in the immortal words of the lgf crew, “gaze at the troll.”

I doubt it will be the last word though it is informative. There will always be word games played around the subject. I, myself, dislike Israel for what it does. When I’m accused of anti-Semitism I have, in the past, been tempted to describe myself as anti-Zionist. But really I have no problem with either Jews identifying with each other as a group or Jewish people living in any particular place, Israel or otherwise.
Personal violence directed at anyone is always disturbing. What has been happening in France, in particular, and around the world in general, is contemptable. Living in Toronto, as I did for years, I often saw billboards and signs posted about the city and in front of Jewish institutions calling for support of Israel and endorsing travel and immigration to Israel. Seeing a picture of a blond haired blue eyed man contemplatively looking out at the Mediterranean Sea with the slogan “You Know You Belong There” tempted me to consider vandalism. Burning a Synagogue down is a ridiculous, unjustifiable criminal length to go to. I do wonder what the object or target of some of these acts was meant to be (not as a justification but as a contextualization of the act).
I did think that Klug’s article missed the opportunity to view the fact of the world-wide increase in anti-Semitism against the situation post September eleventh where all forms and manifestations of racism have run rampant.
Also, I feel he leaves hanging the bizarre insinuation that in making a direct statement condemning Israel without itemizing all other condemnable acts around the world is an act of anti-Semitism; Rome wasn’t dismantled in a day.

Like the South African apartheid regime, Israel must be forced to answer to these injustices. Sorry folks, I know this may be an unpopular viewpoint on this site so I’ll appologize in advance and just remark that I don’t wish to hurt anyones feelings. I do, however, know that this is an issue that will not go away and the longer that it continues to linger the worse it will become.

I am certainly not offended at all. Nor do I see the quote [because you haven’t provided it] where I said that “the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland should not be allowed to continue to exist.” However, even if I did say that, for the sake of argument, or something to that effect, I think the notion that it is antisemtic is still symptimatic of the kind of leap in logic that this article talks about.
I really just think this is a sad state of affairs and it becomes even sadder when the only argument that can lauched is that of antisemitism. It simply is not true for a vast majority, though not all, of the people who struggle on the side of the Palestinians. Call me anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-racist, anti-zionist, anti-sexist but please, refrain from saying that which simply is not true and do not call me an antisemite.

The(A)utonomist wants to get rid of arafat – too white.

Further: The assertion that “No one tries to help the Kurds” is simply false. Certainly western media ignore their plight and the lack of openess in places like Syria impinges on the sort of synergies that the Palestinian cause exploits.
Turkey, in spite of its long running oppression of the Kurds, has moved toward enfranchisment of their Kurdish minority in their system of government. Should the pursuit of the establishment of racially, ethnically or religiously discrete states be our objective? That assumption flies in the face of my own democratic idealism.
In spite of the token trappings of authority extended to the Palestinians the residents of the Israeli occupied territories live under the direct rule of the Israeli government without representation to that government. I beleive that this is a decided policy of Israel maintained to facilitate the ongoing colonisation of the territories that the Palestinians there would, in all likelyhood, if afforded enfranchisement in Israeli democracy, confound.
(Make no mistake:if there is something anti-Semitic in these ideas I’d like to understand how or why.)

t (you remember him hes the anti semite, the coward, the fool)now has decided hes against religiously discrete states (of course israel, while a jewish state, allow full religious freedom and rights to all): funny t hastnt told us of the boycotts hes organizing against jordan and saudi arabia (citizenship only allowed to muslims, in saudi arabia bans all non muslim worship); against the putative state of palestine (a declared muslim state); against nigeria (where muslim law, including stoning to death of women rape victim whose “purity” is thus sullied) has been imposed on muslims and christains in 1/2 the country…need we go on. so the cowardly t might say he objects to these practices, BUT WHERE ARE THE MARCHES HES ORGANIZING TO DIVEST AND BOYCOTT SUCH NATIONS? thats what makes t an anti semite. hes a coward because he refuses to post his email address. hes a fool because only a fool or a member of the kkk would attempt to defend such a bigoted, biased, disgusting anti israeli position.

(a)–yeah, the article’s a month old, but it’s just become the cover story of the nation that’s on newsstands now.

haha — you’re telling me to leave a thread on my own website. that’s rich.

oh avi, read maariv today?

oops..thought you temporarily changed your name to T for some reason – anyway (A) if you haven’t seen it -> think you would like the movie slc punk

I’m glad I’ve sparked so much debate. I just want to clarify a couple of things. I had two main points that got lost in my post. First, was that “the new antisemitism” has inadvertent roots. Well meaning critics of Israel go too far, which can inspire other, less well informed people to form a general, irrational dislike of Israel. See almost any major US university. While these critics don’t mean to be antisemitic, they become so through their action.
My second point was that the forum where things are discussed is important. If we were having a discussion in a cafe in Jerusalem (My heart is in the east, and I am only on the East Coast) that would be very different than a divestment rally at NYU. Basically, it’s the difference between constructive criticism and calls to war.
T, you make some interesting arguments, but I have to take issue with your view on the “You belong here” poster. This is and advertisement by a Jewish institution (the state of Israel) to get Jews to take the positive action of moving there, or at least visiting. I would have no problem with the Palestinians buying the same advertisement in a heavily Palestinian neighborhood of Baghdad or Amman. Also, the fact that Israel is democratic is exactly the reason things like divestment are so wrong. Unlike most of my fellow peaceniks I have not given up hope. But as a Zionist I know antisemitism when I see it, and I think Zionism (i.e. Zion i.e. the modern State of Israel) is the solution.
Moreover, you cannot deny that there is some rabid antisemitism associate with the anti-Zionist movement. If you’ve watched rallies, there are always some swastikas. Also, there is a story of a Rabbi being excluded from anti-war protests (against the war in Iraq) because one of the sponsoring groups vetoed him for making pro-Israel comments. And then of course there is Holocaust denial. As far as I’m concerned that’s always antisemitic.

that antisemites (who have and likely will always exist) take advtange of anti-Zionist discourse, does not, in any way, negate the validity of anti-Zionist criticisms, nor their importance.
that’s like saying you won’t put white sheets on your bed because the klu klux klan wears them.

Good point mo1! To be anti-Zionist is not in and of itself to be anti-Semitic and I indeed admit that, deplorably, some anti-Zionists are also anti-Semitic, probably in the same way that some people who were against Apartheid may have been racists against all whites. However, in my opinion, that still did not change the fact that divestment from South Africa and the eventual collapse of the Apartheid regime was not a just historical occurrence.

To be anti-Zionist is not in and of itself to be anti-Semitic
It depends on what you meant by Zionist, of course. My Zionism only really has three postulates:
– that Jews form a people;
– that that people’s origin is in Israel;
– that that people has the same right to self-determination as any other.
In my book, only these postulates are necessary to Zionism; anything else — say, oh, occupation of West Bank and Gaza, or privileged political status for Jews — is politics about which Zionism holds no necessary position. (To “privileged political status for Jews” I oppose the state’s special responsibility to the Jewish people as a national group. Which is certainly not the same thing and, indeed, how democratic nation-states function.)
I don’t know what “anti-Zionism” means. But when people explain that Jews aren’t really a people; or don’t really have roots in the Middle East; or don’t have the same rights as other peoples — yes, I think that each of those assertions is antisemitic, by which I mean racist.
Now, if folks want to discuss the link between Zionism and actually-existing politics — like, say, how do you reconcile Jews’ right to self-determination with the equal rights of Palestinians? — then that’s, obviously, an important discussion. It’s not anti-Zionism, because it doesn’t sit claiming that Jews have no right to self-determination. It’s criticism of Israeli policy and politics. Which is something quite different.
(As an aside, the constant reference to “apartheid” rankles because, obviously, the sly implication is that, like the WHites of South Africa, the Jews of Israel are latecomers and new arrivals to the region. It comes off as a racist attempt to deny Jewish history and Jewish peoplehood.
On the other hand, if someone were truly passionate about the segregation of people by ethnic or racial origin — unlike in countries like, say, Israel or France — then you would think it was high time people started divesting from the illegal Lebanese apartheid regime. Given that, you know, Palestinians are herded into camps, are not allowed to own land or live anywhere but in those camps, are now allowed to hold jobs except for those on the special approved-for-Palestinians list, have their homes routinely razed by bulldozers who accuse them of illegal construction within their reserves, and so on.)
It simply is not true for a vast majority, though not all, of the people who struggle on the side of the Palestinians.
Indeed. Most people are well-intentioned. The argument is not as to their intentions, however, but as to their words and deeds. That’s what is insidious about racism: it is about practices, not people. People’s practices are always learned from or modelled on those others. That’s how racism gets passed on. The hard part is rooting it out.
Most honest discussions about peace in the Middle East that I’m aware of require agreement on some basics: that Jews and Palestinians are both peoples, and that they are each rooted in the Middle East. I don’t really understand whether so-called “anti-Zionism” is compatible with that position. If it is, then my personal feeling is that it shouldn’t really be called “anti-Zionism”. If it is not, then I would be curious about how it is not a racist ideology.

mobius once again demonstrates his true hatred of his orignins, israel, and jews in general. the asheniazi jews are of Palestinian descent, almost all historians and dna tests confirm. to claim they are descendants of converts from europe is a view held by a few anti semetic crackpots and a lot of muslims (perhaps thats the same thing). as to the Sephardim, they are about 50% of the jewish population of Israel (notice how mobius sneakily calls them a minority, sounds like 5% -10%, no theyre almost 1/2). so mobius, you use big words, you make long aguments, but basically you LIE. why dont you go back to analysis and sort out your problems with your mother and your father; leave politics to the big boys and girls.

I just wanted to comment that this is actually turning into a really great dialogue and I feel like I am learning a lot from it [even though for a while I thought this might have gone the way of most P/I discussions, i.e. down in flames]. With that being said, I am still not an anti-Semite and I still do support divestiture, conversely, I also really like learning and really love dialogue. And, FYI, for anyone who does think that I am an anti-Semite I will have them know that tonight I will be going to a Shabbat dinner with a good Jewish friend…so there! Heh-btw-the last part is most certainly true. I love to get my Shabbat on.

I don’t like the idea of approving or disapproving of the legitimacy of anyone’s pursuit of their desire to live anywhere being based on ethnicity, heritage or religion. If a Jew from Poland wants to live in Jerusalem, fine. If he or she wants to do so from a conviction of faith, that they beleive doing so is part of fulfilling religious ideals, destiny, obligations or whatever is of no importance to me (though irrelevent to this idea, I personally admire people who act on convictions and are motived by faith). I don’t take issue so much with who is invited to Israel but rather with who is barred from Israel and why they are so barred.

Okay, I have a whole bunch of questions and this is not the place, but can someone please explain the “ashkenazi” issue. I know that there are sephardim and ashkenazi, but I was not aware that being ashknenazi was in some way not “ethnically” or “racially” legite. I am very new in discovering my families Jewish background. My mother’s mother’s mother and all that is my tie to being Jewish. My family denied their judaism because they lived in an extremely dangerous environment at the time and felt it was best not to aknowledge their “jewishness”. I struggled for a long time if this meant I was no longer Jewish until my Rabbi explained to me that as long as I can trace the lineage through my mother’s mother then I am a Jew. I can. My great grandmother and grandmother immigrated from Russian to Georgia – the Grossmans. So, I was under the impression that I was a Jew. Now, I am reading about the whole “ashkenazi” concern, which I assume I am ashkenazi. I know this is not the place for this discussion, but I would appreacite any help I can get. Thanks.

hey mo –
“European Jews (such as myself) are then, indeed, colonial occupiers.” – but i thought you were of the direct bloodline of king david – so when you go to israel, you think of yourself as a colonial occupier?
“…involves inviting birthright israel attendees to colonize the West Bank during his keynote addresses given to these disaffected teenage audiences.”
when did that happen – i believe what he wa s promoting was aliah – no mention of the west bank.

So many words. Is Israel aparteid in the way it resembles South Africa of the past or not because of how it differs? Is Israel a colonial occupier due to resemblences to colonizations of the past or not due to the things that make it unique? These are debatable issues.
This started out as a comparative look at the meanings of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Much informed and inflamed comment has been made about anti-Semitism all of which has served to demonstrate and deliniate the meaning of it. Much less has been directed to what anti-Zionism or Zionism is. I said above that I shy from the word anti-Zionism. An now more than ever.
What has been said about Zionism indicates that its meaning and relevence are defined on a very personal level. Zionism may take the form of a political aspiration. There might be something to discuss or debate of that. But Zionism might exist as a religious tenet. (With deference to Mr. Avi Green, in particular) I have no roll in a debate regarding the legitimacy of any particular article of anyone’s faith. I hope that in this I haven’t been misconstrued. And yet whether anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism overlap or bare equivalenies may infact hang on what one means by Zionism.
I keep an eye open to Jewschool.

Incidentally, EMTZAlex, you write that as a Zionist I know antisemitism when I see it, and I think Zionism (i.e. Zion i.e. the modern State of Israel) is the solution.
I have to chime in here, because I — also, as a Zionist — disagree and think it’s an important point. I disagree on two grounds.
On one hand, the struggle against antisemitism and, generally, against anti-Jewish racism doesn’t require Jewish self-determination. At best, it requires an acknowledgement that Jews have that right no less than do other peoples — Kurds, Palestinians, and Abkhazians, say.
And — few Zionists would disagree with this, but it probably needs to be pointed out for this who would caricature Zionism — nor does Jewish self-determination guarantee a bulwark against antisemitism, any more than Greek self-determination (realised as the state of Greece) necessarily means an end to anti-Greek sentiment in, say, Turkey or anywhere else.
More to the point, though, I think that Jews in Israel have been quite lax on the last point. If Israel is to serve as a more effective anchor point for Jews worldwide, I think that it needs to stop always looking to the state to do this — the state does, after all, have responsibilities towards Israel’s other national and ethnic groups — and begin to build up the character of Jewish and Jewish-positive institutions in Israeli civil society. Institutes like the Hartman Institute, or efforts to provide English-language university degrees or, better, extensive conversion programmes that allow non-Israelis to come into the country, learn Hebrew, and do regular university degrees, are good starts. But they’re only beginnings. Look at India’s special provisions for NRIs (“non-resident Indians”), or the role of an assembly of diasporic Palestinians, I think it was, in one of the proposals for a future Palestinian political system. Interesting ideas; Israel has hardly been a leader in this respect.

It depends on what do you mean by “Jewish identity”.
(As an aside: the so-called right of self-determination — the Westphalian contact upon which we’ve erected a world system — is a tricky thing. It’s not necessarily even a good idea. But it’s certainly how we’ve run world affairs, and [as a European idea] it’s certainly been taken to heart all over the place.)
Israel is the instrument of Jewish self-determination’s exercise. How you do that is certainly not a policy issue unique to Israel — it’s characteristic of states everywhere save, perhaps, the white “settler states” like U.S., Canada, Australia, etc. in which the descendants of colonialists far outnumber everyone else.
So, to answer your question, the way that democratic nation-states tend to respond is to acknowledge their special responsibilities to national majorities and national minorities. Why should Israel’s common language be Hebrew, or why should it speak on behalf of its Jewish community when there are Jewish issues to be spoken of? Because it has a responsibility towards the Jews who are its national majority. Why should it do the same for its Palestinian, Muslim, Christian, Druze, Bedouin, (yes these clearly overlap) communities? Similar reason; it has a responsibility towards the communities which are “national minorities” — the cultural communities whose place in the world is uniquely tied to the place in which Israel exists.
Israel, necessarily, is both all of these and yet a superset of these. Jews’ status as a national majority in Israel means that Israeli identity will, given this special responsibility, always be very strongly coloured by Jewishness — it is hard to imagine Israelis, Jewish or not, who live their lives out in Israel without any familiarity with the Hebrew language or, say, what Yom Kipour is.
On the other hand, nor can Israeliness be reducible to Jewishness; it needs to be a shared project which federates each of the communities living there and, it goes without saying, forces categorisation into the communities on noone — only provides the resources for the reproduction and continued vigour of these cultures. Funding schools. Providing for cultural programmes. And so forth. So the challenge becomes making the Israeli state answerable for these communities without reducing them to it.
A good analogy is, again, with other countries. Not all Greeks must spend all their time speaking the Greek language, nor regularly attend Greek Christian Orthodox churches, and so on and so forth. And, indeed, Greece has a long way to go in ensuring rights for its national minorities, such as the historic Turkish population. (Incidentally, Greece does not compare very well to Israeli protection of minority rights on this score. But that is hardly the point here…!)
While most would agree that Greece needs to change its policies quite drastically on this matter, nor would anyone necessarily think it odious that its national minorities speak at least some Greek, or that state-funded minority Turkish schools have some Greek language requirements, and so forth. Nor would it be bizarre if Greek Orthodox Xmas and Easter were statutory holidays — as long as members of the Turkish minority, which is indigenous to Greece, could take the Eids off, too. And so forth.
But, then, Greece is not surrounded by Turkish-speaking countries. Perhaps an even better example is in Quebec, where I live, and in which new immigrants do not have the right to publicly-funded English-language schooling — only French-language — whereas members of the historically English-speaking community, which here is defined as anyone whose parents went to publicly-funded English-language schools, do have that right. That’s been quite controversial. I don’t have a problem with it, nor with the fact that, inevitably, to live here comfortable (get a job, etc) one now needs to speak French — something that wasn’t really true until the French-Canadian majority in Quebec began to use the state as their instrument of self-determination.
A long answer to a short question. Yes, it depends on the Jewish identity of the state of Israel. No, that doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it does.

Neat … just another note re analogies, when you talk about people complaining about how the boom of Asian immigration to North America has led to the development of non-English speaking communities — again, I think that white settler countries have functioned as an exception to the nation-state problem precisely because they were created as new, “cultureless” places for ostensibly empty spaces. A better example is to imagine the same issue is the context of Quebec, where — and we can argue about its own colonialism — in all circumstances, you have a group of people whose language and culture are unique in North America. They faced exactly the problem you’re talking about, and the response was in language laws and so on and so forth. One may disagree with said laws and institutions and so on, but the fact is that the problem is by no means obvious. (An even better example would be to imagine a Canadian state which, for example, feels it has a particular commitment to Haida or Cree or Mohawk, and so forth, communities. Or not just to imagine, I suppose, come to think of it: isn’t Nunavut another parallel to be explored here? How would things have been different had Nunavut been filled with white southerners? and so on.)
Hence: These people need to understand that if they come here, THEY have to fit in…” Needless to say I wonder at what point the onus to acquiesce shifted from the indiginous population to the newer incoming population. Obviously there’s onus on all sides; few would agree, I think, about a one-way onus, at least in the abstract. Similarly, the idea that the Westphalian contract’s implementation has been imposed on much of the world is fine and not particularly controversial and so on — whether French and British and (ex-Soviet) Georgian governments, Senegalese and Zairian and Algerian liberation movements, Liberian and Israeli ideologies of return, what have you, most people have very concrete experience with the desire to territorialise a nation-state that fits into a Westphalian world. The hard bit is noting what effects this has had — what does it mean to want to be part of the United Nations, or to use international law, or .. a whole host of other things — and reconcile it with living in the world?
I think it would be nice to jettison state nationalisms, provided other alternatives were available and in place and workable. At one time, particularly confronted with two state nationalisms very present in my life (the Quebecois and the Israeli) I believe that it was important to try and crush these. Why don’t I think that anymore? Call it an encounter with international institutions. Nationalism doesn’t get crushed; it slowly melts away as empowered peoples gain the confidence and ability to deal with one another in an intimate fashion, even as they build institutions which shift accomplishing the same cultural goals away from the state, and with the state’s participation.
It’s fitting that the process — ongoing for decades, now — is getting started (albeit slowly) in Europe, where state nationalism was invented, deployed internally and, at the same time and as necessary part of the same process, exported worldwide as the foundation of a new “liberated” world. (In which the Middle Eastern articulations of said state nationalism are at least as striking in the Arab world as in Israel.) Even that process has it hiccups. I think it will spread. I think, in the meantime, it is disingenuous (from a European standpoint) and dishonest (from a North American standpoint) to think that, somehow, the rest of the world will go first. It won’t. The way to move away from nation-states inside a Westphalian world is to admit people into that world, and help them advance forward through it.
(Okay, I’m way off topic, and have written way too many posts on this topic. But it’s been interesting. My bottom lines? On Zionism: Yes, I’m a Zionist; yes, my Zionism only has three postulates; yes, those whose critique of Israel is founded in an attack on one of those three postulates seems, if not racist, then worthy of careful explanation. To question Jews’ right to form a people, or that people’s historic roots in the Middle East, or that people’s equality of rights with other peoples in the world, all seem anachronous to me. And, on antisemitism and other racisms: it’s really not useful to talk about people as racist, particularly as people are complicated creatures who do many contradictory things. Practices are racist, not people, and they are often founded in specific sets of ideas; engage the ideas, and criticise the practices, and one goes a lot further than if one attacks the people.)

t now identifies as racist a policy of a nation that expects its immigrants to “fit in”. presumeably this means they speak the the countries primary language, and subscribe to its basic judicial and moral code. Since virtually every nation in the world would have those basic requirements, that means that every nation in the world is racist. im not sure that gets us anywhere. and t, the next time the us thinks of declining an individual who believes murder is ok, treating women as slaves is the proper treatment due them, and that adherents of religions other than his own should be subjugated to his religious leaders, ill suggest that the us admit those individuals and plant them next to your home. t, i think i once called you a fool. i now think that you are an overeducated idiot. please dont embark on an academic career and subject more students to such idiocy. you should join a democratic think tank, perhaps one run by the nation magazine, where you fellows will all admire your inciteful genius.

t–re: religious implications of zionism; my grandmother’s brothers are the munkacher and dineveh rebbes. munkach is a reputable hasidic sect from what’s present-day ukraine. they control vast areas of boro park and have a large enclave, including their own synagogue, in jerusalem. my great granduncle, the munkacher rebbe, was a staunch and notorious anti-zionist, whose beliefs were much akin to the neturei karta’s: we have no business being there til moshiach comes and brings us. up til that point, you may as well be eating ham because you’re violating torah law all the same. i am simply carrying on the traditions of my forebears, using politics as opposed to eschatology, to present my case. if i go raving about moshiach in the context of a political argument, i will be dismissed faster than i can blink. rational people don’t drag messiahs into human rights debates.
avi–you talk more shit than rotorooter.
after the jews were booted out of (the lst) israel, some of the jews ended up in the arab lands, some in spain/portugal, and some in eastern and western europe.
france and germany. eastern and western europe? no. france and germany. period. no one else would take them.
the first two groups are commonly referred to as sephardic, the latter as ashknenazi. all worship the same torah, are totally of the same religion, but some of the locallized customs are different (eg. the ashknezai often spoke yiddish in central and eastern europe, the sephardic often spoke ladino; borsht v. whatever the ladinos learned from their mothers kitchens).
yet for some reason the sephardim are completely racist towards the ashkenazim and behind their backs (and sometimes to their faces) breathe things about how they’re not really jews. but hey, you like pretending we’re one big happy, so…whatever.
meanwhile, sometime in the middle ages, supposedly (its not completely clear), a small group in eastern europe (the khazars) supposedly converted to judaism. if true, based on the historical evidence and dna testing, the khazars are an insignifcant portion of the jewish people today.
the man will probably believe every word of the torah at face value but will deny hard fact in the form of anthropological and historical evidence substantiating the sad reality that we’re fradulent jews. the khazarian empire was comprised of hungary, romania, ukraine–all the countries where the major hasidic sects (which thin out into litvisch, then modern orthodox, conservative, reform, reconstructionist, renewal, and unafilliated jews of white european descent)come from. bah! miniscule numbers. right.
i’ll tell you what, avi. from now on, when you want to talk shit, i want to see sources for everything you say. real, verifiable, valid sources. otherwise don’t even bother hitting the keys. show me one real source on your alleged khazarian dna testing. bet you don’t even have one.
since they converted and joined the jewish people, from a jewish religious point of view it makes no difference whether you trace your heritage to the khazars, the sephardic, or the ashknenazis, or any other group, youre JEWISH (yeah for jews)! a few antisemites, and a lot of muslims (who alas are mostly anti semites)attempt to delegitimize the jewish claim to israel by claiming we cant trace our heritage to ancient Palestine. this is a lie, as any legitimate historian or genetisist will tell you, but then a sizable portion of muslims believe the us government itself created 9/11, so what can you do with crazies?
it doesn’t matter if you’re jewish or not, if you’re not from palestine, you have no claim to the land there. if you’re not from africa, you have no claim to the land there. if you’re not from america, you have no claim to the land there. if you’re not from hawaii, you have no claim to the land there. if you’re not from jamaica, you have no claim to the land there. what part of colonialism don’t you understand? you can not trace your origins there. show me your family tree or take a fuckin’ hike.
also, i resent you being that demeaning towards muslims on my website. this is not lgf–this is not a hate site. if you want to spread hate against arabs, go somewhere i people want to hear it. i am into finding solutions, not antagonizing others, and fanning the flames of hate.
newby, i welcome you to the fold (should you choose to return), but joining results in a lot of pain and agnst, not the least of which is dealing with jews like mobius who hate themselves and their jewish heritage.
avi, you are the worst kind of rasha. what you know about me would fill a thimble. and what’s worse, you publically partake in loshn horah, a sin believed to be worse than murder. you are the farthest thing from a tzadik, sir, and beyond that point, it is only men like you who ever bring me close to feeling ashamed to be a jew.
you will gain a special relationship with g-d; but you will become the target of those antisemites (both jewish and non) who post on this thread.
really, don’t you have anything better to do?
8opus–
Mobius, you criticize the political ideologies of Jabotinsky and of Sharon. Which is fine, but is not so much anti-Zionist as anti-Jabotinsky, or perhaps anti-.
which was my point. there’s a right and left in zionism. i represent the left-leaning towards spiritual zionist. however, because my views are so diametrically opposed to that of those on right, i’m considered an anti-zionist. in the current environment, as is demonstrated by the likes of avi, anyone who dares criticize the establishment is called a capo. it’s the same as when americans criticize george bush. there are always going to be those meatheads there rarin’ to call you unamerican and unpatriotic, even though in actuality you’re doing your patriotic duty to question your leaders.
Zionism is certainly not reducible to the political programme of a Jabotinsky or of a Sharon; it is, I’ve suggested, reducible to the three postulates above — Jews form a people, that people is rooted in the Middle East, that people holds no less right to self-determination than any other — but that’s about it.
while i agree with the first and second tenets, i would also argue, within reason, that the second one need not be the case. we are theologically rooted in the middle east, but it has been thousands of years since we’ve been really rooted anywhere. the christians and muslims claim to be rooted in jerusalem too. if we lay our claim to it under this premise, don’t they have every right to do so as well?
You also claim it a fact that Israel is, essentially, the last remnant of European colonialism. This is demonstrably untrue on a whole series of levels — the easy identification of Israel as “European” (it’s not); the apparent belief in European state colonialism’s extinction elsewhere in the Middle East (it’s not) and elsewhere in the world (it’s certainly not); the assumption that European “colonialism” operates only outside of European territory (it doesn’t); and so forth. But it’s true wide-ranging and general a charge to really respond to in much detail; I suggest you rethink it or, if you truly believe this to be the case, make that case in a separate posting.
i meant that it’s perceived by many that way, whether it’s actually the case or not.
The ethnic home of European Jews (ashkenazim) who converted to Judaism during the reign of the Ukranian Khazar empire, is not Palestine, but the Ukraine and other areas of Eastern Europe, including some parts of Germany and France. While you are more than welcome to hold this belief, it is important you understand that, for many Jews, we hold the Jewish people (‘am yehudi) to be a historic community rooted in the Middle East. That we hold our roots in the Middle East to be crucial to our identities — and, indeed, to our prayer cycles and cultural practices. That we see the gradual admixture of our Middle Eastern forbears with the host population among whom they lived in exile as neither a problem nor a challenge nor a “foreign element” to a Middle Eastern community that has evolved differently in different diasporic places across time.
look, i hold the jewish people to be rooted in the middle east as well. i face the east when i daven just like anybody else. it’s not even that i’m saying ashkenazim shouldn’t be “allowed into israel”, i’m just saying that they can’t lay genuine claim to having origins there other than in a theological, and thus abstract, sense. it’d be like telling people i’m from guatemala. i’m not.
(That said, even if we were to buy into this apparently genetic criterion you seem to have established for Ashkenazic rootedness in the Middle East — and we do not, for the reasons stated above — it would seem to fall on both internal and external logic. Externally, genetic research has consistently demonstrated the genetic commonality between Jews of Eastern Europe and, say, Lebanese and Palestinians, as opposed to Slavic Ukrainians or Turkish Khazars. Internally, it is hard to understand how this argument would be extrapolated to other peoples, all of whom are necessarily ethnically admixted — for example, the many European inbirths into the current-day Palestinian population, especially since the time of the Crusades and visible among the many Palestinian redheads today. But, as I say, all of this is an aside.)
i’m just curious, and i understand your point and all (i have to admit, i’m something of a sophist and use argument as a venue for learning more than anything else; i generally refuse to hold steadfast to any beliefs, thus you shouldn’t really hold me to the things i write here–i’m just putting things out there and seeing how people respond to them) but how are these gene tests really conducted. i mean, they’re always taking genes from jews and people claiming to be jews and matching them up. do they ever apply the same criterion to groups totally not even remotely thought of to be jews and see what the results are? it could just be a self-fulfilling prophecy style of science.
A great many Jews (whether it is most Jews I cannot say, although that doesn’t seem unreasonable), living in diaspora all around the world, believe one another to have common origins in the Middle East, and understand our history as an exilic one with common roots and considerable mixtures with local populations across millennia of exile.
yes, and if we all believed we erupted out of a box of cocoa puffs it would be “true” too. because reality is merely what you can get away with. under the veil all this sounds like is, “this is the story we all have to agree upon, or else we won’t have israel and when they fire up the ovens we’ll be fucked again.”
i’m not afraid to admit that our history may not exactly be the one we collectively agree upon. it doesn’t make our right to self-determination any less relevant. in fact, our history is irrelevant in and of itself. and that’s kind of my whole gist here. you don’t have to be jewish, or chosen, or have some tie to the land, to be entitled to your rights. simply being human entitles you. that goes for everybody.
the jabotinskyites, the right vingers, they hijacked zionism and ran amock doing awful wretched things in zionism’s name, and in our names. we’re paying for that now.
however, rather than fessing up to this fact and addressing it, before things really get out of hand, we continue to avert our past and pretend that our history never happened. know when they say, one day it’ll come back to bite ya? it’s biting us, right now…

mobius, much touched by your concern that my postings might demean the muslims; that your every word virtually drips with vitriol towards jews bothers me even more. btw, littlegreenfootballs.com is a great site that daily shows us the deranged actions of many muslims against the west, christianity, and jews, its not a hate site, its a reality site. and since i actually agree with you that judaisms connection with the land of israel is not sufficient to justify her statehood, ill give you the same reasons for her statehood that apply to every other nation in the world: a) her citizen fought for her birth and existence; b)the united nations recognizes her as a valid state); she functions as a state. after all, why doesnt the us belong to the indians, and the mexicans? why doesnt canada belong to the eskimoes? why doesnt mexico belong to the aztecs (or is it the mayans)? why doesnt austrailia belong to the aboriginees? why doesnt the uk belong to celts? actually, why doesnt saudi arabia belong to the jews, before the muslims defeated, decimated and foreably converted the jews there in the 600`s, jews owned/controlled wide swaths of what is now arab lands (read the koran, dude). the difference between most nations ive mentioned above and israel is that even my little twisted anti semite mobius admits that a good portion of the current jewish population of israel (the sephardic portion) had its origins in israel 1. so mobius, if you do truely daven, great, im glad you are still an identified jew– but ask yourself why you have such hatred towards your own; and such love of your peoples enemies? let me know, im interested, seriously

Well done Mobius and without a hint of flame.

^As a point of clarification-in the above when I speak of Israel and international opinion I am referring to the Israeli government, particularly the forces that currently hold sway, and not the Israeli people. This is a caveat that I tried to express with the analogy about criticism of the US.

ah moby, my anti semetic little friend, so glad you think that jews are hook nosed uglies, cheap, over concerned with money, cocerned only about their own, devious and deceitful in business…. all stereotypes about the jews….therefor at least partially true. your logic, arguments, and thoughts are ugly, mobius, you are indeed an antisemite.

schneider, great post to a site identifying the genetic basis for the position that all jews, eastern and western, are of the same basic stock. but have you ever tried to talk to a laruche (sic) person or a peta person, and reason with them? you cant, theyre members of a cult, theyre virtually brainwashed to avoid logic, and facts that would contradict their belief system. mobius, t, and a above cant be persuaded by facts and logic, theyre into the cult of antisemetism. i can only hope that your postings and the postings of those of us who arent into this cult will persuade the other readers of this site that anti israeli anti semetic ravings are disgusting and vile, and that those who engage in them are really the new kkk, the new nazis.

“mobius, t, and a above cant be persuaded by facts and logic, theyre into the cult of antisemetism.”-It is so funny when avi says things like this. I would argue, and I think more convincingly, that it is avi who suffers from being “brainwashed to avoid logic, and facts that would contradict their (his) belief system.” Avi, honestly, and there are many others who disagree with my viewpoint here, you are the least convincing of them all. Your logic is fragile, your arguments laced with hateful and bitter emotion and your ad hominem attacks against Mobius so little based in reality that it makes you sound delusional.

T-What is a confessional quota?
pauliewood-I am actually not pessimistic at all. To believe that society can function without state coersion you actually have to be somewhat of an optimist, in a particular way.

(What’s the etiquette? Do I keep on replying? This is getting to be a super-long thread. But, well, why not.)
Okay. Mobius, as is demonstrated by the likes of avi, anyone who dares criticize the establishment is called a capo. Yeah: for every person who expresses strong views on a topic of interest, there’s always someone else who is going to call them names. So it goes. To the extent that I see folks in one camp or another proudly brandish angry e-mails as proof of their marginality, radicalism, or moral superiority, on the other hand — not my bag. Now: ‘m not afraid to admit that our history may not exactly be the one we collectively agree upon. it doesn’t make our right to self-determination any less relevant. in fact, our history is irrelevant in and of itself.
See, here’s the confusing bit. Either it doesn’t matter, or it does matter. If it doesn’t matter, then end of story. But you seem to hold that it matters a great deal. You write that it doesn’t matter if you’re jewish or not, if you’re not from palestine, you have no claim to the land there, and that yes, and if we all believed we erupted out of a box of cocoa puffs it would be “true” too. because reality is merely what you can get away with, and even an interest in the history-imprinted-in-human-genes sidethread (do they ever apply the same criterion to groups totally not even remotely thought of to be jews and see what the results are?, on which all I can say is that when I’ve curiously flipped through one or two of these studies the answer has been yes — which is not too surprising in that scientists tend not to be total idiots and have at least a basic grasp of logic — but that I really don’t know very much about it. If one was really curious I guess one could do worse than start with this BBC story turned up on a random Google search).
Does it matter to Zionism whether today’s Jews are linked to the Middle East by descent, then? Yes, I guess I agree with Mobius that it does, and disagree that an answer in the affirmative amounts to “this is the story we all have to agree upon, or else we won’t have israel and when they fire up the ovens we’ll be fucked again.” I mean, to me — as an Ashkenazi Jew in Montreal, etc. — it’s just plain weird to hear Ashkenazim described as primordial Europeans whose homeland and birthplace is in Europe and so forth. That’s for a few reasons.
In terms of history, I‘ve certainly never lived in Europe, and when I talk to members of my family who have, the image always imprinted on me is one of unwelcome interlopers who spent a millennium in Europe without ever being of Europe — and so it seems odd that Ashkenazim should only ever attain European-ness upon having left the continent. (As an aside, I think I’ve said before that, in my opinion, that’s exactly what those who [rightly] critique the Ashkenazi-establishment mode of cultural governance in early Israel just don’t get. It’s not that they were applying their naturally-come-by European learning to statebuilding, though there’s some of that too. Far more important was their doing it as a way of constantly trying to show how European they were and a kind of constant franticness about Sephardi and Mizrahi immigrants casting an “Oriental” character to things that would prove right the European critiques that Jews had been constantly trying to deny the whole time. On which, though this isn’t his main point, see the writing of Sander Gilman, who is one of the few writers to tackle — excellently — this topic.)
Okay, so that was a long aside. But, yeah, in terms of history it doesn’t make much sense to me. In terms of the history of lineage — that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? — imprinted in our genes, I don’t know much beyond what I posted above, which is just about nothing. In terms of physical appearance, I don’t get mistaken for a Ukrainian a whole lot, and do get talked at in Arabic (in Lebanese restaurants) and in Greek (when I first started going to my barber) and so on and so forth. I mean, you’re asking, and there just isn’t that much to answer with.
But, yes, ultimately I can either say that I’m Canadian or, if you prefer, Québécois, and only those things, or that I have something to do with my roots. And, no, I really don’t feel closer to more recent European roots than to the more distant Middle Eastern roots preserved, rightly or wrongly, through the insularity of those people when they were in Europe. That many people added themselves to the mix over the years — does not present a “problem” for me, nor does it for any of the other peoples or nations in the world as they see themselves. Nor should it, I think. Hence: it’d be like telling people i’m from guatemala. i’m not. Indeed. So you can see how I feel: I’m from Canada. Anything else, and you get into the discussion above.

Perhaps…according to Richard Menkis:
Perhaps the most obvious touchstone of Canadian racial thinking comes through in the immigration regulations enacted in the 1920s. As Harold Troper shows elsewhere in this volume, the Canadian government moved from a policy of allowing immigration, with exceptions, to an explicitly restrictive position, where the only non-sponsored groups that could immigrate without obstacle were agriculturalists and British and American citizens. Otherwise, groups were characterized as to whether they belonged to “races that cannot be assimilated without social or economic loss to Canada.” In order of preference, the policy was designed to accept, albeit reluctantly, northern and western Europeans, then central and eastern Europeans and, finally, southern Europeans and Jews. Jews were not categorized according to the country of their citizenship – they were Jews whether they came from Poland or Italy – and they were placed in the Special Permit Group, with the greatest restrictions of all Europeans. Immigration policy was framed to populate the country with agriculturalists and with the right racial groups. In addition to being overwhelmingly urban, Jews were not of the preferred racial origins, and the government never showed flexibility towards the Jews, as is all too well-known.
http://www.bnaibrith.ca/institute/millennium/millennium03.html for further backgound.

for those of you looking for sites to support the mobius view, that western jews are not really originally from ancient palestine, the following all agree with him: http://www.meguiar.addr.com/Freedman.htm; http://www.abbc3.com/judaism/; http://www.scripturesforamerica.org/html2/jm0011.htm

Interesting and good article Mobius posted a while back, I recommend you read it.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200310310840.asp

“…that some imaginary cabal, or some stealthy agenda — certainly not our own weakness — is conspiring to threaten our good life.”
-Oh indeed, is this truly the tenor of anything I, or for that matter, anyone else has said here in this thread? I know, lets stop talking about the issues and just continue on and on using anti-Semitism smokescreen. This is not to say that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist, quite the contrary, however, it is to say that if you want people to take it seriously anymore (as indeed they should, just like all other forms of oppression) you should use it a bit more sparingly and actually only calling things, ideas and/or actions anti-Semitic_if_they_actually_are. Let’s be concerned with oppression in all its myriad forms. What about racism, heterosexism, class subordination and patriarchy for starters?

Well, at least what you said above was funny and even showed a little imagination; however, as per usual you have failed to answer to any issues whatsoever. Congratulations, you have proven to be some form of neo-con through and through. Something tells me that not even the people on this site think neo-cons can offer us an adequate perspective of the world. And, by the ways, I am not, was not, nor will I ever be a liberal. Ask me what I think of liberals and I will tell you.
The bottom line is that if you don’t take class subordination seriously, than why should you care so much about anti-Semitism? If you don’t think racism is inherently bad, then why so concerned with anti-Semitism? Oh, is it because you are Jewish? I see. So you are not concerned with forms of oppression or what may be “just” or right, you are only concerned with what may oppress you. Indeed. And my views are the ones that are narrow?

t, as you probably know, a convert is for all purpose exactly like a “born” jew, in fact it is a violation under jewish law to even mention that one is a convert. Jews dont feel an imperative to convert others since jews arent exclusionists, we believe that all good people of whatever faith can get to heaven; but once a person does convert, he/she is fully embraced. speaking only for myself, i wish the frum community would make it easier to convert, this would be a much better world with a lot more jews with jewish values.

avi: as a person who has worked in jewish communal services for 10 years and wraps tefillin in the morning, your suggestion that i am an antisemite is a rather absurd one. just stop your inanity already.
paulie: in 700 ad, “The Khazars were now at the peak of their power, their realm stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Danube, and well to the north of Moscow. About 750, the Khazar aristocracy accepted Judaism as their religion, partly because they feared they would be hounded by Rome or Constantinople if they turned Christian–or by Bhagdad, if they turned Muslim.” — Isaac Asimov’s Chronology of the World
here’s a map. figure it out. the danube’s in southeast germany, the caspian’s towards the far-right corner of the map.
8opus: Either it doesn’t matter, or it does matter. If it doesn’t matter, then end of story. But you seem to hold that it matters a great deal.
it shouldn’t matter, ideally. the problem is that zionists are constantly equating the jewish people’s right to self-determination with their “right” to ethnically cleanse a country that is by no means their own (and by that i mean, both not their’s alone–it belongs to its arab natives too, and not necessarily their land of origin).
If one was really curious I guess one could do worse than start with this BBC story turned up on a random Google search).
fine, you got me there. the reason i raised the question as to whether or not they sampled the genes of non-jews as well is simply because scientists have a tendency to ‘find what they’re looking for’–there’s a sort of tunnel vision inherent in the logic used in these sorts of studies which is sometimes tailored to produce the desired results.
I mean, to me — as an Ashkenazi Jew in Montreal, etc. — it’s just plain weird to hear Ashkenazim described as primordial Europeans whose homeland and birthplace is in Europe and so forth.
look, as i believe i stated previously, when a person converts to judaism, they don’t convert to ashkenazism. they don’t inherit my ancestors. what they do inheret is our collective ancestry–avraham, yitzhak and yaakov, our sages, our great rabbeim. likewise, when turkish khazars convert to judaism, they don’t become o.g. palestinian jews. they don’t inheret that bloodline.
however, that’s not to say that there weren’t the real descendents of o.g. palestinian jews among the khazars, who married and mated in. it’s not like we haven’t all intermingled and mixed by this point. however, the vast majority of immigrants to palestine were native europeans for dozens of generations–from 700-1930, not native palestinians. thus what entitlement do they really have to palestine, other than in a the sense of their theological roots? none.
In terms of history, I’ve certainly never lived in Europe, and when I talk to members of my family who have, the image always imprinted on me is one of unwelcome interlopers who spent a millennium in Europe without ever being of Europe — and so it seems odd that Ashkenazim should only ever attain European-ness upon having left the continent.
i mean, that’s a fair point. but frankly, that neither jews nor europeans viewed ashkanzim as europeans is simply foolish and wholly ignorant on both their parts. and the zionists take advantage of this, feeding into this jew-as-alien image. hertzl himself stoked the flames. he wanted antisemitism to thrive so that he could light a fire under people’s asses to catalyze the movement.
(As an aside, I think I’ve said before that, in my opinion, that’s exactly what those who [rightly] critique the Ashkenazi-establishment mode of cultural governance in early Israel just don’t get. It’s not that they were applying their naturally-come-by European learning to statebuilding, though there’s some of that too. Far more important was their doing it as a way of constantly trying to show how European they were and a kind of constant franticness about Sephardi and Mizrahi immigrants casting an “Oriental” character to things that would prove right the European critiques that Jews had been constantly trying to deny the whole time. On which, though this isn’t his main point, see the writing of Sander Gilman, who is one of the few writers to tackle — excellently — this topic.)
you’re just helping my point here.
But, yes, ultimately I can either say that I’m Canadian or, if you prefer, Québécois, and only those things, or that I have something to do with my roots. And, no, I really don’t feel closer to more recent European roots than to the more distant Middle Eastern roots preserved, rightly or wrongly, through the insularity of those people when they were in Europe. That many people added themselves to the mix over the years — does not present a “problem” for me, nor does it for any of the other peoples or nations in the world as they see themselves. Nor should it, I think. Hence: it’d be like telling people i’m from guatemala. i’m not. Indeed. So you can see how I feel: I’m from Canada. Anything else, and you get into the discussion above.
exactly. i am a jewish american. i have been to israel and love it there, culturally speaking. but i am not from there. my religion is rooted there, yes. i’m not. for me to claim i’m entitled to live there because i’m a jew is an incredulous remark. to claim that i’m entitled to live there because i’m a human being and people should have the right to settle wherever they please, on the other hand, is a just and noble statement.
Speaking personally, if you’re going to start divesting, I mean — if you’re mad at Israel-the-government-not-the-people, why on Earth aren’t you divesting from Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan? Apartheid, racism, colonial occupation, illegitimate rule, indiscriminate use of force … I mean, it’s all there, and it’s right next door on the map. You can’t criticize every country at once, and it’s fine (though weird) that so many people focus on Israel and so few focus on anywhere else in the region. But when you get to things like divestment campaigns, it seems to me one would either want to be more systematic about it, or else be open to being questioned about why doesn’t want to be systematic about it, no?
you’re missing just one important point opus–israel receives an obscene amount of money from american taxpayers. when that money is going to oppress a people who, in turn, are hijacking our ships and airplanes (as the plo has to u.s. ships and planes), you can imagine that americans are going to get bent out of shape and start questioning who their money’s going to.
israel’s smaller than new jersey and, thanks to the US, has an arsenal to rival every country on the asian and african continents with the exception of, perhaps, mainland china, who israel sells nuclear weapons to. not to mention the fact that the israeli navy’s original submarines were a gift from musolinni to jabotinsky, but i digress.
a state that small, with that much firepower, and with a record of doing scummy things like nuking nuclear reactors and provoking unncessary wars, as sharon instigated in lebanon, will surely draw the ire of the international community.
no?
auto: I know, lets stop talking about the issues and just continue on and on using anti-Semitism smokescreen […] if you want people to take it seriously anymore (as indeed they should, just like all other forms of oppression) you should use it a bit more sparingly and actually only calling things, ideas and/or actions anti-Semitic_if_they_actually_are.
word to that. might i recommend counterpunch’s politics of antisemitism? some of the book rubs me the wrong way, but for the most part, it hits the nail on the head. or actually, how about the fucking article this thread is linked from? when people like avi pull antisemitism out of their asses, they’re simply deflating the meaning of antisemitism, and eventually to a point where it’s utterly meaningless. thanks to guys like avi, so quick to cry wolf, being thought of an antisemite is now a non-threatening and easily dismissible suggestion. i mean, shit, having abe foxman on your ass used to mean something…
avi: demise is thought to been caused by exposure to speeches of hayak, reagan, friedman.
reagan? you mean the one who laid wreaths on nazi graves at bitburg, right? you mean the one asleep at the wheel while the iran contra was being cooked in the adjacent office, right?
god you are such a dunce.
auto: “this would be a much better world with a lot more jews with jewish values.”-sounds rather chauvanistic in tenor to me.
perhaps, auto, that’s true, but i’m going to have to agree with avi on that one, even if he is a billigerant, neoconic dunce.

Fine-I’ll accept that from you as I believe the the world would be a lot better if only there were more anarchists. Perhaps we are all a bit chauvanistic at times…sigh. But I won’t accept it from avi, so there. heh.

Is 85 really a record? I think Jakeneck has gotten up to 160 at times.

The Khazar question is rejected by a vast majority of historians as most Eastern European Jews can trace their ancestry coming from the West, starting in Italy. But of course there has been admixture and intermarriage to an extent that isn’t really known. As with any population that has been out of their homeland for thousands of years and still identify with their homeland there is no way to stay pure as a group. If people want to get into specifics about genetics, the palestine arabs are not natives. As the Arabs conquered the middle east during the upsurge of Islam. In fact, populations like the druze who havent mixed with any population since 1000 AD are much more light skinned than the so called arab “palestine natives”. Still, I dont think the genetics of the homeland should matter because jewish identity is about tradition, civilization, religion and not really genetics. The fact that only the mother must be Jewish was enforced by the rabbis because of the rapes done by invading armies such as the Romans. So even in Ancient Israel, there was already admixture of different peoples into the jewish identity.

Danke Mobius. So, tonight at our campus’ ubiquitous peace group, aptly called the Peace Coalition, we had a discussion lead by a new member who is also an Israeli Refusnik. He doesn’t, by the way, support the divestment campaign but he does support the one state solution. He thinks that it is high time that Israel stop f**king around and give all of the people, including Palestinians, full democratic rights. He talked about the ways that Israeli history glosses over the facts to fit an image of the past that is not true and how he learns more and more everday about what really happened in the formation of Israel. But I’m going to stop speaking for him. I’ll give him this link and see if perhaps he wants to engage in this debate.

Incidentally — off-topic — T, re 8opus’ BBC article speaks of a genetic connection of European Jews to middle eastern men: not my article, I have to plead… just the first thing I found on a Google search I did. I agree with you that it’s probably not important and that, if it is at all important, it is as historic “document” to be ascribed the value of any historic document, nothing more. For those really interested in that stuff, I’m sure Google can find lots of actual research papers, not just BBC coverage of them.
(Though, T, as an exercise of logic: the study seems to be implying that a representative sample of Ashkenazim showed that [European] Jews and Arabs have more in common with each other, genetically speaking, than they do with any of the wider communities in which they might live — that is, closer genetic ties to Middle Easterners than to the majority populations in thier host countries. The flaw you’re finding is that it might be argued that Ashkenazim in general would have nothing to do with the Middle East except for widespread and generalized marriage to non-Jewish Middle Easterners. Now a scientific study is a scientific study — inherently criticizable — but surely there are more plausible criticisms than that!)

Thanks Asaf ; )

Can you please give more details about what a jewish state should be?

Cultural responsibility of state-
well ironically Israel did create a new and beautiful culture, but it did so on the expense of killing what it was originally meant for- jewish culture. This culture is more thriving in the states than in Israel. Now we are left to decide the relation between israeli and jewish culture, which is an interesting question. But in any case, all my arguments against zionism is the fact that it is an ideology that has failed. The good thing that came out of it – Israeli culture, was not even the dream of most of zionis scholars. Not that I expect them to pridct the future. In any case- all I am saying that in practical terms the only thing Israel could do today is adopt a democratic attitude of a one state solution.
This is not about my ideals but my intrepertation of the clash of ideology and reality.

I strongly reject the notion that without Israel anti-semitism would be less. Israel is the only reason anti-semitism is not too high. And in some ways its the reason there hasnt been a nuclear war yet. Here’s a link to what I consider the best modern philosopher, Eric Hoffer.
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/jul02/hoffer.htm

Yeah an old article, but still applies the same way. The Arabs have not changed their mission, they have only changed their methods in order to achieve their goals of destroying Israel.

This is a quot from THE DECLARATION OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL:
“The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people – the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe – was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.”
Now why would anyone mention the holocaust at all if its not about security?
Anyway, I dont know when the last time you were in Israel, but the majority of Jewish Israelis believe a Jewish state is needed to protect the jews. Thats what its all about: secury and antisemitism.
Regarding the one state solution:
give me a better one. Settlements and the wall dont leave another option, unless ethnic cleansing and appartheid are an option.

8: You’re losing your composure. I detected no joy in Asaf’s reference to ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
I have trouble putting my finger on it but it seems Asaf is refering to the reality in Israel that he perceives as opposed to the theoretic possibility to which you seem to be refering.
I follow your reference to the planned partial withdrawal from Gaza but your characterization of the plans for the West Bank seem a little bit fanciful. The things I’ve read indicate that, in all probability, Israel will set about selectively annexing segments of the Territories and possibly redrawing some of the Green Line boundery to exclude pockets of Palestinian Israelis.
You display an academic inclination. As Israel has effectively ruled the Occupied Territories for nearly 37 years and established settlement (in contravention of International Law?), by which act it has defined itself as such (i.e. the ruling authority), discussion of whether or not Israel is apartheid within its internationally recognized borders is simply academic. I don’t believe Asaf is talking about aparthied within Israel per se. Nor do I think that he’s saying that he wants, or as you impute, “think[s] it is so important for post-occupation Israel to implement a program of apartheid” (though I’ve wrong before).
Other than theoretically what do you think of what’s going on?

8: As to the thick and the thin of things barring the weight of your voluminous postings there has been a notable amount of comment offered up here reflecting people’s feelings about what is presently happening in and around Israel. Should I narrow things down into a rarified band of discussion that you feel more comfortable with? No.
You seem to “theoretically” skirt around the fact that Israel exists in the Occupied Territories. Why? To what end? (I think there’s a difference between occupying and conquoring.)
Maybe there is, as you say,”rhetoric and PR,” and by analogy,”a PR ploy to convince the people” but there has been a certain amount of reification of the idea that Israel, in part, exists as a haven for Jews in an otherwise hostile world. This might not hold sway with regard to your hopes for Israel but so what?
Sorry if the word “characterization” bothered you. Maybe “idle musing about” would have been better.
Your comments, as always, flirt around your implied insistance that no one can say that Israel does not have a right to exist. Fine. Can you deny that Israel defines its existence, in part, through the occupation, that it defines itself by its acts? (But I guess this just talk of what Israel is and not what it could be.)
I really believed, and still do, that Asaf’s comments about a one state solution were presented in the context of how the latice-work of settlement and impending annexations will confine Palestinians to unsustainable enclaves.
(My apologies, Asaf, if I’m puting words in your mouth.)
Anyway, its late now. I await your further deconstructions.

Israel does not exist as a jewish state just because of international law. It exists that way because Israelis ideologically believe they need it for their own security. I believe the army thinks the same.
you should know this is the first time in my life I heard your argument… and I mean, in the last 4 years I thought I heard EVERYTHING. the problem is, that you cant really base what you are saying. I mean, ok, so there is international law. How can you show me this is the cause, the essence, the base, etc. etc. of the existence of Israel? Israel’s legitimacy exists on a very complex ideological superstructure (let me use some dirty words..) which is FAR from being PR. It is almost religious, this ideology. It has roots in Israel’s and the Jews history. International law is simply the legal recognition of the international community in Israel’s right to exist as Jewish state. it is NOT the raison d’etre, unless you define the raison d’etre of EVERY country to be its legal legitimacy.
I am NOT saying that the current superstrucure isnt based on lies etc. but thats not the point.
Holocaust as PR- ok, I might agree with you that the holocaust was cynically manipulated for ideological reasons. Unlike you, i dont think this is PR but a sincere ideological belief of almost every Israeli, almost every army general and every member of Parliament.
This point has a lot of implications, because the occupation wasnt just born in a vacuum, it exists in the last 36 years BECAUSE of militarism which is a direct result of Israeli insecurity and obsession with a second hitler.

Asaf — while I don’t have time to find more stuff to link to re: right to self-determination, a good article which sounds like it encapsulates some of my criticisms of it turns up here, about Tibet. It’s interesting to read that article against the random U.N. note I linked to above, for instance…

Just for clarification my horribly elliptical sentence “Fine.” was meant to mean that I have no interest in questions regarding Israel’s right to exist. (But I will still scratch my head as so much of what you’ve said seems to be directed at confirming Israel’s right to exist.)

Why make appeals to international law while Israel is clearly in violation of it on many other grounds, particularly in the area of human rights, violations of UN resolutions, etc…