Mishegaas
- Roughly half of all Brits surveyed believe that “Jew” is a swear word.
- BBC web editors claim that anti-Jewish conspiracy theories do not constitute objectionable speech.
- Guess who’s building nuclear power plants?
- Jakarta: “A dozen Christian men were convicted Thursday and sentenced to up to 14 years in jail for beating to death and beheading two Muslims.”
- “More than 10,000 academics [including 32 Nobel laureates] signed a petition demanding a halt to the campaign by Britian’s academic union to boycott Israel.”
- Israel: State commission recommends 1000 NIS (~$250) monthly living stipend for Holocaust survivors; State gives 100 NIS (~$20) instead, proclaims own generosity.
- Khaled Abu Toameh rightly asks, where is the outcry over the Lebanese army’s recent decimation of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp?
- The IDF is planning to evacuate militant settlers from the Hebron casbah.
- The Onion: “God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Boy”
- ACLU defends students’ right to individual religious expression in public school, wins.
- Oxford PhD Issa Khalaf attempts to knock us out of our alleged psychosis. Crosses some very uncomfortable lines but offers a compelling perspective.
I happen to agree with some of what he says, but this paragraph in particular really struck me as… bizarre? COntradictory?
The Palestinians are strikingly unburdened by the pathologies of their oppressors, not least of all because they do not reciprocate their occupier’s widespread racism. Their responses to their sadistic dispossession and unbearable suffering run the gamut from peaceful to violent resistance, including the desperate barbarity of suicide bombings. Yet unlike their tormentors, they’ve not lost their humanity and essential decency, their acceptance of their enemy’s humanity, their cultural generosity of spirit and life, their respect for the sacredness of all life, their sanity. I can’t imagine that Palestinian soldiers would cruelly and coolly remain unmoved — devoid of an abiding sense of rescue — by a Jewish mother dying in her house as her children watched in fear and horror.
What?! HOw about those engaged inthe violent resistance he mentioned a few words ago, or the desperate barbarity? They wouldn’t remain “unmoved — devoid of an abiding sense of rescue — by a Jewish mother dying in her house as her children watched in fear and horror?”
Um, come on, here. I’m about as left as a person can get, and I definitely think he’s engaging in some deep denial here. This doens’t negate the other things he says (which I – and you- have said for years), but I think that paragraph is in fact the very paradigm of the example of the flaws of the other side of thiscoin.
Khalaf’s missing the two largest points.
1) The degree to which Palestinian terrorism, the raison d’etre for Israeli actions, is itself an extension of the Arab anti-semitism that funds it.
2) The degree to which Israeli action, and especially the demagoguery he cites, is itself an extension of the Christian anti-Arabism that funds it through organizations like CUFI.
Both of these back ends would rather fan the flames of the conflict and push it into crisis than see peace in the region.
I used to be a TA in the religion department at a nominally Catholic university, where *most* of the students were under the impression that “Jew” was a bad word. We always got a kick out of the awkward phrasing they’d manage to come up with when discussing the “Judaic peoples” or a “person of the Hebrew faith”.
Once a girl waxed philosophical about how calling myself a Jew bothered her the same way Black people using the “n-word” in public did. She conceded that it might be okay if we called ourselves that when safely amongst our own people, but not in mixed company in order to avoid giving others the impression that they could also call us “Jews”. Oy.
“JEW” is considered offensive by many. Working with a large publishing house, their guidlines specifically insist on “Jewish Person” over “Jew.”
“Jew” is definitely a bad word when used as a verb, as in “Are you trying to jew me down?” (and yes, there actually are still people who use this).
As “Gyp” should be.