprising.htm
If we could say that there was a bright spot in the gloomy and somber history of the holocaust, perhaps we could point to the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto.
If in all the dark and disgusting annals of recent history, when Jews were led to murder like sheep let to slaughter, when Jews were tortured for fun, it was the revolt in the Warsaw ghetto.
This alone stands out as a monument to the Jewish ability to resist the Nazi onslaught. Yet I believe that it is precisely in the story of the uprising that the deeper cause of the holocaust can be seen.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the causes of the Holocaust
By N. Shuldig –
July 2009
Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933. His plans were obvious from his speeches and his book, Mein Kampf, first published in, yet we find that the Jews did not seem to be particularly worried or anxious at that time. As Hitler became stronger and bolder and began instituting his laws against the Jews, and allowing atrocities to take place against the Jews, most German Jews felt that this would pass. After all, was not Germany an enlightened country; wasn't Germany one of the first countries to give Jews equal rights; didn't Jews serve in the German Parliament, the Bundestag, and distinguish themselves in the first World War? Jews enjoyed equal rights in Germany from the mid 1800's and participated fully in the nation's affairs.
Yet with all of this goodness bestowed upon them from the previous German governments, 1933 saw the beginning of the oppression of the Jews in Germany. Jewish stores and offices were officially boycotted; Jews were refused work and fired; Jewish children were not welcome in public schools. As the years progressed, the oppression increased. In 1938 Kristallnacht increased the persecution and began a series of wanton killing and confiscation of Jewish properties. It was not until 1941 that Auschwitz was chosen to be the first extermination camp.
(The rest of the article is on the link above)
ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS REQUIRED.
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/AUSSIEHEGMA/WALKFORHARMONY?feat=email#
You are invited to view photo album: WALK FOR HARMONY
Friday, November 14, 2008
RACISM 60 YEARS AFTER DEFEAT OF NAZISM
NAZI HATE ROCK
On Wednesday, 12 Nov 2008 Australian TV ABC2 showed the above Documentary . Donal MacIntyre investigated the disturbing and secretive world of white power music and how the money made helps fund far right political organisations in many countries, including the British National Party in the UK, whose leader is even now trying to come to Australia to foster race-hatred!
Watching this kind of hate-fest as exposed in the documentary sent shivers down my spine, particularly after watching some of the current crop of excellent 2008 Jewish Film Festival movies about the Shoa.
Our community is so involved with the problems facing Israel that we sometimes forget that out there in the wide world is a growing menace of a resurrection of Nazism, via the use of rock and pop music which appeals to a new and young generation of racists.
Well we may say "never again",- those thugs seem to have other plans! May they never realize them, but we must never drop our guard and vigilance. On the other hand, too often we cry "racism" against everyone who protests when an ethnic minority group or individual claims exemptions from legal or even social obligations (such as dress,or pushing a pedestrian-traffic light on a Sabbath) which apply to all others. Democracy and tolerance does have its limits after all.
Some groups and individuals may be better off to live in theocracies instead of expecting constant privileges on the basis of religious or cultural diversity in our democracies. Objecting or denying sometimes such privileges seems to attract labels of "racism" even if it appears totally fair and acceptable to the majority. It would be better to leave the tags of "racism" to those groups like the above, i.e. racism meaning the "incitement to hatred", instead of it losing its meaning through overuse.
French and other European Jews are making 'alyah' in ever increasing numbers. Even if not permanently residing in Israel, they are investing heavily in apartments which are only used for holidays,- at present. 'Eurabia' they feel, is again no longer as safe as they thought it should be.
See letter and extract of Isi Leibler's review of a book about Scandinavian anti-Semisitism, below.
Yet Avraham Burg in his latest book argues that "the Holocaust is over. We must rise from the ashes."
[MM][
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
French Jews.
[A personal letter which has been widely distributed.]
"Will the world say nothing - again - as it did in Hitler's time? He writes, "I AM A JEW -- therefore I am forwarding this to everyone on all my e-mail lists. I will not sit back and do nothing." Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France: In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil - all recently. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words "Dirty Jew" were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months.
"According to the Police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents PER DAY in the past 30 days. Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas chambers" and "Death to the Jews." A gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop (and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse, France; a Jewish couple in their 20's were beaten up by five men in Villeurbanne, France The woman was pregnant; a Jewish school was broken into and vandalized in Sarcelles, France . This was just in the past week.
"So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a friend, or merely a person with the capacity and desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do, at least, these three simple things:
" First, care enough to stay informed. Don't ever let yourself become deluded into thinking that this is not your fight. I remind you of what Pastor Neimoller said in World War II: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me".
The number one bestselling book in France is...."September 11: The Frightening Fraud," which argues that no plane ever hit the Pentagon.
Brenda H. Mitchell
Executive Assistant to the Rabbis
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nordic exposure
by Isi Leibler
November 9, 2008
http://www.leibler. com/article/ 370
Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews.
Edited by Manfred Gerstenfeld Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/Simon Wiesenthal Center 256 pages; $29
When Scandinavia is mentioned, we instinctively conjure up images of decent people who are our friends. We associate them with the king of Denmark's refusal to implement the Nazi racial laws, the rescue of 7,000 Danish Jews to neutral Sweden and noble humanitarians like Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Hungary who emerged as the role model for Righteous Gentiles. Many of us also remember Per Ahlmark, the former Swedish deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party, who was a stalwart campaigner against anti-Semitism and probably the first non-Jewish statesman to publicly proclaim that hatred of Israel was being exploited as a surrogate for traditional anti-Semitism.
Yet regrettably, this beatific image of philo-Semitic Scandinavians is a far cry from reality. Despite the presence of only minuscule Jewish communities in the region, Scandinavian countries are today at the forefront of promoting the most vicious expressions of the new anti-Semitism and are at the vanguard of the global campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel. What makes their application of double standards and virulent bias grate even more is the sanctimonious manner in which they cloak their venom against the Jewish state and Jews in general.
(Extract only)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Book review 2. "The Holocaust is over. We must rise from the Ashes."
"Avraham Burg: Israel's new prophet?
Avraham Burg was a pillar of the Israeli establishment but his new
book is causing a sensation. It argues that his country is an "abused
child" which has become a "violent parent". And his solutions are
radical, as he explains to Donald Macintyre
Saturday, 1 November 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/avraham-burg-israels-new-prophet-979732.html
On Wednesday, 12 Nov 2008 Australian TV ABC2 showed the above Documentary . Donal MacIntyre investigated the disturbing and secretive world of white power music and how the money made helps fund far right political organisations in many countries, including the British National Party in the UK, whose leader is even now trying to come to Australia to foster race-hatred!
Watching this kind of hate-fest as exposed in the documentary sent shivers down my spine, particularly after watching some of the current crop of excellent 2008 Jewish Film Festival movies about the Shoa.
Our community is so involved with the problems facing Israel that we sometimes forget that out there in the wide world is a growing menace of a resurrection of Nazism, via the use of rock and pop music which appeals to a new and young generation of racists.
Well we may say "never again",- those thugs seem to have other plans! May they never realize them, but we must never drop our guard and vigilance. On the other hand, too often we cry "racism" against everyone who protests when an ethnic minority group or individual claims exemptions from legal or even social obligations (such as dress,or pushing a pedestrian-traffic light on a Sabbath) which apply to all others. Democracy and tolerance does have its limits after all.
Some groups and individuals may be better off to live in theocracies instead of expecting constant privileges on the basis of religious or cultural diversity in our democracies. Objecting or denying sometimes such privileges seems to attract labels of "racism" even if it appears totally fair and acceptable to the majority. It would be better to leave the tags of "racism" to those groups like the above, i.e. racism meaning the "incitement to hatred", instead of it losing its meaning through overuse.
French and other European Jews are making 'alyah' in ever increasing numbers. Even if not permanently residing in Israel, they are investing heavily in apartments which are only used for holidays,- at present. 'Eurabia' they feel, is again no longer as safe as they thought it should be.
See letter and extract of Isi Leibler's review of a book about Scandinavian anti-Semisitism, below.
Yet Avraham Burg in his latest book argues that "the Holocaust is over. We must rise from the ashes."
[MM][
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
French Jews.
[A personal letter which has been widely distributed.]
"Will the world say nothing - again - as it did in Hitler's time? He writes, "I AM A JEW -- therefore I am forwarding this to everyone on all my e-mail lists. I will not sit back and do nothing." Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France: In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil - all recently. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words "Dirty Jew" were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months.
"According to the Police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents PER DAY in the past 30 days. Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas chambers" and "Death to the Jews." A gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop (and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse, France; a Jewish couple in their 20's were beaten up by five men in Villeurbanne, France The woman was pregnant; a Jewish school was broken into and vandalized in Sarcelles, France . This was just in the past week.
"So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a friend, or merely a person with the capacity and desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do, at least, these three simple things:
" First, care enough to stay informed. Don't ever let yourself become deluded into thinking that this is not your fight. I remind you of what Pastor Neimoller said in World War II: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me".
The number one bestselling book in France is...."September 11: The Frightening Fraud," which argues that no plane ever hit the Pentagon.
Brenda H. Mitchell
Executive Assistant to the Rabbis
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nordic exposure
by Isi Leibler
November 9, 2008
http://www.leibler. com/article/ 370
Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews.
Edited by Manfred Gerstenfeld Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/Simon Wiesenthal Center 256 pages; $29
When Scandinavia is mentioned, we instinctively conjure up images of decent people who are our friends. We associate them with the king of Denmark's refusal to implement the Nazi racial laws, the rescue of 7,000 Danish Jews to neutral Sweden and noble humanitarians like Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Hungary who emerged as the role model for Righteous Gentiles. Many of us also remember Per Ahlmark, the former Swedish deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party, who was a stalwart campaigner against anti-Semitism and probably the first non-Jewish statesman to publicly proclaim that hatred of Israel was being exploited as a surrogate for traditional anti-Semitism.
Yet regrettably, this beatific image of philo-Semitic Scandinavians is a far cry from reality. Despite the presence of only minuscule Jewish communities in the region, Scandinavian countries are today at the forefront of promoting the most vicious expressions of the new anti-Semitism and are at the vanguard of the global campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel. What makes their application of double standards and virulent bias grate even more is the sanctimonious manner in which they cloak their venom against the Jewish state and Jews in general.
(Extract only)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Book review 2. "The Holocaust is over. We must rise from the Ashes."
"Avraham Burg: Israel's new prophet?
Avraham Burg was a pillar of the Israeli establishment but his new
book is causing a sensation. It argues that his country is an "abused
child" which has become a "violent parent". And his solutions are
radical, as he explains to Donald Macintyre
Saturday, 1 November 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/avraham-burg-israels-new-prophet-979732.html
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
WHAT’S IN A DRESS CODE ? Bare or burkha?
Baring it all or covering up,- is that the question for women of the world today?
I recently read a newspaper article by an Australian journalist who after traveling for a couple of weeks through Morocco where she wore loose clothing masking her body shape to conform with the local customs where women were totally covered up,- she then returned to Italy to find herself being taken aback by the open sexuality which is normal in that country. The contrast suddenly made her feel almost prudish and she wondered whether to return to wearing her usual figure-hugging jeans!
Questioning the Islamic way of covering up their women,- from just the hair, to almost totally as in Afghanistan,- whether it is a liberating experience or a form of enslavement for the women, the journalist was trying to justify those burkha-clad women who claimed that they prefer their dress code to the Western one. This is where we start to go from one extreme to the other. Head coverings,- whether with wigs or scarves or saris,- are common in many cultures. Observant orthodox Jewish women, moderate Moslem women, as well as many religious sects in many countries, will traditionally cover their hair in some fashion, while also dressing modestly to cover-up most of their figures. These women will often claim to make a “statement” through this form of dress,- i.e. they openly declare their faith or culture to the world at large. But if someone doesn't like this form of dress, they should be able to declare their dislike without being labelled "anti-Semitic" or just "racist".We all have freedom of choice in a democracy, including the likes and dislikes of other people's form of dress, particularly in public places of employment.
The rest of women’s attire should also reflect the traditions of the country in which they live, not the one from which they or their previous generations may have originated. For example, covering up of women in Sharia-Islamic countries seems to be not a matter of choice but of strict official control. Where there is no freedom of choice it is obviously a form of subservience for the women at the behest of their patriarchal and theocratic societies. The men must become totally lascivious as a result of not seeing any other female forms except their own families in their own homes’ - unless they travel to the West (or frequent brothels, which probably abound aplenty in those countries)! With polygamy allowed and practiced under Sharia law in many Islamic countries, not to mention child-brides and so called “honour killings” if any female even dares to question her fate, it is no wonder those men want to maintain their hegemony over their womenfolk.
One reads of frequent rapes in such countries which on top of it, are then blamed on the poor female victims because “she must have asked for it”! There is in addition, still the barbaric slave trade where young girls are sold by their poverty-stricken families in many third-world countries, while the trafficking of women and girls is a growing menace in most parts of the world. Most of these archaic trades in human lives are happening in countries where women are kept covered up from head to toe, in public.
DRESS FOR RESPECT.
Such covering-up of females in Western societies is totally uncalled-for and should be also unacceptable for those who immigrate from other cultures.. This does not mean that some amount of self-control should not be exercised even in our cultures in the democratic West, by choosing the appropriate form of dress to suit the climate, the environment in which one finds oneself and respect for the effect one’s attire has on others. Flaunting one’s bodily assets in public by the very young, is not a sign of freedom of expression in appearance but an attention-seeker, while a more mature approach requires a modicum of common sense. The former may attract perhaps some unwanted attention, while the latter should command respect
As they say “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”,- unless a woman wants to draw attention to herself. Then she must ask herself,- what is the kind of attention that she seeks.By avoiding the extremes, no one will question her,- but the wrong dress on the wrong person in the wrong place may have unpleasant consequences! Women, particularly the young don’t have to go the extreme of baring it all, nor covering up in burkhas in our Western democracies. Our men have to learn self-control and our women, independent self-respect.
MM
I recently read a newspaper article by an Australian journalist who after traveling for a couple of weeks through Morocco where she wore loose clothing masking her body shape to conform with the local customs where women were totally covered up,- she then returned to Italy to find herself being taken aback by the open sexuality which is normal in that country. The contrast suddenly made her feel almost prudish and she wondered whether to return to wearing her usual figure-hugging jeans!
Questioning the Islamic way of covering up their women,- from just the hair, to almost totally as in Afghanistan,- whether it is a liberating experience or a form of enslavement for the women, the journalist was trying to justify those burkha-clad women who claimed that they prefer their dress code to the Western one. This is where we start to go from one extreme to the other. Head coverings,- whether with wigs or scarves or saris,- are common in many cultures. Observant orthodox Jewish women, moderate Moslem women, as well as many religious sects in many countries, will traditionally cover their hair in some fashion, while also dressing modestly to cover-up most of their figures. These women will often claim to make a “statement” through this form of dress,- i.e. they openly declare their faith or culture to the world at large. But if someone doesn't like this form of dress, they should be able to declare their dislike without being labelled "anti-Semitic" or just "racist".We all have freedom of choice in a democracy, including the likes and dislikes of other people's form of dress, particularly in public places of employment.
The rest of women’s attire should also reflect the traditions of the country in which they live, not the one from which they or their previous generations may have originated. For example, covering up of women in Sharia-Islamic countries seems to be not a matter of choice but of strict official control. Where there is no freedom of choice it is obviously a form of subservience for the women at the behest of their patriarchal and theocratic societies. The men must become totally lascivious as a result of not seeing any other female forms except their own families in their own homes’ - unless they travel to the West (or frequent brothels, which probably abound aplenty in those countries)! With polygamy allowed and practiced under Sharia law in many Islamic countries, not to mention child-brides and so called “honour killings” if any female even dares to question her fate, it is no wonder those men want to maintain their hegemony over their womenfolk.
One reads of frequent rapes in such countries which on top of it, are then blamed on the poor female victims because “she must have asked for it”! There is in addition, still the barbaric slave trade where young girls are sold by their poverty-stricken families in many third-world countries, while the trafficking of women and girls is a growing menace in most parts of the world. Most of these archaic trades in human lives are happening in countries where women are kept covered up from head to toe, in public.
DRESS FOR RESPECT.
Such covering-up of females in Western societies is totally uncalled-for and should be also unacceptable for those who immigrate from other cultures.. This does not mean that some amount of self-control should not be exercised even in our cultures in the democratic West, by choosing the appropriate form of dress to suit the climate, the environment in which one finds oneself and respect for the effect one’s attire has on others. Flaunting one’s bodily assets in public by the very young, is not a sign of freedom of expression in appearance but an attention-seeker, while a more mature approach requires a modicum of common sense. The former may attract perhaps some unwanted attention, while the latter should command respect
As they say “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”,- unless a woman wants to draw attention to herself. Then she must ask herself,- what is the kind of attention that she seeks.By avoiding the extremes, no one will question her,- but the wrong dress on the wrong person in the wrong place may have unpleasant consequences! Women, particularly the young don’t have to go the extreme of baring it all, nor covering up in burkhas in our Western democracies. Our men have to learn self-control and our women, independent self-respect.
MM
Saturday, March 24, 2007
ANTISEMITISM: new and old racism,-if it's bad for the Jews it's bad for everyone!
About Stanley Fish
Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Mr. Fish has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 10 books.
March 4, 2007, 9:36 pm
Is It Good for the Jews?
When I was growing up in the ’40s and ’50s, a single question was asked in my neighborhood of every piece of news, large or small, local or national: “Is it good for the Jews?” We have now learned to identify this question in all of its versions – Is it good for the Catholics? Is it good for the Latinos? Is it good for the gays? and on and on – as the paradigmatic question of identity politics, the politics that is derived not from some general, even universal, assertion of what is good, but from a particularized concern with insular interests. Is it good for us, for those of our kind, for our tribe?A community in which this question is central and even natural will be a community with a sense of its own precariousness. (No one ever asks, is it good for the white, male, Anglo-Saxon graduates of Princeton; it’s always good for them.)
Its members will think of themselves as perpetually under assault (even if the assault never comes), and as the likely victims of acts of discrimination and exclusion. (“No Irish need apply.”) As a result it will turn inward and present to the outside world a united and fiercely defensive face. It will be informed and haunted by a conviction that no matter how well things may seem to be going, it is only a matter of time before there is a knock on the door and someone comes in and takes it all away.
By all the available evidence, formal and informal, precariousness does not mark the situation of the Jewish community today, at least not in this country. Whether the measure is education, wealth, ownership of property, influence in the corridors of power, prominence in the professions, or accomplishments in the arts, Jews in the United States are visible and successful to a degree that is remarkable given their relatively small numbers (around 2 percent of the population). Yet as Professor Charles Small of Yale University reports, “Increasingly, Jewish communities around the world feel under threat,” and there are some Jews in this country who share this feeling, not because they are themselves threatened (although that does occasionally happen), but because they fear – in the spirit of Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” or Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” – that what is happening elsewhere may soon happen here.
Why should they think that? Part of the answer is to be found in the relationship between three words – Israel, Iraq and anti-Semitism. Much of the world has been opposed to the Iraq war from its beginning, and now after four years 70 percent of Americans share the world’s opinion. Some who deplore the war believe that those who got us into it and cheered it on did so, at least in part, out of a desire to improve Israel’s position in the Middle East. Those who hold this view (and of course there are other analyses of the war’s origins) fear that the same people – with names like Wolfowitz, Pearle, Feith, Abrams, Kristol, Kagan, Krauthammer, Wurmser, Libby and Lieberman – are pushing for a strike against Iran, arguably a greater threat to Israel than Iraq ever was. Why, they ask, should our foreign policy be held hostage to the interests of a small country that is perfectly capable of defending itself and is guilty of treating the Palestinians, whose land it appropriated, in ways that are undemocratic and even, in the opinion of many, criminal?
A now famous answer to this question was given a year ago in the title of an article in the London Review of Books written by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt: “The Israel Lobby.” Mearsheimer and Walt contend that American Middle East policy “derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby,’” which they describe as an incredibly powerful “coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.” The goal of the coalition, they assert, is to get “America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power,” and so successful has it been that “the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.”So there you have it. The war was a huge mistake and is causing us no end of trouble at home and in the world at large. The lobby that led us into it is “a de facto agent for a foreign government” – Israel. Members of that lobby are largely, though not exclusively, Jewish.
And that’s where the anti-Semitism comes in. Or does it? One reason the lobby is “immune from criticism,” Mearsheimer and Walt explain, is that criticism, when it appears, is always re-described as anti-Semitism, and “anti-Semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.” Their point, and it has been made by many, is that there is no reason to assume that those who criticize Israel and argue that America’s uncritical support for a flawed state is strategically unwise and morally wrong are anti-Semitic. Maybe so, but there is some empirical evidence to the contrary. Charles Small and his Yale colleague Edward Kaplan have recently published an article in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the title of which also tells its own story: “Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe.” What Small and Kaplan find is that “Those with extreme anti-Israel sentiment are roughly six times more likely to harbor anti-Semitic views than those who do not fault Israel on the measures studied, and among those respondents deeply critical of Israel, the fraction that harbors anti-Semitic views exceeds 50 percent.” The authors conclude that, “even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors,” “anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is anti-Semitic” and will say things like “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind” or “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country” or “Jews have too much power in international financial markets.” Small and Kaplan are careful to disclaim any causal implications that might be drawn from their analysis: they are not saying that anti-Semitism produces opposition to Israel or that opposition to Israel produces anti-Semitism, only that the two attitudes will more often than not be found in the same individual: scratch an opponent of Israel and you are likely – 56 percent of the time – to find an anti-Semite.
This does suggest that if opposition to Israel increases, there will be an increase in anti-Semitism because the population of the 56 percenters will be larger. Is this something Jews, even Jews living in the United States, should be apprehensive about? The answer to that question will depend on whether you think that there is a meaningful distinction to be made between the “old” and the “new” anti-Semitism. Old anti-Semitism, according to Brian Klug of Oxford University, is based on a hostility to and fear of “the Jew” as an alien and demonic figure. In this ancient and much retailed story, Klug tells us, in an article in Catalyst magazine last year, subhuman Jews wander from country to country and “form a state within a state, preying on the societies in whose midst they dwell.” This is the anti-Semitism that came to full and disastrous flower in Nazi Germany.The new anti-Semitism, in contrast, Klug continues, is rooted not in a hostility to “the Jew” as a vampire-like destroyer of cultures, but “in the controversial nature of the State of Israel and its policies.” As such, “it is not a mutation of an existing ‘virus,’ but a brand new ‘bug.’” That is to say, its origin is political rather than racial, and there is at least a chance that if its political source were removed – if Israel’s policies were to change – its force would abate.
So there you have two stories: anti-Semitism is on the rise and it’s time to get out those “Never Again” signs. Or, it’s not anti-Semitism in the old virulent sense, but a rational, if problematic, response by Middle East actors and their supporters in the West to what they see as “an oppressive occupying force”; don’t take it personally. I understand this second story, and appreciate its nuance, but I can’t bring myself to accept it, if only because I believe that the viral version of anti-Semitism is always capable of regaining its full and deadly form even when it is apparently dormant or weakened. All it needs is a pretext, and any pretext will do. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t exist, it would attach itself to something else; but it does exist, and anti-Semitism couldn’t be happier. Because I think this way, I can imagine a time in the not-so-distant future when American Jews might feel precarious once again. There is a certain irrationality to this imagining, given that at this moment, I am sitting in a very nice house in Delray Beach, Fla., and taking advantage of the opportunity afforded me by The New York Times to have my say on anything I like every Monday. And in a few months I will repair to an equally nice house in the upstate New York town of Andes, where I will be engaging in the same pleasurable activity.
Sounds like a good life, and it is. So why am I entertaining fantasies of being dispossessed or discriminated against or even threatened?Part of the answer lies in the fact that I spend much of my time in colleges and universities, where anti-Israel sentiment flourishes and is regarded more or less as a default position. And I have seen (with apologies to Shelley) that when hostility to Israel comes, anti-Semitism is not far behind. But the deeper explanation of my apprehension is generational. One of my closest friends and I agree on almost everything, but we part company on this question. He tells, and believes, the “criticism of Israel is one thing, anti-Semitism another” story.
I hear it, but I can’t buy it. He is 10 years my junior. I remember World War II. By the time he was born it was history. Maybe it’s that simple.
Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Mr. Fish has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 10 books.
March 4, 2007, 9:36 pm
Is It Good for the Jews?
When I was growing up in the ’40s and ’50s, a single question was asked in my neighborhood of every piece of news, large or small, local or national: “Is it good for the Jews?” We have now learned to identify this question in all of its versions – Is it good for the Catholics? Is it good for the Latinos? Is it good for the gays? and on and on – as the paradigmatic question of identity politics, the politics that is derived not from some general, even universal, assertion of what is good, but from a particularized concern with insular interests. Is it good for us, for those of our kind, for our tribe?A community in which this question is central and even natural will be a community with a sense of its own precariousness. (No one ever asks, is it good for the white, male, Anglo-Saxon graduates of Princeton; it’s always good for them.)
Its members will think of themselves as perpetually under assault (even if the assault never comes), and as the likely victims of acts of discrimination and exclusion. (“No Irish need apply.”) As a result it will turn inward and present to the outside world a united and fiercely defensive face. It will be informed and haunted by a conviction that no matter how well things may seem to be going, it is only a matter of time before there is a knock on the door and someone comes in and takes it all away.
By all the available evidence, formal and informal, precariousness does not mark the situation of the Jewish community today, at least not in this country. Whether the measure is education, wealth, ownership of property, influence in the corridors of power, prominence in the professions, or accomplishments in the arts, Jews in the United States are visible and successful to a degree that is remarkable given their relatively small numbers (around 2 percent of the population). Yet as Professor Charles Small of Yale University reports, “Increasingly, Jewish communities around the world feel under threat,” and there are some Jews in this country who share this feeling, not because they are themselves threatened (although that does occasionally happen), but because they fear – in the spirit of Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here” or Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” – that what is happening elsewhere may soon happen here.
Why should they think that? Part of the answer is to be found in the relationship between three words – Israel, Iraq and anti-Semitism. Much of the world has been opposed to the Iraq war from its beginning, and now after four years 70 percent of Americans share the world’s opinion. Some who deplore the war believe that those who got us into it and cheered it on did so, at least in part, out of a desire to improve Israel’s position in the Middle East. Those who hold this view (and of course there are other analyses of the war’s origins) fear that the same people – with names like Wolfowitz, Pearle, Feith, Abrams, Kristol, Kagan, Krauthammer, Wurmser, Libby and Lieberman – are pushing for a strike against Iran, arguably a greater threat to Israel than Iraq ever was. Why, they ask, should our foreign policy be held hostage to the interests of a small country that is perfectly capable of defending itself and is guilty of treating the Palestinians, whose land it appropriated, in ways that are undemocratic and even, in the opinion of many, criminal?
A now famous answer to this question was given a year ago in the title of an article in the London Review of Books written by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt: “The Israel Lobby.” Mearsheimer and Walt contend that American Middle East policy “derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby,’” which they describe as an incredibly powerful “coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.” The goal of the coalition, they assert, is to get “America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power,” and so successful has it been that “the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.”So there you have it. The war was a huge mistake and is causing us no end of trouble at home and in the world at large. The lobby that led us into it is “a de facto agent for a foreign government” – Israel. Members of that lobby are largely, though not exclusively, Jewish.
And that’s where the anti-Semitism comes in. Or does it? One reason the lobby is “immune from criticism,” Mearsheimer and Walt explain, is that criticism, when it appears, is always re-described as anti-Semitism, and “anti-Semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.” Their point, and it has been made by many, is that there is no reason to assume that those who criticize Israel and argue that America’s uncritical support for a flawed state is strategically unwise and morally wrong are anti-Semitic. Maybe so, but there is some empirical evidence to the contrary. Charles Small and his Yale colleague Edward Kaplan have recently published an article in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the title of which also tells its own story: “Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe.” What Small and Kaplan find is that “Those with extreme anti-Israel sentiment are roughly six times more likely to harbor anti-Semitic views than those who do not fault Israel on the measures studied, and among those respondents deeply critical of Israel, the fraction that harbors anti-Semitic views exceeds 50 percent.” The authors conclude that, “even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors,” “anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is anti-Semitic” and will say things like “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind” or “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country” or “Jews have too much power in international financial markets.” Small and Kaplan are careful to disclaim any causal implications that might be drawn from their analysis: they are not saying that anti-Semitism produces opposition to Israel or that opposition to Israel produces anti-Semitism, only that the two attitudes will more often than not be found in the same individual: scratch an opponent of Israel and you are likely – 56 percent of the time – to find an anti-Semite.
This does suggest that if opposition to Israel increases, there will be an increase in anti-Semitism because the population of the 56 percenters will be larger. Is this something Jews, even Jews living in the United States, should be apprehensive about? The answer to that question will depend on whether you think that there is a meaningful distinction to be made between the “old” and the “new” anti-Semitism. Old anti-Semitism, according to Brian Klug of Oxford University, is based on a hostility to and fear of “the Jew” as an alien and demonic figure. In this ancient and much retailed story, Klug tells us, in an article in Catalyst magazine last year, subhuman Jews wander from country to country and “form a state within a state, preying on the societies in whose midst they dwell.” This is the anti-Semitism that came to full and disastrous flower in Nazi Germany.The new anti-Semitism, in contrast, Klug continues, is rooted not in a hostility to “the Jew” as a vampire-like destroyer of cultures, but “in the controversial nature of the State of Israel and its policies.” As such, “it is not a mutation of an existing ‘virus,’ but a brand new ‘bug.’” That is to say, its origin is political rather than racial, and there is at least a chance that if its political source were removed – if Israel’s policies were to change – its force would abate.
So there you have two stories: anti-Semitism is on the rise and it’s time to get out those “Never Again” signs. Or, it’s not anti-Semitism in the old virulent sense, but a rational, if problematic, response by Middle East actors and their supporters in the West to what they see as “an oppressive occupying force”; don’t take it personally. I understand this second story, and appreciate its nuance, but I can’t bring myself to accept it, if only because I believe that the viral version of anti-Semitism is always capable of regaining its full and deadly form even when it is apparently dormant or weakened. All it needs is a pretext, and any pretext will do. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t exist, it would attach itself to something else; but it does exist, and anti-Semitism couldn’t be happier. Because I think this way, I can imagine a time in the not-so-distant future when American Jews might feel precarious once again. There is a certain irrationality to this imagining, given that at this moment, I am sitting in a very nice house in Delray Beach, Fla., and taking advantage of the opportunity afforded me by The New York Times to have my say on anything I like every Monday. And in a few months I will repair to an equally nice house in the upstate New York town of Andes, where I will be engaging in the same pleasurable activity.
Sounds like a good life, and it is. So why am I entertaining fantasies of being dispossessed or discriminated against or even threatened?Part of the answer lies in the fact that I spend much of my time in colleges and universities, where anti-Israel sentiment flourishes and is regarded more or less as a default position. And I have seen (with apologies to Shelley) that when hostility to Israel comes, anti-Semitism is not far behind. But the deeper explanation of my apprehension is generational. One of my closest friends and I agree on almost everything, but we part company on this question. He tells, and believes, the “criticism of Israel is one thing, anti-Semitism another” story.
I hear it, but I can’t buy it. He is 10 years my junior. I remember World War II. By the time he was born it was history. Maybe it’s that simple.
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